Once upon a time—but whether in the time past or time to come is a
matter of little or no moment—this wide world had become so
overburdened with an accumulation of worn-out trumpery, that the
inhabitants determined to rid themselves of it by a general bonfire.
The site fixed upon at the representation of the insurance companies,
and as being as central a spot as any other on the globe, was one of
the broadest prairies of the West, where no human habitation would be
endangered by the flames, and where a vast assemblage of spectators
might commodiously admire the show. Having a taste for sights of this
kind, and imagining, likewise, that the illumination of the bonfire
might reveal some profundity of moral truth heretofore hidden in mist
or darkness, I made it convenient to journey thither and be present. At
my arrival, although the heap of condemned rubbish was as yet
comparatively small, the torch had already been applied. Amid that
boundless plain, in the dusk of the evening, like a far off star alone
in the firmament, there was merely visible one tremulous gleam, whence
none could have anticipated so fierce a blaze as was destined to ensue.
With every moment, however, there came foot-travellers, women holding
up their aprons, men on horseback, wheelbarrows, lumbering
baggage-wagons, and other vehicles, great and small, and from far and
near, laden with articles that were judged fit for nothing but to be
burned.
“What materials have been used to kindle the flame?” inquired I of a
bystander; for I was desirous of knowing the whole process of the
affair from beginning to end.
The person whom I addressed was a grave man, fifty years old or
thereabout, who had evidently come thither as a looker-on. He struck me
immediately as having weighed for himself the true value of life and
its circumstances, and therefore as feeling little personal interest in
whatever judgment the world might form of them. Before answering my
question, he looked me in the face by the kindling light of the fire.
“O, some very dry combustibles,” replied he, “and extremely suitable to
the purpose,—no other, in fact, than yesterday’s newspapers, last
month’s magazines, and last year’s withered leaves. Here now comes some
antiquated trash that will take fire like a handful of shavings.”
As he spoke, some rough-looking men advanced to the verge of the
bonfire, and threw in, as it appeared, all the rubbish of the herald’s
office,—the blazonry of coat armor, the crests and devices of
illustrious families, pedigrees that extended back, like lines of
light, into the mist of the dark ages, together with stars, garters,
and embroidered collars, each of which, as paltry a bawble as it might
appear to the uninstructed eye, had once possessed vast significance,
and was still, in truth, reckoned among the most precious of moral or
material facts by the worshippers of the gorgeous past. Mingled with
this confused heap, which was tossed into the flames by armfuls at
once, were innumerable badges of knighthood, comprising those of all
the European sovereignties, and Napoleon’s decoration of the Legion of
Honor, the ribbons of which were entangled with those of the ancient
order of St. Louis. There, too, were the medals of our own Society of
Cincinnati, by means of which, as history tells us, an order of
hereditary knights came near being constituted out of the king quellers
of the Revolution. And besides, there were the patents of nobility of
German counts and barons, Spanish grandees, and English peers, from the
worm-eaten instruments signed by William the Conqueror down to the
bran-new parchment of the latest lord who has received his honors from
the fair hand of Victoria.
At sight of the dense volumes of smoke, mingled with vivid jets of
flame, that gushed and eddied forth from this immense pile of earthly
distinctions, the multitude of plebeian spectators set up a joyous
shout, and clapped their hands with an emphasis that made the welkin
echo. That was their moment of triumph, achieved, after long ages, over
creatures of the same clay and the same spiritual infirmities, who had
dared to assume the privileges due only to Heaven’s better workmanship.
But now there rushed towards the blazing heap a gray-haired man, of
stately presence, wearing a coat, from the breast of which a star, or
other badge of rank, seemed to have been forcibly wrenched away. He had
not the tokens of intellectual power in his face; but still there was
the demeanor, the habitual and almost native dignity, of one who had
been born to the idea of his own social superiority, and had never felt
it questioned till that moment.
“People,” cried he, gazing at the ruin of what was dearest to his eyes
with grief and wonder, but nevertheless with a degree of
stateliness,—“people, what have you done? This fire is consuming all
that marked your advance from barbarism, or that could have prevented
your relapse thither. We, the men of the privileged orders, were those
who kept alive from age to age the old chivalrous spirit; the gentle
and generous thought; the higher, the purer, the more refined and
delicate life. With the nobles, too, you cast off the poet, the
painter, the sculptor,—all the beautiful arts; for we were their
patrons, and created the atmosphere in which they flourish. In
abolishing the majestic distinctions of rank, society loses not only
its grace, but its steadfastness—”
More he would doubtless have spoken; but here there arose an outcry,
sportive, contemptuous, and indignant, that altogether drowned the
appeal of the fallen nobleman, insomuch that, casting one look of
despair at his own half-burned pedigree, he shrunk back into the crowd,
glad to shelter himself under his new-found insignificance.
“Let him thank his stars that we have not flung him into the same
fire!” shouted a rude figure, spurning the embers with his foot. “And
henceforth let no man dare to show a piece of musty parchment as his
warrant for lording it over his fellows. If he have strength of arm,
well and good; it is one species of superiority. If he have wit,
wisdom, courage, force of character, let these attributes do for him
what they may; but from this day forward no mortal must hope for place
and consideration by reckoning up the mouldy bones of his ancestors.
That nonsense is done away.”
“And in good time,” remarked the grave observer by my side, in a low
voice, however, “if no worse nonsense comes in its place; but, at all
events, this species of nonsense has fairly lived out its life.”
There was little space to muse or moralize over the embers of this
time-honored rubbish; for, before it was half burned out, there came
another multitude from beyond the sea, bearing the purple robes of
royalty, and the crowns, globes, and sceptres of emperors and kings.
All these had been condemned as useless bawbles, playthings at best,
fit only for the infancy of the world or rods to govern and chastise it
in its nonage, but with which universal manhood at its full-grown
stature could no longer brook to be insulted. Into such contempt had
these regal insignia now fallen that the gilded crown and tinselled
robes of the player king from Drury Lane Theatre had been thrown in
among the rest, doubtless as a mockery of his brother monarchs on the
great stage of the world. It was a strange sight to discern the crown
jewels of England glowing and flashing in the midst of the fire. Some
of them had been delivered down from the time of the Saxon princes;
others were purchased with vast revenues, or perchance ravished from
the dead brows of the native potentates of Hindustan; and the whole now
blazed with a dazzling lustre, as if a star had fallen in that spot and
been shattered into fragments. The splendor of the ruined monarchy had
no reflection save in those inestimable precious stones. But enough on
this subject. It were but tedious to describe how the Emperor of
Austria’s mantle was converted to tinder, and how the posts and pillars
of the French throne became a heap of coals, which it was impossible to
distinguish from those of any other wood. Let me add, however, that I
noticed one of the exiled Poles stirring up the bonfire with the Czar
of Russia’s sceptre, which he afterwards flung into the flames.
“The smell of singed garments is quite intolerable here,” observed my
new acquaintance, as the breeze enveloped us in the smoke of a royal
wardrobe. “Let us get to windward and see what they are doing on the
other side of the bonfire.”
We accordingly passed around, and were just in time to witness the
arrival of a vast procession of Washingtonians,—as the votaries of
temperance call themselves nowadays,—accompanied by thousands of the
Irish disciples of Father Mathew, with that great apostle at their
head. They brought a rich contribution to the bonfire, being nothing
less than all the hogsheads and barrels of liquor in the world, which
they rolled before them across the prairie.
“Now, my children,” cried Father Mathew, when they reached the verge of
the fire, “one shove more, and the work is done. And now let us stand
off and see Satan deal with his own liquor.”
Accordingly, having placed their wooden vessels within reach of the
flames, the procession stood off at a safe distance, and soon beheld
them burst into a blaze that reached the clouds and threatened to set
the sky itself on fire. And well it might; for here was the whole
world’s stock of spirituous liquors, which, instead of kindling a
frenzied light in the eyes of individual topers as of yore, soared
upwards with a bewildering gleam that startled all mankind. It was the
aggregate of that fierce fire which would otherwise have scorched the
hearts of millions. Meantime numberless bottles of precious wine were
flung into the blaze, which lapped up the contents as if it loved them,
and grew, like other drunkards, the merrier and fiercer for what it
quaffed. Never again will the insatiable thirst of the fire-fiend be so
pampered. Here were the treasures of famous bon vivants,—liquors that
had been tossed on ocean, and mellowed in the sun, and hoarded long in
the recesses of the earth,—the pale, the gold, the ruddy juice of
whatever vineyards were most delicate,—the entire vintage of Tokay,—all
mingling in one stream with the vile fluids of the common pot house,
and contributing to heighten the self-same blaze. And while it rose in
a gigantic spire that seemed to wave against the arch of the firmament
and combine itself with the light of stars, the multitude gave a shout
as if the broad earth were exulting in its deliverance from the curse
of ages.
But the joy was not universal. Many deemed that human life would be
gloomier than ever when that brief illumination should sink down. While
the reformers were at work I overheard muttered expostulations from
several respectable gentlemen with red noses and wearing gouty shoes;
and a ragged worthy, whose face looked like a hearth where the fire is
burned out, now expressed his discontent more openly and boldly.
“What is this world good for,” said the last toper, “now that we can
never be jolly any more? What is to comfort the poor man in sorrow and
perplexity? How is he to keep his heart warm against the cold winds of
this cheerless earth? And what do you propose to give him in exchange
for the solace that you take away? How are old friends to sit together
by the fireside without a cheerful glass between them? A plague upon
your reformation! It is a sad world, a cold world, a selfish world, a
low world, not worth an honest fellow’s living in, now that good
fellowship is gone forever!”
This harangue excited great mirth among the bystanders; but,
preposterous as was the sentiment, I could not help commiserating the
forlorn condition of the last toper, whose boon companions had dwindled
away from his side, leaving the poor fellow without a soul to
countenance him in sipping his liquor, nor indeed any liquor to sip.
Not that this was quite the true state of the case; for I had observed
him at a critical moment filch a bottle of fourth-proof brandy that
fell beside the bonfire and hide it in his pocket.
The spirituous and fermented liquors being thus disposed of, the zeal
of the reformers next induced them to replenish the fire with all the
boxes of tea and bags of coffee in the world. And now came the planters
of Virginia, bringing their crops of tobacco. These, being cast upon
the heap of inutility, aggregated it to the size of a mountain, and
incensed the atmosphere with such potent fragrance that methought we
should never draw pure breath again. The present sacrifice seemed to
startle the lovers of the weed more than any that they had hitherto
witnessed.
“Well, they’ve put my pipe out,” said an old gentleman, flinging it
into the flames in a pet. “What is this world coming to? Everything
rich and racy—all the spice of life—is to be condemned as useless. Now
that they have kindled the bonfire, if these nonsensical reformers
would fling themselves into it, all would be well enough!”
“Be patient,” responded a stanch conservative; “it will come to that in
the end. They will first fling us in, and finally themselves.”
From the general and systematic measures of reform I now turn to
consider the individual contributions to this memorable bonfire. In
many instances these were of a very amusing character. One poor fellow
threw in his empty purse, and another a bundle of counterfeit or
insolvable bank-notes. Fashionable ladies threw in their last season’s
bonnets, together with heaps of ribbons, yellow lace, and much other
half-worn milliner’s ware, all of which proved even more evanescent in
the fire than it had been in the fashion. A multitude of lovers of both
sexes—discarded maids or bachelors and couples mutually weary of one
another—tossed in bundles of perfumed letters and enamored sonnets. A
hack politician, being deprived of bread by the loss of office, threw
in his teeth, which happened to be false ones. The Rev. Sydney
Smith—having voyaged across the Atlantic for that sole purpose—came up
to the bonfire with a bitter grin and threw in certain repudiated
bonds, fortified though they were with the broad seal of a sovereign
state. A little boy of five years old, in the premature manliness of
the present epoch, threw in his playthings; a college graduate, his
diploma; an apothecary, ruined by the spread of homeopathy, his whole
stock of drugs and medicines; a physician, his library; a parson, his
old sermons; and a fine gentleman of the old school, his code of
manners, which he had formerly written down for the benefit of the next
generation. A widow, resolving on a second marriage, slyly threw in her
dead husband’s miniature. A young man, jilted by his mistress, would
willingly have flung his own desperate heart into the flames, but could
find no means to wrench it out of his bosom. An American author, whose
works were neglected by the public, threw his pen and paper into the
bonfire and betook himself to some less discouraging occupation. It
somewhat startled me to overhear a number of ladies, highly respectable
in appearance, proposing to fling their gowns and petticoats into the
flames, and assume the garb, together with the manners, duties,
offices, and responsibilities, of the opposite sex.
What favor was accorded to this scheme I am unable to say, my attention
being suddenly drawn to a poor, deceived, and half-delirious girl, who,
exclaiming that she was the most worthless thing alive or dead,
attempted to cast herself into the fire amid all that wrecked and
broken trumpery of the world. A good man, however, ran to her rescue.
“Patience, my poor girl!” said he, as he drew her back from the fierce
embrace of the destroying angel. “Be patient, and abide Heaven’s will.
So long as you possess a living soul, all may be restored to its first
freshness. These things of matter and creations of human fantasy are
fit for nothing but to be burned when once they have had their day; but
your day is eternity!”
“Yes,” said the wretched girl, whose frenzy seemed now to have sunk
down into deep despondency, “yes, and the sunshine is blotted out of
it!”
It was now rumored among the spectators that all the weapons and
munitions of war were to be thrown into the bonfire with the exception
of the world’s stock of gunpowder, which, as the safest mode of
disposing of it, had already been drowned in the sea. This intelligence
seemed to awaken great diversity of opinion. The hopeful philanthropist
esteemed it a token that the millennium was already come; while persons
of another stamp, in whose view mankind was a breed of bulldogs,
prophesied that all the old stoutness, fervor, nobleness, generosity,
and magnanimity of the race would disappear,—these qualities, as they
affirmed, requiring blood for their nourishment. They comforted
themselves, however, in the belief that the proposed abolition of war
was impracticable for any length of time together.
Be that as it might, numberless great guns, whose thunder had long been
the voice of battle,—the artillery of the Armada, the battering trains
of Marlborough, and the adverse cannon of Napoleon and Wellington,—were
trundled into the midst of the fire. By the continual addition of dry
combustibles, it had now waxed so intense that neither brass nor iron
could withstand it. It was wonderful to behold how these terrible
instruments of slaughter melted away like playthings of wax. Then the
armies of the earth wheeled around the mighty furnace, with their
military music playing triumphant marches,—and flung in their muskets
and swords. The standard-bearers, likewise, cast one look upward at
their banners, all tattered with shot-holes and inscribed with the
names of victorious fields; and, giving them a last flourish on the
breeze, they lowered them into the flame, which snatched them upward in
its rush towards the clouds. This ceremony being over, the world was
left without a single weapon in its hands, except possibly a few old
king’s arms and rusty swords and other trophies of the Revolution in
some of our State armories. And now the drums were beaten and the
trumpets brayed all together, as a prelude to the proclamation of
universal and eternal peace and the announcement that glory was no
longer to be won by blood, but that it would henceforth be the
contention of the human race to work out the greatest mutual good, and
that beneficence, in the future annals of the earth, would claim the
praise of valor. The blessed tidings were accordingly promulgated, and
caused infinite rejoicings among those who had stood aghast at the
horror and absurdity of war.
But I saw a grim smile pass over the seared visage of a stately old
commander,—by his war-worn figure and rich military dress, he might
have been one of Napoleon’s famous marshals,—who, with the rest of the
world’s soldiery, had just flung away the sword that had been familiar
to his right hand for half a century.
“Ay! ay!” grumbled he. “Let them proclaim what they please; but, in the
end, we shall find that all this foolery has only made more work for
the armorers and cannon-founders.”
“Why, sir,” exclaimed I, in astonishment, “do you imagine that the
human race will ever so far return on the steps of its past madness as
to weld another sword or cast another cannon?”
“There will be no need,” observed, with a sneer, one who neither felt
benevolence nor had faith in it. “When Cain wished to slay his brother,
he was at no loss for a weapon.”
“We shall see,” replied the veteran commander. “If I am mistaken, so
much the better; but in my opinion, without pretending to philosophize
about the matter, the necessity of war lies far deeper than these
honest gentlemen suppose. What! is there a field for all the petty
disputes of individuals? and shall there be no great law court for the
settlement of national difficulties? The battle-field is the only court
where such suits can be tried.”
“You forget, general,” rejoined I, “that, in this advanced stage of
civilization, Reason and Philanthropy combined will constitute just
such a tribunal as is requisite.”
“Ah, I had forgotten that, indeed!” said the old warrior, as he limped
away.
The fire was now to be replenished with materials that had hitherto
been considered of even greater importance to the well-being of society
than the warlike munitions which we had already seen consumed. A body
of reformers had travelled all over the earth in quest of the machinery
by which the different nations were accustomed to inflict the
punishment of death. A shudder passed through the multitude as these
ghastly emblems were dragged forward. Even the flames seemed at first
to shrink away, displaying the shape and murderous contrivance of each
in a full blaze of light, which of itself was sufficient to convince
mankind of the long and deadly error of human law. Those old implements
of cruelty; those horrible monsters of mechanism; those inventions
which it seemed to demand something worse than man’s natural heart to
contrive, and which had lurked in the dusky nooks of ancient prisons,
the subject of terror-stricken legend,—were now brought forth to view.
Headsmen’s axes, with the rust of noble and royal blood upon them, and
a vast collection of halters that had choked the breath of plebeian
victims, were thrown in together. A shout greeted the arrival of the
guillotine, which was thrust forward on the same wheels that had borne
it from one to another of the bloodstained streets of Paris. But the
loudest roar of applause went up, telling the distant sky of the
triumph of the earth’s redemption, when the gallows made its
appearance. An ill-looking fellow, however, rushed forward, and,
putting himself in the path of the reformers, bellowed hoarsely, and
fought with brute fury to stay their progress.
It was little matter of surprise, perhaps, that the executioner should
thus do his best to vindicate and uphold the machinery by which he
himself had his livelihood and worthier individuals their death; but it
deserved special note that men of a far different sphere—even of that
consecrated class in whose guardianship the world is apt to trust its
benevolence—were found to take the hangman’s view of the question.
“Stay, my brethren!” cried one of them. “You are misled by a false
philanthropy; you know not what you do. The gallows is a
Heaven-ordained instrument. Bear it back, then, reverently, and set it
up in its old place, else the world will fall to speedy ruin and
desolation!”
“Onward! onward!” shouted a leader in the reform. “Into the flames with
the accursed instrument of man’s bloody policy! How can human law
inculcate benevolence and love while it persists in setting up the
gallows as its chief symbol? One heave more, good friends, and the
world will be redeemed from its greatest error.”
A thousand hands, that nevertheless loathed the touch, now lent their
assistance, and thrust the ominous burden far, far into the centre of
the raging furnace. There its fatal and abhorred image was beheld,
first black, then a red coal, then ashes.
“That was well done!” exclaimed I.
“Yes, it was well done,” replied, but with less enthusiasm than I
expected, the thoughtful observer, who was still at my side,—“well
done, if the world be good enough for the measure. Death, however, is
an idea that cannot easily be dispensed with in any condition between
the primal innocence and that other purity and perfection which
perchance we are destined to attain after travelling round the full
circle; but, at all events, it is well that the experiment should now
be tried.”
“Too cold! too cold!” impatiently exclaimed the young and ardent leader
in this triumph. “Let the heart have its voice here as well as the
intellect. And as for ripeness, and as for progress, let mankind always
do the highest, kindest, noblest thing that, at any given period, it
has attained the perception of; and surely that thing cannot be wrong
nor wrongly timed.”
I know not whether it were the excitement of the scene, or whether the
good people around the bonfire were really growing more enlightened
every instant; but they now proceeded to measures in the full length of
which I was hardly prepared to keep them company. For instance, some
threw their marriage certificates into the flames, and declared
themselves candidates for a higher, holier, and more comprehensive
union than that which had subsisted from the birth of time under the
form of the connubial tie. Others hastened to the vaults of banks and
to the coffers of the rich—all of which were opened to the first comer
on this fated occasion—and brought entire bales of paper-money to
enliven the blaze, and tons of coin to be melted down by its intensity.
Henceforth, they said, universal benevolence, uncoined and exhaustless,
was to be the golden currency of the world. At this intelligence the
bankers and speculators in the stocks grew pale, and a pickpocket, who
had reaped a rich harvest among the crowd, fell down in a deadly
fainting fit. A few men of business burned their day-books and ledgers,
the notes and obligations of their creditors, and all other evidences
of debts due to themselves; while perhaps a somewhat larger number
satisfied their zeal for reform with the sacrifice of any uncomfortable
recollection of their own indebtment. There was then a cry that the
period was arrived when the title-deeds of landed property should be
given to the flames, and the whole soil of the earth revert to the
public, from whom it had been wrongfully abstracted and most unequally
distributed among individuals. Another party demanded that all written
constitutions, set forms of government, legislative acts,
statute-books, and everything else on which human invention had
endeavored to stamp its arbitrary laws, should at once be destroyed,
leaving the consummated world as free as the man first created.
Whether any ultimate action was taken with regard to these propositions
is beyond my knowledge; for, just then, some matters were in progress
that concerned my sympathies more nearly.
“See! see! What heaps of books and pamphlets!” cried a fellow, who did
not seem to be a lover of literature. “Now we shall have a glorious
blaze!”
“That’s just the thing!” said a modern philosopher. “Now we shall get
rid of the weight of dead men’s thought, which has hitherto pressed so
heavily on the living intellect that it has been incompetent to any
effectual self-exertion. Well done, my lads! Into the fire with them!
Now you are enlightening the world indeed!”
“But what is to become of the trade?” cried a frantic bookseller.
“O, by all means, let them accompany their merchandise,” coolly
observed an author. “It will be a noble funeral-pile!”
The truth was, that the human race had now reached a stage of progress
so far beyond what the wisest and wittiest men of former ages had ever
dreamed of, that it would have been a manifest absurdity to allow the
earth to be any longer encumbered with their poor achievements in the
literary line. Accordingly a thorough and searching investigation had
swept the booksellers’ shops, hawkers’ stands, public and private
libraries, and even the little book-shelf by the country fireside, and
had brought the world’s entire mass of printed paper, bound or in
sheets, to swell the already mountain bulk of our illustrious bonfire.
Thick, heavy folios, containing the labors of lexicographers,
commentators, and encyclopedists, were flung in, and, falling among the
embers with a leaden thump, smouldered away to ashes like rotten wood.
The small, richly gilt French tomes of the last age, with the hundred
volumes of Voltaire among them, went off in a brilliant shower of
sparkles and little jets of flame; while the current literature of the
same nation burned red and blue, and threw an infernal light over the
visages of the spectators, converting them all to the aspect of
party-colored fiends. A collection of German stories emitted a scent of
brimstone. The English standard authors made excellent fuel, generally
exhibiting the properties of sound oak logs. Milton’s works, in
particular, sent up a powerful blaze, gradually reddening into a coal,
which promised to endure longer than almost any other material of the
pile. From Shakespeare there gushed a flame of such marvellous splendor
that men shaded their eyes as against the sun’s meridian glory; nor
even when the works of his own elucidators were flung upon him did he
cease to flash forth a dazzling radiance from beneath the ponderous
heap. It is my belief that he is still blazing as fervidly as ever.
“Could a poet but light a lamp at that glorious flame,” remarked I, “he
might then consume the midnight oil to some good purpose.”
“That is the very thing which modern poets have been too apt to do, or
at least to attempt,” answered a critic. “The chief benefit to be
expected from this conflagration of past literature undoubtedly is,
that writers will henceforth be compelled to light their lamps at the
sun or stars.”
“If they can reach so high,” said I; “but that task requires a giant,
who may afterwards distribute the light among inferior men. It is not
every one that can steal the fire from heaven like Prometheus; but,
when once he had done the deed, a thousand hearths were kindled by it.”
It amazed me much to observe how indefinite was the proportion between
the physical mass of any given author and the property of brilliant and
long-continued combustion. For instance, there was not a quarto volume
of the last century—nor, indeed, of the present—that could compete in
that particular with a child’s little gilt-covered book, containing
_Mother Goose’s Melodies_. _The Life and Death of Tom Thumb_ outlasted
the biography of Marlborough. An epic, indeed a dozen of them, was
converted to white ashes before the single sheet of an old ballad was
half consumed. In more than one case, too, when volumes of applauded
verse proved incapable of anything better than a stifling smoke, an
unregarded ditty of some nameless bard—perchance in the corner of a
newspaper—soared up among the stars with a flame as brilliant as their
own. Speaking of the properties of flame, methought Shelley’s poetry
emitted a purer light than almost any other productions of his day,
contrasting beautifully with the fitful and lurid gleams and gushes of
black vapor that flashed and eddied from the volumes of Lord Byron. As
for Tom Moore, some of his songs diffused an odor like a burning
pastil.
I felt particular interest in watching the combustion of American
authors, and scrupulously noted by my watch the precise number of
moments that changed most of them from shabbily printed books to
indistinguishable ashes. It would be invidious, however, if not
perilous, to betray these awful secrets; so that I shall content myself
with observing that it was not invariably the writer most frequent in
the public mouth that made the most splendid appearance in the bonfire.
I especially remember that a great deal of excellent inflammability was
exhibited in a thin volume of poems by Ellery Channing; although, to
speak the truth, there were certain portions that hissed and spluttered
in a very disagreeable fashion. A curious phenomenon occurred in
reference to several writers, native as well as foreign. Their books,
though of highly respectable figure, instead of bursting into a blaze
or even smouldering out their substance in smoke, suddenly melted away
in a manner that proved them to be ice.
If it be no lack of modesty to mention my own works, it must here be
confessed that I looked for them with fatherly interest, but in vain.
Too probably they were changed to vapor by the first action of the
heat; at best, I can only hope that, in their quiet way, they
contributed a glimmering spark or two to the splendor of the evening.
“Alas! and woe is me!” thus bemoaned himself a heavy-looking gentleman
in green spectacles. “The world is utterly ruined, and there is nothing
to live for any longer. The business of my life is snatched from me.
Not a volume to be had for love or money!”
“This,” remarked the sedate observer beside me, “is a bookworm,—one of
those men who are born to gnaw dead thoughts. His clothes, you see, are
covered with the dust of libraries. He has no inward fountain of ideas;
and, in good earnest, now that the old stock is abolished, I do not see
what is to become of the poor fellow. Have you no word of comfort for
him?”
“My dear sir,” said I to the desperate bookworm, “is not nature better
than a book? Is not the human heart deeper than any system of
philosophy? Is not life replete with more instruction than past
observers have found it possible to write down in maxims? Be of good
cheer. The great book of Time is still spread wide open before us; and,
if we read it aright, it will be to us a volume of eternal truth.”
“O, my books, my books, my precious printed books!” reiterated the
forlorn bookworm. “My only reality was a bound volume; and now they
will not leave me even a shadowy pamphlet!”
In fact, the last remnant of the literature of all the ages was now
descending upon the blazing heap in the shape of a cloud of pamphlets
from the press of the New World. These likewise were consumed in the
twinkling of an eye, leaving the earth, for the first time since the
days of Cadmus, free from the plague of letters,—an enviable field for
the authors of the next generation.
“Well, and does anything remain to be done?” inquired I, somewhat
anxiously. “Unless we set fire to the earth itself, and then leap
boldly off into infinite space, I know not that we can carry reform to
any farther point.”
“You are vastly mistaken, my good friend,” said the observer. “Believe
me, the fire will not be allowed to settle down without the addition of
fuel that will startle many persons who have lent a willing hand thus
far.”
Nevertheless there appeared to be a relaxation of effort for a little
time, during which, probably, the leaders of the movement were
considering what should be done next. In the interval, a philosopher
threw his theory into the flames,—a sacrifice which, by those who knew
how to estimate it, was pronounced the most remarkable that had yet
been made. The combustion, however, was by no means brilliant. Some
indefatigable people, scorning to take a moment’s ease, now employed
themselves in collecting all the withered leaves and fallen boughs of
the forest, and thereby recruited the bonfire to a greater height than
ever. But this was mere by-play.
“Here comes the fresh fuel that I spoke of,” said my companion.
To my astonishment the persons who now advanced into the vacant space
around the mountain fire bore surplices and other priestly garments,
mitres, crosiers, and a confusion of Popish and Protestant emblems with
which it seemed their purpose to consummate the great act of faith.
Crosses from the spires of old cathedrals were cast upon the heap with
as little remorse as if the reverence of centuries passing in long
array beneath the lofty towers had not looked up to them as the holiest
of symbols. The font in which infants were consecrated to God, the
sacramental vessels whence piety received the hallowed draught, were
given to the same destruction. Perhaps it most nearly touched my heart
to see among these devoted relics fragments of the humble
communion-tables and undecorated pulpits which I recognized as having
been torn from the meeting-houses of New England. Those simple edifices
might have been permitted to retain all of sacred embellishment that
their Puritan founders had bestowed, even though the mighty structure
of St. Peter’s had sent its spoils to the fire of this terrible
sacrifice. Yet I felt that these were but the externals of religion,
and might most safely be relinquished by spirits that best knew their
deep significance.
“All is well,” said I, cheerfully. “The wood-paths shall be the aisles
of our cathedral, the firmament itself shall be its ceiling. What needs
an earthly roof between the Deity and his worshippers? Our faith can
well afford to lose all the drapery that even the holiest men have
thrown around it, and be only the more sublime in its simplicity.”
“True,” said my companion; “but will they pause here?”
The doubt implied in his question was well founded. In the general
destruction of books already described, a holy volume, that stood apart
from the catalogue of human literature, and yet, in one sense, was at
its head, had been spared. But the Titan of innovation,—angel or fiend,
double in his nature, and capable of deeds befitting both
characters,—at first shaking down only the old and rotten shapes of
things, had now, as it appeared, laid his terrible hand upon the main
pillars which supported the whole edifice of our moral and spiritual
state. The inhabitants of the earth had grown too enlightened to define
their faith within a form of words, or to limit the spiritual by any
analogy to our material existence. Truths which the heavens trembled at
were now but a fable of the world’s infancy. Therefore, as the final
sacrifice of human error, what else remained to be thrown upon the
embers of that awful pile, except the book which, though a celestial
revelation to past ages, was but a voice from a lower sphere as
regarded the present race of man? It was done! Upon the blazing heap of
falsehood and worn-out truth—things that the earth had never needed, or
had ceased to need, or had grown childishly weary of—fell the ponderous
church Bible, the great old volume that had lain so long on the cushion
of the pulpit, and whence the pastor’s solemn voice had given holy
utterance on so many a Sabbath day. There, likewise, fell the family
Bible, which the long-buried patriarch had read to his children,—in
prosperity or sorrow, by the fireside and in the summer shade of
trees,—and had bequeathed downward as the heirloom of generations.
There fell the bosom Bible, the little volume that had been the soul’s
friend of some sorely tried child of dust, who thence took courage,
whether his trial were for life or death, steadfastly confronting both
in the strong assurance of immortality.
All these were flung into the fierce and riotous blaze; and then a
mighty wind came roaring across the plain with a desolate howl, as if
it were the angry lamentation of the earth for the loss of heaven’s
sunshine; and it shook the gigantic pyramid of flame and scattered the
cinders of half-consumed abominations around upon the spectators.
“This is terrible!” said I, feeling that my check grew pale, and seeing
a like change in the visages about me.
“Be of good courage yet,” answered the man with whom I had so often
spoken. He continued to gaze steadily at the spectacle with a singular
calmness, as if it concerned him merely as an observer. “Be of good
courage, nor yet exult too much; for there is far less both of good and
evil in the effect of this bonfire than the world might be willing to
believe.”
“How can that be?” exclaimed I, impatiently. “Has it not consumed
everything? Has it not swallowed up or melted down every human or
divine appendage of our mortal state that had substance enough to be
acted on by fire? Will there be anything left us to-morrow morning
better or worse than a heap of embers and ashes?”
“Assuredly there will,” said my grave friend. “Come hither to-morrow
morning, or whenever the combustible portion of the pile shall be quite
burned out, and you will find among the ashes everything really
valuable that you have seen cast into the flames. Trust me, the world
of to-morrow will again enrich itself with the gold and diamonds which
have been cast off by the world of today. Not a truth is destroyed nor
buried so deep among the ashes but it will be raked up at last.”
This was a strange assurance. Yet I felt inclined to credit it, the
more especially as I beheld among the wallowing flames a copy of the
Holy Scriptures, the pages of which, instead of being blackened into
tinder, only assumed a more dazzling whiteness as the fingermarks of
human imperfection were purified away. Certain marginal notes and
commentaries, it is true, yielded to the intensity of the fiery test,
but without detriment to the smallest syllable that had flamed from the
pen of inspiration.
“Yes; there is the proof of what you say,” answered I, turning to the
observer; “but if only what is evil can feel the action of the fire,
then, surely, the conflagration has been of inestimable utility. Yet,
if I understand aright, you intimate a doubt whether the world’s
expectation of benefit would be realized by it.”
“Listen to the talk of these worthies,” said he, pointing to a group in
front of the blazing pile; “possibly they may teach you something
useful, without intending it.”
The persons whom he indicated consisted of that brutal and most earthy
figure who had stood forth so furiously in defence of the gallows,—the
hangman, in short,—together with the last thief and the last murderer,
all three of whom were clustered about the last toper. The latter was
liberally passing the brandy bottle, which he had rescued from the
general destruction of wines and spirits. This little convivial party
seemed at the lowest pitch of despondency, as considering that the
purified world must needs be utterly unlike the sphere that they had
hitherto known, and therefore but a strange and desolate abode for
gentlemen of their kidney.
“The best counsel for all of us is,” remarked the hangman, “that, as
soon as we have finished the last drop of liquor, I help you, my three
friends, to a comfortable end upon the nearest tree, and then hang
myself on the same bough. This is no world for us any longer.”
“Poh, poh, my good fellows!” said a dark-complexioned personage, who
now joined the group,—his complexion was indeed fearfully dark, and his
eyes glowed with a redder light than that of the bonfire; “be not so
cast down, my dear friends; you shall see good days yet. There is one
thing that these wiseacres have forgotten to throw into the fire, and
without which all the rest of the conflagration is just nothing at all;
yes, though they had burned the earth itself to a cinder.”
“And what may that be?” eagerly demanded the last murderer.
“What but the human heart itself?” said the dark-visaged stranger, with
a portentous grin. “And, unless they hit upon some method of purifying
that foul cavern, forth from it will reissue all the shapes of wrong
and misery—the same old shapes or worse ones—which they have taken such
a vast deal of trouble to consume to ashes. I have stood by this
livelong night and laughed in my sleeve at the whole business. O, take
my word for it, it will be the old world yet!”
This brief conversation supplied me with a theme for lengthened
thought. How sad a truth, if true it were, that man’s age-long endeavor
for perfection had served only to render him the mockery of the evil
principle, from the fatal circumstance of an error at the very root of
the matter! The heart, the heart, there was the little yet boundless
sphere wherein existed the original wrong of which the crime and misery
of this outward world were merely types. Purify that inward sphere, and
the many shapes of evil that haunt the outward, and which now seem
almost our only realities, will turn to shadowy phantoms and vanish of
their own accord; but if we go no deeper than the intellect, and
strive, with merely that feeble instrument, to discern and rectify what
is wrong, our whole accomplishment will be a dream, so unsubstantial
that it matters little whether the bonfire, which I have so faithfully
described, were what we choose to call a real event and a flame that
would scorch the finger, or only a phosphoric radiance and a parable of
my own brain.