it does not cultivate, but rather represses and deadens, the
imagination. This is the instrument of the creative faculty in man, that
in which we make the nearest approach to, and which gives to man in the
form and degree possible for him, the plastic power that is exhibited to
us in the richness, and diversity, of nature. It is this which makes a
man myriad-minded; which enables him to look at things from all sides,
and to see them in all lights; to regard them as minds most unlike his
own regard them; to be in his single self all men to all things; it is
what gives insight; and the power of forming accurate and distinct
conceptions of things in the three forms of what they actually are, of
what they have been, and of what, with reference to other conceptions
that have a bearing upon them, they ought to be. A man cannot be a poet,
an orator, an artist, hardly an inventor, or discoverer, an historian,
or a statesman, without the exercise of this faculty. His rank in any
one of these fields of intellectual work will depend on the degree to
which it has been developed within him; and the kind of discipline it is
under. Our system, in a rough, and haphazard, kind of a way, and again
more by accident than by intelligent, deliberate design, does something
for its cultivation, by the study of the poets and orators of Greece and
Rome; and by attempts at poetical composition. This is good as far as it
goes; but insufficient for the great purpose. And this insufficiency of
the means we are employing is aggravated, when they have to be applied
under the direction of masters and tutors, who possibly, and probably,
too, have never given a thought to the nature and purposes of the
imaginative faculty; and, therefore, are, of course, equally heedless of
the right methods of using the means, that happen to be in their hands,
for awakening, cultivating, and strengthening it.
Its proper cultivation in these times should not be confined to the
poetry of the old world. That is valuable, not merely on account of its
perfectness of form, but because it is one-sided, unchristian, and
narrow. It is the poetry of a small, highly privileged class, when that
small class was everything, and the bulk of mankind nothing. It is not
the poetry of humanity broadly. The recognition of the humanity of all
men equally constitutes one essential difference between the modern and
the old world. And this limited, and somewhat abnormal, humanity of the
ancient poetry is, furthermore, somewhat unconnected with a knowledge
of, and love for, nature—the _milieu_ of man. All this makes it very
valuable as a study of a distinct development, under peculiar
circumstances, of the poetic faculty. But it is insufficient. It is no
substitute for an acquaintance with the poetry of the modern world;
which, too, it should follow, and not precede. That is the truer and
more normal development. It has additional roots, a wider range, a
larger inspiration; it takes cognizance of what is in man, irrespective
of conditions, or rather under every condition: and it also consciously
regards man and nature connectedly; man’s internal nature, and nature
external to man, are to its apprehension correlated. Here, too, it has
received a new revelation.
And the attempt to turn a child’s mind in the direction of nature, and
to give him some general acquaintance with nature, and with modern
poetry, would be invaluable for another reason: for not only is this now
necessary, as an indispensable part of mental culture for all, being a
part of the rightful mental inheritance of those whose lot is cast in
these times, but because experience has taught us that there are many
minds, which have no aptitude for the acquisition of languages, either
from some congenital defects, or, as is most probable, from some faults
and omissions of early teaching and associations—but whatever may have
been in their cases the cause is a matter of no consequence now: the
mischief exists, and cannot be removed. Still, though deficient to this
extent, they may have no disinclination for the study of nature: that,
in the young, can hardly be possible. Here, then, is something that will
enable them to live a not unworthy intellectual life. It is necessary
for all: as a part of complete culture for those who are capable of
complete culture; and, for those who are not, as a sufficient culture.
* * * * *
The advocates of the continuance—to the extent and for the purposes I
have indicated—of classical study will labour under a great and unfair
disadvantage, as long as the classics shall be taught with but slight
perception, on the part of those who teach them, of their bearing on the
higher work of the day. As long as the main object of our public schools
shall continue to be professedly linguistic, and that, too, in a
somewhat narrow, and shallow fashion; and their tone, sometimes a little
ostentatiously, at variance with that of the world, and of the day, for
the work of which they ought to be a preparation (it was so with them
originally) so long will the advocacy of classical studies be unfairly
weighted with a sense of the justice of the charge of unreality brought
against them, as now conducted. Whereas in the advocates of modern
knowledge as the object and instrument of education, and in its
teachers, there is none of this unreality, or want of connexion with the
thought, and with the work, of the world that is stirring around us. We,
however, hold that it is a different department of work and thought, to
which the latter training mainly and primarily applies. A public man
need not, as a public man, know anything of astronomy and geology;
though, of course, he is behind the age, and his culture is incomplete,
if he does not. Of all such subjects he ought, as an educated man, to
have a general knowledge; and he will also be the better, as a public
man, for having it; but what is primarily and indispensably required of
him is a knowledge of man, and of all kinds of social phenomena in their
whole range; what they are, how they came to be what they are, and how
they affect man. Here his knowledge should be full and precise: and a
very valuable part of this knowledge is contained in the literature of
the old world. He ought to have lived through those ages. To have done
so is a vast extension of experience of the most useful kind. But he
cannot have lived through those times, unless he is familiar with the
feelings and thoughts, and actions of the men of those times, together
with the circumstances, and conditions, under which they so thought, and
felt, and acted. And he cannot have this familiarity unless he has a
knowledge of the very words, in which they, themselves, expressed, and
described, those feelings, thoughts, and actions.
One word more. There is no knowledge so valuable as that of what is
knowledge; nor any intellectual habit so valuable as that which disposes
us in every thing to require knowledge, and to separate that which is
knowledge from that which is not. Theoretically, there is no reason why
either the study of language, or theology, should not be made a training
for this knowledge, and for this habit. But as this is a matter of
practice, as well as of theory, we must look at things as they are, and
see where what we want is actually found, and what has in those cases
produced it; and where there has been a failure in producing it, and
what has been in those cases the cause of this failure. Who, then, are
most conspicuous for knowing in what knowledge consists, and for the
habit of requiring knowledge as a ground for thought and action, and for
being ever on the alert to separate knowledge from its counterfeits? No
one, I think, would hesitate in replying, those who have had some
scientific training. And it is easy to see how scientific training gives
this knowledge, and this habit. It makes no difference what the matter
of the study be, whether the stars, or the fungi; whether the physiology
of man, or of an earth-worm. The object is soon seen to be truth; and
the motive is soon felt to be the satisfaction which truth gives to the
mind, and the desire to escape, in the practical order, from the
wastefulness, and the mischief of error. Whatever, therefore, is
necessary for the attainment of truth is submitted to, or acquired, or
eliminated, or avoided, in accordance with the exigency of each case. In
these pursuits men learn to guard against appearances that they may not
be misled by them; to sift evidence; to distinguish facts from supposed,
or alleged, facts; to observe patiently and closely; to suspend
judgment; to distinguish probability from certainty; to distinguish
different degrees of probability; to distinguish what they know from
what they wish; not to wish for anything but ascertained and
demonstrable truth; to examine everything, and to hold fast only that
which is demonstrably true; to guard against ambiguities in words; to
use words for photographing facts, and not to make them a mist which
obscures both the object of inquiry, and the paths which lead to it. As
a matter of observation, and of fact, these are the habits of mind,
which the scientific study of any subject inculcates, and makes natural
to a man. They become his second nature. Of course they ought to be the
nature of all educated people. And when a man’s mind has been thus
trained in the study, scientifically pursued, of any one subject, he
applies these habits to the consideration of all other subjects, with
which he may have to do: to those, with which he is not familiar, he
addresses himself with the same ideas, and the same ways of thinking, as
he does to that, with which he is familiar. He knows what knowledge is;
and, while he can suspend his judgment, he cannot be satisfied with
anything but knowledge. What he does not know upon these subjects he
knows that he does not know. The study of language, and theology, if
scientifically taught, are doubtless capable of supplying this training,
but looking at our educated classes generally, and at those who have had
administered to them the greatest amount of these two studies, it does
not appear that the desired effect has been produced. If, then, these
things are so, here is both something that should be an object, and
something that is a defect, as things now are, in our higher education.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XVII.
ELSASS—LOTHRINGEN—METZ—GRAVELOTTE—MOTHER OF THE CURÉ OF STE. MARIE AUX
CHÊNES—WATERLOO.
It is a just award
That they who take, should perish by, the sword.
I included Mulhouse, Colmar, Strasbourg, Bitche, and Metz in my homeward
journey. As I passed along, the higher peaks of the Vosges were white
with recently fallen snow. It is not, however, the forest-clad
mountains, and their snow-capped summits which interest most the thought
of the traveller, as he traverses this district, now, but the
consequences of that recent transference of power, of which the names
just written down remind him: the cotton industry of Mulhouse and
Colmar; the astonishing agricultural wealth of the neighbourhood of
Strasbourg, where the land yields, side by side, in singular luxuriance
the five agricultural products, sugar-beet, hops, wine, tobacco, and
maize, which in Europe pay the best; the strategical importance, and
military strength, of Strasbourg, Bitche, and Metz; the variety of the
manufactures, and of the agricultural resources, of the country round
Metz; and, more than all this wealth and strength, the people themselves
of these districts, who were the manliest, the most industrious, and the
most thriving part of the population of France. One can, at present,
hardly estimate rightly the value of what has thus been taken from
France, and given, if the expression may be allowed, to her natural
enemy. Still it was France herself that laid this incalculable stake
upon the table: her portion of the left bank of the Rhine against
Prussia’s; and insisted on the game being played. And the chances were
against her. She had acquired Strasbourg by amazing treachery; and now
the ignorance, arrogance, and vice by which she was to lose it, were
equally amazing. And this war of 1870-71 was a natural sequel of the
wrongs the first Napoleon did to Germany. That it was that had obliged
the Germans to devote themselves to military organisation, and to
understand the necessity of national union; and which was hardening
their will, and nerving their arm. As to the French, one would be glad
to find that they were delivering themselves from those causes in
themselves, which led to their great catastrophe. But the existing
generation cannot expect to see the day, when the rural population of
France will have attained to more enlightenment than they have at
present, and its city population to more rational ideas of liberty,
justice, and truth, than they have exhibited hitherto; for the lives of
the former are too hard, and the latter are too fanatical, to admit of
much immediate improvement in either.
I stopped at Metz to see the battle-field of Gravelotte. I went over it
with two Englishmen, who had come to Metz for the same purpose. We were
provided with maps, and plans, and narratives of the great battle. It
was a bright fine day. We started at 8.30 A.M., and did not get back to
Metz till 5 P.M. It requires, at least, six hours to go over the field,
including the hour you stop at Ste. Marie aux Chênes for baiting your
horses, and for luncheon.
The French ground was well chosen for a defensive battle. It was along
the ridge of the rising ground, facing to the west, from St. Privat and
Roncour on their right, to the high ground opposite to, and behind St.
Hubert, on their left. St. Hubert was a farmhouse in the depression. It
had a walled garden. This ground was about five miles in length. Early
in the day the Germans occupied only a part of the ground in front of
the French position, beginning at Gravelotte, a little to the south-west
of the French left. At this time there was no enemy in front of the
French right. The ground here, rendered strong by a line of detached
farm-houses, woods, and villages, was occupied by French outposts. From
all these they were driven, in succession, by the extension of the
German left. The strongest position here, and in it much hard fighting
took place, was the village of Ste. Marie aux Chênes. The Germans first
attacked the French left at St. Hubert. From this they drove them out.
One can hardly understand how they managed to get possession of it, for
the French occupied the high ground all round it. To march upon it was
like marching into the bottom of a bowl to attack a strong place in the
bottom, commanded by the enemy’s cannon from every part of the rim.
Having, however, established themselves here, they advanced up the hill
against the French left. But, though they were repulsed, they were not
driven out of St. Hubert. In the evening, the Germans, having
established themselves along the front of the French right, and having
even somewhat outflanked it, attacked them at St. Privat and Roncour.
Here was most desperate fighting; and one, while standing on the ground,
is surprised that any troops could have faced what the Germans had to go
through. Their advance was made up a perfectly smooth, and open,
incline, three-quarters of a mile across, the whole of it completely
swept, and commanded by the French cannon, mitrailleuse, and Chassepots,
which we must recollect killed some hundreds of yards further than the
needle-gun. A Saxon corps, that had been coming up with forced marches,
in the evening reached this point, and went straight up the hill. In
fourteen minutes half its strength was _hors du combat_. There is a
monument on the spot to those who fell here. The whole field is full of
German monuments, for wherever their men fell, there they were buried;
and there a monument has since been raised to their memory. At last the
French right was driven off this ground, and out of the strong village
of St. Privat behind it. It was now dark. The French were in no
position, or condition, to renew the fight the next day; and so, during
the night, they withdrew to Metz, leaving their material behind. They
had fought a defensive battle, which suited neither the character of
their troops, nor the circumstances of their position.
At Ste. Marie aux Chênes, where we stopped an hour for luncheon, we
spent part of the time in walking about the village, and looking at the
traces of the fight. It is a large village, every house of which has
thick rubble or stone walls. All the buildings in it were occupied
strongly by the French; and all were, successively, carried. It was a
from house-to-house and hand-to-hand fight. We found all the doors,
window-shutters, and window-frames in the place, new, because the old
ones had been battered in, hacked to pieces, and destroyed by the
Germans, as they forced their way into each house separately. No
prisoners were taken.
Among other spots we visited here was a little enclosed space, where the
Germans had buried their dead. While we were looking at the grave of a
young Englishman of the name of Annesly—Von Annesly he is called on the
stone—who had fallen in the assault on the village—he had attained to
the rank of lieutenant in the German service—an elderly peasant woman
approached; and, on finding that we were not Germans, freely entered
into conversation with us. She soon told us that she was the mother of
the Curé of the village. She had been one among the few inhabitants of
the place, who, having taken refuge in cellars, had remained in it
during the assault. She was very communicative, and invited us to
accompany her to her house, where she showed us, with touching pride,
their best tea service, and the church ornaments, which are used on fête
days. The best room in the house had been appropriated to their safe
keeping, and exhibition. The china service had been a present, what we
should call a testimonial, and was placed, _en évidence_, on a table in
the middle of the room. The church ornaments were arranged on a large
sofa. They consisted of artificial flowers moulded in porcelain, with a
great deal of gilding. The good woman then took us into the study; M. le
Curé’s study, as she was careful to tell us. She never referred to M. le
Curé, and her thoughts were never far from him, without a smile of
satisfied motherly emotion playing over her face. Those were M. le
Curé’s books. There were about half-a-dozen. That was the table at which
M. le Curé sometimes wrote. That garden, the outer door of the study
opened upon it, was a beautiful garden, which M. le Curé worked in
himself. M. le Curé was now absent from home, for the purpose of making
a collection for the purchase of a figure of the Virgin, to commemorate
her goodness in having miraculously saved the Church, when so much
injury had been done to every other building in the place: but the
church in the neighbouring village we saw had been burnt during the
assault upon it. The good villagers had been very liberal in their
contributions for the purchase of the figure. The sum, however,
mentioned as their contributions, amounted only to a few francs. Still
it might have been much for them to give, for they may not have been
much in the habit of giving. M. le Curé’s study, the scene of his
peaceful and sacred studies, had been made a hospital. There, just where
he always sits, a limb had been amputated. Here, and there, on the floor
wounded men had died. The floor of M. le Curé’s study had been stained
with blood. One memento of that fearful day had been preserved. It was a
small hole in the door through which a bullet had passed: but that was a
bullet that had hurt nobody. I shall never think of the field of
Gravelotte without a pleasing recollection of the mother of the Curé of
Ste. Marie aux Chênes. She was a tall woman with what seemed a hard
face, but at every mention of M. le Curé, or of the Holy Virgin, it was
lighted up, and softened. She wore a faded cotton dress, and a
weather-stained, coalscuttle-shaped straw bonnet—her grandmother,
perhaps, had once been proud of it—but the reflection of her simple,
motherly, happy heart on her face, refined both face and dress. The
heart’s ease only was noticed.
The Germans have done, and are doing, everything that could be done, to
restore to the people what they lost during the war. They have, in these
parts, repaired every house and building that admitted of repair; and
completely rebuilt all that had been too much injured for repair. They
have thus given many new lamps for very old ones. They have not yet
rebuilt the Church of St. Privat, because the people themselves have not
yet decided, whether they wish the new one to be the facsimile of the
old one, or a larger structure, such as the increased population of the
modern village requires: the familiar opposition between those who are
afraid to acknowledge that the world has made any advances, and those
who see nothing objectionable in advances, or in accommodating
themselves to them. Of the other injuries, the people in these parts had
sustained by the war, they were asked to make an estimate themselves.
Half of their estimates was immediately paid to them; and they were told
that the remaining half would be paid, after the 1st of October, on
their having decided to become German citizens. The inhabitants of the
villages round Metz had had their corn, and cattle, and horses swept off
by the French Commissariat. These poor people the Germans fed during the
siege with provisions brought from Germany. I could not hear in Metz, or
in the neighbourhood, of a single instance of a German soldier having
been seen drunk, or that any act of violence could be charged against
them; nor could I hear even of oppression or harshness of any kind.
Metz, with its central arsenal, and its outer circle of apparently
impregnable hill fortresses, gives you the idea of a place which nature
had formed expressly for this gunpowder era, intending that its owners
should fortify it, and use it as a rallying place for defeated
armies—the armies, not of a small, but of a great nation; where they
might in safety collect their shattered fragments; and, having
re-organised and re-equipped themselves, might again take the field for
fresh efforts. In the days of bows and spears it could not have had this
value, which it may lose when our present instruments of war shall have
been superseded by discoveries not yet dreamt of; but, although the
French were not able to turn the place to such an account, still this
seems to be one of the uses that may be made of it by its possessors:
besides being an impregnable advanced post for the invasion of a
neighbour.
The Cathedral is far too short for its height. It contains some windows
of very good old stained glass. The only person I saw in it was an
American. Shall I say that we had both come to see it, just as we might
go to see some curious object in a museum? I, at all events, accused
myself of something of this kind, for I had a consciousness of the
discord between such a purpose, and the history and character of the
structure. For however much it may now have the appearance of a thing
unused, and unloved, and from which the soul has fled, yet was it built
to satisfy a want, in the religious order, which all men longed to
satisfy; and to give visible expression to a feeling, which then stirred
every heart. Not anything else, not money, not power, could have built
it; that is to say, could have summoned into existence the sentiments,
of which the building is an embodiment.
But on this occasion its clustered columns, its groined roof, its lofty
aisles, its jewelled light, transported my thoughts only to Mr.
Spurgeon’s Tabernacle; for I found myself endeavouring to understand and
measure the difference between the two: but the endeavour brought me to
see, under so much outward diversity, only an inward identity. They are
both equally the result of the desire to form elevated and right
conceptions of God—the focal name in which all elevated and right
conceptions meet; and so to open the heart and mind, as that these
elevated and right conceptions, which have been projected from them, may
react upon them. This is Religion, the Spiritual life, in their simplest
expression, in their inner form. In the ages of Faith, as they have been
called, the most effectual way of attaining the desired end was through
the eye; that is to say, the means, that could then be used with most
effect, was art, in architecture, sculpture, painting, music. In the
then state of the heart and of the imagination these best stirred and
attuned them. Hence the Cathedral, and all that is implied in it. In
these days, not of the knowledge, or of the conditions of life, or of
the faith, of the old kinds, the most effectual means, especially among
the lower strata of the middle class, is not art, which would have no
power over them, but such direct appeals to their understandings and
consciences, as will not be beyond their capacities. Hence Mr. Spurgeon
and his Tabernacle. But the object is in both one and the same.
No sooner, however, had I come to this, which seemed for a moment to be
a conclusion, than my thoughts entered the reverse process, and the
identity I had been contemplating was transformed into diversity. The
juxtaposition, in the mind’s eye, of the Cathedral and of the Tabernacle
suggested a difference, if not in the elements of religion itself, yet,
at all events, in the modes through which different religious systems
have attempted to act on the world. The Cathedral seemed to represent
two modes: that which may for convenience be called, using the word in a
good sense, the heathen mode; that is to say, culture, but in the form
only of art; and the priestly, or Judaical, mode, which means
organization. Its grand and beautiful structure grew out of the former,
through the aid of the latter. The Tabernacle represents a totally
different mode—the prophetical; and prophesying is the principle of
life, of growth, and of development in religion. We see this throughout
the history both of the Old and of the New Dispensation. Romanism has
killed this vital principle; and is, therefore, as good as, or worse
than, dead; for it has a bad odour. It is now all dead heathenism, and
dead organization: a gilt and gaily painted monstrous iron machine,
which can be set at work, but which has no heart. This explains
everything. This is the key that unlocks its whole modern history. Its
long ghastly list of persecutions, its Inquisition, its St.
Bartholemew’s, its Infallible Monocracy, are all alike logically
deducible from the determination to live by other means than that of
prophesying; in fact, utterly to suppress the one means of life, and to
live, if such a thing were possible, by those means only which have not
life in themselves. But Persecutions, Inquisitions, St. Bartholemew’s,
and Infallibility can be of no avail: for prophesying has always and
everywhere been, and will always and everywhere be, the life of
religion; and, therefore, destructive, sooner or later, of all cast-iron
systems. With respect to the Tabernacle, it is not so much that it has
rejected the other two modes, as that it has no comprehension of their
nature and use. It never, therefore, has either risen to the level of
ordinary culture, or organized itself as a religious system. It makes no
appeal to the former, and, Wesleyanism excepted, no use of the latter.
This explains why, though not devoid of life, it is without form, and
without attractive power for refined minds. Christianity, it is evident,
in its early days depended entirely on prophesying. As it grew, having
at that time the living power of assimilating what it needed, it
borrowed organization from Judaism, and culture and art from heathenism:
but prophesying must always be the distinctively Christian mode; so long
as Christianity addresses itself to what is in man, that is, to his
knowledge and moral consciousness.
Which, therefore, of these modes is the best is an inquiry, which would
be somewhat sterile, and misleading; for each is good in its proper
place, and degree, and for its proper purpose; and under some
circumstances one, and under other circumstances another, will
inevitably be resorted to. It would be more profitable to keep in mind
that not one is ever exempt in its use from error and perversion. These,
at every turn and step, will reappear, as the unavoidable results of the
imperfections of those, in whose hands the administration of religion,
as of all human affairs, must rest: for they are but men; and, Error and
Perversion, you both have the same name, and that name is Man. History,
and experience, teach us that, in the long run, the most efficient check
to these errors and perversions, both in those who minister, and in
those who are ministered to, is, as far as is possible in this world of
necessarily mixed motives, and defective knowledge, to be dead unto
self, and alive unto God, that is to the good work one finds set before
one. Herein is the true apostolism: not for self, but for the end for
which one was sent—for an object, beyond self, distinctly seen, and
distinctly good. This in an individual is almost, and in a body of men
perhaps quite, impossible. Still it is just what always has to be done
by ‘the Church,’ which, in whatever sense we take the word, will be a
body of men; and by Mr. Spurgeon, acting with those who believe in him;
and, therefore, whenever attempted, will only be done very imperfectly.
So it must be. But we see that, notwithstanding, the world has advanced,
and is advancing. In ‘the Church,’ and among the Spurgeons and their
respective people, and among others, who cannot be quite correctly
ranged under either of these categories, there will always be some
(generally a very small minority; but these are not questions that can
be decided by counting hands) who have caught partial glimpses of what
ought to be said and done, and who will set themselves the task,
generally a very thankless one, of making their partial glimpses known.
One thing, however, at all events is certain: it is safer to trust to
the Spirit of the Prophet than to the culture and organization of the
Priest, if they must be had separately: though, perhaps, their due
combination, might be best of all.
These were the thoughts which passed through my mind, while I was in the
Cathedral of Metz; for the American, who came in just after I had
entered it, required but a very few minutes for ‘doing’ this grand old
monument of mediæval piety; and soon left it to the twilight—the day was
nearly run out—and to my twilight meditations.
The Hotel de l’Europe, the best in Metz, is not good. The head-waiter—he
was an Austrian—was so imperious that I soon found it advisable,
whenever I had occasion to ask him a question, to apologise for the
trouble I was giving him. The angular peg had been put into the round
hole. Nature had intended him for a German prince. They charge here for
a two-horse carriage to Gravelotte, including the driver, two Napoleons.
At this rate they must get back, one would think, every week the
original cost of the rickety vehicle and half-starved horses. There is,
however, but little competition in the matter of the imperious waiter,
and none at all in that of the costly carriage he provides for you.
At Metz, and I heard that it was so, generally, throughout both the
annexed provinces, a great many people were desirous of selling their
houses and land. There was not, however, by any means an equal number of
people who were desirous of purchasing. This fewness of purchasers
indicates the prevalence of an opinion that the loss of these provinces
is far too great for France ever to acquiesce in; and that, therefore,
she will, on the first opportunity that may offer, endeavour to recover
them by the sword: in which case they will become the theatre of war. It
is true that the course of events in the New World, as well as in the
Old, has taught the present generation, very impressively, the lesson
that what is expected is seldom what happens; still, one may say, of
course with a strong feeling of the uncertainty of human affairs, that
there is nothing apparent, at present, on the surface of things, to give
rise to the supposition that a second reference, on the part of the
French, to the arbitrament of the sword, would lead to a different issue
from that which the first had. Empire is maintained, and retained, by
the means by which it was obtained; and there seems no probability of
Germany ever allowing herself to be caught napping; or of her strength,
energy, and determination being sapped by national corruption. That is
not a consummation which the solid character of the people renders at
all likely. Even their rude climate, which, to some extent, forbids a
life of sensuous and vicious self-indulgence, will, we may think, help
them in the future to maintain the character, which has always
distinguished them hitherto; it seems to make earnestness, and mental
hardihood, natural to them. One’s thoughts on this subject would be very
much modified, if there were in France any symptoms, which might lead
one to hope that she was ‘coming to herself.’
On leaving Metz, by an early train, I had to form one in a scene of
crowding and confusion greater than I had ever elsewhere encountered on
that side of the Channel, except a few days before at Strasbourg, where
it was as bad. We are often told that the advantage of the foreign
system of over-administration is that everything of this kind is
rendered impossible; but here it was all in excess. Tickets for all
classes were issued by the same clerk, and for two trains at the same
time, for one was to start only a few minutes before the other. Some
people were pushing; some were in a high state of excitement. There was
no possibility of forming a _queue_. I was told that this, and many
other things of the same kind, would be set right after the 1st of
October, on which day the Germans would take all these matters into
their own hands. Hitherto they had interfered with the local
administration as little as possible. One consequence of this had been
that the existing authorities, whose reign was so soon to expire, had
not been very attentive to their duties; perhaps they had not been very
desirous of keeping things straight; and the lower orders, availing
themselves of the license that had been permitted, had become so
insubordinate, that it had been found difficult, in some cases
impossible, to carry on the operations of factories, in which many hands
were employed. But after the 1st of October there was to be an end of
all this: a German burgomaster was to be appointed, and German order was
to be maintained. On that morning I wished that, as far as the station
at Metz was concerned, the change had already been effected.
In the neighbourhood of Luxembourg, I saw several trains full of iron
ore. From Luxembourg to Namur the country is, generally, very poor. It
consists mainly of lime-stone hills, heaths, and woods in which there is
little or no good timber. Between Namur and Brussels the country
improves, agriculturally, very much.
At Brussels I had some difficulty in getting a bed; all the hotels being
full of Belgian and English volunteers, and of people who had come to
see the international shooting. There had just been a public reception
of volunteers, and everybody was in the streets. I heard a burly
tradesman, who was standing at the door of his shop, shout at the top of
his voice, but the result did not correspond with the effort, as one of
our volunteers was passing, in the uniform of a Scottish corps,
‘Shotland for ever’—the land, doubtless, of good shots. Etymologists,
consider this, and be cautious.
The much-lauded Hotel de Ville I venture to think unsatisfactory. For so
much ornamentation it is deficient in size. Its chief external feature
is the multitude of figures upon it. The effect of this is bad. One sees
no reason why they should be there. They are too small. They are
indistinguishable from each other, There is no action: merely rows of
figures. This was unavoidable in the position assigned them, but its
being unavoidable was no reason for assigning them that position, nor
does it at all contribute towards rendering them pleasing objects.
Many of the volunteers made a night of it in honour of their English
visitors. Having been woke, by their shouting and hurrahing in the
streets, at one o’clock in the morning, I was disposed to think such
demonstrations unbecoming in bearded warriors.
I went with a party of Englishmen, and some Americans, to Waterloo. We
were driven over the old, straight, stone-paved, poplar-bordered road,
by an English whip, in an English four-horse stage-coach. The road is
just what it was, when Wellington passed over it, from ‘the revelry at
night’ for the great fight. That part, however, of the Forest of
Soignies, which should be on the right of the road, has been destroyed,
to make way for the plough. What remains of the forest, on the left,
consists of tall, straight, unbranching beech, with the surface of the
ground, between the trunks, clear and smooth. While we were at Hougomont
a violent thunderstorm, accompanied with heavy rain, drifted over the
field. As the soil is a tenacious clay, which becomes very slippery when
wet, this storm was most opportune, for it showed us what kind of
footing the contending hosts had on the great day. Hougomont is still
very much in the condition in which it was left on the evening of that
day. What was burnt has not been rebuilt; and what remained, has not
been added to, or altered. The loop-holes that were made in the garden
wall are still there. So also are the hedge, and ditch, on the outside
of the orchard. The only difference is that the whole of the wood of
Hougomont has gone the way of a part of the Forest of Soignies. We have
all of us tried to understand Waterloo; but a visit to the field itself
will show that it is no more possible to understand, fully and rightly,
this than any other battle, without ocular knowledge of the ground on
which it was fought. A comparison of the field of Waterloo with that of
Gravelotte will assist a civilian in estimating the extent of the change
in tactics, which modern improvements in the weapons of war have
necessitated. He will see that the battle of June 18, 1815, belongs to
an order of things that is obsolete now. With the cannon, and rifles, of
the present day, it could not have been fought as it was; and would not,
probably, have been fought where it was.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XVIII.
HOW THE OBSERVATION AND KNOWLEDGE OF NATURE, AND THE CONDITIONS OF
SOCIETY AFFECT RELIGION AND THEOLOGY. AN INSTRUCTIVE PARALLELISM.
CONCLUSION.
Consider the lilies of the field.—_Gospel of St. Matthew._
The powers that be are ordained of God.—_Epistle to the Romans._
It was 8 o’clock in the evening when I left Brussels. At 6 o’clock the
next morning I stepped upon the platform of the Charing Cross Station.
So ended, after very nearly five weeks, my little excursion. In the
foregoing pages I have set down, not only what I saw, which could not
have had much novelty, but the thoughts, also, as well about man as
about nature, which what I saw suggested to me; and these, too, may not
have much value. To some, however, everything in nature is instructive
and interesting, and so is everything in man; or they seem to be so.
But, in order to secure this instruction and interest, I believe that
they must be viewed connectedly. The one is properly intelligible only
by the light that shines from the other. To regard either separately is
to misunderstand both. Nature is the field in which He, Whose form no
man hath seen at any time, reveals to us His Creative Power, for the
purpose that the intelligent contemplation of the objects, He presents
to our view, should engender in us certain sentiments and ideas, which
have from the beginning, in the degree and form possible at each epoch,
underlaid religion. Our fellow men are the field in which He reveals to
us the capacities and conditions; the strength, the weaknesses, the
workings, and the aspirations of moral and of intellectual being, as
conditioned in ourselves: another, and perhaps a higher, revelation of
Himself; and the consciousness of which being in the individual
constitutes, as far as we know, in this visible world of ours, the
distinctive privilege of man; and the exercise of which, under the sense
of responsibility, crowns the edifice of religion. The study of both has
been equally submitted to us, is equally our duty, and is necessary for
the completion of our happiness. They are the correlated parts of a
single revelation, and of a single study. The man who shuts his eyes to
the one, or to the other, cannot understand, at all events as fully as
he might, either that portion of the revelation at which he looks
exclusively, or himself, or Him, Who makes the revelation, in the sense
in which He has willed that each should be understood.
The products of our modern advanced methods of agriculture bear the same
kind of relation to the products of the burnt stick (they could both
support life, but very differently), that the religious sentiments and
ideas produced by our knowledge of nature bear to those which the
ignorant observation of a few prominent phenomena, as thunder and
lightning, the power of the wind and of the sun, the action of fire,
life and death, produced in the minds of the men of that remote day. The
mind of the inhabitants of this country, precisely like the land of this
country, was just the same at that day as at this. The powers and
capacities of each are invariable. What varies, and always in the
direction of advance, is that which is applied to the mind: as is the
case also with respect to the land. The knowledge of what produces the
thunder and lightning, of the laws that govern the motions of the
heavenly bodies, of what originates and calms the wind, of the forces of
nature, of the structure of animals and plants, are so many instruments,
by which the constant quantity, the human mind, is cultivated for
greater productiveness. No one dreams that we have approached the end of
such knowledge, any more than that our agriculture has reached its last
advance. The state of knowledge, whatever it may be at any time (from
that of our rudest forefathers to our own), produces corresponding ideas
and sentiments. Its reception into the mind unfailingly generates those
ideas and sentiments, just as the application of any method of
agriculture, with the appliances that belong to it, gives the amount and
kind of produce from the land proper to that method and to those
appliances. As an instance taken from a highly civilized people, the
close observation of the instincts of animals, and of the properties of
plants, offered to the leisure, accompanied by some other favouring
circumstances, of the ancient Egyptians, but unaccompanied by any
knowledge of the laws, the forces, and the order of nature; that is to
say, their existing knowledge, together with the existing limitations to
that knowledge, led unavoidably to the ideas and sentiments we find in
them; that is to say, to what was their religion, which combined the
worship of plants and animals, with belief in a future life.
The other self-acting factor to that organization of thought and
sentiment, which is religion, is the observation of what will perfect
human society, and the life of the individual, under the conditions of
their existence at the time. Certain things ought to be removed: it is
religion to remove them. Certain things ought to be maintained: it is
religion to maintain them. Certain things ought to be established: it is
religion to establish them. Certain knowledge ought to be propagated: it
is religion to propagate it.
Now both these contributions to religion, the knowledge of nature, which
is inexhaustible, and the conditions of human society, which are
endlessly multiform, are progressively variable quantities; religion,
therefore, the resultant of the combined action of the two, must itself
vary with them; that is to say, must advance with them.
It is a corollary to this, that from the day a religion forms itself
into a completed system, it becomes a matured fruit; the perfected
result of a train of anterior and contemporary conditions, that have
long been working towards its production. Thenceforth it is useful for a
time just as a fruit may be. It has, also, in itself, as a fruit has,
the seed of a future growth. But with that exception, though still
serviceable, it is dead, though organized, matter. A certain concurrence
of conditions, which can never be repeated, because knowledge and
society are ever advancing, produced the fruit, which, like that of the
aloe, can only be produced once out of its own concurrence of
conditions. Man’s spiritual nature feeds on that fruit, and is nourished
by it, for a greater or less number of generations. At last, for it must
come, a new concurrence of conditions arises, and a new fruit is
produced. The vital germ that was in the old fruit, passed into the
_milieu_ of the new ideas and sentiments, and a new growth commenced.
Organization then ensued, and in due time bore, as its fruit, its own
matured and perfected system. At the establishment of Christianity, in
the order of knowledge, the perception of the absurdity of thousands of
local divinities, and, in the social and political order, the
establishment of an Universal Empire, which gave rise to a sense of the
brotherhood of mankind, combined in demanding that the whole
organization of religious thought should be recast. Everyone can see the
part these two facts had in the construction, and in bringing about the
reception, of Christian ideas and Christian morality. In these days we
see that social and political conditions are changing, though we cannot
so exactly define and describe in what that change consists as we can
that just referred to; but we know that at the time of that change there
was, though it was distinctly felt, the same absence of power to define
and describe it distinctly. About the recent advance, however, in
knowledge there is no want of distinctness: that is as palpable as it
is, beyond measure, greater than the advances of all former times. It
amounts almost to a revelation of the constitution and order of nature.
The ideas and sentiments this new knowledge has given rise to are
somewhat different from, for instance they are grander and give more
satisfaction to thought than, the ideas and sentiments that accompanied
the knowledge, or rather the ignorance, on the same subjects, of two, or
of one, thousand years back. This must have some effect on the religion
of Christendom, and the effect cannot but be elevating and improving.
This knowledge cannot possibly be bad, because it is only the attainment
of the ideas, which, on the theory both of religion and of commonsense,
were in the mind of the Creator before they were embodied in nature;
which were embodied in nature, and were submitted to us, in order that
they might be attained to by us, for the sake of the effect the
knowledge would have upon our minds, that is to say, ultimately on our
religion.
This knowledge, it is notorious, is not estimated in this way by many
good men amongst us, they, on the contrary, being disposed to regard it
rather with repugnance, horror, and consternation. The reason is not far
to seek. They have, probably, in all such cases, received only a
theological and literary training. Now every theology, as is seen in the
meaning of the word, and as belongs to the nature of the construction,
contains an implicit assertion, both that no new knowledge, which can
have any good influence on men’s thoughts, sentiments, and lives, can be
attained, subsequently to the date of its own formation; and that the
workings of human society will never lead to advances beyond those,
which had at that time been reached. And literary training, in this
country, has hitherto meant a kind of _dilettante_ acquaintance with the
literature of the ancient Greeks and Romans, regarded, not as a chapter
in the moral and intellectual history of the race, but rather as
supplying models for expression. No wonder, then, need be felt at
finding those, who are conversant only with what is dead, scared at the
phenomena of life. The wonder would be if it were otherwise. But the
same conditions, we all know, act differently on differently constituted
minds: and this explains the opposite effect which modern criticism has
upon the minds of some of those who have had only literary training.
This criticism they find opposed to some of the positions of the old
theology; and the effect of this discovery upon them is that it makes
them hostile to religion itself. As well might Newton have felt horror
at the idea of gravitation because Ptolemy had believed in cycles and
epicycles. It is the preponderance of literary training in them, also,
that issues in this opposite result.
Religion is the organization of all that men know both of outward nature
and of man, for the purpose of guiding life, of perfecting the
individual and society, and of feeding the mind and the heart with the
contemplation of the beauty and order of the universe, inclusive of man
and of God, that is to say, of the conception we can form, at the time,
of the All-originating, All-ordering, and All-governing Power. This is,
ever has been, and ever will be Religion, unless we should pass into a
New Dispensation, at present inconceivable, because it would require the
recasting, at all events, of man, if not of the external conditions of
his existence, that is, of the world also. But as long as things
continue as they have been, knowledge will always advance religion; and
religion will always conform itself to knowledge. The essential
difference between one religion and another, from Fetishism up to
Christianity, is one of knowledge.
Before the construction of systematic theologies, knowledge and religion
were convertible terms. It was so under the Old Dispensation; and so
again in the early days of Christianity. After their construction the
former term was modified. It had been generic, it thenceforth became
specific. The differentiating limitation imposed upon it was that of
this particular theology, exclusive of all other theologies; and, as it
was a theology, this involved the exclusion of the ideas of correction
and enlargement.
Error and insufficiency must, from the nature of the materials dealt
with, after a time be found in every theology. In this sense every
Church has erred, and could not but have erred. The mischief, however,
is not in this error and insufficiency, for they are remediable. The
progress of knowledge which points out the error, often indeed creating
it by the introduction of additional data, supplies the means for
correcting it; and the advance in the conditions of society, which
creates the insufficiency, suggests the means for correcting it, too.
Nor, again, is the mischief in the ignorance of the majority, for that
can to the extent required be removed. It is in the determination of
some, from whom better things might have been expected, not to examine
all things with the intention of holding fast that which is true; but to
close their eyes and ears, as theologians, against all that the educated
world now knows, and all that the uneducated masses are repelled by in
what is now presented to them as the Word of God. This determination
puts them in the position of being obliged to support, and encourage,
only those who address themselves to the ignorance of the age, but not
for the purpose of removing it; and to oppose, and discourage, those who
address themselves to the knowledge of the age, for the purpose of
making it religious. We need not repeat what we have been told will
happen, when the blind lead the blind.
The recollection of what has given to our political constitution its
orderly and peaceful development might be of use here. It goes on
accommodating itself smoothly, and without convulsions, to the altering
conditions of society, because political parties amongst us are not
coincident with classes. Members of the popular party are to be found in
the highest classes as well as in the lowest, and of the stationary
party in the lowest as well as in the highest. This is what has here
exorcized the demon of revolution. If party lines had been drawn
horizontally instead of vertically, class would have been arrayed
against class; and, probably, ignorance and violence, supported by
numbers, would have made a clean sweep of our institutions, and, to no
small extent, of our civilization. What has been advantageous in the
political order would be equally so in the religious. What has saved us
from a political, might, if adopted, save us from a possible religious,
crash. It is a miserably short-sighted policy to endeavour to drive from
the camp of religion, or of the National Church, those who have accepted
the knowledge of our times, and who have sympathies with the existing
tendencies or possibilities of society: so that on one side shall be
arrayed only those, who rest on what is old, and on the other only
those, who have no disposition to reject what is new. Whereas the true
bridge from the present to the future can be constructed by neither of
these parties alone; but must be the work of those, whose wish and
effort are to combine, and to harmonise, the new with the old. This
appreciation of what is needed, is, at all events, in accordance with
the meaning of the saying, to the authority of which we must all defer,
that ‘every scribe, who is instructed unto the Kingdom of Heaven, will
bring forth out of his treasures things new as well as old.’ The course
taken by those, who lose sight of the guidance offered them in this
saying, can only bring them into a false position.
It is very instructive to observe how circumstances analogous to those,
which existed among the chosen people, at the date of the promulgation
of Christianity, are, at this moment, amongst ourselves producing
analogous effects. We have lately heard those, who are attempting to
make the knowledge, men have now been permitted to attain to, an element
of religion, which is what knowledge must always become in the end,
described as ‘maudlin sentimentalists.’ Precisely the same expression,
motivated by precisely the same feelings, and ideas, might have been
applied with the same propriety, or impropriety, and with the same
certainty of disastrous recoil on those who used it, to the teaching of
the Divine Master Himself. He appealed from the hard, narrow, rigid
forms, in which the old Law had been fossilized, to the sense men had
come to have of what was moral, and needed, and to the knowledge they
had come to have of what was true, under the then advanced conditions of
society and of knowledge. The maintainers of the fossilized Law were for
binding heart and mind fast in the fetters of dogmatic human traditions.
He was for setting mind and heart free by the reception of what was
broad and true; at once human and divine. That alone was desirable,
beneficent, and from God. It blessed, strengthened, emancipated, and
gave peace. No authority, however venerable, could be pleaded against
it. No thrones, principalities, or powers, however exalted, would be
able to withstand it. There was no fear or possibility of its being
refuted: for it was nothing but the perception, and the practical
recognition, of existing knowledge, and of existing conditions. Men,
they might be many, might reject it, but to their own detriment only.
The facts would remain. The rest, all whose eyes were open, or could be
opened, to perceive what was before their eyes, would receive it as from
God. The more it was set in the broad light of day the better. It must
be proclaimed in the highways, and the market-places, and in the Temple
itself. If those who had received it were to hold their peace, the
stones would immediately cry out. It was God’s Truth. It was God’s Word:
not because it was written, for as yet it was not written, but because,
as the Word of God ever had, and ever would, come, it came from the pure
heart, and the enlightened understanding, and approved itself to those,
who had eyes to see, and ears to hear, and hearts to understand. Let
every one examine it. If in that day had been known what is now known of
man’s history, and of nature, and of what is seen of the possibility of
raising men, throughout society, to a higher moral and intellectual
level than was heretofore attainable, we may be sure that there would
have been no attempt to discredit such knowledge, and such aspirations;
and that they would have been urged as extending our knowledge of God,
and of His will; that they would have been appealed to, and that men
would have been called upon to raise themselves to the level of what had
become conceivable, and, conceivably, attainable. At all events, the one
great point, the one paramount duty, was to proclaim what was then seen
to be true. To keep back nothing. To care nothing for the consequences,
in the way of what it might overthrow; to be ready to spend and be spent
for the consequences, in the way of the good it must produce. The
requisite boldness would come to its promulgators from feeling, that it
was God’s work, and that He was on their side. The issue could not be
doubtful. The Gates of Hell could not prevail against the Truth. It was,
notwithstanding its ‘maudlin sentimentality,’ mighty to the pulling down
of strongholds; and went forth conquering, and to conquer. So will it do
again. So will it do ever. The parallelism is complete at every point.
It is only strange that it has not been seen, and dwelt upon, till all
have become familiar with it. The facts, the situation, the ideas, the
hopes and fears, are the same. So, too, is the language needed to
describe them, each and all.
The thoughts, which this chapter outlines, were often, as might be
supposed, in my mind during the little excursion described in the
foregoing pages. They are, as far as I can see, the logical and
inevitable conclusions of the acquaintance some have, such as it may be,
with history and with physical science; and I suppose that travelling
further along the same road would only enable them to see the object to
which it leads with more distinctness. In Switzerland there is much both
in the singularly varied mental condition of the people themselves, and
in the impressive aspects of nature, to confirm them. The narrative,
though its form, in keeping with the particular purpose in which it
originated, is at times somewhat minute, may yet, as things were, for
the most part, seen and regarded through the medium of ideas I have just
referred to, contribute a little to their illustration. It was my wish,
at all events, that my mind and heart should be always open,
unreservedly, to the teaching of all that I saw, both of man and of
nature; but still, I trust, with that caution, and sense of
responsibility, that befit the formation of opinions, by which—for one
is conscious that they are the inner man, the true self—one must stand,
or fall, and in which one must live, and die.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
INDEX.
Aar, 150-2
Aigle, 183
Absenteeism, 43
Agriculture, capital improves, 60.
In the United States, 69.
Burnt stick and hoe eras, 81.
Progress in size of farms, 83-85.
In Alsace, 230
American lads mountaineering, 13
Americans in Switzerland, 200
Animal worship, rationale of, in the ancient Egyptians, 253
Antithesis, an Alpine, 13
Anza, 126
Apostolism, true, 243
Armies of the Romans, 141
Art, place of, in religion, 241
Auroch, 212
Austrian marriages, 100.
Waiter, 244
Avalanches, 22, 158
Blue boy, 13, 16, 141, 142, 154, 163, 164, 171, 184-193
Bonus amicus pro vehiculo, 133
Breakfast at a monster hotel, 195
Bridge, from the present to the future, 260
Brieg, 140
Brienz, 155
Brussels, 247.
Hôtel de Ville, unsatisfactory, 248
Bubble schemes why alluring, 67
Buffers, our labourers have three, 105, 106
Butterflies, 53, 151
Camping out, 177
Capital, power of, in modern societies, 50.
Revolution effected by, 53.
Inversion of land and, 54.
Peel and Gladstone, due to, 55.
A ladder, 56.
Era of, on Visp-side, 50-66.
Will improve agriculture, 61.
Flow of, to the land will counterbalance cities, 62.
Moral and intellectual effects, 63.
Increases size of agricultural concerns, 85.
Size of estates in era of, 94.
Is king, 103.
Essence of all property, 106, 107.
Uses of, discriminated, 108, 109
Carpet, magical bit of, 3
Caterpillar, 53, 127
Cathedral of Metz, 238-242
Ceppo Morelli, 127
Certificates of land-shares, 87, 89, 93, 94
C’est un pauvre pays, 217
Change, modern craving for, 4, 5
Christianity, in what sense a recast of religious thought, 255.
A
modern parallel to the ground taken by first promulgators of, 261-263
Church, value of establishment, 65.
Effect of disestablishment, 97
Cities, land counterpoise to, 62;
and land, 93
Classics, place of, in English education, 222, 223.
Unfairly weighted, 226
Colmar and Mulhouse, cotton industry of, 230
Continuity of human history, 213
Co-operation inapplicable to land, 104-106
Corporate estates, 74, 76, 96
Cost of Swiss travel, 176
Coups manqués of humanity, 202
Cranoges, Irish and Scotch, 210
Curé of Sainte Marie aux Chênes, 235
Danube, Roman road on the banks of the, 126
Dinner, last, in London, 3.
At Macugnaga, 125.
At a monster hotel, 196
Disorder, temporary, permitted at Strasbourg and Metz, 246
Distel, 122
Dogs, why bay the moon, 181
Domo D’Ossola, 128
Drama of the Mountains, 184-193
Drunkenness, how may be discouraged, 85.
Want of drink-water a cause of, 209
Dust, 174
Eclipse, feelings caused by, 182
Edelweiss, 161
Education, property is an, 33.
What would promote, 84.
Spread of, unfavourable to
existing land-system, 97.
Range and method of teaching, 192, 193.
Swiss aims, 218-221.
How applicable, and how not, to us, 221-223.
Sciences of humanity needed, 221, 222.
Imagination should be cultivated, 223.
Place of poetry in, 224
Eggishorn, 143
Elsass, agricultural wealth of, 230
Empire, how retained, 245
Enthusiastic ladies, 200
Establishments, religious, useful under landlordism, 65.
Effect of disestablishment, 97
Etymology of field, 82.
Of Scotland, 247
Expected, what is, seldom happens, 245
Eyes in back of the head, 97
Fallows abandoned, 83
Falls of Frosinone, 135.
Another, 136.
Aar and Handeck, 152.
Staubbach, 152.
Reichenbach, 154
Fee, 116
Field, etymology of, 82
Feudalism, none in our landlordism, 77
Findelen, 17
Fireworks at Interlaken, 164
Flies, 147
Flowers, 14, 18
France, a cause of its wealth, 98.
Insisted on war, 231
French petty proprietors, 105, 106, 110
Frosinone, 135
Fruit, religion is a, 254
Fungus, a Brobdingnagian, 144
Game, 82
Gasteren, 167
Gauter, 139
Gemmi, 167-71
Geneva, Lake of, excavated by glacier, 8
Genius loci, 133
Geology of Rhone Valley, 7.
Of Alpine valleys, 134.
Of Delta of the Kander, 166
German professor, 114.
Travellers, 156, 201.
At Gravelotte, 232-6.
At Metz, 237.
Conquests will be retained, 245
Glacier action, 7.
Bies, 9.
Gorner, 9.
Fee, 116.
Allalein, 119.
Kaltenwasser, 138.
Rhone, 146.
Old Aar, 150.
Grindelwald, 162
Gladstone, the Right Hon. W. E., 55
Gneiss, channel how cut in, 151
God, the focal name, 239
Gondo, 135
Gorner Grat, 12
Government, modern Swiss, 146
Gravelotte, battle of, 232-6
Grimsel, 149
Grindelwald, 160
Guide, 18, 115, 123, 127
Guttanen, 153
Handeck, 151, 152
Health, better to keep than to recover, 183
Helle Platte, 150
History, continuity of, 213
Homer, a simile of his, 178, 183
Honesty, 36, 39
Hornli, 17
Hospice, Simplon, 135.
Grimsel, 148, 149
Hotels, St. Niklaus, 8.
Riffel, 16.
Saas, 115.
Mattmark See, 120.
Macugnaga, 125.
Ponte Grande, 127.
Domo D’Ossola, 128.
Simplon, 135.
Du Glacier du Rhone, 147.
Interlaken, 156.
Grindelwald, 161.
Schwarenbach, 168.
Swiss monster hotels, 194-204.
Zurich, 215.
Metz, 244
Human interest of improved agriculture, 86
Humanity, sciences of, place in education, 221
Humility, true, 216
Ice sent from Grindelwald to Paris, 162.
Ice-field of Bernese Oberland, 174
Ignorance of the day, some address themselves to, but not for the
purpose of removing it, 259
Imagination, place in education, 223.
How to be cultivated, 224
Imhof, 153
Industry, Swiss, 34-8, 46, 129
Intellectual life among peasant proprietors, 32.
Under landlordism, 48.
Under capital, 63, 107
Interlaken, 155, 156
Investments for all, 87, 88
Invidious position, 101, 102
Italians compared to Swiss, 129
Jack of many trades, 118
Joint-stock cultivation of the land, 78-89
Jungfrau, 156-8
Kander, Delta of the, 166
Kandersteg, 167
King, capital is, 103
Kitchen-maids, acquisition and use of capital within reach of, 109
Knights’ fees, number of, 77
Knowledge, what it is, 227.
Grammatical and theological studies obscure, 229.
Its effects on religion, 257
Lake-villages, 210-215
Land, reclamation, and cultivation of, 21.
In Greece and Rome, 51.
In feudal times, 52.
Inversion of land and capital, 54.
Settlement of, prevents distribution, 70.
Joint-stock principle applicable to, 78.
Land mobilised, 88.
Increased value under joint-stock cultivation, 88, 89.
Land and cities, 93.
Size of landed estates in era of capital, 94.
Might be sold subject to rent-charge, 95.
Tendency of things with respect to; corporate estates, 96.
Disestablishment, 97.
Increasing size of estates, 97.
Education, 97.
Perception of cause of wealth of France, 98.
Increase in our population and wealth, 98.
Popular character of modern legislation, 99.
Rise in cost of labour, 99.
How two kinds of wills affect land, 110.
Culture and price of, in Switzerland, 206
Landlordism, 41, 50.
Political effects in Ireland and Scotland, 111
Landowners, advantage to, of joint-stock cultivation of the land, 89.
Diminishing numbers, 97
Lausanne, 3
Lauterbrunnen, 157
Leukabad, 172-174
Life, who scared by phenomena of, 257
Literary and theological training, effects of, 256
Lords of creation, 124
Lothringen, 231
Lowe, Right Hon. R., 65
Luxembourg, 247
Macugnaga, 125
Magician, capital a, 107
Man, conditions antecedent to, 116
Matterhorn, 12, 17, 18
Mattmark See, 119, 120
Meiringen, 153
Men and women highest form of wealth, 32
Methods of teaching, 192, 193
Metz, 230
Money-lords, 55
Monte Leone, 138
Moon on the Jungfrau, 165.
Witchery of the, 179.
Why dogs bay, 181
Moral value of peasant-proprietorship, 34-40.
Under landlordism, 46
Morality, man lives not only by or for, 40
Moro, Monte, 123
Mortmain, history of abolition of, 74.
Its failure, 75
Mother of Curé of Ste. Marie aux Chênes, 235
Mountaineering, 10, 19, 20
Mountains seen face to face, 121
Munster, 144
Museum of Lake-Villages, 210, 215
Myriad-minded, 223
Nature, 192, 225
Nautical felicity, 6
New world’s contributions to old, 7
Niesen, 175
Nonconformity, strength and weakness of, 241, 242
Oberwald, 146
Opinion, how stream of tendency affects, 99
Organisation, religious, 241
Ownership of land, proposed form of, 89
Paganism, modern, 26
Parallelism of the present religious situation and that at the
promulgation of Christianity, 261-263
Paris, 1
Parquetry flooring, 182
Pauper, euthanasia of agricultural, 86
Peak-climbers and pass-men, 10, 18, 175, 199
Peasant-proprietorship, 29-40.
Impossible here, 94.
French, 105, 106, 110
Pedestrianism, pedantry of, 144
Peel, Sir R., 55
Personal worth, 103
Physical science teaches what truth is, 228
Picturesque will not stop advances, 86
Pié de Muléra, 128
Pinus Cembra, 11, 159. Pumilio, 150
Platform road, 126
Poetry of Vale of Grindelwald, 161.
Classical and modern, 224
Pompeii, 52
Ponte Grande, 127
Poor-law, rationale of, 106
Population under peasant-proprietorship, 31.
Under landlordism, 45
Porter and practical man, 156
Possibilities, 27
Post-office, Swiss, 118
Potatovors, Irish, 105, 106
Practical man and porter, 156
Prasias, Lake, 210
Prayers played for, 24
Primogeniture, 90
Property, educational effects of, 33
Prophesying, place of, in religion, 241, 242
Prospects of great proprietors, 100
Railways, delays on Swiss, 138
Récolte des voyageurs, 217
Reichenbach, falls of, 154
Religion, 25.
Its primitive and modern forms, 145.
Relation to art, organisation, and prophesying, 141, 142.
Error and perversion in, 242, 243.
Relation of the knowledge of nature and of man to, 251.
How affected by the conditions of society, 253.
Progressive, 254.
A parellelism, 261-263
Religious establishments, when useful, 64
Rent-charge, land might be sold subject to, 95
Responsibility in the formation of opinions, 264
Revolution, a great but bloodless, 53
Rhone, Delta of Upper, 7.
Source of, 146
Riffel, 11, 16
Rocky mountains, young pines in, 160.
Camping out in, 177
Romanism, decay of, 25, 26.
How uses art, organisation, and prophesying, 241
Saas, 113, 121
Sac, lost, 131
St. Niklaus, 8, 21
Ste. Marie aux Chênes, fight in, 234.
Mother of curé of, 235
Saltine, 139
Saracens, 124
Savings’ bank for all, 87, 109
Scene from Gorner Grat, 12.
Valley of Saas, 113.
Mattmark, 120.
Macugnaga, 125.
Gemmi, 169
Schwartz See, 16, 17
Scotland, a Belgian’s etymology of, 247
Selborne, White of, 4.
Lord, 4, 65
Self, when to be considered, 132.
When not, 243
Sermon on the Riffel, 15.
Effect of fluency and imagination on, 165
Settlement of land prevents distribution, 70.
Action of settled estates, 72.
How preventible, 73
Shawls, fine, better than rugs, 117
Simplon, 131-139
Size of estates in era of capital, 94
Slavery, 82
Society, conditions of, affect religion, 253
Sprite, the reprobate, 203
Spurgeon, Mr., 239, 243
Stalden, 113
Steam culture, 83
Stenches in hotels, 8, 147, 148
Stone age, 81, 211
Strasbourg, 230
Sugar factories, 84
Sun, colourless risings, 175.
Of England has set, 202.
A good sunset, 216, 217
Swiss life in a valley, 23, 29, 40.
Compared with Italians, 129.
Monster hotels, 194-204.
Swiss sights suggestive, 264
Teaching, range and method of, 192, 193
Technical University of Zurich, 218
Tendency of events as respects land, 96
Tents, travelling with, in Switzerland, 177
Testimony, fallibility of, 118
Theology, 256
Thun, 163
Too soon but late at last, 168
Travel, order of, 5
Travellers in monster hotels, 198.
Swiss, classified, 199, 203
Trust-funds, investment proposed for, 89
Twice as clever, 171
United States, answer to a question asked in the, 68
Agriculture of, 69
Urus, 212
Val Anzasca, 126, 129, 130
Valleys, geology of Alpine, 134.
View of Grindelwald, 160
Venice, 210
Verrieres, 2
Villages of Upper Rhone Valley, 144.
Old Lake, 210-215
Vines and vineyards, 205
Virgin, the Holy, at Ste. Marie aux Chênes, 236
Virtue, highest form of, 38
Visp, 8.
Life and religion in Valley of the, 21-27.
Thoughts about land suggested by the Valley of the, 28-112
Voiturier, boorish, 143.
Dilatory, 165.
Payment should depend on time, 166
Water-supply in Switzerland, 206-209.
In England, 207, 208.
Would lessen drunkenness, 209
Waterloo, 248, 249
Weather, 175
Well-being, constituents of, 40
Wengern Alp, 157, 158
Wheat cultivated by Old Lake villagers, 212
White of Selborne, 4
Widows and younger children provided for by landowners, 93
Wife, 5, 142, 162, 168, 171
Wildstrubel, 169
Will strengthened, 139
Wills, two errors with respect to, 110
Wine, 197
Wood-carving, 155
Zermatt, 9, 10, 115
Zmutt glacier, 17
Zurich Museum of lake village antiquities, 210-215.
Modern city, 214.
Technical University, 218
LONDON: PRINTED BY
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BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
* * * * *
_The Duty and Discipline of Extemporary
Preaching._
SECOND EDITION.
C. SCRIBNER & CO., NEW YORK.
* * * * *
_A Winter in the United States_:
Being Table-Talk collected during a Tour through the late Southern
Confederation, the Far West, the Rocky Mountains, &c.
JOHN MURRAY, LONDON.
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_Egypt of the Pharaohs and of the Kedivé._
SECOND EDITION. [In the Press.
SMITH, ELDER, & CO., LONDON.
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● Transcriber’s Notes:
○ Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected.
○ Typographical errors were silently corrected.
○ Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only
when a predominant form was found in this book.
○ Text that:
was in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_)).