becomes manifest to the dullest, that mind is
stronger than matter--that mind is the creator and
shaper of matter--that not brute force, but only
persuasion and faith, is the King of this world.
The true poet, who is but an inspired thinker, is
still an Orpheus whose lyre tames the savage
beasts, and evokes the dead rocks to fashion
themselves into palaces and stately inhabited
cities. It has been said, and may be repeated,
that literature is fast becoming all in all to
us--our Church, our Senate, our whole social
constitution. The true Pope of Christendom is not
that feeble old man in Rome, nor is its autocrat
the Napoleon, the Nicholas, with its half million
even of obedient bayonets; such autocrat is
himself but a more cunningly-devised bayonet and
military engine in the hands of a mightier than
he. The true autocrat, or Pope, is that man, the
real or seeming wisest of the last age; crowned
after death; who finds his hierarchy of gifted
authors, his clergy of assiduous journalists:
whose decretals, written, not on parchment, but on
the living souls of men, it were an inversion of
the laws of nature to disobey. In these times of
ours, all intellect has fused itself into
literature; literature--printed thought, is the
molten sea and wonder-bearing chaos, in which mind
after mind casts forth its opinion, its feeling,
to be molten into the general mass, and to be
worked there; interest after interest is engulfed
in it, or embarked in it; higher, higher it rises
round all the edifices of existence; they must all
be molten into it, and anew bodied forth from it,
or stand unconsumed among its fiery surges. Woe to
him whose edifice is not built of true asbest, and
on the everlasting rock, but on the false sand and
the drift-wood of accident, and the paper and
parchment of antiquated habit! For the power or
powers exist not on our earth that can say to that
sea--roll back, or bid its proud waves be still.
"What form so omnipotent an element will
assume--how long it will welter to and fro as a
wild democracy, a wilder anarchy--what
constitution and organization it will fashion for
itself, and for what depends on it in the depths
of time, is a subject for prophetic conjecture,
wherein brightest hope is not unmingled with
fearful apprehensions and awe at the boundless
unknown. The more cheering is this one thing,
which we do see and know--that its tendency is to
a universal European commonweal; that the wisest
in all nations will communicate and co-operate;
whereby Europe will again have its true Sacred
College and council of Amphictyons; wars will
become rarer, less inhuman; and in the course of
centuries, such delirious ferocity in nations, as
in individuals it already is, may be proscribed
and become obsolete for ever."
My last and not least conclusive extract (for it shows the actual hold
which these speculations have taken of the minds of practical men--of
men out in the world, and even of _soldiers_) is from a book popular
among all classes of readers--the _Bubbles from the Brunnens of Nassau_,
written by Major Sir Francis Head. What he says of one country's
educating another, by the natural progress of books and opinion, and of
the effect which this is likely to have upon governments even as remote
and unwilling as Russia, is particularly worthy of attention.
The author is speaking of some bathers at whom he had been looking, and
of a Russian Prince, who lets us into some curious information
respecting the leading-strings in which grown gentlemen are kept by
despotism:--
"For more than half an hour I had been indolently
watching this amphibious scene, when the landlord
entering my room said, that the Russian Prince,
G----n, wished to speak to me on some business;
and the information was scarcely communicated,
when I perceived his Highness standing at the
threshold of my door. With the attention due to
his rank, I instantly begged he would do me the
honour to walk in; and, after we had sufficiently
bowed to each other, and that I had prevailed on
my guest to sit down, I gravely requested him, as
I stood before him, to be so good as to state in
what way I could have the good fortune to render
him any service. The Prince very briefly replied,
that he had called upon me, considering that I was
the person in the hotel best capable (he politely
inclined his head) of informing him by what route
it would be most adviseable for him to proceed to
London, it being his wish to visit my country.
"In order at once to solve this very simple
problem, I silently unfolded and spread out upon
the table my map of Europe; and each of us, as we
leant over it, placing a forefinger on or near
Wiesbaden (our eyes being fixed upon Dover), we
remained in this reflecting attitude for some
seconds, until the Prince's finger first solemnly
began to trace its route. In doing this, I
observed that his Highness's hand kept swerving
far into the Netherlands, so, gently pulling it by
the thumb towards Paris, I used as much force as I
thought decorous, to induce it to advance in a
straight line; however, finding my efforts
ineffectual, I ventured with respectful
astonishment, to ask, 'Why travel by so
uninteresting a route'?
"The Prince at once acknowledged that the route I
had recommended would, by visiting Paris, afford
him the greatest pleasure; but he frankly told me
that no Russian, not even a personage of his rank,
could enter that capital, without first obtaining
a written permission from the Emperor.
"These words were no sooner uttered, than I felt
my fluent civility suddenly begin to coagulate;
the attention I paid my guest became forced and
unnatural. I was no longer at my ease; and though
I bowed, strained, and endeavoured to be, if
possible, more respectful than ever, yet I really
could hardly prevent my lips from muttering aloud,
that I had sooner die a homely English peasant
than live to be a Russian prince!--in short, his
Highness's words acted upon my mind like thunder
upon beer. And, moreover, I could almost have
sworn that I was an old lean wolf, contemptuously
observing a bald ring rubbed by the collar, from
the neck of a sleek, well-fed mastiff dog;
however, recovering myself, I managed to give as
much information as it was in my humble power to
afford; and my noble guest then taking his
departure, I returned to my open window, to give
vent in solitude (as I gazed upon the horse bath)
to my own reflection upon the subject.
"Although the petty rule of my life has been never
to trouble myself about what the world calls
'politics'--(a fine word, by the by, much easier
expressed than understood)--yet, I must own, I am
always happy when I see a nation enjoying itself,
and melancholy when I observe any large body of
people suffering pain or imprisonment. But of all
sorts of imprisonment, that of the mind is, to my
taste, the most cruel; and, therefore, when I
consider over what immense dominions the Emperor
of Russia presides, and how he governs, I cannot
help sympathizing most sincerely with those
innocent sufferers, who have the misfortune to be
born his subjects; for if a Russian Prince be not
freely permitted to go to Paris, in what a
melancholy state of slavery and debasement must
exist the minds of what we call the lower classes?
"As a sovereign remedy for this lamentable
political disorder, many very sensible people in
England prescribe, I know, that we ought to have
resource to arms. I must confess, however, it
seems to me that one of the greatest political
errors England could commit would be to declare,
or to join in declaring, war with Russia; in
short, that an appeal to brute force would, at
this moment, be at once most unscientifically to
stop an immense moral engine, which, if left to
its work, is quite powerful enough, without
bloodshed, to gain for humanity, at no expense at
all, its object. The individual who is, I
conceive, to overthrow the Emperor of Russia--who
is to direct his own legions against himself--who
is to do what Napoleon had at the head of his
great army failed to effect, is the little child,
who, lighted by the single wick of a small lamp,
sits at this moment perched above the great steam
press of the 'Penny Magazine,' feeding it, from
morning till night, with blank papers, which, at
almost every pulsation of the engine, comes out
stamped on both sides with engravings, and with
pages of plain, useful, harmless knowledge, which,
by making the lower orders acquainted with foreign
lands, foreign productions, various states of
society, &c., tend practically to inculcate 'Glory
to God in the highest, and on earth peace--good
will towards men.' It has already been stated,
that what proceeds from this press is now
greedily devoured by the people of Europe; indeed,
even at Berlin, we know it can hardly be reprinted
fast enough.
"This child, then,--'this sweet little cherub that
sits up aloft,'--is the only army that an
enlightened country like ours should, I humbly
think, deign to oppose to one who reigns in
darkness--who trembles at day-light, and whose
throne rests upon ignorance and despotism. Compare
this mild, peaceful intellectual policy, with the
dreadful, savage alternative of going to war, and
the difference must surely be evident to everyone.
In the former case, we calmly enjoy, first of all,
the pleasing reflection, that our country is
generously imparting to the nations of Europe the
blessing she is tranquilly deriving from the
purification of civilization to her own mind;--far
from wishing to exterminate, we are gradually
illuminating the Russian peasant, we are mildly
throwing a gleam of light upon the fetters of the
Russian Prince; and surely every well-disposed
person must see, that if we will only have
patience, the result of this noble, temperate
conduct, must produce all that reasonable beings
can desire."--_Bubbles from the Brunnens of
Nassau_, p. 164.
By the 'Penny Magazine,' our author means, of course, not only that
excellent publication, but all cheaply-diffused knowledge--all the
tranquil and enlightening deeds of "Captain Pen" in general--of whom it
is pleasant to see the gallant Major so useful a servant, the more so
from his sympathies with rank and the aristocracy. But "Pen" will make
it a matter of necessity, by and by, for all ranks to agree with him, in
vindication of their own wit and common sense; and when once this
necessity is felt, and fastidiousness shall find out that it will be
considered "absurd" to lag behind in the career of knowledge and the
common good, the cause of the world is secure.
May princes and people alike find it out by the kindliest means, and
without further violence. May they discover that no one set of human
beings, perhaps no single individual, can be thoroughly secure and
content, or enabled to work out his case with equal reasonableness,
_till all are so_,--a subject for reflection, which contains, we hope,
the beneficent reason _why all are restless_. The solution of the
problem is co-operation--the means of solving it is the Press. If the
Greeks had had a press, we should probably have heard nothing of the
inconsiderate question, which demands, why they, with all their
philosophy, did not alter the world. They had not the means. They could
not command a general hearing. Neither had Christianity come up, to
make men think of one another's wants, as well as of their own
accomplishments. Modern times possess those means, and inherit that
divine incitement. May every man exert himself accordingly, and show
himself a worthy inhabitant of this beautiful and most capable world!
THE END.
LONDON:
Printed by C. and W. REYNELL,
Little Pulteney Street.
[Illustration: _P. 112._]
* * * * *
Transcriber's Note: On page 67, a quote begins but has no end that this
transcriber can find. It was retained as printed. ("Try a reasonable
condition)
End of Project Gutenberg's Captain Sword and Captain Pen, by Leigh Hunt