characters, that are susceptible of all the fidelity and beauty
of this sentiment, a certain adaptation of circumstances, and
conformity of disposition, mind, development and temperament, I
believe with St Pierre, that it is desirable, that there should be
a certain contrast as well as much fitness. Constant assentation,
the same opinions, tastes, tempers and views have been found by
experience, not to generate the most permanent, and pleasant unions
of the sort. The moral, as well as the physical appetite, would
grow weary of perpetual uniformity and unvarying similarity, and
requires the spice, afforded by the mixture of various ingredients
of affectionate contrariety. Both the love and friendship, most
likely to endure, spring up between the placid and piquant, the
tranquil and energetic, the monotonously sweet tempered and the
sensitive, whose irritability is held in check by good sense,
kindness and self-control;--between the temperament, connected
with blue eyes and fair hair, and that of the keen, deep black
eye, and raven locks. ‘Soldiers,’ says St Pierre, ‘on long and
distant expeditions, should be associated with ministers, lawyers
with naturalists, and in general, the strongest contrasts of
profession’--_all nature’s discord thus making all nature’s peace_.
But I am perfectly aware, that there will be great danger of making
fatal mistakes, in acting on this principle. I am confident,
that is true in the abstract; but let sentimentalists beware of
trenching too confidently on ground, where the limits between
safety and ruin are so narrow, and difficult to discern. Doves of
a different feather may pair happily, but not doves and vultures.
There must be a certain compatibility not only of character, but of
age, condition and circumstances, as we are broadly instructed in
the fable of the frog thinking to wed with the ox.
Any discussion of the details, touching the requisite circumstances
of compatibility to form friendships with any chance of their being
pleasant and permanent, as well as the obligations and duties
involved by it, would require a volume, and would carry me utterly
beyond my present purpose. Books are ample, if not interesting
and just, in the information which they impart upon this subject.
With my views of its obligations and duties in few words, I shall
dismiss it.
In a pecuniary point of view the claims of friendship are only
limited by the sterner demands of justice. The common adage, which
calls upon us to be just, before we allow ourselves to be generous,
is worthy to be written in letters of gold; though it has been a
thousand times wrested by selfish and cold hearts, into a pretext
for their avarice. Whoever should think of lavishing his money
upon a friend, in order to absolve himself from the more difficult
calls of justice, would show a mind, too weak and incapable of
discrimination, to honor that friend by his bounty. But, grant that
the friends have delicacy, consideration and gentlemanly tact, and
they may possess a common purse, without danger to the duties of
either.
The fame and character of the one are strictly the property of
the other. Let no one, who has the least particle of the base
alloy of envy in his feelings towards him, whom he calls his
friend, who is willing to hear, and countenance abatements of his
qualities, talents, or virtues, dare to assume that almost sacred
name. He is equally unworthy of it, if he stand by in neutrality
when calumny is busily passing against him; and still more, if by
smiles he gives his countenance, and half his consent to the story
of detraction and abatement. It is a forfeiture of the right to
the name, though it may be a less worthy one, to make the person,
called friend, the subject of jest and ridicule. In regard to all
these points, the duties are clear, distinct, palpable and not
to be compromised. Every honorable mind feels, in witnessing any
infraction of the laws of equity, or strict justice, a sentiment
of recoil and disgust, difficult perhaps to define, but one which
instantly designates the person guilty of it, as unworthy of the
name of friend. Honest, frank and disinterested advice, especially
in relation to concerns of great interest to the party, is a
paramount obligation, whether the advised will bear, or forbear.
This prerogative may, indeed, be claimed by unfeeling and rude
bluntness. But, by a discriminating mind, the suggestions of a
counterfeit, will never be mistaken for those of genuine friendship.
The time, the courtesy and the amount of intercourse, due from
one friend to another, can never be brought under subjection to
rules. Moral, like physical attraction, acting unconsciously, will
regulate this portion of duty, with the unvarying certainty of
the laws of nature. If persons, claiming to sustain this relation
to each other, do not wish to be as much together, as duty and
propriety will admit; if they allow this matter to be settled by
the rigid tithing of etiquette, they are anything rather than real
friends.
I have been struck by an incident in the life of a religious woman,
I think it was Mrs Graham. There was a sacramental pledge between
her and a friend, that, whichever of them should be first called
from life, the other should visit her in the sickness, which
she should consider her last, and not leave her, until she had
received her last sigh. Sublime test of affection! What a tender,
sacred office, after a life of friendship, thus, by a sacramental
contract, to close the eyes of the friend beloved in life, and
separated only by death! There can be no doubt that the feelings,
called thus into action, are peculiarly fitted to mitigate the
last sorrows; and in the simple grandeur of such a sentiment,
so manifested, the departing friend will see a proof, that such
affections are, in their own nature, immortal; and that such ties
shall be renewed in the eternal regions of the living.
When friends are separated wide from each other by distance,
duty, and the stern calls of our pursuits, I admire the custom of
baptizing, if I may so say, our remembrances, by giving the names
of our dear and distant friends to the hills, valleys, streams,
trees or pleasant views in our walks; or the objects most familiar
and pleasant to our view. The stern silence of nature may thus be
compelled to find a tongue, and discourse with us of those we love.
In a word, the name, I am sensible, is too often a morbid mockery
of cold and affected sentimentalism, both weak and disgusting,
the cant term for the intercourse between the enlarged prisoners
of boarding schools. But the sentiment exists, pure, simple
delightful. Neither fawning, nor cant, nor flattery, nor any
mixture of earth’s mould makes any part of it. Honorable,
dignified, unshaken, it feels its obligations, and discharges
them. The reputation, character and whole interest of the friend
is its object; and his highest happiness its prayer. In holy
segregation from the hollow intercourse, false phrases and
deceitful compliments of fashion, and what is called the world,
it is faithful and consistent, under all proofs and trials, until
death; and when the eyes of the departed are closed, his memory is
enshrined in the remembrance of the survivor. Thank God! I have
seen, I have felt, that there are such friendships; and if there is
anything honorable, dignified and attractive in aught, that earth
presents, it is the sight of two friends, whose attachment dates
from their first remembered sentiment; and has survived difference
of opinion and interest, the changes of distance, time and
disease, and those weaning influences, which, while they crumble
the most durable monuments, convert most hearts to stone.
Note 38, page 129.
I have long been in the habit of measuring the character, mental
power and prospects of the young, who are brought by circumstances
under my observation, by the power which they evince, to resist the
suggestion of the senses. In the same proportion, as I see them
capable of rising above the thraldom of their appetites, capable
of that energy of will, that gives the intellectual control over
the animal nature, I graduate them higher in the scale of moral
power and prospect. But if, in their course, they manifest the
clear preponderance of the animal; if sloth, sensuality, and the
inclinations, which have no higher origin than the senses, sway
them beyond the influence of advice and moral suasion, be they
ever so beautiful, endowed, rich, distinguished, be their place in
general estimation ever so high, I put them down, as belonging to
the animal, and not the intellectual orders. They can never reach
higher worth and success, than that, which is the blind award of
accident.
Note 39, page 131.
It seems to me, that writers on taste have not seen all the
importance of uniting physical with moral ideas, to give them any
deep and permanent interest. This subject might be enlarged to any
extent, by carrying out the details, suggested by the striking,
just, but necessarily very brief views of the author. We have here
a clue, by which we may explore a whole universe of the highest
and purest pleasures which can touch the heart, and which to the
greater portion of the species have no existence.
There are travellers more learned, and equally capable of noting
facts with M. de Chateaubriand. They have traversed the same
countries, seen the same objects, and collected an immense mass
of facts, which they have published, on their return, to be read
by none, but kindred spirits, as dull as themselves. In his
record of his travels in the same countries, we are beguiled
onward, under the spell of a sustained charm. The imagination is
constantly in action; the heart swells; images of grandeur and
beauty, remembrances of pathos and power are evoked from every
side, and the shadows of the past throng round us. Why is it
so? The former see brute nature, in its lifeless and motionless
materiality, divorced from mind and memory. The latter not only
sees that universe with a radiant eye, but holds converse with a
superincumbent universe, as much more vast, beautiful, touching,
diversified, than the other, as mind is superior to matter. It is
this creation of thoughts, remembrances, poetry, and affecting
images, in his mind, intimately connected with the other, and
overshadowing it, like an illumined stratum over a region covered
with palpable mist, by virtue of which he makes nature eloquent.
This is the charm spread over all the beautiful passages that
abound in his writings; a peculiar aptitude to associate nature,
in every position and form, with the universe of thought within
him. Such is the endowment of all poets, orators, and painters,
that have produced efforts worthy of immortality. Common writers
see nature dead, silent, sterile--mere brute and voiceless
matter. Endowed minds kindle it into speech, beauty and grandeur;
interpreting it by the internal world in their own minds.
Note 39a, page 134.
These illustrations of the importance of uniting moral with
physical ideas, in regard to vision, landscape, painting and music,
are as true, as they are eloquent and striking. Who has not had
the vivid remembrance of home recalled in a distant land, by a
tree, a feature in the landscape, a blue hill in the distance!
How readily the shadowy images of memory are evoked! Every one is
acquainted with the touching circumstance in the character of
the Swiss soldiers serving in foreign countries. Great numbers of
them used to serve, as stipendaries, in the French armies. It was
forbidden to play, in their presence, the air _Ranz des vaches_.
Homesickness and desertion scarcely failed to ensue from hearing
it. The wild and plaintive air reminded them of ‘Sweet home,’
their mountains, their simple pleasures, and the range and lowing
of their kine. The beautiful Scotch airs derive their charm from
their association with mountain scenery, and the peculiar history
and manners of a highly sensitive, intelligent and national
people. The same may be said of the unrivalled _Erin go Bragh_, in
relation to the Irish; in a word of the national music of every
people. Associate any idea with sentiment and the heart, and it
becomes touching, and sublime, and capable of stirring the deepest
fountains of feeling, according to the remembrance with which it is
allied.
Note 40, page 136.
I have heard persons, endowed with keen feelings, repiningly
contrast the miseries which they endured from an excess of
irritable and unregulated sensibility, with the apparently joyous
apathy of fat and fortunate burghers, who seem to find no sorrows
and no troubles in life, and who hear with incredulity and, in
fact, with an entire want of comprehension, about sufferings
resulting from witnessing misery, which we have no means of
relieving, and the sorrows, from innumerable sources, to which
those of a keenly sensitive nature are subject. I have never seen
these contrasts of character in this light. I unhesitatingly
believe that a righteous Providence has exactly and admirably
adjusted the weights in either scale. The great mass, who are not
disturbed with excess of feeling, are, from the same temperament,
interdicted from a whole universe of enjoyments, into which those,
who possess sensibility, and regulate it aright, have free access.
Note 41, page 137.
Man seems to contain, according as he is contemplated in different
lights, inexplicable contradictions of character; and to be at one
time all tenderness of heart; and at another an odious compound
of insensibility and cruelty; according to the circumstances
with which he is surrounded, and the positions in which he is
placed. Who could believe, that it was the same being, that now
dissolves into tears at the rehearsal of a tragedy, on reading a
romance or witnessing a spectacle of misery, and now hurries from
these emotions to see a bull-fight; and in passing to the show,
encourages two bullies in the street to form a ring, to bruise
each other! Who would believe, that it has always been considered
an attribute in the more susceptible sex, to regard duellists with
a partial eye; to give a secret place in their kind feelings to
those who are reckless of their own and another’s blood; and more
than all to look propitiously on soldiers encrimsoned with the
fresh stains of the battle field? Nay, more, who reads without
astonishment, and almost without unbelief, that a whole people, in
the days of the pagan Roman emperors, days of the utmost luxury of
taste and refinement, days, in which, in all probability, traits
of kindness, generosity and magnanimity were no more uncommon than
now, the ladies of the greatest and most splendid city in the world
thronged with an irrepressible curiosity, and an intense desire,
to see naked gladiators lacerate, and stab each other, and old and
feeble men torn in pieces by lions and wild beasts, when merely a
movement of a finger would save them!
The ministers of the gospel, who attribute the abhorrence, which
the same spectacles would excite in the population of a Christian
city, to the humanizing influences of our faith, forget that such a
city has seen, times without number, its inhabitants pouring forth
from its gates, to witness miserable victims burnt to death at an
_auto da fé_, and shouting with joy at the spectacle.
Protestant ministers exult, in contrasting the influences of the
reformed faith with results like these; and yet witness their
congregations thronging in crowds to see a wretched criminal
swinging in the agonies of strangulation. The same people thrill
with horror, as they hear, around their evening fire, how those
whom they call savages, dance, and yell round the stake, at which
a captive enemy is burning. To the red man it seems the extreme of
cold-blooded ferocity, to execute a criminal with a halter, by the
hands of a person who bears no ill will to the victim.
Far be it from me to question one of the sublime trophies of the
gospel, or to doubt its refining and humanizing influences. But the
whole aspect of history and society compels me to believe, that
fashion and prevalent opinions exert an influence, that will bring
men to tolerate almost anything. I much fear, that the spectacles
of the Roman Amphitheatre might be revived, if a certain number of
any community would pertinaciously conspire, to write in favor of
them, and countenance them by their presence.
Note 42, page 137.
To present, in contrast, the favorable side of human
contradictions:--I have seen a man plunge into the water, and
put his own life at fearful jeopardy, to rescue a stranger from
drowning. I have witnessed instances of disinterested and heroic
sacrifice, which present men in the aspect of angels, in every walk
of life. Such sublime samples of the capability of our nature are
the appropriate theme of oratory, painting and song; and cannot
be too much blazoned. Pity it is that history did not select more
instances, and dwell upon them with more partial eulogy, instead of
amplifying the revolting details of war.
Two instances of affecting manifestation of tenderness are deeply
impressed upon my memory, simply because they were elicited by
common cases of suffering; and had in them nothing of romance, or
of uncommon tendency to excite the feelings.
I was passing in the streets of one of our northern cities. On the
marble door steps of a sumptuous mansion sat a ragged boy, with
a look at once dogged and subdued, manifesting long acquaintance
with sorrow and want. Near him sat an aged woman, apparently his
mother, decrepit, worn and squalid, with her face turned from me.
The boy was devouring with voracious greediness a piece of dried
herring. Fair and richly dressed children were passing to their
morning school. Most of them jeered him, in passing, calling on him
to get down from the steps, and asking him if he was very hungry?
‘Yes, and you would be hungry, and sad too, if you was poor and a
stranger, and had to take care of an old mother, and had walked as
far as I have.’ One of the boys lingered behind, as if ashamed of
his feelings. I noticed his broad, high forehead, and eye speaking
a soul within. His eyes filled with tears, as he handed the boy
money. My own eyes moistened, as I witnessed the angelic expression
of this noble boy, who I dare affirm, had not the spirit to do such
things by halves.
The other was in another extremity of our country, where money and
cotton, sugar and slaves, balls and theatres are the all-absorbing
objects of interest. A large group of gaily dressed gentlemen
and ladies were promenading, in company with an heiress and her
intended husband, who were shortly to be married, and they were
merely discussing the preparations. A poor, pale boy, apparently a
stranger, came up to them, with his written petition for charity;
and with the low and subdued tone of voice appropriate to shame,
bashfulness and misery, began to tell his little story. The
splendid laughers walked on with an incurious carelessness. One of
the group lingered behind. He was struggling with the difficulties
of obtaining a profession, and aiding in the support of a distant
family. But, he bestowed on the boy one of his few remaining
dollars. When I see such instances of native tenderness of heart, I
thank God that men are not totally depraved.
Note 43, page 138.
Every one who has had extensive acquaintances, and been exposed
to frequent requests for letters of recommendation, and to
procure the intervention and aid of opulent friends, must feel
the importance and justice of these remarks. We ought not to
refuse such letters from indolence, selfishness, or the commonly
alleged fear of troubling our friends. But then, the case must be
such, as will bear us out, in being measured and scrupulous, in
regard to the existence, the actual truth and justice, of what we
advance; otherwise our inter-position will soon be rendered cheap
and inefficient; and will react, in creating want of respect for
the writer, instead of good feeling toward the person recommended.
Such, in a great measure, is the result, in the current value of
these letters, as they are emitted, according to the common forms
of society.
Note 44, page 139.
A most affecting proof, that the human heart is not intrinsically
bad, and that the obduracy and cold-blooded selfishness of the
world is adventitious, and the result of our modes and our
training, is, that the sisters of charity, the truly beneficent
everywhere, create a deep sensation of respect in beholders.
Efficient charity is almost the only thing, that no one feels
disposed to question, or slander. A corpse was borne slowly by me,
to the place of its long sleep. An immense procession followed
with sorrow and respect impressed upon their countenances. I
asked, whom they were burying. ‘A single woman without wealth or
connexions.--But her life has been marked by beneficence.’ If that
sex, which so instinctively desire to appear to advantage, knew, in
what light a lady, distinguished by fortune and cultivation appears
while traversing the dirty and dark lanes of a city, to seek out,
and relieve cases of misery, they would practise charity, were it
from no higher motive, than to create a sensation, and appear
lovely. Every one knows the example of the sublime, quoted by
Longinus from Moses. A passage in the Gospel seems to me still more
sublime. _He went about doing good._ All other homage, than that
which the heart pays to beneficence, is adventitious. This is real.
Note 45, page 141.
Of all the pleasures of our earthly sojourn, after those of a
good conscience, the most varied, and yet equable, healthful and
permanent are those of reading. ‘I have never,’ says a respectable
writer, ‘passed a comfortable day without books since I was capable
of reading.’ It is certainly pleasant, to be able to converse with
the wise and instructed of all countries and all times without
formality, without embarrassment, and just as long as we choose;
and then dismiss one of them without any apology, and sit down
with another. We travel without expense with them. We inhabit the
tropics, or the polar circle, the table summits of mountains, or
the wide plains, at our choice. We journey by land or by sea. We
select congenial minds, and make them converse with us about our
congenial pursuits. We throw away no voice. We never dialogue in
wrath; and intelligence converses with intelligence, divested of
terrene grossness and passion. When detained on long journeys,
in some remote interior tavern, by a storm, or inability to find
a conveyance, how keenly, while reading almanacks of the past
years, and old fragments of books, found on the dusty shelf of
the ordinary, have I felt the value of books, as a perfect cure
for the impatience of such a position. In this state of privation
and intellectual fasting, we master dull and tiresome books,
which, under other circumstances, we should not have dreamed of
reading. Then the mind is taught to pay the proper homage to these
intellectual resources.
The pleasures of winter reading, in the sacred privacy of the
parlor, are thus finely described by Thomson, the painter of
nature.