_The Age_.--Its leading fault, to which we of America are especially
obnoxious, is this: in Poetry, in Legislation, in Eloquence, the best,
the divinest even of all the arts, seems to be laid aside more and
more, just in proportion as it every day grows of greater necessity.
It is still, as in Swift's time, who complains as follows: "To say the
truth, no part of knowledge seems to be in fewer hands, than that of
discerning _when to have done_."
_Dancing_.--The following are sufficiently amusing illustrations of
the fine lines in Byron's Ode,
"You have the Pyrrhic dance as yet;
Where is the Pyrrhic phalanx gone?"
The French translation of St. John (de Creve-cœur's) _American
Farmer's Letters_--a book once very popular--was adorned with
engravings, to fit it to the European imagination of the Arcadian
state of things in America. The frontispiece presents an allegorical
picture, in which a goddess of those robuster proportions which
designate Wisdom, or Philosophy, leads by the hand an urchin--the
type, no doubt, of this country--with ne'er a shirt upon his back.
More delightfully still, however, in the back ground, is seen, hand in
hand, with knee-breeches and strait-collared coats, a band of
Pennsylvania quaker men, dancing, by themselves, a true old fashioned
six-handed Virginia reel.
But of the Pyrrhic dance, more particularly: the learned
Scaliger--that terror and delight of the critical world--assures us,
in his _Poetica_, (book i, ch. 9) that he himself, at the command of
his uncle Boniface, was wont often and long to dance it, before the
Emperor Maximilian, while all Germany looked on with amazement. "Hanc
saltationem Pyrrhicam, nos sæpe et diu, jussu Bonifacii patrui, coram
divo Maximiliano, non sine stupore totius Germaniæ, representavimus."
_Ariosto_.--Has not the following curious testimony in regard to him
escaped all his biographers? Montaigne, in his Essays, (vol. iii, p.
117, Johanneau's edition, in 8vo.) says, "J'eus plus de despit
encores, que de compassion, de le veoir à Ferrare en si piteux estat,
survivant à soy mesme, mecognoissant et soy et ses ouvrages; lesquels,
sans son sςeu, et toutesfois en sa veue, on a mis en lumiere
incorrigez et informes."
"I was touched even more with vexation than with compassion, to see
him, at Ferrara, in a state so piteous, outliving himself, and
incapable of recognizing either himself or his works; which last,
without his knowledge, though yet before his sight, were given to the
world uncorrected and unfinished."
_Thin Clothing_.--It would be difficult more skilfully to turn a
reproach into a praise, than Byron has done, as to drapery too
transparent, in his voluptuous description of a Venitian revel.
--------"The thin robes,
Floating like light clouds 'twixt our gaze and heaven,"
form the very climax of many intoxicating particulars.
The Greeks seem not to have practised a very rigorous reserve, as to
the concealment of the person. The Lacedemonians, indeed, studiously
suppressed, by their institutions, whatever of sexual modesty was not
absolutely necessary to virtue. Among the Romans, however, the
national austerity of manners made every violation of delicacy in this
matter a great offence. Their Satyrists (as Seneca, Juvenal, and
others) abound in allusions to the license of dress, which grew up,
along with the other corruptions of their original usages. The words
of Seneca, indeed, might almost be taken for a picture of a modern
belle, in her ball-room attire. He says, in his _De Beneficiis_,
"Video Sericas vestes, si vestes vocandæ sint, in quibus nihil est,
quo defendi aut corpus, aut denique pudor, possit: quibus sumtis,
mulier parum liquido, nudam se non esse, jurabit. Hæc, ingenti summa,
ab ignotis etiam ad commercium gentibus, accersuntur, ut matronæ
nostræ ne adulteris quidem plus suis in cubiculo, quam in publico,
ostendant." "I see, too, silken clothing--if clothing that can be
called, which does not protect, nor even conceal the body--apparelled
in which, a woman cannot very truly swear, that she is not naked. Such
tissues are brought to us at enormous cost, from nations so remote
that not even their names can reach us; and by the help of this vast
expense, our matrons are able to exhibit, to their lovers and in their
couches, nothing at which the whole public has not equally gazed."
_Mythology_.--Bryant and others have puzzled themselves not a little
to give a rational explanation to the story of Ariadne; who, it will
be remembered, was abandoned upon the isle of Naxos by her seducer,
Theseus: but Bacchus chancing to come that way, fell upon the forlorn
damsel, and presently made her his bride. All this may well puzzle a
commentator, for the single reason, that it is perfectly plain and
simple. The whole tale is nothing but a delicate and poetic way of
stating the fact, that Mrs. Ariadne, being deserted by her lover,
sought and found a very common consolation--that is to say, she took
to drink.
_Naples_.--Its population of Lazzaroni appears, after all, to be but
the legitimate inheritors of ancestral laziness. They were equally
idle in Ovid's time: for he expressly calls that seat of indolence
------"in otia natam
Parthenopen."
_Exhibition of Grief_.--There is a curious instance of the unbending
austerity of Roman manners, in the trait by which Tacitus endeavors to
paint the disorder with which the high-souled Agrippina received the
news of the death of Germanicus. She was, at the moment, sewing in the
midst of her maids; and so totally (says Tacitus) did the intelligence
overthrow her self-command, _that she broke off her work_.
_Snoring_.--The following story of a death caused by it is entirely
authentic. Erythræus relates that when Cardinal Bentivoglio--a scholar
equally elegant and laborious--was called to sit in the Conclave, for
the election of a successor to Urban VIII, the summons found him much
exhausted by the literary vigils to which he was addicted. Immured in
the sacred palace, (such is the custom while the Pope is not yet
chosen,) his lodging was assigned him along side of a Cardinal, whose
snoring was so incessant and so terrible, that poor Bentivoglio ceased
to be able to obtain even the {356} little sleep which his studies and
his cares usually permitted him. After eleven nights of insomnolence
thus produced, he was thrown into a violent fever. They removed him,
and he slept--but waked no more.
_Human Usefulness_.--Wilkes has said, that of all the uses to which a
man can be put, there is none so poor as hanging him. I hope that I
may, without offence to any body's taste, add, that of all the
purposes to which a _soul_ can be put, I know of none less useful than
_damning it_.
_Sneezing_.--It is the Catholics (see father Feyjoo for the fact) who
trace the practice of bidding God bless a man when he sneezes, to a
plague in the time of St. Gregory. He, they say, instituted the
observance, in order to ward off the death of which this spasm had,
till then, been the regular precursor, in the disease. If the story be
true, such a plague had already happened, long before the day of St.
Gregory. In the _Odyssey_, Penelope takes the sneezing of Telemachus
for a good omen; and the army of Xenophon drew a favorable presage, as
to one of his propositions, from a like accident: Aristotle speaks of
the salutation of one sneezing as the common usage of his time. In
Catullus's _Acme and Sempronius_, Cupid ratifies, by an approving
sneeze, the mutual vows of the lovers. Pliny alludes to the practice,
and Petronius in his _Gyton_. In Apuleius's _Golden Ass_, a husband
hears the concealed gallant of his wife sneeze, and blesses her,
taking the sternutation to be her own.
If there be a marvel or an absurdity, the Rabbins rarely fail to adorn
the fiction or the folly with some trait of their own. Their account
of the matter is, that in patriarchal days, men never died except by
sneezing, which was then the only disease, and always mortal.
Apparently then, the antiquity of the Scotch nation and of rappee
cannot be carried back to the time of Jacob. Be this point of
chronology as it may, however, it is certain that the same sort of
observance, as to sneezing, was found in America at the first
discovery.
Aristotle is politely of opinion that the salutation was meant as an
acknowledgment to the wind, for choosing an inoffensive mode of
escape. But a stronger consideration is necessary to account for the
joy with which the people of Monopotama celebrate the fact, when their
monarch sneezes. The salutation is spread by loud acclamations, over
the whole city. So, too, when he of Sennaar sneezes, his courtiers all
turn their backs, and slap loudly their right thighs.
_Honor_.--The source of the following passage in Garth's _Dispensary_,
is so obvious, that it is singular that no one has made the remark.
In the debate among the Doctors, when war is proposed, one of the
Council speaks as follows.
Thus he: "'Tis true, when privilege and right
Are once invaded, Honor bids us fight:
But ere we yet engage in Honor's cause,
First know what honor is, and whence its laws.
Scorned by the base, 'tis courted by the brave;
The hero's tyrant, yet the coward's slave:
Born in the noisy camp, it feeds on air,
And both exists by hope and by despair;
Angry whene'er a moment's ease we gain,
And reconciled at our returns of pain.
It lives when in death's arms the hero lies;
But when his safety he consults, it dies.
Bigotted to this idol, we disclaim
Rest, health and ease, for nothing but a name."
_Implicit Faith_.--I am delighted with the following excellent
contrast of ignorant Orthodoxy with cultivated Doubt. It is from the
learned and pious Le Clerc's Preface to his _Bibliothèque Choisie_,
vol. vii, pp. 5, 6.
"Il n'y a, comme je crois, personne, qui ne préferât l'état d'une
nation, où il y auroit beaucoup de lumières quoiqu'il y eût quelques
libertins, à celui d'une nation ignorante et qui croiroit tout ce
qu'on lui enseigneroit, ou qui au moins ne donneroit aucunes marques
de douter des sentimens reçus. Les lumières produisent infailliblement
beaucoup de vertu dans l'esprit d'une bonne part de ceux qui les
reçoivent; quoiqu'il y ait des gens qui en abusent. Mais l'Ignorance
ne produit que de la barbarie et des vices dans tous ceux qui vivent
tranquillement dans leurs ténèbres. Il faudroit étre fou, par exemple,
pour préferer ou pour égaler l'état auquel sont les Moscovites et
d'autres nations, à l'égard de la Religion et de la vertu, à celni
auquel sont les Anglois et les Hollandois, sous prétexte qu'il y a
quelques libertins parmi ces deux peuples, et que les Moscovites et
ceux qui leur ressemblent ne doubtent de rien."
"There is, I think, no one who would prefer the state of a nation, in
which there was much intelligence, but some free thinkers, to that of
a nation ignorant and ready to believe whatever might be taught it, or
which, at least, would show no sign of doubting any of the received
opinions. For knowledge never fails to produce much of virtue, in the
minds of a large part of those who receive it, even though there be
some who make an ill use of it. But Ignorance is never seen to give
birth to any thing but barbarism and vice, in all such as dwell
contentedly under her darkness. It would, for example, be nothing less
than madness, to prefer or to compare the condition in which the
Muscovites and some other nations are, as respects Religion and
Virtue, to that of the English or Hollanders; under the pretext that
there are, among the two latter nations, some free thinkers, and that
the Muscovites and those who resemble them doubt of nothing."
The whole of this piece, indeed, is excellent, and full of candor,
charity and sense, as to the temper and the principles of those who
are forever striving to send into banishment, or shut up in prisons,
or compel into eternal hypocrisy, all such opinions as have the
misfortune to differ with their own.
_Friendships_.--There are people whose friendship is very like the
Santee Canal in South Carolina: that is to say, its repairs cost more
than the fee simple is worth.
_Benefits_.--There are many which must ever be their own reward, great
or small. Others are positively dangerous. That subtle courtier,
Philip de Comines, declares, that it is exceedingly imprudent to do
your prince services for which a fit recompense is not easily
found:[1] and Tacitus avers that obligations too deep are sure to turn
to hatred.[2] Seneca pursues the matter yet further, and insists that
he, whom your excessive services have thus driven to ingratitude,
presently begins to desire to escape the shame of such favors, by
{357} putting out of the world their author.[3] Cicero, too, is
clearly of opinion, that enmity is the sure consequence of kindness
carried to the extreme.[4]
[Footnote 1: "Il se fault bien garder de faire tant de services à son
maistre, qu'on l'empesche d'en trouver la juste
recompense."--_Memoires_.]
[Footnote 2: "Beneficia eo usque læta sunt, dum videntur exsolvi
posse: ubi multum antivenere, pro gratiâ odium redditur."]
[Footnote 3: "Nam qui putat esse turpe non reddere, non vult esse cui
reddat."]
[Footnote 4: "Qui si non putat satisfacere, amicus esse nullo modo
potest."]
_Heroes_.--Marshal de Saxe is accustomed to get the credit of a very
clever saying, "that no man seems a hero to his own valet de chambre."
Now, not to speak of the scriptural apothegm, "that a prophet has no
honor in his own country," the following passage from Montaigne will
be found to contain precisely the Marshal's idea.
"Tel a esté miraculeux au monde, auquel sa femme et son valet n'ont
rien veu seulement de remarquable. Peu d'hommes ont esté admirez par
leurs domestiques: nul n'a esté prophète, non seulement en sa maison,
mais en son pais, diet l'expérience des histoires."--_Essais_, vol. v,
p. 198.
"Such an one has seemed miraculous to the world, in whom his wife and
his valet could not even perceive any thing remarkable. Few men have
ever been admired by their own servants; none was ever a prophet in
his own country, still less in his own household."