lofty tower, whence our gaze rests on hundreds of human destinies,
astir in the valley below--I understood what a beautiful destiny meant
to the instinct of man. It would doubtless have puzzled Saint-Simon
himself to have told what it was that he loved and admired in some of
his heroes, whom he enwraps in a sort of resigned, and almost
unconscious, respect. Thousands of virtues that he esteemed highly have
ceased to exist to-day, and many a quality now seems petty indeed that
he commended in some of his great ones. And yet are there, unperceived
as it were by him, four or five men in the midst of the glittering
crowd hard by the monarch's throne, four or five earnest benevolent
faces on whom our eye still rests gladly; though Saint-Simon gives them
no special attention or thought, for in his heart he looks with
disfavour on the ideas that govern their life. Fenelon is there; the
Dukes of Chevreuse and Beauvilliers; there is Monsieur le Dauphin.
Their happiness is no greater than that of the rest of mankind. They
achieve no marked success, they gain no resplendent victory, They live
as the others live--in the fret and expectation of the thing that we
choose to call happiness, because it has yet to come. Fenelon incurs
the displeasure of the crafty, bigoted king, who, for all his pride,
would resent the most trivial offence with the humbleness of humblest
vanity; who was great in small things, and petty in all that was
great--for such was Louis XIV. Fenelon is condemned, persecuted,
exiled. The Dukes of Chevreuse and Beauvilliers continue to hold
important office at Court, but none the less deem it prudent to live in
a kind of voluntary retirement. The Dauphin is not in favour with the
King; a powerful, envious clique are for ever intriguing against him,
and they finally succeed in crushing his youthful military glory. He
lives in the midst of disgrace, misadventure, disaster, that seem
irreparable in the eyes of that vain and servile Court; for disgrace
and disaster assume the proportions the manners of the day accord.
Finally he dies, a few days after the death of the wife he had loved so
tenderly. He dies--poisoned, perhaps, as she too; the thunderbolt
falling just as the very first rays of kingly favour, whereon he had
almost ceased to count, were stealing over his threshold. Such were the
troubles and misfortunes, the sorrows and disappointments, that wrapped
these lives round; and yet, as we look on this little group, standing
firm and silent in the midst of the feverish, intermittent glitter of
the rest, then do these four destinies seem truly beautiful to us, and
enviable. Through all their vicissitudes one common light shines
through them. The great soul of Fenelon illumines them all. Fenelon is
faithful to his loftiest thoughts of piety, meekness, wonder, justice,
and love; and the other three are faithful to him, who was their master
and friend. And what though the mystic ideas of Fenelon be no longer
shared by us: what though the ideas that we cling to ourselves, and
deem the profoundest and noblest--the ideas that live at the root of
our every conviction of life, that have served as the basis of all our
moral happiness--what though these should one day fall in ruins behind
us, and only arouse a smile among such as believe that they have found
other thoughts still, which to them seem more human, and final?
Thought, of itself, is possessed of no vital importance; it is the
feelings awakened within us by thought that ennoble and brighten our
life. Thought is our aim, perhaps; but it may be with this as with many
a journey we take--the place we are bound for may interest us less than
the journey itself, the people we meet on the road, the unforeseen that
may happen. Here, as everywhere, it is only the sincerity of human
feeling that abides. As for a thought, we know not, it may be
deceptive; but the love, wherewith we have loved it, will surely return
to our soul; nor can a single drop of its clearness or strength be
abstracted by error. Of that perfect ideal that each of us strives to
build up in himself, the sum total of all our thoughts will help only
to model the outline; but the elements that go to construct it, and
keep it alive, are the purified passion, unselfishness, loyalty,
wherein these thoughts have had being. The extent of our love for the
thing which we hold to be true is of greater importance than even the
truth itself. Does not love bring more goodness to us than thought can
ever convey? Loyally to love a great error may well be more helpful
than meanly to serve a great truth; for in doubt, no less than in
faith, are passion and love to be found. Some doubts are as generous
and passionate as the very noblest convictions. Be a thought of the
loftiest, surest, or of the most profoundly uncertain, the best that it
has to offer is still the chance that it gives us of loving some one
thing wholly, without reserve. Whether it be to man, or a God; to
country, to world or to error, that I truly do yield myself up, the
precious ore that shall some day be found buried deep in the ashes of
love will have sprung from the love itself, and not from the thing that
I loved. The sincerity of an attachment, its simplicity, firmness, and
zeal--these leave a track behind them that time can never efface. All
passes away and changes; it may be that all is lost, save only the glow
of this ardour, fertility, and strength of our heart.
96. "Never did man possess his soul in such peace as he," says
Saint-Simon of one of them, who was surrounded on all sides by malice,
and scheming, and snares. And further on he speaks of the "wise
tranquillity" of another, and this "wise tranquillity" pervades every
one of those whom he terms the "little flock." The "little flock,"
truly, of fidelity to all that was noblest in thought; the "little
flock" of friendship, loyalty, self-respect, and inner contentment,
that pass along, radiant with peace and simplicity, in the midst of the
lies and ambitions, the follies and treacheries, of Versailles. They
are not saints, in the vulgar sense of the word. They have not fled to
the depths of forest or desert, or sought egotistic shelter in narrow
cells. They are sages, who remain within life and the things that are
real. It is not their piety that saves them; it is not in God alone
that their soul has found strength. To love God, and to serve Him with
all one's might, will not suffice to bring peace and strength to the
soul of man. It is only by means of the knowledge and thought we have
gained and developed by contact with men that we can learn how God
should be loved; for, notwithstanding all things, the human soul
remains profoundly human still. It may be taught to cherish the
invisible, but it will ever find far more actual nourishment in the
virtue or feeling that is simply and wholly human, than in the virtue
or passion divine. If there come towards us a man whose soul is truly
tranquil and calm, we may be certain that human virtues have given him
his tranquillity and his calmness. Were we permitted to peer into the
secret recesses of hearts that are now no more, we might discover,
perhaps, that the fountain of peace whereat Fenelon slaked his thirst
every night of his exile lay rather in his loyalty to Madame Guyon in
her misfortune, in his love for the slandered, persecuted Dauphin, than
in his expectation of eternal reward; rather in the irreproachable
human conscience within him, overflowing with fidelity and tenderness,
than in the hopes he cherished as a Christian.
97. Admirable indeed is the serenity of this "little flock!" No virtue,
here, to kindle dazzling fires on the mountain, but heart and soul that
are alive with flame. No heroism but that of love, of confidence and
sincerity, that remember and are content to wait. Some men there are
whose virtue issues from them with a noise of clanging gates; in others
it dwells as silent as the maid who never stirs from home, who sits
thoughtfully by the fireside, always ready to welcome those who enter
from the cold without. There is less need of heroic hours, perhaps, in
a beautiful life, than of weeks that are grave, and uniform, and pure.
It may be that the soul that is loyal and perfectly just is more
precious than the one that is tender or full of devotion It will enter
less wholly perhaps, and with less exaltation, into the more exuberant
adventures of life; but in the events that occur every day we can trust
it more fully, rely more completely upon it; and is there a man, after
all, no matter how strange and delirious and brilliant his life may
have been, who has not spent the great bulk of his time in the midst of
most ordinary incident? In our very sublimest hour, as we stand in the
midst of the dazzling circles it throws, are we not startled to find
that the habits and thoughts of our soberest hour are whirling around
with the rest? We must always come back to our normal life, that is
built on the solid earth and primitive rock. We are not called upon to
contest each day with dishonour, despair, or death; but it is
imperative, perhaps, that I should be able to tell myself, at every
hour of sadness, that there exists, somewhere, an unchangeable,
unconquerable soul that has drawn near to my soul--a soul that is
faithful and silent, blind to all that it deems not conformable with
the truth. We can only have praise for heroism, and for surpassingly
generous deeds; but more praise still--as it demands a more vigilant
strength--for the man who never allows an inferior thought to seduce
him; who leads a less glorious life, perhaps, but one of more uniform
worth. Let us sometimes, in our meditations, bring our desire for moral
perfection to the level of daily truth, and be taught how far easier it
is to confer occasional benefit than never to do any harm; to bring
occasional happiness than never be cause of tears.
98. Their refuge, their "firm rock," as Saint-Simon calls it, lay in
each other, and, above all, in themselves; and all that was blameless
within their soul became steadfastness in the rock. A thousand
substances go to form the foundations of this "firm rock," but all that
we hold to be blameless within us will sink to its centre and base. It
is true that our standard of conduct may often be sadly at fault; and
the vilest of men has a moment each night when he proudly surveys some
detestable thought, that seems wholly blameless to him. But I speak of
a virtue, here, that is higher than everyday virtue; and the most
ordinary man is aware what a virtue becomes, when it is ordinary virtue
no longer. Moral beauty, indeed, though it be of the rarest kind, never
passes the comprehension of the most narrow-minded of men; and no act
is so readily understood as the act that is truly sublime. We may
admire a deed profoundly, perhaps, and yet not rise to its height; but
it is imperative that we should not abide in the darkness that covers
the thing we blame. Many a happiness in life, as many a disaster, is
due to chance alone; but the peace within us can never be governed by
chance. Some souls, I know, for ever are building; others have
preference for ruins; and others, still, will wander, their whole life
through, seeking shelter beneath strange roofs. And difficult as it may
be to transform the instincts that dwell in the soul, it is well that
those who build not should be made aware of the joy that the others
experience as they incessantly pile stone upon stone. Their thoughts,
and attachments, and love; their convictions, deceptions, and even
their doubts--all stand in good service; and when the passing storm has
demolished their mansion, they build once again with the ruins, a
little distance away, something less stately perhaps, but better
adapted to all the requirements of life. What regret, disillusion, or
sadness can shatter the homestead of him who, in choosing the stones
for his dwelling, Was careful to keep all the wisdom and strength that
regret, disillusion, and sadness contain? Or might we not say that it
is with the roots of the happiness we cherish within as with roots of
great trees? The oaks that are subject the most to the stress of the
storm thrust their roots the most staunchly and firmly, deep down in
eternal soil; and the fate that unjustly pursues us is no more aware of
what comes to pass in our soul, than the wind is aware of what happens
below in the earth.
99. Here let us note how great is the power, how mysterious the
attraction, of veritable happiness. Something of a hush comes over
Saint-Simon's stirring narrative as one of the members of the "little
flock" passes through the careless, triumphant crowd, unceasingly busy
with intrigue and salutation, petty love and petty triumph, amidst the
marble staircases and magnificent halls of Versailles. Saint-Simon goes
calmly on with his story; but for one second we seem to have compared
all this jubilant vanity and ephemeral rejoicing, this brazen-tongued
falsehood that secretly trembles, with the serene, unvarying loftiness
of those strenuous, tranquil souls. It is as though there should
suddenly appear in the midst of a band of children--who are plucking
flowers, it may be, stealing fruit, or playing forbidden games--a
priest or an aged man, who should go on his way, letting fall not one
word of rebuke. The games are suddenly stopped; startled conscience
awakens; and unbidden thoughts of duty, reality, truth, rush in on the
mind; but with men no more than with children are impressions of long
duration, though they spring from the priest, or the sage, or only the
thought that has passed and gone on its way. But it matters not, they
have seen; and the human soul, for all that the eyes are only too
willing to close or turn away, is nobler than most men would wish it to
be, for it often troubles their peace; and the soul is quick to declare
its preference for that it has seen, and fain would abandon its
enforced and wearisome idleness. And although we may smile and make
merry as the sage disappears in the distance, he has, though he know it
not, left a clear track in the midst of our error and folly, where,
haply, it still will abide for a long time to come. And when the sudden
hour of tears bursts upon us, then most of all shall we see it
enwrapped in light. We find again and again, in Saint-Simon's story,
that sorrow no sooner invades a soul somewhat loftier than others,
somewhat nearer to life perhaps, than it speedily flies for comfort to
one it has thus seen pass by in the midst of the uneasy silence and
almost malevolent wonder, that in this world too often attend the
footsteps of a blameless life. It is not our wont to question happiness
closely in the days when we deem ourselves happy; but when sorrow draws
nigh, our memory flies to the peace that somewhere lies hidden: the
peace that depends not on the rays of the sun, or the kiss that has
been withheld, or the disapproval of kings. At such moments we go not
to those who are happy, as we once were happy; for we know that this
happiness melts away before the first fretful gesture of fate. Would
you learn where true happiness dwells, you have only to watch the
movements of those who are wretched, and seek consolation. Sorrow is
like the divining-rod that used to avail the seekers of treasure or of
clear running water; for he who may have it about him unerringly makes
for the house where profoundest peace has its home. And this is so true
that we should be wise, perhaps, not to dwell with too much
satisfaction on our own peace of mind and tranquillity, on the
sincerity of our own acquiescence in the great laws of life, or rely
too complacently on the duration of our own happiness, until such time
as the instinct of those who suffer impels them to knock at our door,
and their eyes can behold, shining bright on the threshold, the steady,
unwavering flame of the lamp that burns on for ever. Yes; only they, it
may be, have the right to deem themselves safe to whose arms there come
to weep those whose eyes are heavy with tears. And indeed there are not
a few in this world whose inner smile we can only behold when our eyes
have been cleansed by the tears that lay bare the mysterious sources of
vision; and then only do we begin to detect the presence of happiness
that springs not from the favour or gleam of an hour, but from widest
acceptance of life. Here, as in much beside, desire and necessity
quicken our senses. The hungry bee will discover the honey, be it hid
never so deep in the cavern; and the soul that mourns will spy out the
joy that lies hidden in its retreat, or in most impenetrable silence.
100. Destiny begins when consciousness wakes, and bestirs itself within
man; not the passive, impoverished consciousness of most souls, but the
active consciousness that will accept the event, whatever it may be, as
an imprisoned queen will accept a gift that is offered to her in her
cell. If nothing should happen, your consciousness yet may create
important event from the manner in which it regards the mere dearth of
event; but perhaps to each man there occurs vastly more than is needed
to satisfy the thirstiest, most indefatigable consciousness. I have at
this moment before me the history of a mighty and passionate soul, whom
every adventure that makes for the sorrow or gladness of man would seem
to have passed by with averted head. It is of Emily Bronte I speak,
than whom the first fifty years of this century produced no woman of
greater or more incontestable genius. She has left but one book behind
her, a novel, called "Wuthering Heights," a curious title, which seems
to suggest a storm on a mountain peak. She was the daughter of an
English clergyman, the Rev. Patrick Bronte, who was the most
insignificant, selfish, lethargic, pretentious creature the mind can
conceive. There were only two things in life that seemed of importance
to him--the purity of his Greek profile, and solicitude for his
digestion. As for Emily's unfortunate mother, her whole life would seem
to have been spent in admiring this Greek profile and in studying this
digestion. But there is scarcely need to dwell upon her existence, for
she died only two years after Emily's birth. It is of interest to note,
however--if only to prove once again that, in ordinary life, the woman
is usually superior to the man she has had to accept--that long after
the death of the patient wife a bundle of letters was found, wherein it
was clearly revealed that she who had always been silent was fully
alive to the indifference and fatuous self-love of her vain and
indolent husband. We may, it is true, be conscious of faults in others
from which we are ourselves not exempt; although to discover a virtue,
perhaps, we must needs have a germ of it in us. Such were Emily's
parents. Around her, four sisters and one brother gravely watched the
monotonous flight of the hours. The family dwelling, where Emily's
whole life was spent, was in the heart of the Yorkshire Moors, at a
place called Haworth, a gloomy, desolate village; barren, forsaken, and
lonely.
There can never have been a childhood and youth so friendless,
monotonous, and dreary as that of Emily and her sisters. There came to
them none of those happy little adventures, bright gleams from the
unexpected, which we broider and magnify as the years go by, and store
at last in our soul as the one inexhaustible treasure acquired by the
smiling memory of life. Each day was the same, from first to
last--lessons, meals, household duties, work beside an old aunt, and
long solitary walks that these grave little girls would take hand in
hand, speaking but seldom, across the heather now gay with blossom, now
white beneath the snow. At home the father they scarcely saw, who was
wholly indifferent, who took his meals in his room, and would come down
at night to the rectory parlour and read aloud the appallingly dreary
debates of the House of Commons: without, the silence of the adjoining
graveyard, the great treeless desert, and the moors that from autumn to
summer were swept by the pitiless wind from the north.
The hazard of life--for in every life some effort is put forth by
fate--the hazard of life removed Emily three or four times from the
desert she had grown to love, and to consider--as will happen to those
who remain too long in one spot--the only place in the world where the
plants, and the earth, and the sky were truly real and delightful. But
after a few weeks' absence the light would fade from her ardent,
beautiful eyes; she pined for home; and one or another of the sisters
must hasten to bring her back to the lonely vicarage.
In 1843--she was then twenty-five--she returned once again, never more
to go forth until summoned by death. Not an event, or a smile, or a
whisper of love in the whole of her life to the day of this final
return. Nor was her memory charged with one of those griefs or
deceptions, which enable the weaklings, or those who demand too little
of life, to imagine that passive fidelity to something that has of
itself collapsed is an act of virtue; that inactivity is justified by
the tears wherein it is bathed; and that the duty of life is
accomplished when suffering has been made to yield up all its
resignation and sorrow.
Here, in this virgin soul, whose past was a blank, there was nothing
for memory or resignation to cling to; nothing before that last
journey, as nothing after; unless it be mournful vigils by the side of
the brother she nursed--the almost demented brother, whose life was
wrecked by his idleness and a great unfortunate passion; who became an
incurable opium-eater and drunkard. Then, shortly before her
twenty-ninth birthday, on a December afternoon, as she sat in the
little whitewashed parlour combing her long black hair, the comb
slipped from the fingers that were too weak to retain it, and fell into
the fire; and death came to her, more silent even than life, and bore
her away from the pale embraces of the two sisters whom fortune had
left her.
101. "No touch of love, no hint of fame, no hours of ease lie for you
across the knees of fate," exclaims Miss Mary Robinson, who has
chronicled this existence, in a fine outburst of sorrow. And truly,
viewed from without, what life could be more dreary and colourless,
more futile and icily cold, than that of Emily Bronte? But where shall
we take our stand, when we pass such a life in review, so as best to
discover its truth, to judge it, approve it, and love it? How different
it all appears as we leave the little parsonage, hidden away on the
moors, and let our eyes rest on the soul of our heroine! It is rare
indeed that we thus can follow the life of a soul in a body that knew
no adventure; but it is less rare than might be imagined that a soul
should have life of its own, which hardly depends, if at all, on
incident of week or of year. In "Wuthering Heights"--wherein this soul
gives to the world its passions, desires, reflections, realisations,
ideals, which is, in a word, its real history--in "Wuthering Heights"
there is more adventure, more passion, more energy, more ardour, more
love, than is needed to give life or fulfilment to twenty heroic
existences, twenty destinies of gladness or sorrow. Not a single event
ever paused as it passed by her threshold; yet did every event she
could claim take place in her heart, with incomparable force and
beauty, with matchless precision and detail. We say that nothing ever
happened; but did not all things really happen to her much more
directly and tangibly than unto most of us, seeing that everything that
took place about her, everything that she saw or heard, was transformed
within her into thoughts and feelings, into indulgent love, admiration,
adoration of life? What matter whether the event fall on our
neighbour's roof or our own? The rain-drops the cloud brings with it
are for him who will hold out his vessel; and the gladness, the beauty,
the peace, or the helpful disquiet that is found in the gesture of
fate, belongs only to him who has learned to reflect. Love never came
to her: there fell never once on her ear the lover's magical footfall;
and, for all that, this virgin, who died in her twenty-ninth year, has
known love, has spoken of love, has penetrated its most impenetrable
secrets to such a degree, that those who have loved the most deeply
must sometimes uneasily wonder what name they should give to the
passion they feel, when she pours forth the words, exaltation and
mystery of a love beside which all else seems pallid and casual. Where,
if not in her heart, has she heard the matchless words of the girl, who
speaks to her nurse of the man who is hated and harassed by all, but
whom she wholly adores? "My great miseries in this world have been
Heathcliff's miseries, and I watched and felt each from the beginning;
my great thought in living is himself. If all else perished, and HE
remained, _I_ should still continue to be; and if all else remained,
and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger;
I should not seem a part of it. My love for Linton is like the foliage
in the woods: time will change it, I'm well aware, as winter changes
the trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks
beneath--a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I AM
Heathcliff! He's always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure, any more
than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being. ... I do
not love him because he's handsome, but because he's more myself than I
am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same." ...