SCENE II.—_The Van._ TIME—_Midnight._

BLACKWOOD’S

EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

NO. CCCCXLII. AUGUST, 1852. VOL. LXXII.

CONTENTS.

DIES BOREALES. NO IX. CHRISTOPHER UNDER CANVASS, 133

FROM STAMBOUL TO TABRIZ, 163

KATIE STEWART. A TRUE STORY. PART II., 182

GOLD—EMIGRATION—FOREIGN DEPENDENCE—TAXATION, 203

THE MOOR AND THE LOCH, 218

MY NOVEL; OR, VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. PART XXIII., 235

THE EARL OF DERBY’S APPEAL TO THE COUNTRY, 249

EDINBURGH:

WILLIAM BLACKWOOD & SONS. 45 GEORGE STREET; AND 37 PATERNOSTER ROW,

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PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH.

BLACKWOOD’S

EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

NO. CCCCXLII. AUGUST, 1852. VOL. LXXII.

=Dies Boreales.=

No. IX.

CHRISTOPHER UNDER CANVASS.

_Camp at Cladich._

SCENE—_The Pavilion_. TIME—_Sunset_.

NORTH—TALBOYS—SEWARD.

NORTH.

The great Epic Poets of Antiquity began with invoking superhuman aid to

their human powers. They magnified their subject by such a confession,

that their unassisted strength was unequal to worthily treating it; and

it is perfectly natural for us to believe that they were sincere in

these implorations. For their own belief was that Gods presided over,

ruled, and directed, not only the motions of the Visible Universe, and

the greater and outward events and destinies of nations and individuals,

but that the Father of Gods and Men, and peculiar Deities under him,

influenced, inspired, and sustained, gave and took away the powers of

wisdom, virtue, and genius, in every kind of design and in every kind of

action.

SEWARD.

They would call down the help, suggestion, and inspiration of heavenly

guides, protectors, and monitors;—of Jupiter, to whom even their dim

faith looked above themselves and beyond this apparent world, for the

incomprehensible causes of things;—of Apollo, the God of Music and of

Song;—of those divine Sisters, under whose especial charge that

imaginative religion placed Poets and their works, the nine melodious

Daughters of Memory;—of those three other gentle deities, of whom Pindar

affirms, that if there be amongst men anything fair and admirable, to

their gift it is owing, and whose name expresses the accomplishing

excellence of Poesy, if all suffrages are to be united in praise: bright

Sisters too, adored with altar and temple,—the Graces.

NORTH.

Milton, who had unremittingly studied the classical Art of Poetry, and

who brought into the service of his great and solemn undertaking all the

resources of poetical Art, which prior ages had placed at his disposal,

whose learning, from the literature of the world, gathered spoils to

hang up in the vast and glorious temple which he dedicated—He might,

without offence to the devout purpose of his own soul, borrow from the

devotion of those old pagan worshippers the hint, and partially the

form, of those exordial supplications.

SEWARD.

He opens the _Paradise Lost_ with Two Invocations. Both implore aid. But

the aid asked in one and in the other is different in kind, as the Two

Powers, of whom the aid is asked, are also wholly different. Let us look

at these two Invocations in the order in which they stand.

“Of Man’s first disobedience, and the fruit

Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste

Brought death into the world, and all our woe,

With loss of Eden, till one greater Man

Restore us, and regain the blissful seat,

Sing, heavenly Muse, that, on the sacred top

Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire

That shepherd, who first taught the chosen seed,

In the beginning how the heavens and earth

Rose out of chaos: or, if Sion hill

Delight thee more, and Siloa’s brook that flow’d

Fast by the oracle of God; I thence

Invoke thy aid to my adventurous song,

That with no middle flight intends to soar

Above the Aonian mount, while it pursues

Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme.

And chiefly Thou, O Spirit, that dost prefer

Before all temples the upright heart and pure,

Instruct me, for Thou know’st: Thou from the first

Wast present, and, with mighty wings outspread,

Dove-like, sat’st brooding on the vast abyss,

And mad’st it pregnant: what in me is dark,

Illumine: what is low, raise and support;

That to the height of this great argument

I may assert eternal Providence,

And justify the ways of God to men.”

The First is taken, hint and form both, from Homer. Homer, girding up

his strength to sing the war of confederated Greece against Troy and her

confederates, makes over his own overpowering theme to a Spirit able to

support the burden—to the Muse.

Sing, Goddess, he begins, the Anger of Achilles.

NORTH.

Even so Milton. After proposing in a few words the great argument of his

Poem—that fatal first act of disobedience to the Creator, by which our

First Parents, along with His favour, forfeited Innocence, Bliss,

Immortality, and Paradise, for themselves and their posterity, until the

coming of the Saviour shall redeem the Sin and loss—he devolves his own

task upon a Muse, whom he deems far higher than the Muse of his greatest

predecessor, and whom he, to mark this superiority, addresses as the

_Heavenly Muse_.

TALBOYS.

She is the Muse who inspired on the summit now of Horeb, now of Sinai;

when for forty years in retreat from his own people, yet under their

Egyptian yoke, he kept the flocks of his father-in-law Jethro—the actual

Shepherd who, from communing with God and commissioned by God, came down

into Egypt again to be the Shepherd of his people and to lead out the

flock of Israel.

SEWARD.

She is the Muse who, when the Hebrew tribes were at length seated in the

promised land—when Zion in the stead of Sinai was the chosen Mountain of

God—inspired Psalmists and Prophets.

TALBOYS.

And the reason is manifest for the distinguishing of Moses. For all

critics of the style of the inspired Writers distinguish that of Moses

from all the others, as antique, austere, grave, sublime, as if there

were in him who conversed personally with God greater sanctity of style,

even as his face shone when he came down from the Mount; as the whole

character and office of Moses was held by the Hebrews, and is held,

perhaps, by us, as lifting him above all other prophetic leaders.

NORTH.

He was the founder of the Nation, and the type of the Saviour.

TALBOYS.

Milton desires for his work, all qualities of style, as the variable

subject shall require them. Not only the high rank of Moses as the

author of the Pentateuch required that he should be named, but this in

particular, that Moses was the historian of the Creation and Fall.

NORTH.

One might for a moment be tempted to confound the inspiration here meant

with that highest inspiration which was vouchsafed in those holy places,

and which we distinguish by the unequivocal name of revelation. But on

reflection we perceive it not possible that Milton should have ascribed

such an office to an Impersonation—those awful Communications which

distinguished those persons chosen by the Almighty to be the vessels of

his Will to the Children of Men. His revelations, we are instructed to

believe, are immediately from himself.

TALBOYS.

Somebody said to me once that Milton’s First Invocation to the Muse is

oppressed with Mountains; that it is as if he had shaken out what he had

got under the head Mountains, in his Common-Place Book; and—

NORTH.

Somebody had better have held his tongue. No. They occur by natural

association. He wants aid of the Muse who inspired Moses—I suppose, who

sustained—that is, gave his style—of the other writers in the Old

Testament. To suppose her visiting Moses on either peak of the Sacred

Hill where he had his divine communions, is obvious and inevitable, and,

I hope, solemn and sublime too. To suppose her accompanying the

migration of the Israelites, and as she had devoutly affected their

Sacred Mountain of the Wilderness, also devoutly affecting their Holy

Mountain at the foot of which they built their Metropolis, is a

spontaneous and unavoidable process of thought. Sinai and Sion

represent, as if they contain embodied, the religion and history blended

of the race. And if the divine Muse has two divine Hills, how can Milton

help thinking of the quasi-divine Hill on which were gathered the nine

quasi-divine Sisters? Doubtless, three distinct Mountains in the first

sixteen lines, if absolutely considered, may seem cumbrous and

overwhelming. But accept them for what they are in the Invocation; the

two first localisings of the one Muse, they are easy. Why should not her

wing skim from peak to peak? and Parnassus looms in the distance on the

horizon.

SEWARD.

A more urgent and trying question is, _what_ does he invoke? We have a

sort of biographical information respecting the Address to the Spirit.

Milton did believe himself under its especial influences, and the

Address is a direct and proper Prayer. But _what_ is this Muse? To us

the old Muses—whatever they may have been to the Greeks—are

Impersonations, and nothing more, of powers in our own souls. If name

attest nature, such is the muse of Milton—a power of his own soul—but

one which dwelt also in the soul of the great Hebrew shepherd. Say, for

the sake of a determining notion, the power of the austere and simple

religious sublime. A human power, but moved by contact of the soul with

divine subjects. Perhaps I say too bluntly that those old Muses were

mostly but impersonations of human powers. An abstruse, difficult, and

solemn part of our existence is touched, implicated. We find when we are

deeply moved that powers which slept in us awake;—Powers which have

before awaked, and fallen back in sleep;—Powers, too, that have never

before awaked.

NORTH.

But what do we know of what is ultimate? If there is a contact of our

spirits with the universal Spirit, if there are to us divine communions,

influences, how do we know when they begin and end? It _seems_ reverent

and circumspect to view poetical inspiration as a human fact only, but

we are not sure that it is not even more religious to believe that the

unsuspected breath of Deity moves our souls in their higher and happier

moments. Be they motions of our own souls, be there inferior influences

mingled, those Muses were names for the powers upon this view—for the

powers and mingled influences upon another. On the whole, I think that

the distinction is here intended generally; and that the heavenly Muse

represents the human soul exalted, or its powers ennobled by contact

with illuminating and hidden influences—as the prophets Isaiah, Ezekiel,

Jeremiah, have each quite the style of their own humanity in writing

under the governance of the Spirit.

SEWARD.

I consider the free daring with which all Poets of the modern world, at

least, have, for the uses of their Art, converted Powers and Agencies

into imaginary beings. I consider the respects in which the Poet has

need of aid. He wants aid if he is to penetrate into regions

inaccessible to mortal foot or eye—if he is to disclose transactions

veiled since the foundations of the world; but this aid the Muse cannot

afford to the _Christian_ Poet, and we shall presently see that he

applies for it to a higher Source. But the Poet who undertakes to sing

of Heaven and Earth, of Chaos and of Hell, who comprehends within his

unbounded Song all orders of Being, from the Highest and Greatest to the

Lowest and Least—all that are Good and all that are Evil, and all that

are mixed of Good and Evil—and all transactions from the date, if we may

safely so speak, when Time issued from the bosom of Eternity to the

still distant date, when Time shall again merge in that Eternity out of

which it arose, and be no more:—That Poet, if any, needs implore for a

voice equal to his theme, a power of wing measured to the flight which

he intends to soar; he needs for the very manner of representation which

he is to use—for the very words in which he is to couch stupendous

thoughts—for the very music in which his pealing words shall roll—aid,

if aid can be had for supplication.

NORTH.

Yes, Seward. We consider these things. We consider the laborious,

learned, and solemn studies, by which we are told, by which Milton tells

us, that he endeavoured to qualify himself for performing his great

work, and I propose this account of this first Invocation, stripped of

its Poetical garb. In the first place, that the subject of desire to the

Poet—the thing asked—is high, grave, reverend, sublime, fitted Style or

Expression. As for the addressing, and the power of the wish, you may

remember that, as we hear, employing human means, he assiduously read,

or caused to be read, the profane, and his native, and the Sacred

Writers—drawing thence his manner of poetical speech.

TALBOYS.

“_Heavenly_” Muse is opposed to “_Olympian_” Muse; as if “_Hebraic_” to

“_Hellenic_;” as if “Scriptural” to “Classical;” as if “_Sacred_” to

“_Profane_;” as if Muse of Zion to Muse of Pindus. Therefore we must

ask—What “_Muse_” ordinarily means? We know what it meant in the mouth

of a believing Greek. It meant a _real person_—a divine being of a lower

Order. But Milton is a Christian—for whom those deities are no more.

_They_ are, in his eye, mere imaginations—air.

“For Thou art heavenly! _She_ (the Hellenic) an _empty dream_.”

And so already—

“The meaning, not _the name_, I call.”

To wit, the Hellenic is to him a name—_air_.

SEWARD.

We must ask—What does, in ordinary Verse, not in sacred poetry, a

Christian poet mean, when He names, and yet more when he invokes, the

Muse—the Sacred Sisters nine? And we are thrown upon recognising the

widely-spread literary fact—not unattractive or quite unimportant—that

Christendom cherished this reminiscence of Heathendom; that, in fact,

our poetry seems to rest for a part of its life upon this airy relic of

a fled mythology—varied in all ways, Muse, Helicon, Hippocrene, &c.

Greatest Poets, not poetasters, the inspired, not the imitative and

servile—and at height of occasion.

Thus Shakspeare—

“O for a Muse of fire that would ascend

The highest heaven of invention!

A kingdom for a stage!” &c.

Spenser—at entering upon his vast Poem—

“Me all too mean the Sacred Muse areeds.”

And the master of good plain sense in verse, Pope, acknowledges the

ineradicably rooted expression—

“Drink deep, or taste not the _Pierian spring_.”

I put these together, because I doubt not but that Milton in _choosing_

and _guarding_ (just like Tasso) the word, looked this practice of

Christian, or christened poets, full in the face; and spoke, founding

upon it. Muse, to his mind _inventing_ his Invocation, had three senses.

Imaginary Deity of a departed belief—An Authoritative Name, thence

retained with affection and pride by Poets of the Christian world—Or,

something new, which might be made for his own peculiar purpose, or

which Tasso had begun to make, undertaking a Poem after a sort sacred.

TALBOYS.

I cannot believe that the word which has held such fond place in the

minds of great poets, and all poets, can have been a dry and bald

imitation of antiquity. Doubtless it had, and has, a living meaning;

answers to, and is answered by, something in their bosoms—the Name to

which Shakspeare and Spenser clung, and which Milton put by the side of

the Holy Spirit and transplanted into Heaven.

NORTH.

Our attention is first reflectively directed upon recognised

Impersonations _in Poetry_. But we are very much accustomed to

misunderstand the nature of Poetry; for we are much accustomed to look

upon Poetry as an art of intellectual recreation, and nothing more. Only

as a privileged Art—an Art privileged to think in a way of its own, and

to entertain, for the sake of a delicate amusement and gratification,

illusory thoughts which have never had belief belonging to them. And

meeting with Impersonations in poetry, we set down Impersonations

amongst the illusory thoughts thus imagined and entertained for

intellectual pleasure, and which have never been believed. It is a

mistake altogether. Poetry has its foundation in a transient belief.

Impersonations have held very durable belief amongst men. When we

reflect and take upon us to become cognisant of our own intellectual

acts, we are bound to become cognisant of these illusions—to know that

they must have temporary belief—that they must not have permanent

belief.

SEWARD.

“Sing, _Heavenly_ Muse.” Milton redeems the boldness of adventurously

transplanting from a Pagan Mythology into a Christian Poem, and thus

imparts a consecration of his own to a Heathen word; but the primitive

cast and colouring remain, satisfying us that we must here understand an

Imaginary Being.

NORTH.

The Seventh Book again opens with an Invocation for aid, and again to

the same person.

We find in the opening verses the personality attributed with increased

distinctness, and with much increased boldness. A proper name is given,

and a new imaginary person introduced, and a new and extraordinary joint

action attributed to the Two.

“Descend from Heaven, Urania—by that name

If rightly Thou art called—whose voice divine

Following, above the Olympian hill I soar,

Above the flight of Pegasean wing!

The meaning, not the name, I call: for Thou

Nor of the Muses nine, nor on the top

Of old Olympus dwell’st; but, heavenly born,

Before the hills appeared, or fountain flowed,

Thou with Eternal Wisdom didst converse;—

Wisdom thy sister, and with her didst play

In presence of the Almighty Father, pleased

With thy celestial song.”

She is now named—_Urania_. (The former title given her—“_Heavenly

Muse_”—is equivalent.) But because one of the Nine Muses was named

Urania, he distinguishes—

“The _meaning_, not _the name_, I call.”

She is described as conversing before the creation of this Universe, and

playing with her Sister Wisdom, in the presence of God, who listens,

pleased, to her song.

In this bold and tender twofold Impersonation, I seem to understand

this.

_Wisdom_ is the Thought of God respectively to the connection of Causes

and Effects in his Creation, or to the Laws which constitute and uphold

its Order: considered as Useful.

This Thought is boldly separated from God, and impersonated as One

Sister.

_Urania_ is the Thought of God, relatively to the Order and Harmony of

his Works:—considered as Beautiful.

When God sees that his Creation upon each day is “good,” (which

expression Milton is careful to repeat upon each day,) we must

understand that he regards it in _both_ respects.

The Invocation is, therefore, placed with a perfect propriety at the

beginning of the Book which is occupied in describing the Creation.

For the meaning here attributed to Urania _playing_ with Wisdom before

the pleased Father, compare the passage where the dance of the Angels

has been compared to the motions of the stars, and the Speaker, the

Archangel Raphael, adds:

“And in their motions harmony divine

So smooths her charming tones, that God’s own ear

Listens delighted.”

Where the audible harmony of the spheres and the song of Urania seem to

be as nearly as possible one and the same thing—namely, Music—which is

The Beautiful in one of its kinds, used, with extremely profound and

bold imagination, for expressing The Beautiful in all its kinds.

Who is it that, in presence of the Everlasting Throne, converses with

her sister, Eternal Wisdom; plays with her—singing, the while, so that

the awful Ear of Omnipotence bends from the Throne, listening and

pleased?

The majestical Invocation opens the Seventh Book of the _Paradise Lost_;

and the Seventh Book of the _Paradise Lost_ is occupied from beginning

to end in amplifying, with wonderful plenitude, exactness, beauty, and

magnificence of description, the First Chapter in the Book of Genesis.

In other words the Seventh Book of _Paradise Lost_ describes the Week of

Creation—the six days of God’s working, and the seventh of His rest.

Milton moulds, at the height of poetical power, into poetical form

thoughts that are universal to the Spirit of Man. What then, we must

ask, are the two Thoughts that rise in the Spirit of Man, looking with

its awakened and instructed faculties upon the Universe of God?

Assuredly one is, wonder at the adaptation of Means to Ends—that fitness

of which all human Science is nothing but the progressive, inexhaustible

revelation. This is that Eternal Wisdom, whom the Poet daringly finds a

distinct inhabitant of the Empyrean. The other thought, insuppressibly

arising upon the same contemplation, is, wonder of the overwhelming

beauty that overflows the visible creation. This is the _Heavenly Muse,

Urania_. The purpose of the Divine Mind to create the Useful Order of

Things is impersonated as _Eternal Wisdom_. The purpose of the Divine

Mind to create the Beauty of Things is impersonated under a name which

the Poet boldly and reverently supplies. Milton’s description of the six

days completely displays the two notions: it impresses the notion of

Useful Order and Beauty.

SEWARD.

These verses, which introduce the Creation of Man on the sixth day,

impress the two distinctly—

“Now Heaven in all her glory shone;”

—that is, for the Beautiful:

——“and roll’d

Her motions, as the first great Mover’s hand

First wheel’d their course;”

—that is, for Useful Order.

“Earth in her rich attire

Consummate lovely smiled;”

—that is, for Beauty.

“Air, water, earth,

By fowl, fish, beast, was flown, was swum, was walked,

Frequent.”

Here is again the Adaptation, the Useful Order,

“Of all yet done;”—

namely, Man;—again Design, Order, Wisdom.

And when the whole work is finished, the _two characters_ are set side

by side, as answering, in the Mind of the Creator, to His antecedent

purpose.

“Here finished He, and all that he had made

View’d,—and behold all was intensely good;

So even and morn accomplished the Sixth day:

Yet not till the Creator, from his Work

Desisting, though unwearied, up returned,

Up to the Heaven of Heavens, his high abode,

Thence to behold this new-created world,

The addition of his empire, _how it showed_

_In prospect from his Throne, how_ GOOD, _how_ FAIR,

_Answering his great Idea_.”

Here _good_ expresses the _Useful Order_—_fair_ the _Beauty_.

TALBOYS.

The Heavenly Muse descended upon Earth is then the God-given

Intelligence, in the Human bosom, of The Beautiful. It is the Faculty,

as we are more accustomed to speak, of the Sublime and Beautiful;—a

human ability, raised in the sacred writers by divine communions—Milton

desires, but can hardly be thought in that first Invocation, or in this,

(Book VII.) directly to pray, that the powers of his mortal genius may

receive similar exaltation.

NORTH.

Speak boldly.

SEWARD.

I do.

TALBOYS.

The Heavenly Muse, in Heaven, is God’s thought of the Beauty which shall

be in the Universe to be created. The heavenly Muse, upon Earth, is the

Thought or the Faculty of Beauty, as originally given to the soul of

man, as nourished by all human ways, and specifically and finally as

attempered and exalted by expressly religious contemplations and

communions—in Moses by converse with God face to face, as a man with his

friend. You remember Jeremy Taylor, sir—

NORTH.

I do.

TALBOYS.

In Milton, by reading the Scriptures, by prayer and meditation, by the

holiest consciousnesses, in which he seems to have apprehended even for

himself some afflux vouchsafed of spiritual help, light, and support

more than ordinarily has been understood in the Protestant Church, if

less than enthusiasts have claimed. In a word, the Heavenly Muse upon

Earth is the Human Sense of Beauty fashioned to the uttermost, hallowed

by the nearest approaches to the Deity that are permitted to the

individual human person who happens to be in question, but who must be

understood as one living under the revelation of the true God. In

strictness of speech, Heavenly Muse upon Earth is at last, as I said,

Scriptural Muse opposed to Classical Muse.

NORTH.

Well said, my excellent Talboys.

TALBOYS.

Upon our thoughts, my dear sir, the distinctions, Heavenly Muse in

Heaven, upon Earth, visiting Moses, visiting Milton, four different

aspects of one thing force themselves. Are they all well comprehended

under one Impersonation?

NORTH.

Yes—from the bold nature of Impersonation, which comprehends always a

_variable_ thought. For Imagination blends and comprehends rather than

it severs and excludes. It delights in conceiving that as another manner

of acting in some imaginary being which the analytical understanding

would class as a distinct metaphysical faculty. It delights in unity of

creation; and, having created, in bestowing power, and in accumulating

power on its creature. I have heard people say that Collins, in speaking

of Danger—

“Who throws himself on the ridgy steep

Of some low-hanging rock to sleep”—

confounds the Power, Danger, and the endangered Man. But I say he was

right in such poetical confusion of one with the other.

TALBOYS.

Might one word, my dear sir, be dropped in, purporting or reminding,

that the Beautiful, or Beauty, is here used, with its most capacious

meaning, to comprehend many other qualities distinct from the Beautiful

taken in its narrowest acceptation among critics. For example, the

solemn, the sublime, and many other qualities are included, that are

distinct from the Beautiful, taken in the mere sense that critics have

attached to it; all such qualities agreeing in this, that they affect

the mind suddenly, and without time given for reflection, and that they

appear as a glory poured over objects as over the natural universe. The

large sense of the term Beauty belongs to a perfectly legitimate use of

language—a use at once high and popular; as every one feels that the

beauty of creation includes whatever affects us with irreflective

admiration—appears as a glory—stupendous forests—mountains—rivers—the

solemn, boundless munificence of the starry firmament. Milton says there

is terror in Beauty—and we may say there is a beauty in terror.

NORTH.

The holy Mind of the Poet has been represented from his life; the holy

aspirations of his Genius have been shown from the record of his

literary purposes; the holy meaning of the _Paradise Lost_ from the Two

Invocations. You may go on to examining the Poem well prepared; for you

now know in what Spirit of thought it was entered upon and composed, and

in what Spirit of thought you must engage in, and carry through, the

examination of the Poem. You can understand that Milton, sanctified in

Will by a dedicated life—intellectually armed and accomplished by the

highest mere human learning, as a Scholar, as a Thinker, as a Master of

his own sublime and beautiful Art—enriched by more solemn studies,

whether of God’s written word or of its devout and powerful expounders,

with all the knowledge, especially claimed by his task, which a Mind,

capacious, profound, retentive, indefatigable, could bring to the

celebration of this most stupendous theme;—finally, led—as he, in all

reverence, believed himself,—upheld, and enlightened by the Spirit of

supernal grace, prayed for and vouchsafed;—that He, coming,—by nature

and by nurture such and so fitted,—to relate anew and at large—and as if

He, the Poet, were himself enfolded with the garb of a Prophet,—as if He

were himself commissioned from on High, and charged with a second, a

more explicit and copious, an ampler and more unbosoming

revelation,—_that History_, full of creating Love and provoked

Wrath,—full of zeal and loyal truth, in pure angelical creatures, and of

hateful revolt—full, in the lower creature, Man, at first of gracious

and ineffable glory and bliss, and native immortality, then of

lamentable dishonour, sin and misery, and death—You can readily conceive

that Milton approaching to begin this Work, to which alone the desires,

to which alone the labours, to which alone the consecration of his

genius looked—that he, indeed, felt in his now near, in his now reached

undertaking, a burthen overwhelming to his mortal strength; and that his

prayer, put up for support, rose indeed from his lips as men pray who

are overtaken with some sharp fear and sore constraint.

TALBOYS.

Yet, sir, irreverence has been felt, and will be felt, by those who take

low and narrow views, in the treating of sacred subjects, as themes of

poetry.

NORTH.

Shall we stand back awed into silence, and leave the Scriptures alone,

to speak of the things which the Scriptures declare? This is a restraint

which the Human Spirit has never felt called upon to impose upon itself.

On the contrary, the most religious Minds have always felt themselves

required in duty to dedicate their best faculties of reason to the

service of religion—by inquiring into, and expounding, the truths of

religion. But Reason is not the sole intellectual power that God has

given to Man, nor the sole faculty by the use of which he will be

glorified. Another power native to the same spirit, granted to it now in

more scant and now in overflowing measure, is the faculty of verse and

of poetical creation; and it is no more conceivable that we are bound to

withhold the efforts of this power from its highest avocations, than

that we are under obligation to forbear from carrying our powers of

rational investigation to the searching of the Scriptures.

SEWARD.

The sanctity of spirit in which Milton wrote hallows the work of Milton.

He was driven back by no scruple from applying the best strength of his

mind to the highest matters. Holding him justified for attempting the

most elevated subjects in verse, we must bear in mind what is the nature

of Poetry, and beware that we do not suffer ourselves to be

unnecessarily alarmed or offended when we find the Poet, upon the

highest occasions, fearlessly but reverently using the manner of

representation inseparable from his Art.

NORTH.

What is this Manner of Representation?

TALBOYS.

It may be said in a word. Poetry represents the Inward and the Invisible

by means of the Outward and the Visible.

The First great law of poetical Creation is this: that the Kingdom of

Matter and of the bodily senses, transformed by the divine energy of

genius, shadows forth and images out the Kingdom of the Mind and of

Spirit.

NORTH.

Accordingly, in this great poem, the name Heaven continually meets us as

designating the blissful abode where the Omnipresent God is imagined as

from eternity locally dwelling in light uncreated—the unapproachable

splendour of his own effulgence. There, the Assessor of his throne, the

Divine Son, sits “in bliss embosomed.” And there, created inhabitants,

are the innumerable host of happy Angels. At first, all—whilst all stand

upright—and until the sin of Satan casts out one third part of the

number. The Imagination of the poet supposes a resemblance to Earth; for

beauty and delight—hills, rocks, vales, rivers and fountains, trees and

Elysian flowers. Although he endeavours to dilate the fancy of his

reader in speaking of Heaven with conceptions of immense extent, it is a

limited, not a boundless, Heaven; for it is conceived as resting upon a

base or firmament, and as being enclosed with crystalline walls. Palaces

and towers, which the angels have built, are spoken of in Heaven.

The course of the Poem sometimes leads us into CHAOS. We are to imagine

an infinite abyss of darkness, in which the formless embryons and

elements of things toss and war in everlasting uproar. A Ruler and other

spirits of darkness will be found dwelling there. Here height, breadth,

and time and place are lost. But the tremendous gulf is permeable to the

wings of angels. A more important seat of the transaction to which we

shall be introduced is, “the place of evil,” made, after the rebellion

of the Angels, their habitation and place of punishment—“the house of wo

and pain”—HELL. It is described as having various regions—fiery and

frozen; hideous mountains, valleys, and caves. Five rivers, named and

characterised from those that flow through the Hell of classical

antiquity—and, in particular, a boiling Ocean, into which the rebel

Angels are supposed to fall. Notwithstanding the flames, a heavy gloom

prevails throughout. It is immensely extended, but has a solid ground—“a

dungeon horrible,” walled and overvaulted. The whole of the Fallen

Angels are at first imprisoned in Hell. But they escape. Hell has Gates

kept by Sin and her Son Death. The Fallen Angels build in Hell a palace

and city called Pandemonium. Hell is situated in the lowest depth of

Chaos, out of which it has been taken.

_This Visible Universe_ is represented as built subsequently to, and

consequently upon, the Fall of the Angels. You are to imagine this Earth

of ours, the Moon, the Sun, the planets, the fixed stars, and the Milky

Way—all that sight can reach—as enclosed in a hollow sphere: that is,

firmly compacted. Satan alights upon its outside, and walks about it:

and it serves to defend this enclosed visible Universe from the inroads

of Chaos and primeval darkness. On the Earth, created in all the variety

that we behold in it, excepting that the climates are all happy, our Two

first Parents live in the Garden of Paradise, planted by God. The

unimaginably vast enclosing Sphere hangs by a golden chain from the

battlements of Heaven.

SEWARD.

Yes, sir, Poetry represents:—

Things of the Mind by Things of the Body—the Spiritual Kingdom by the

Kingdom of Matter, or of the Senses.

TALBOYS.

So the world of _metaphors_, which express the powers and acts of the

mind by organs and actions of the body, or by images from nature.

So, expressly, Allegory.

NORTH.

So, here, Spirits are clothed in visible human form. They walk, they fly

with wings. Their disagreeing becomes a War waged with violent weapons.

High and Low in space have a moral meaning. So _ocular_ light and

darkness. Even the omnipresent God appears as having a local divine

residence, and speaks with a voice. The Eternal Eye sees, the Eternal

Ear hears. He sits, invisible through brightness, on a Throne.

These modes of thinking, or of representing rather, follow our minds. We

may, by a great effort of abstraction, throw them off. It is for a

moment. They return, and hold habitual dominion in our thoughts.

TALBOYS.

Milton has boldly given such determinate Shape, as to constitute a

seeming reality, without which he would be without power over us—who

_know_ by our senses, _feel_ by our senses—_i. e._ habitually attach

feelings moved by things inward to things outward; as our love, moved by

a soul, to a face.

NORTH.

It is remarkable that Poetry, which above all human discourse calls out

into our Consciousness the Divinity that stirs within us, at the same

time casts itself with delight into the Corporeal Senses, as if the two

Extremes met, or that either balanced the others. We see a reason in

this. Passion cleaves to the perceptions of the Senses. Upon these

impressions Imagination still feeds and lives.

SEWARD.

Moreover, Nature herself shows us Man, now half as the Child, now half

as the victim, now half as the victor—of his place.

TALBOYS.

Therefore, great Poetry, that will most potentially represent Man’s

innermost spirit, sets out, often, from his uttermost circumstances.

In the Philoctetes, and Œdipus at Colonus, what pains to delineate

place!

What pains to make you present in the forest of Arden,—and in the

Island!

NORTH.

This outward Picturesque, embosoming the Human Pathetic and Sympathetic,

is known to the great Father of Poetry.

Homer paints _for eye_ and ear; but usually with brief touches.

TALBOYS.

The predominance given in Verse to the Music over the Sense—the

conspicuous power of the Music, perhaps calls the Soul into the Senses.

NORTH.

But there is a more comprehensive view. The Mind in the treatment of its

Knowledge ranges between two Extremes. It receives the original givings

of Experience, at the utmost particularised and individualised,

determined under conditions of time, Place, Individuals. It reduces

individuals into Kinds, actions into Laws, finds Principles, unveils

Essences. These are the ultimate findings of Reason. The Philosophical

Mind tends to these—dwells in these—is at home in these—is impatient of

its knowledge whilst unreduced. This is the completed victory of

Intelligence over its data. It is by Comprehension and Resolution the

Reduction of Multitude into Unity. At the same time, the Mind leaves the

turbulent element of Sense, and passes into a serene air, a steadfast

and bright and cold sky. Now, then, Poetry dwells or makes a show of

dwelling at the other extreme—in the forms as they were given. What

semblance, what deception, may be in this, is another question. But this

is her ostentation. She imitates to a deception, if she does not copy

these original givings. She represents Experience, and this she does for

the sake of the Power of Affection which attends the forms of

Experience. For the most part these original givings are involved in

sensible perceptions, Eye, Ear, Hand, and beating heart. How will you

escape from them? Eye, above all, the reigning faculty of communing with

Earth and Sky. So as that he who is shut out from the world of sight,

seems to us to be shut out from the world; but he who is shut out from

the world of Sound: not equally so. Nevertheless, that which Poetry

requires is not——

TALBOYS.

You were going a few minutes ago to say something more about

Impersonations, sir.

NORTH.

Nothing new. We are warranted by universal human experience in assuming

it as a psychological fact, that we are formed with a disposition

irresistibly carrying us to see in things out of ourselves, _ourselves

reflected_—in things that are without life, will, and intelligence, we

conceive life, will, and intelligence; and, when the law of a stronger

illusion swaying our faculties constrains us to bestow an animated form,

we bestow our own. By these two intellectual processes, which in one way

or another are familiar to our experience, but which seem strange when

we reflect upon them, and try to understand them, we make human-shaped

Impersonations of inanimate things, and of abstract notions! If we would

know the magnitude of the dominion which this disposition constraining

us thus to Impersonate has exercised over the human mind, we must go

back into those ages of the world when this disposition exerted itself,

uncontrolled by philosophy, and in obedience to religious impulses, when

Impersonations of inanimate Objects and Powers, of Moral Powers, and of

notions formed by the understanding, filled the Temples of the nations

with visible Deities, and were worshipped with altars and incense, hymns

and sacrifice.

TALBOYS.

If not new, how beautifully said, sir! These for the second time.

NORTH.

If we will see how hard this dominion is to eradicate, we must look to

the most civilised and enlightened times, when severe Truth has to the

utmost cleansed the understanding from illusion, and observe how

tenaciously these imaginary beings, with imaginary life, hold their

place in our Sculpture, Painting, Poetry, and Eloquence; nay, and in our

quiet and common speech; and if we should venture to expatiate in the

walks of the profounder emotions, we shall sometimes be startled with

the sudden apparition of boldly-impersonated thoughts, upon occasions

that did not seem to promise them, whereof one might have thought that

interests of overwhelming moment would have effectively banished the

play of imagination!

SEWARD.

Impersonation is the highest poetical figure. It is in all degrees and

lengths, from a single expression up to the Pilgrim’s Progress and Fairy

Queen.

TALBOYS.

Good, Seward.

SEWARD.

It is, as you say, strongly connected with this disposition in the human

mind, to produce—and believe in Power in external nature—Nymphs, Genii,

Fairies, Neptune, Vulcan, Apollo, and every belief in mythology. This

disposition is, the moment it sees effects which strongly affect it, to

embody upon the spot the cause or power which produced them. In doing

this in the old unenlightened world, it filled Nature with Deities, and

not Nature only, but the human mind and life. Love was a Deity; Fear and

Anger were; Remorse was in the Furies; Memory was Mnemosyne; Wisdom was

in Pallas; Fortune was, and Ate; and Necessity and Death were Deities.

TALBOYS.

I seem to have heard all that a thousand times before.

SEWARD.

So much the better. In some of Homer’s descriptions, names that look

like Impersonations are mixed with acknowledged Deities—Remorse, for

instance, with Fear and Flight, which Virgil copies. Now, I don’t know

what he meant. I hope, for the sincerity and simplicity of his poetry,

that they are not his own Impersonations for the occasion, walking with

Deities of national belief.

TALBOYS.

Eh?

SEWARD.

The moment you allegorise fabulous poetry—that is, admit it to have been

allegorically written, you destroy from it the childlike verity of

belief.

TALBOYS.

Eh?

NORTH.

Now in whatever way we are to understand these Impersonations, the

result as to our question is much the same.

SEWARD.

What question, sir?

NORTH.

What question? If they are meant as _real_, though not Impersonations of

the Poet, they were Impersonations of the human mind from an earlier and

more believing time. Whether they were simply and purely from human

feeling, in the bosom of human society, or were framed for the belief of

others by the skilful artificers of belief, is not of positive moment as

to the evidence to the operations and dispositions of the human mind.

Those who presided over the national life of every religion might

deliberately contrive, and might deliver over to the credence of their

nation, imaginary powers, conceived with inventive imagination, as a

Poet conceives them. But the very inventions, and still more the simple

faith that received the inventions, show the intellectual disposition to

embody in living powers the causes of effects. The faith of the people

shows further the disposition and ability of the human mind to attribute

reality, and that by force of feeling, to the creations of its own

intellect, and particularly its aptitude to cleave to those creations in

which it embodies power of which it strongly feels the effects. But I

would rather believe that such faith has often formed itself in the

bosom of simple societies without devisers—that men have conceived and

felt till they believed; that they felt delight and beauty in a gushing

fountain till they believed in a presiding spirit as fair—that the sun,

the giver of light and warmth, of the day and of the year, could not

appear to them a mere star of day, a larger, brighter fire. They felt a

gift in his rays, and in their influence, and deified the visible orb.

They thought of—they saw the terrors of war, and believed that some

Power delighting in blood stirred up the hearts of men to mutual

destruction.

TALBOYS.

If those ancient poets in whom this mythology remains, are to be

received sometimes as delivering known and accepted names as beings,

sometimes as supplying from their momentary inventions unreceived names,

then this view of the case also affords proof of the same disposition we

have spoken of. It shows the disposition of men to believe in powers the

immediate causes of impressive effects; and the Poet must be conceived

as suggesting and delivering the shape and name of Powers which it is

already believed must be, though themselves are not known—not as

inventing them deliberately and ornamentally, nor as declaring them from

an assured and assumed knowledge. This disposition to produce shapes of

powers which in early ages is attended with positive belief, afterwards

remains in imagination—art, though not extinct in the work of our mind

for dealing in realities. Do we, sir, ever divest ourselves of a belief

in Death, Chance, Fate, Time? But a strong belief overrules with us all

such illusions of fancy, withdrawing all power to the great source of

power. Therefore, such a disposition, though it continues, is in real

thought much oppressed and stifled, and shows itself almost

accidentally, as it were, rather than in any constant opinion, for in

deliberate opinion it cannot hold. But in Poetry, even in Eloquence, it

remains. There we allow ourselves in illusion; and the mind leaps up

with a sort of rejoicing, to recover its old liberty of deceiving itself

with splendid fictions.

SEWARD.

Which is again an instance of the two different forms in which

Imagination is seen in the earlier and later age—in the first, realised

in belief—in the last, having its domain in the avowedly ideal world of

Poetry.

NORTH.

I confess, my dear friends, it appears to me not easy to explain how the

mind is enabled, desire it as much as it will, to pour its own

capacities into insensate things. When Lear says, “Nature, hear! dear

Goddess, hear!” his passion will not believe but that there is a hearer

and executor of its curse; and it imagines nature capable of hearing.

“If prayers can pierce the clouds and enter heaven, why then, give way,

dull clouds, to my quick curses.” Does not all Passion that addresses

itself to inanimate objects throw into them a feeling? Would not the

Invocation be idle to the unresponsive and unhearing? This, then, is the

nature of human passion, that, when vehement, it cannot conceive that

its will is not to be fulfilled. If there are no adequate ministers,

inadequate ministers must take their place. Inanimate things must become

agents. “Rise, rise, ye wild tempests, and cover his flight.”—“Strike

her young bones, ye taking airs, with lameness.” This is one demand,

then, of passion, the execution of its purposes. Another demand of

passion is sympathy. This, we know, is one of its first and strongest

demands. If, then, men will not, or are not present to sympathise, that

which surrounds must. The boiling passion finds it easier to believe

that winds and rocks feel with it, than that it is sole, and cut off

from all participation. Hence the more exuberant passion animates

things, our own gladness animates nature.

SEWARD.

And how well has Adam Smith said how our sympathy includes the dead! Of

all that feel not, it may with the readiest illusion embrace those who

once felt; and what do we _know_ that they do not yet feel? Now, if this

can be granted as the nature and power of passion, that, without any

better ground than its own uncontrollable efflux, it can blend itself

into that which is around it—that it believes lightnings and floods will

destroy, merely from the intensity of will with which it wills them to

destroy—though here the fitness for destruction is a reason; but if it

imagines that, undestroying, they will rise to destroy, that peace shall

be converted into danger, and sleep into anguish, that food shall not

nourish, and winds shall not waft, rather than it shall be left without

vengeance, or baffled; then may we say that there is in Passion an

absolute power of carrying itself out into other existence, and that no

other condition, in such existence, is necessary, save that it shall

become _obviam_ to passion in its mood. If so, then, of course, any

reason from analogy or causation becomes a very potent one to attract

such passion and opinions formed by passion. Let this be established in

passion at its fiercest, wildest height, and the principle is obtained.

It is then the disposition of the mind under emotion to diffuse its

emotion, bending the things around to suit its purposes, or at least

filling them with sympathy with itself. In either case, upon this

reason, that only so can the will which rises with its emotion ever be

satisfied. This principle given, strongest in strongest passion, but

accompanying all emotion, is the root of Impersonation. All intellectual

analogies, all coincidences of reality with the demands of emotion, will

quicken and facilitate this act of the mind; but neither analogies nor

coincidences, nor any other inclining reasons, are requisite. The

emotion will reconcile and assimilate any object to itself, if it is

reduced to them. Here then is a principle sufficient to animate all

nature, all being, and to any extent or height. This seems to be the

foundation of Impersonation—that it is the nature of man to fill all

things with himself. It is plainly a radix for all poetical

Impersonation. He makes and reads everywhere reflection of mind; he does

this without passion, that is, not without feeling—for in all ordinary

thought there is feeling—but without transported passion. His strong

passions in their transport show us in plainer evidence how he involves

all things with himself, and subjects all things to himself; and his

gentler feelings do the same. He is almost the cause of a world of mind

revolving round and upon himself—he makes himself such a centre; this is

the constant temper and the habitual mode of conceiving and hearing of

all minds.

TALBOYS.

We seem, sir, to be talking of Imagination?

NORTH.

If the act of imagination is the perception of the sublime—of the

beautiful, of the wonderful—then pleasure is an element of the

product;—for without pleasure, the Sublime, the Beautiful, the

poetically wild or solemn, does not exist. All other ingredients, if

pleasure be absent, leave the compound imperfect—the thing undone.

Therefore Addison says boldly, the pleasure of Imagination, whom

Akenside follows. But further, Talboys—I believe that in Imagination

poetical, there is always—or almost always—Illusion. I cannot get it out

of my head as a main element. In its splendour, this is past doubt—in

Impersonation—Apostrophe to the dead, or absent, or unborn—Belief is in

the power of your curses—seeing the past or future as present; and in

the whole fiction of Epos or Drama, the semi-belief in the life and

reality of the feigned personages.

TALBOYS.

A certain degree of passion, sir, appears to be requisite for supporting

Illusion. We well know that in all the history of Passion, to produce

illusion is the common operation. Why not in Imagination?

NORTH.

In natural passion, gentlemen, the Illusion reigns unchecked. In the

workings of poetical imagination the Illusion is tempered and ruled,

subdued under a Law, conformed to conditions and requisitions of art.

Men resist the doctrine of Illusion. They dislike to know to what an

immense extent they are subject to Illusions. I have no conception of

Beauty or Sublimity that does not require, for effecting it, some

transfusion of life and spirit from our own soul into the material

object—some transmutation of the object. If so, the whole face of the

Universe is illuminated to us by Illusion.

TALBOYS.

If you are asked in what parts of the Iliad Imagination assumes its most

powerful sceptre, you cannot help turning to the supernatural.

Everything about Gods and Goddesses—Olympus—Jupiter’s nod—Vulcan making

armour—all the interpositions. The terrestrial action is an Isle that

floats in a sea of the marvellous; but this is for us at least

Illusion—fictitious creation—the top of it. So in Shakspeare; for we are

obliged to think of the Ghosts, Witches—Caliban—Ariel.

NORTH.

Existences, which we accept in the sheer despite of our knowledge—that

is, of reason. The rational king of the Earth, proud of his reason, and

ignorant of his Imagination, grows ashamed when the facts of his

Imagination are obtruded upon him—denies them—revolts from them. To

restore the belief and faith in Imagination, and to demonstrate its

worth, is an enterprise obligatory on philosophy. The world seems

returning to it, for a while having abhorred it. Our later poets have

seen both Cause and Effect. Do you believe that thinking a child like a

flower does not increase your tenderness for him or her, and that the

innocence of the flower does not quicken and heighten by enshrining its

beauty? Child and Flower give and take.

TALBOYS.

Excellent. We put down, then, as the first stone in all such

argument—that the act of Imagination—or the poetical act—be they one or

two, is accompanied with belief.

SEWARD.

Fancy, Wit, have a touch of belief.

TALBOYS.

Even a play upon words has a motion towards belief.

NORTH.

No metaphysician has ever, that I have read, expounded belief. Has

Hartley? This quasi-belief, or half-belief, against better knowledge,

must be admitted as a sure fact or phenomenon. I don’t care how hard

it may be to persuade anybody to believe as the foundation of a

philosophy an absurdity, or self-contradictory proposition, “That you

believe to be true, that which you know to be false.” There the fact

is; and without it you build your house in the air—off the ground.

Soften it—explain it. Say that you know for one moment, and in the

next know the contrary. Say that you _lean to belief_—that it is an

impression, half-formed—imperfect belief—a state of mind that has

partaken of the nature of belief—that it is an impression resembling

belief—operating partial effects of belief. But unquestionably, no

man, woman, or child has read a romance of Scott or Bulwer or Dickens,

without seeing their actions and sufferings with his soul, in a way

that, if his soul be honest, and can simply tell its own suffering,

must by it be described as a sort of momentary belief. What are the

grief, the tears, the joy, the hope, the fear, the love, the

admiration, and half-worship—the vexation, the hate, the indignation,

the scorn, the gratitude, yea, and the thirst of revenge—if the

pageant floats by, and stirs actually to belief? The supposition is an

impossibility, and the theory lies on our side, and not on Johnson’s,

who has nothing for him but a whim of rationalism. I take

novels—because in them it is a common proof, though this species be

the less noble. But take Epos from the beginning. Take Tragedy—take

Comedy—and what is, was, or will it be, but a half-unsubstantial image

of reality, waited upon by a half-substantial image of belief, the

fainter echo of airy harps? My drift is, that our entire affection,

passion—choose your word—attended with pleasure and pain of heart and

imagination—the love, the hate in either, are the sustaining,

actuating soul of the belief. Evidence, that as the passion thrills,

the belief waxes, and that—

SEWARD.

Clear as mud.

TALBOYS.

As amber.

NORTH.

I see in Imagination a power which I can express to my own satisfaction

by two terms, of which you, Seward, sometimes look as if you refused me

the use, disabling me from defining for you. For myself, I see “Passion

moulding or influencing Intellectual Forms.” As the language stands

hitherto, I do not see my way of getting out of the two terms. You want,

on the lowest steps, a very elementary description—something far below

the Poet—something as yet far short of the sublime, the beautiful, and

the wonderful. Tell me some one who has felt fear, or anger, or love, or

hate—how these have affected for him the objects of simple apprehension

or of conception; of sight, for instance—of sound? Has anything through

his fear seemed larger—through his hate wickeder, than it is? For that

differencing of an object by a passion, I know no name but Imagination.

It is the transformation of a reality; that seems to me to be the ground

of what we more loftily apprehend under the name Imagination.

The great differences in the different psychological states and facts

arising out of the different passions or passionate moments, are

various, endless. Such influences from pleasure and pain, from loves of

some sort, and from hates of some sort, take effect for us in all the

objects with which we have intercourse. They make what it is to us. They

make man what he is to us. They are the life of our souls. They are

given to all human spirits.

SEWARD.

We have, all of us, clean forgotten Milton.

SCENE II.—_The Van._ TIME—_Midnight._

NORTH—TALBOYS—SEWARD.

NORTH.

May the bond of Unity lying at the heart of the _Paradise Lost_, be said

to be the following _Ethical Dogma_?

“The Good of the created rational Intelligence subsists in the conscious

consent of his Will, with the holy Will of the Creator.”

His Good:—_i. e._ his innocence and original happiness, whilst these

last:—his virtue and regained happiness, if he attain virtue and regain

happiness:—these and the full excellence of his intellectual and natural

powers—

TALBOYS.

It is Ethical, and more than Ethical.

NORTH.

The Innocence and Fall of the Rebel Angels:—The Bliss and Loyalty of the

Upright:—(Consider Abdiel:) The Innocence and Fall and Restoration of

Man:—are various Illustrations of this great Dogma. The Restoration, as

respects Man himself:—and far more eminently as respects the person of

the _Uncreated_ Restorer.

SEWARD.

This central Thought, radiating in every direction to the circumference,

cannot be regarded as a theological notion, coldly selected for learned

poetical treatment. The various and wonderful shaping-out, the

pervading, animating, actuating, soul-like influence and

operation;—direct us to understand that in the Mind of Milton, through

his day of life, a vital self-consciousness bound this Truth to his

innermost being:—that he loved this Truth;—lived in and by this Truth.

Wherefore the Poem springs from his Mind, by a moral necessity.

TALBOYS.

Four great aspects of Composition, or Four chief moods of Poetry appear

in the _Paradise Lost_. 1. The Sublime of disturbed Powers in the

_infernal Agents_:—fallen and, ere they fall, warring. 2. _Heaven in

humanity_: while Adam and Eve are “yet sinless.”—A celestial

Arcadia.—The purer Golden Age. 3. _Man, Earthly_: when they have eaten.

“_I_ now must _change Those_ notes to TRAGIC.”

4. _Heaven_;—extended, wheresoever the good Angels go.

These Four greatly dissimilar aspects are each amply displayed:—and much

as they differ, are wonderfully reconciled.

SEWARD.

Milton sets before our eyes in utmost opposition, God and Satan—_i. e._

Good and Evil, namely—_Good_, as Holiness and Bliss inseparably united

in God—_Evil_, as Wickedness and Misery united inseparably in Satan.

NORTH.

The Poem represents the necessary eternal War irreconcilable of the

Two—throughout the Creation of God—namely, first in Heaven the abode of

Angels—next upon Earth the abode of Men.

SEWARD.

The Poem represents in Heaven and upon Earth, God as the willing

infinite Communicator of Good:—as, in Heaven and upon Earth the

perpetual Victor over Evil.

TALBOYS.

And Evil—in Heaven and upon Earth as necessarily _Self_-Destructive:

_videlicet_, in this visible shape: that from God’s Heaven and from

God’s Earth all reason-gifted Doers of Evil—that is, all doers of moral

Evil—are cast out into perdition.

NORTH.

The Poet himself has declared in the outset the purpose of his Poem. It

is to establish in the mind of his readers the belief in the Two great

Truths:—That the Universe is under the government of Eternal and

Omnipotent Wisdom:—and that this Government, as far as it regards

Mankind, is holy, just, and merciful. This essential truth, infinitely

the most important that can be entertained, since it comprehends all our

good, all our evil—all happiness, all misery—temporal—eternal;—all the

destinies and conditions of the human race;—was worthy the

taking-in-hand of such a Teacher. This truth He _might have_

illustrated, from _any_ part of human history;—and with great power and

evidence from a great many parts—both for obedience and for

disobedience—in the case of individuals _and of_ communities.

But He found one part of human history, where this truth shines out in

its utmost strength—namely, where the Obedience and Disobedience are

those of two individuals, and, at the same time, of all Mankind;—and

where the illustration of the truth is beyond all comparison convincing,

since the conjunction of the Happiness and the Obedience is _here_

promulgated—since the Happiness and the Obedience are _here_ formally

bound together—the Disobedience and the Misery—by the promising and the

menacing voice of the Almighty.—The _Disobedience takes effect_;—and

first creates human misery.

SEWARD.

Milton took then this instance, _preferable_ to all others, because

above all others it emblazons, as if in characters written by the finger

of Heaven, the Truth which he would teach;—notwithstanding the

stupendous difficulties of the attempt into which he plunged;—committing

himself, as He thus did, to unfolding before mortal gaze the Courts of

Heaven;—to divulging for mortal ears colloquies held upon the celestial

everlasting Throne;—to delineating the War of Creatures (_i. e._ the

Angels) against the Creator, &c. &c.

NORTH.

Observe, moreover, that, although Man’s Obedience and Fall from

Obedience is the _theme_ undertaken, yet the _Truth_ undertaken has

other illustration, in the Poem, and reaches into higher Orders of

Being. For instance, in the Order of Angels, there occurs _twofold_

illustration—namely,

1. By the Opposition presented of unfallen and fallen Angels.

2. And, amongst the rebellious Angels themselves, by the unspeakable

contrast exhibited of their first happy and their second unhappy

state;—their sinless glory and their horrible punishment.

Far higher yet,—immeasurably higher,—in the divine Messiah, the

_Obedience_ is the grace, the glory, and the happiness of his Being!

TALBOYS.

_God_ is the Creator and Upholder—_Satan_, the Destroyer. _God_ is the

rightful Monarch of the Universe, unassailably seated on his everlasting

Throne. _Satan_ ever attempts Usurpation, and is ever baffled.

_Pride_ is the inward Self-exaltation of a Creature. Observe that

_Exaltation_ is proper _raising from_ a lower degree held to a higher

degree, not before held. God is eternally the Highest;—a state which

precludes the idea, strictly spoken, of Exaltation.

NORTH.

Therefore, to Satan, as proud, is opposed the _Self-humiliation_ of the

Son—whom God thereupon exalts.

Pride, in Satan, considered as _undue_ Self-_exaltation_, stands (when

we follow out the opposition in which he stands to God) opposed to

_due_, legitimate, rightful height, or Supremacy, Sovereignty. _Satanic

Pride_ is undue self-exaltation, at the height, in the Creature.

But this, in the Creature, is a self-enthroning, a self-idolising, a

self-deifying.

SEWARD.

The Creature _depends_ upon the Creator. The Creature is bound to the

Creator by a million of distinct relations.

If you ask for One Relation, that shall contain all the others, it is

_this One_, Dependency. That is to say, that, so long as you own your

dependency, so long is there no true relation that you can deny. But, if

you deny your dependency, therewith and therein you deny _all_ your

other true relations. The _first_ motion towards (_i. e._ in the

direction of—_i. e._ relating to) God, of pride in the proud Creature,

is the denial of _dependency_. Satan _denies his dependency_. Both in

the _Past_—for he denies his Creation, and avers that he had never heard

such a thing mentioned. And in the _Present_, by renouncing his

allegiance, opening war, &c. He denies the Creature’s continual

derivation from the Creator, when he says, (as if in the _Future_,) “our

own right hand _shall teach us_ highest deeds.”

NORTH.

If it should appear necessary to vindicate expressly and at length the

character which has been affirmed as one main character of the _Paradise

Lost_, namely, that it is an _Ethico-didactic_ Poem, the proofs offer

themselves to the hand more thickly than that they can easily be all

gathered.

They are _Implicit_ and _Explicit_. The _Implicit_ or inferential

Proofs—Proofs involved in the tenor of the displayed History, and which

are by reflection to be drawn out and unfolded—are of several kinds,

and, in each, of the highest description.

Thus, the Main Action of the Poem, or _the Fall of Man_, teaches us that

the Goodness and Happiness of the Creature subsists in the inviolable

conformity of his Will to the holy Will of the Creator. Thus again:—The

great Action is _inductive_ to this Main Action—that is to say, _The

Fall of the Angels_, which, by an easily-springing sequence of Moral

Causes and Effects, brings on the Temptation, and, too easily, the

Seduction of Man—as loudly inculcates the same sublime and

all-comprehending Ethical Truth. And thus again:—That Third _highest_

Action, which is incorporated into the Main action—_The Redemption of

Man_—provided, in the Counsel of God, as remedial to the fatal

Catastrophe of the Fall, and, according to the reverently-daring

representation of the Poet, as undertaken in Heaven even ere the need

that asks for it has befallen in Paradise upon Earth—this awful Mystery

of the Divine interposing Grace irresistibly preaches the same solemn

doctrine. Hell, and Earth, and Heaven proclaim with One Voice:—“Cleave,

Oh Child of dust and Heir of Immortality, cleave and cling inwardly, by

thy love—by thine obedience, outwardly—to the all-wise and all-righteous

Will, which has called the Worlds and their Inhabitants into Being, and

has imposed upon the worlds, and upon those which inhabit them, its

bountiful and upholding Laws!—O cleave and immovably cling to that holy

and gracious Will, which the Angels forsook and they fell!—which Man

deserted, and—He fell!—which the Son of Man fulfilled, and He lifted up

fallen and lost, but _now restored_ Man to the peace of God upon this

Earth, and to the bosom of God in Heaven.”

SEWARD.

Such, explicitly worded, is the admonishment, grave and high, which

continually peals amidst the majestic and profound harmonies of this

consecrated Poem—the admonishment the most loudly, the most distinctly

heard.

TALBOYS.

Milton represents inordinate Pride, or the temper, in excess, of inward

self-exaltation, as the chief element in the personal character of

Satan; yet the great Archangel has maintained his Obedience to the

Almighty King. The opinion of wrong done to himself, of an imposed

humiliation in another’s exaltation exasperating his haughty

self-idolatry, first rouses him into active disloyalty and rebellion,

and to the desire and endeavour of dispossessing the Monarch of Heaven,

and reigning in his stead. The open outward war which Satan is

represented as waging with sensible weapons and armoury, with

innumerable spirits banded in confederacy upon his part—the setting up

his own throne in the north—the march across heaven—the attempt, such as

it is described, at invading the very throne of Omnipotence—amongst

other lights in which they may be contemplated, may be contemplated in

this light, namely, that the Outward expresses, depictures the Inward.

The proud Apostate Spirit, in conceiving offence and displeasure at

God’s rule and ordinance, has already within his own mind rebelled

against God—he has made his own Mind the field of an impious war.—We

must conceive within his mind a sovereign throne erected, whereupon,—so

long as He remained obedient, loyal, good,—the rightful Monarch sate, in

undisputed supremacy.—From that Throne within his mind, as soon as Satan

rebels, in will, God is dispossessed:—and on that internal usurped

Throne the rebel now sits;—in imagination, his own King, and his own

God. That which outwardly he attempts, and in which outwardly he must

fail:—that inwardly he has attempted—and in that—attempting it—inwardly

He must succeed.

NORTH.

A Spirit created good and great has voluntarily foregone its native

inborn goodness, and, in consequence, involuntarily foregoes its native

inborn greatness. There is in the Universe but one fountain of all that

is holy, divine, good, amiable or pure.—This left, we drink troubled

waters. No one can tell the alliances of wrong with wrong. Truth,

justice, good-will—alone are magnanimous. He who has been shown at the

highest of self-power,—of intellectual strength—of empire over

spirits—of their willing idolatry, which extols him equal to the Highest

in Heaven,—He is gradually brought down low, lower, lowest—by voluntary

and imposed humiliation:—self-incarnate in bestial slime—turned into a

monstrous serpent on his belly prone, and hissing amongst hissing. Has

Milton in painting the fallen Archangel changed his hand, and checked

_his_ pride? He has delineated for our admiration; he has delineated for

our scorn—for our pity, also.

TALBOYS.

One meaning pervades the delineation. The pride which alienates Satan

from God, alienates him at last from himself.—He is wicked, and the ways

of wickedness are crooked and creeping. The haughtiest of spirits in

seeking to revenge his just punishment stoops to the lowest abasement. A

great lesson is written on the front of this great revolution. A mind

has let go of its only stronghold, and it slips lower and lower. We have

seen a Spirit exalted in the favour of the Creator;—high in rank, strong

in power, rich in gifts, radiant with glory, seated in bliss;—and the

same cast down into misery and into dishonour. The Cause is, that he has

deserted Obedience and Love.

NORTH.

This is not a picture removed to a distance from us, to be looked at

with wonder. It is a lesson for each of us.

Can we not imagine the Poet himself telling us this?

Can we not raise our thoughts, to fancy Milton drawing the moral of his

astonishing picture?

“You are Spirits,” he might say to us—“the creation of the same hand.

Heavenly gifts are yours, and heavenly favours; and notwithstanding the

fall of man, gleams, vestiges are yours of heavenly glory. To you the

same choice is offered of adhering, or of separating yourselves. In you

is the same ground of temptation, the same difficulty of adhering, a

misunderstood _self-love_. You too are tempted to enthrone self upon the

usurped throne of the divine legislator. To obey the law of right—to

follow out the law of love, is only difficult because we feel, in every

instance of being called upon so to do, that we are called upon to make

some sacrifice of ourselves. It is an error—a mistaken feeling. We are

called upon to sacrifice not ourselves, but a _present inclination_,

which self suggests. Make the sacrifice—obey, fulfil the law that makes

the claim upon you, and you will find that you have relinquished a

fallacious, for a real good. Follow the false inclination, and you will

find that instead of enthroning yourselves in the despite of Heaven’s

King, you have begun to descend steps of endless descent.—Be warned by

terrible example.”

TALBOYS.

We see of mankind some that are lifted up in power and exalted by their

native powers—mighty minds holding ascendancy over other

minds—Kings—Conquerors—Philosophers—sitting upon the thrones of the

Earth, or upon intellectual thrones. To them there is the same hazard.

There is the same inward solicitation of pride—the same impulse to

self-idolatry. They would usurp—would extend power. Adversaries of God

and Man—and knowing themselves for such—the madness of Ambition seizes

upon their hearts, and on they go. They seek Exaltation—they find

abasement. The false aggrandisement which they have laboured to acquire

may or may not be wrested from them. But assuredly the inward abasement

will hold on its appointed way.

Their end is high, but their means will be low. Ambition disjoined from

good is divorced from true greatness. The consciousness of right aims

alone sustains the genuine self-respect of the mind, struggling its way

through the obstacles which the strife of human affairs presents. One

law—one principle—one rule of action—takes dominion of the spirit which

has surrendered itself to the allurement of a selfish ambition:—It has

One Motto—one war-cry—“_To succeed!_”—The character of the means can no

longer be a reason for declining them—and the proudest of Men stoop the

lowest.

SEWARD.

If we read the History of humankind, we see this in the slaves to the

lust of earthly empire:—in the slaves to the lust of renown. They suffer

a double change from the higher and better nature given them. They have

hardened themselves against shame. They harden themselves too against

pity.—What does the misery which he strews in his path trouble the

_famous conqueror_?—His chariot-wheels crush under them the gardens of

humanity—He rides over human heads.—And what does it concern him who

uses the high gifts of intelligence not for extending the useful domains

of human knowledge,—but for aggrandising his own name—what does it

concern him though, to plant his proud reputation, and multiply the

train of his adherents, he must pull down heavenward hopes, in millions

of human hearts?—that he must wither in them the flowers of the

affections?—that he must crush the sacred virtues, which repose upon

received belief?—The hero of Infidelity recoils as little from these

consequences of his fame as the hero of a thousand battle-fields.

NORTH.

There is withal a Pride, which, whilst dwelling with the mind, is

rebellion. There is a Pride of the Creature, which reluctantly

acknowledges, which refuses to acknowledge, benefits derived from the

Creator.

TALBOYS.

Yes; self-contradictory as the mood of mind seems, there is a temper in

man, which may be certainly recognised, that throws off the obligation

of gratitude and the belief of dependence. Thus, the feeling of Pride in

intellectual talents implies that he who is in this way proud, views his

talents, in a measure, as originally his own. He refers them to himself,

and not beyond. If he looked at them as given, there would be an end of

Pride, which would give way to the sense of heavy responsibility.

NORTH.

What a great passage in Milton is that descriptive of——

TALBOYS.

Upon a day of the heavenly year the Almighty Father, upon his Holy

Mount, before the assembled Angels, manifests the Son—proclaims the Son,

the head over all Principalities and Powers, and requires to be paid him

accordingly the homage and obedience of the whole angelical host. The

whole angelical Host pay, as required, their homage. But not all gladly

and sincerely. One of the highest Archangels—if not the highest—whose

heavenly name is heard no more—but upon Earth and in Hell he is called

Satan and Lucifer—envies and revolts in heart at this new vicegerency.

He intends rebellion:—beguiles the next Angel in authority under him,

and with him, pretending a command from the celestial King, withdraws

the legions who are bound in service to his hierarchal standard into the

northern quarter of Heaven. With such precision does Milton dare to

imagine, even in the highest, the scenes and procedure of his Poem.

There the false Archangel proposes to his followers that they shall

resist the ordinance imposing a new reign over them. The followers thus

addressed are _one third part_ of the whole celestial host. One Seraph

resists—refuses to forego his original, proper allegiance, and flies

back. The rest march in arms against the Mount of God. They are

encountered by an equal number of the faithful Angels. Two days the

fight rages in the celestial fields. The second of the two days closes

the unequal, hopeless conflict. The Messiah goes forth to war; and the

rebellious angelical multitude are precipitated from the verge of Heaven

into the fiery pit of Hell, newly created, and yawning to receive the

vanquished and cast-out numbers without number from their unimaginable

fall.

NORTH.

What, according to Milton, is Pride? Milton’s answer is in one word.

Satan aspires to sit upon the Throne of God. Then in angel or in man

there is but one meaning of the word Pride. He unseats God, and sets up

another—namely, Self—in his place. The comparison of Man’s Sin to

Satan’s, is by Milton distinctly affirmed. The Almighty says—

“——_Man disobeying_,

Disloyal breaks his fealty, and sins

Against the high supremacy of heaven,

_Affecting Godhead_.”

I suppose the meaning to be universally applied to man’s

transgression—namely, to break a law is virtually to set aside the

Lawgiver, and to legislate for yourself. The act may, indeed, be more or

less conscious, wilful, reflective; may more or less _intend_ siege and

defiance to Heaven. Proud Sin _most intends_ this; and even the Sin of

Pride, simply as constituted in the Will, ere going forth into action. I

understand that moral offences, into which impetuous passions hurry,

however undeliberated, and although they _intend_ simply the

gratification of desires, and cannot well be said to include a proud

scorn of the laws that they break—for there is often more rash oblivion

of than stiff-necked opposition to the laws broken—yet partake of the

character condemned in Satan; and condemned in man also by these words

put into the mouth of the Almighty. Every the most thoughtless and

reckless breach of a law sets aside the Lawgiver, and usurps legislation

to the law-breaker. The law-breaker makes his own law. No doubt,

however, there are more heedful offenders. There are those who look the

law in the face, and with impious hardness of heart, and wilfully

approaching God, break his laws. They are proud Sinners.

TALBOYS.

In the Seventh—the Book of the Creation—we are told

“The World was made for Man, and Man for God.”

This is not so much perceptive or demonstrative as it is enkindling: a

dear and near tie—elation by consciousness of a high purpose in his

Creation, and gratitude for the love which thus ennobled him in creating

him. If he reverences himself he is bound to a Creator, whose designs in

him are thus expounded. Related hereto, but distinct, and more

incidental, is the Philosophy of Man’s nature, propounded by Raphael,

who nevertheless propounds as if upon divine revelation made to himself

at the moment. This philosophy, delivered in three words, appears to me

exceedingly sublime, and profoundly true.

“There wanted yet the master-work, the end

Of all yet done; a creature who, not prone

And brute as other creatures, but endued

With sanctity of reason, might erect

His stature, and upright with front serene

Govern the rest, self-knowing; and from thence

Magnanimous to correspond with heaven,

But grateful to acknowledge whence his good

Descends, thither with heart, and voice, and eyes

Directed in devotion, to adore

And worship God supreme, who made him chief

Of all his works.”

Here Milton describes Man as being—1. _Self-knowing._ That is the root.

2. Thence, great souled, and communicating with Heaven. 3. Thence also

acknowledges himself as dependent. 4. Still thence grateful for the

good. 5. Still thence adoring, praising. 6. From his height of Being—as

chief of God’s works here below.

SEWARD.

_He knows himself._

That is to say, he knows the God-like and God-allied and God-tending in

his nature.

He knows his Nature as exalted—as capable for divine communions and

influences, aspirations, joys, desires.

And knowing this, he boldly cherishes these desires and joys—aspires to

these communions.

As Milton says, he is—

“From thence

Magnanimous to correspond with Heaven.”

NORTH.

But knowing himself, he knows himself weak—unable to create—unable to

furnish his own good. Hence

“But grateful to acknowledge whence his good

Descends.”

SEWARD.

And why should self-knowledge educe _gratitude_ from dependence?

NORTH.

I imagine, because self-knowledge includes the distinct _intelligence_

of _his own good_. But he cannot know his own highest good—cannot really

understand his happiness, and be ungrateful. How can you to the Giver of

Love be ungrateful for the gift of Love?—if you know truly the happiness

of love—_i. e._, know yourself as a Spirit endowed for loving—and know

him for the giver? It would be a self-contradiction in Spirit.

SEWARD.

And why do you, _the_ self-knowing, adore and praise? I think that

Milton expresses this—

“Thither with hearts and hands and eyes,

Directed in devotion to adore,

Who made him chief

Of all his works.”

NORTH.

As if the discernment of his own constitution as chief of creation

peculiarly summoned him to acknowledge with adoration—_i. e._, with

awful ecstasy of admiring—the Constitutor. Is it not a high, solemn,

sublime, true thought, that Man’s discernment of his own exaltedness,

immediately and with direct impulse, carries him God-ward—as on the

summit of a high hill you are next heaven, or seem to be next it?

TALBOYS.

This passage beginning—

“_There wanted_ yet the Master-work,”

contains an undoubted imitation of Ovid.

“Sanctius his animal, &c.

_Deerat_.”

And Ovid’s is surprisingly noble—for _him_—the _Sanctius_ alone is quite

enough. That is the heathen contemplation of Man. How many of us know

ourselves and our fellows as holy? Nevertheless, Milton makes that which

was high and impassioned—logical, comprehensive, and sublime.

SEWARD.

Sanctity of Reason is hallowed and hallowing Intelligence. It is implied

that in the best and truest actions of our understanding, there is an

afflux of Deity, and that, as Bacon says, we are akin to God by our

Spirits.

NORTH.

Well alluded to.

TALBOYS.

The sublime passage, which describes Man’s creation, besides the moral

influence and incitement of its main bearing—that Man is “the end of all

yet done”—that he is made in the likeness of God—that here only the

Father is distinctly and especially announced as consulting and

co-operating with the Son—besides the call that is thus made upon Man to

revere and guard the Spirit implanted in him—and besides the formal

precept with which it concludes, inculcating compliance with the sole

prohibition, is, in the following respect, also remarkable, when we look

for testimonies to the frame of mind in which the Poem was written. To

wit: The passage appears to embosom, in a very few words—in half-a-dozen

verses—an entire system of Ethics in the germ, or general thought.

Milton appears to lay as its basis the faculty which Man possesses of

_Self-Knowledge_, which he seems nearly to identify with Reason. Hence,

very loftily, but very summarily, he deduces the general moral condition

of Man, and his highest, that is to say, his religious obligations. We

must understand, no doubt, that the other inferior obligations are to be

similarly deduced. But the bare fact, that Milton _so places_ (and so

compendiously) this high and comprehensive speculation in a striking

manner, attests the temper of thinking in which the whole Poem has been

composed. In such a fact we unequivocally read that which has been

repeatedly here affirmed upon all kinds of evidence,—that the _Paradise

Lost_ was to Milton the depository (within room at once confined and

ample) for his lifelong studies; and in particular, that, holding the

office of a Poet at the highest—that is to say, seeing in every one upon

whom the high faculties of Poetry are bestowed, a solemn and missioned

Teacher to Men, Milton hoped, in this great Poem, to acquit himself of

this responsibility laid upon his own Spirit.

NORTH.

In the Kingdom of God’s Love, to obey him and to promote happiness is

one and the same thing. To disobey him and to destroy happiness is one

and the same thing. If it were possible for a finite being to see the

consequences of his actions as God sees them, he would perform precisely

the same actions, whether he aimed at augmenting to the utmost the

welfare of God’s Creation, or endeavoured to the utmost to conform his

actions to God’s Will.

SEWARD.

Unable to penetrate consequences, should he have access to know God’s

Will—he will by this means have a safe rule of effecting that which the

right, loving disposition of his Mind desires, but which his imperfect

foresight disables him from accomplishing by his own computation of

results.

TALBOYS.

Nor is it unreasonable to say that nations unvisited by God’s Word have

access to know, in some imperfect measure, his Will—and to use it for

their guidance—and that they have done so;—for all the nobler nations,

and perhaps all the nations—or all, with few exceptions—at least those

high Gentile nations who have left us their own hearts disclosed and

recorded in writings, have witnessed, as follows:—They have regarded the

primary Affections by which the family is bound together within

itself—and those affections by which a nation is bound as a brotherhood

within itself—as Divine Laws speaking in their bosoms. Yet more solemnly

they have acknowledged the voice of Conscience, dividing Right from

Wrong, in each man’s innermost Thoughts, as a divine oracle, shrined in

the human heart.

SEWARD.

Yes, Talboys; their Orators, their Historians, their Philosophers, their

Poets, their Mythologies, and their Altars, witness to the fact of their

having thus apprehended themselves to live under a Divine Legislation.

NORTH.

When, therefore, not idly and presumptuously arrogating to themselves to

divine and calculate consequences removed from their faculties, they

did, in simplicity of soul, follow out the biddings of these holy

charities, and the dictates of this inwardly prophesying monitor, they

were so far, in the light and in the eye of Reason—VIRTUOUS. They did so

far—if we may dare so highly to pronounce—conform themselves to God’s

will. They did this, designing—even in the dim light in which they

walked—to do this. And so far conforming themselves, after their

imperfect apprehension, to his laws, they were so far producers of

happiness. Their conformity—their production of human happiness, and

their virtue—flowed in one channel—were one and the same stream.

SEWARD.

Even this solemn conviction, which seems to carry its own evidence in

itself, derives confirmation from weighing the connection of human

happiness with human actions. The feelings which carry us to accept

implicitly, and without the suggestion of a doubt, the Will of God as

the law of our actions, are in themselves principal sources of

Happiness—the Obedience itself is the firmest and only secure foundation

of Happiness. He whose will we are to obey is the Sole Giver of

Happiness. And if we could begin with searching our own Being into its

depths—the laws of Happiness which we should there discover would point

out to us, as the effectual and unfailing sources, and the necessary

condition of happiness, those qualities of action, which we know as the

immutable attributes of the Divine Will—Truth, Justice, Holiness, Love.

NORTH.

The Moral Nature of Man is to be regarded as something which may rise

from very low to very high degrees. And what is manifestly true of it in

one state may not be as manifestly true of it in another. To understand

it, my dear friends, we must regard it in its nearest approaches to

perfection. From that observation of it, we must endeavour to establish

principles, and deduce Rules, which we may be able afterwards to apply

to judging of its inferior states. We cannot equally expect, from

observing its inferior states, to find the rule that will enable us to

comprehend its highest.

SEWARD.

My Preceptor teacheth well.

NORTH.

The highest Moral State of the Human Mind is unquestionably that in

which it knows Deity, in his perfections; in which his Known Law is

adopted as the express and supreme Law of Life;—in which the affections

due towards him are strong, pure, full, habitual;—in which all the other

affections, under subordination to these, are directed, each in due

degree, towards its due object; and in which Conscience is known, as a

declarer of the Divine Will, when other testimony is silent, is revered

as such, and holds authority sufficient to decide the choice whenever

the Will fluctuates in its Obedience to its highest affections.

TALBOYS.

From this state, which is that to which every human being is bound to

aspire, you would deduce grounds of judging of those inferior moral

conditions which tend to the attainment of this highest?

NORTH.

I would; and it will be found that these are moral, either because they

bear an imperfect and broken resemblance to this state, or because they

have a visible tendency towards it.

TALBOYS.

Believing, then, that the Human Soul only reaches the fulness of its

nature, and the exaltation of its powers, when it Knows itself in the

presence of God, when it looks up to Him, and endeavours, not in hidden

thought merely, but in action and life, to adore His Will, we must not

allow as possessing the same excellence, and participating in the same

Nature of Morality, any state in which we cannot discern footsteps of

the same Deity, where the breath of the same spirit cannot be felt?

That, on the other hand, we embrace with affection, and with moral

anticipation, whatever seems even remotely to be animated with this

influence, and to tend to this result?

NORTH.

Yes. To an observer looking in this spirit upon the affairs of men,

there will be no difficulty in approving and condemning those who, in

the same light as he himself enjoys, conform to or contemn what he

acknowledges as the highest Law. The two extremes of virtue and crime

fall distinctly and decisively under the test which he recognises. The

nature of the merit, the nature of the Guilt, of those who in the

highest degree conform to this Law, and of those who most audaciously

trample upon it, cannot be mistaken.

SEWARD.

But between these there are infinite degrees, to which it may often be

extremely difficult to apply the same rule of Moral Estimation.

NORTH.

Alas! alas! He who looks forth from himself with the views of human

perfection which I have described, must regard the world with sorrow and

compassion, perceiving how much the great body of mankind are departed

from the happiest and fittest condition of their nature—how they are

become immersed in passions and pursuits which disguise from their own

knowledge the very capacities of their being, and degrade and destroy

their powers by withholding from them even the prospect of their

original destination!

SEWARD.

Such must, indeed, be his melancholy view of mankind at large, comparing

them, as he needs must do, with the idea of that excellence of which

they are capable, and which they ought to attain.

NORTH.

But when he descends from that height of contemplation, and, mixing with

them, makes himself more intimate with their actual condition, he will

look on them in some degree in a different light; for, my good Seward,

he will then consider, not so much what they _want_ of perfection, as

those _tendencies towards_ it, which are still actually undestroyed

among them, and which are continually found exerting themselves—with

irregular impulses, indeed, and with uncertain and variable direction;

but which still do exert themselves, throwing gleams over human nature

of its true happiness, and maintaining to Man, in the midst of all his

errors, the name and dignity of a Moral Being.

TALBOYS.

Methinks, sir, what would appear to such a Mind most grateful and

consolatory in the midst of the aberrations of the human Soul, and of

its darkness as to the knowledge of its Chief Good, must be the sight of

those beautiful Affections which fill the hearts of human beings towards

one another, and the observations of the workings of that Conscience,

which in its mysterious intimations admonishes men of their departure

from the Eternal Laws, though they know not whence the voice comes, nor

how profound is its significance. In these great and pure affections,

and in the rectitude of conduct thus maintained, he would recognise the

fulfilling of that Divine Will, in harmony with which is all Good, and

in revolt from which is all Evil. To him, then, the Human Will would

appear thus far to maintain its conformity with the Divine: and he would

witness Obedience to the Universal Law, although those who fulfilled it

did but imperfectly understand their own Obedience, or conceive to what

authority it was paid.

NORTH.

If the great natural Affections were made at first in perfect harmony

with the Affections of Religion, they will still bear that character.

And they do so, for they still appear to us in themselves pure and holy.

If that is their character, then their very presence in the soul will be

in some degree a restoration of its own purity and holiness. And this

also is universally felt to be true: to such a degree that, most

strongly to describe those feelings, we apply to them terms derived from

the language of religion. We call those ties sacred: we call those

duties Piety. They re-induce upon the Soul that purer, loftier nature,

which the ordinary course of the world has troubled; and in doing so,

they not only bring the Mind into a State which is in harmony with the

Divine Law, but they do, to a certain degree, begin Religion in the

Soul. This intimate connection between the strongest feelings of the

heart and its holiest thoughts, discovers itself when the whole heart is

wrung by the calamities to which through those feelings it lies open.

When the hand of Death has rent in one moment from fond affection the

happiness of years, and seems to have left to it no other lot upon Earth

than to bleed and mourn, then, in that desolation of the spirit, are

discovered what are the secret powers which it bears within itself, out

of which it can derive consolation and peace. The Mind, torn by such a

stroke from all those inferior human sympathies which, weak and

powerless when compared to its own sorrow, can afford it no relief,

turns itself to that Sympathy which is without bounds. Ask of the

forlorn and widowed heart what is the calm which it finds in those hours

of secret thought, which are withdrawn from all eyes?—ask what is that

hidden process of Nature, by which Grief has led it on to devotion? That

attraction of the Soul in its uttermost earthly distress to a source of

consolation remote from Earth, is not to be ascribed to a Disposition to

substitute one emotion for another, as if it hoped to find relief in

dispelling and blotting out the vain passion with which it laboured

before: but, in the very constitution of the Soul, the capacities of

human and of divine affection are linked together; and it is the very

depth of its passion that leads it over from the one to the other. Nor

is its consolation forgetfulness. But that affection which was wounded

becomes even more deep and tender in the midst of the calm which it

attains.

SEWARD.

Assuredly such a spectator of human nature as we have imagined could not

be indifferent to such a tendency of these natural emotions. He could

not observe with unconcern even the nascent streaks of light, the

dawning of a religious mind. He would call that GOOD which, though it

had no distinct and conscious reference to anything above the Earth, did

yet, by the very preparation it made in the Soul for the reception of

something more holy, vindicate to itself a heavenly origin.

NORTH.

Even the Ancients, contemplating that Power in the Mind which judges so

supremely of Right and Wrong, could call it nothing else than a God

within us. He then who, in the highest light of knowledge, contemplates

the human mind, will be yet more strongly impressed with this SANCTITY

of the Conscience, which affected even minds lying under much darkness

and abasement, and therefore alienated from such perceptions. He

undoubtedly will regard this principle as a part of original Religion

not yet extinct in the Soul: will, as such, esteem and revere it; and

conceiving the highest perfection of human nature to consist in its

known and willed Conformity to the Divine Will, will regard with kindred

feelings even this imperfect and unconscious conformity to that Law,

which is thus maintained by the human spirit, resolutely and proudly

struggling, in the midst of its errors, against a yet deeper fall.

TALBOYS.

And, sir, it must be remembered that, as the degrees of moral goodness

are different in the various dispositions and actions of men, though

they all fall under the description of one morality; so, too, the

feeling of moral approbation exists in very different degrees in

different minds, though in all it bears a common name. If the moral

sensibility is not enlightened and quickened by those feelings which

belong to its most perfect state, its judgments will be proportionally

faint and low. As in its virtue there is a lower virtue, which tends

merely to a Harmony with the Divine Will, so, in the judgment of virtue,

there is a lower judgment, which implies no more than that he who judges

has his own mind brought into a state in which there is a tendency to

the same sacred and solemn apprehensions.

NORTH.

The Moral judgments of men are vague and undefined; but they are

accompanied universally with a solemn feeling: not merely of

dislike—not, in the highest degree, of mere detestation and hate—not

merely with reproach and resentment for violating the benevolence, and

invading the happiness of human nature; but there is a sensation of awe

accompanying the sentiment of condemnation, which visibly refers to

something more than what is present to our eyes on the face of the

smiling or the blasted Earth. Among all nations, the abhorrence and

punishment of crime has always reference to some indignation that is

conceived of among higher powers. Their Laws are imagined to be under a

holier sanction, and in their violated majesty there is apprehended to

be something of the anger of offended Deity. Hence the wrath of

Punishments, which have been conceived of as fulfilling heavenly

displeasure; and those who have inflicted signal retributions have

imagined that they avenged their Gods as well as the broken laws of men.

TALBOYS.

This feeling of a superhuman authority present in the affairs of men

shows decisively what is the tendency, in natural minds, of moral

feeling, when it is aroused to its greatest height; the season in which

it may be expected best to declare its own nature.

NORTH.

Nor did this awe of a superior power present in the consciences of men,

and violated there, discover itself solely in the vindications of

punishment; but the great acts of virtue also led men to thoughts above

humanity; nor did they otherwise conceive of the impulses of the mind,

in the noblest actions, than as inspirations from the divinity.

SEWARD.

These opinions and views have prevailed in nations ignorant of religion,

but in whose powerful nature the native sentiments of the human spirit

disclosed themselves in full force; among whom, therefore, its actual

tendencies may best be ascertained.

NORTH.

The same truths, deeply buried in human nature, may be recognised in

different forms wherever its voice speaks in its strength. If one people

have believed that Furies rose from their infernal beds to dog the steps

of the murderer, wandering upon the Earth, others, from the same source

of preternatural feeling, have believed that the body would bleed afresh

at his approach, and that his unappeased ghost would haunt the place

where Guilt had driven it out from life. The very conception of such

crimes dilates the spirit to conceptions of the unseen powers which

reign over human life, which walk unperceived among the paths of men,

and which are universally believed to be enemies or punishers of human

wickedness. If the history of superstition might be told at large, it

would represent to us the conscience of man laid open by his

Imagination, and would disclose, in fearful pictures, the reality of

that connection which subsists in our nature between the apprehension of

Good and Evil in the soul of man, and the apprehensions cognate with it

of a world of invisible power, of which it is the eternal law that Good

is required, and Evil hated and pursued.

TALBOYS.

These evidences attest that, even among those who have the least

knowledge of Religion, whose judgments are least moulded by its spirit,

there is an inseparable connection between Conscience and Religion; that

its strong emotions always carry the soul to those conceptions which are

most akin to its powers.

NORTH.

If, under the circumstances which produce the strongest feeling, such a

tendency shows itself distinctly and in remarkable forms, then, under

all circumstances, there will be fainter and more indistinct perception

of this tendency?

SEWARD.

Even so, sir.

NORTH.

For this is the nature of the human Mind. Our feelings are not always

determined by distinct thought; but there is a sort of presaging faculty

in the soul, by which it foresees whither its own conception tends, and

_feels_, in anticipation of those thoughts, into which the imagination

would run if it were left free.

SEWARD.

I am not sure, sir, that I fully understand you.

NORTH.

Thus certain strains of thought are felt to be joyous or solemn when

they are barely touched, and in the ready sensibility, feeling begins to

arise, though no ideas are yet distinctly present to which such feeling

fitly belongs. The mind shudders or is gladdened at the distant

suggestion of what it knows, if pursued, would shake it with horror, or

fill the blood with joy.

TALBOYS.

Every human being must have had such experience.

NORTH.

This is a fact of our nature too well understood by those whose mind

labours with any store of fearful or bitter recollection, into which

they dread to look. The approach to some place hideous to the memory

produces the shivering of horror before it is beheld; and even within

the spirit, in like manner, the approach to those dark places of thought

where unsoothed sorrows lie buried, startles the mind, and warns it to

turn the steps of thought another way.

TALBOYS.

The feeling that “that way madness lies;” and the recoiling from it,

through a forefeeling of the pain which lies in the thoughts that might

arise, is common to all strong passion that has held long possession of

the mind.

NORTH.

A similar state is known in these imitations of passion, the works of

art;—Music has power over us, not by the feelings which it produces

distinctly in the mind, but by those many deep and passionate feelings

which it barely touches, and of which it raises up, therefore, from

moment to moment, obscure and undefined anticipations. In Painting, the

Imagination is most powerfully excited often not by what is shown, but

by what is dimly indicated. What is shown exhausts and limits the

feelings that belong to it; what is indicated merely, opens up an

insight into a whole world of feelings inexhaustible and illimitable.

SEWARD.

Such, indeed, is the nature of our mind; and these are examples of a

general principle of thought and feeling.

NORTH.

This capacity of the Mind to be affected in slighter degree, but in

similar manner, by anticipated feeling, is to be noticed in respect to

_all_ its more fixed and important emotions. It enters as a great

element into all its moral judgments. The judgment of right or wrong is

quick and decisive, but is rather unfrequently attended with very strong

emotion. Those strongest emotions belong to rare occurrences; for the

greater part of life is calm. But they have been felt, nevertheless, at

times; so that the soul distinctly knows what is its emotion of moral

abhorrence, and what its emotion of moral veneration. When lesser

occasions arise, which do not put its feeling to the proof, it still is

affected by a half-remembrance of what those feelings have been: a

slighter emotion comes over it—an apprehension of that emotion which

would be felt in strength, if it could be given way to. Thus even the

very name of crimes affects the mind with a dim horror, though the

Imagination is still remote from picturing to itself anything of the

reality of acting them. Whatever great conceptions, then, are so linked

in actual Nature with our moral emotions, that under the passionate

strength of these emotions they must arise, some slight shadow of the

same conceptions, some touch of the feelings which they are able to call

up, will be present to the mind whenever it is morally moved.

SEWARD.

Ay, sir, I now see the meaning—of the application—of all your discourse.

If there is in the depth of our Nature such a connection between our

Moral and our Religious conceptions, that our moral feelings, when

exalted or appalled in the highest degree, will assume a decidedly

religious character, then even in their slighter affection they will be

touched, even from a distance, with that religious temper.

NORTH.

And does not this appear to be precisely the case?

SEWARD.

It does appear that the two kinds of feelings are so connected, that in

the strongest moral feeling Religion is sensibly present, and that in

its weaker emotion there is a slight colouring of the same feeling—faint

and indistinct indeed, but such as to give to all our judgments of right

and wrong a something of solemnity that is distinct from the ordinary

complexion of human affairs, from the ordinary judgment of human

interests or passions.

NORTH.

This connection which is perceived in individual Minds may be observed

in considering the differences of national character. The different

nations of the earth have exhibited the moral nature of man in very

different degrees of strength. It will be found that they have also

possessed in very different degrees the spirit of Religion; and that the

two have risen or declined together. This is true both of the nations of

the old world who were enlightened, and of the Christian nations, who

have preserved their Religion in various degrees of purity and truth,

and whose morals have always borne a corresponding character. If there

is a people light and fickle in their moral character, the same

unfixedness and levity will be found in their religion. But whatever

nation has embraced with deep and solemn feeling the tenets of their

faith, will be found to be distinguished in proportion by the depth of

their moral spirit. The dignity of their Mind appears not in one without

the other, but in the two united.

TALBOYS.

Thus, then, in those minds in which the two are imperfectly unfolded,

they are united, as in those in whom they are most perfectly unfolded.

But with this difference:—that where Religion in its most perfect form

is known, there it enlightens and exalts the moral feelings. Under its

imperfect and erroneous forms, conscience applies to men’s hearts in

some degree the defects of religion.

FROM STAMBOUL TO TABRIZ.[1]

Politics, since the year 1848, have engrossed so unwonted a share of the

attention of the reading world, that there can be no doubt that, in more

than one European country, books of great literary and scientific

interest have been withheld from publication until more tranquil days

should give them a better chance of the welcome they merit. Such has

avowedly been the case with Dr Wagner’s latest work, the fourth and most

important of a series suggested to him by several years of Oriental

travel and study. It was, if we rightly remember, in the second book of

this series, relating to Armenia,[2] that he announced his intention of

reserving for a final work the more important results of his rambles and

observations. Previously to the Armenian volume he had published his

account of Caucasus and the Cossacks,[3] to the general reader more

interesting than any of its successors. Third in order of appearance

came the Journey to Colchis;[4] and now, believing that his countrymen’s

taste for books of foreign travel and adventure is reviving, he puts

forth two copious volumes, containing all that he has to say, and that

he has not previously published, concerning his Eastern journeyings and

residence.

Dr Wagner is one of the most experienced, indefatigable, and, as we

believe, one of the most trustworthy and impartial of foreign literary

travellers. On a former occasion we explained how his strong natural

bent for travel and scientific research had overcome many and great

obstacles, and had conducted him not only through various European

countries, but with a French army to Constantina, and afterwards over a

great part of Western Asia. His present book is comprehensive and

somewhat desultory in its character. It details the author’s residence

in the Alpine region of Turkish Armenia, his travels in Persia, and his

adventurous visits to certain independent tribes of Kourds, whose

country is immediately adjacent to that interesting but unsafe district

of Kourdistan, where Schulze, the German antiquarian, and the Englishman

Browne (the discoverer of Darfour) met a bloody death, and rest in

solitary graves. Dr Wagner is sanguine that, now that the revolutionary

fever has abated, many will gladly quit the study of newspapers, and the

contemplation of Europe’s misty future, to follow him into distant

lands, rarely trodden by European foot, and some of which have hitherto

been undescribed “by any German who has actually visited them.” As the

most novel portions of his book, he indicates his visits to the mountain

district south of Erzroum, and his excursions east, south, and west of

the great salt lake of Urumiah, the Dead Sea of Persia. A keen

politician, and this book being, as we have already observed, a sort of

omnium-gatherum of his Eastern experiences, political, scientific, and

miscellaneous, he devotes his first chapter to what he terms “a

dispassionate appreciation of Prince Metternich’s Oriental policy,”

(chiefly with respect to Servia,) which chapter we shall avail ourselves

of his prefatory permission to pass unnoticed, as irrelevant to the main

subject of the book. Equally foreign to the objects announced in the

title-page are the contents of Chapter the Second, in which, before

taking ship for Trebizond, he gives a hundred pages to the Turkish

capital, promising, notwithstanding all that has of late years been

written concerning it, to tell us something new about Constantinople,

and bidding his readers not to fear that he is about to impose upon them

a compilation from the innumerable printed accounts of that city, which

have issued from female as well as male pens, “from the days of Lady

Montague down to Mrs Ida Pfeiffer the far-travelled, and Madame Ida Hahn

Hahn the devotee.” He fulfils his promise. His sketches from the

Bosphorus are not only amusingly written, but novel and original. Dr

Wagner, it must be observed, set out upon his Eastern wanderings well

provided with circular letters of recommendation from Lord Aberdeen and

M. Guizot to the various British and French agents in the countries he

anticipated visiting. From the Russian government he also obtained,

although with greater difficulty, similar documents. The natural

consequence was, that, at Constantinople, and elsewhere, he passed much

of his time in diplomatic and consular circles, and to such intercourse

was doubtless indebted for much useful information, as his readers

unquestionably are for many pungent anecdotes and entertaining

reminiscences.

Upon an early day of his stay in Constantinople, Dr Wagner was so

fortunate as to enjoy a near and leisurely view of his Highness Abdul

Meschid. It was a Friday, upon which day the Grand Seignior is wont to

perform his devotions in one of the principal mosques of his capital. In

the court of the great Achmet mosque, Dr Wagner saw a crowd assembled

round a group of twenty horses, amongst which was a slender,

richly-caparisoned, silver-grey Arabian, of extraordinary beauty and

gentleness. It was a favourite steed of the Sultan’s. Presently the door

of the mosque opened; the grey was led close up to the lowest step; a

slender Turk came forth, descended the steps stiffly and rather

unsteadily, was assisted into saddle and stirrup by black slaves, and

rode silently away through the silent crowd, which gave back

respectfully as he passed, whilst every head was bowed and every hand

placed upon the left breast. No shout or cheer was heard—Turkish custom

forbidding such demonstrations—nor did the sovereign requite by salute

or smile his subjects’ mute reverence. At that time Abdul Meschid was

but twenty years old. His appearance was that of a sickly man of thirty.

Early excesses had prematurely aged him. His cheeks were sunken; lines,

rarely seen in youth, were visible at the corners of his eyes and mouth;

his gaze was fixed and glassy. Dr Wagner is witty at the expense of

another German writer,[5] who saw the Sultan since he did, and sketched

his personal appearance far more favourably.

“It is possible, however,” he says, “that with improved health the

Sultan’s figure may have improved and his countenance have acquired

nobility, so as to justify the description of the genial author of the

‘Fragments.’ Possible is it that Dr Spitzer’s[6] steel pills, combined

with the seraglio-cook’s strong chicken broth and baths of Burgundy

wine, may have wrought this physical marvel, have given new vigour to

the muscles, have braced the nerves, and have imparted to his Highness’s

drooping cheeks that firm and healthful look which the learned German

declares he noted on the occasion of his audience. Abdul Meschid has

still youth on his side; and when such is the case, nature often

willingly aids the physician’s inadequate art. At the time I speak of,

it is quite certain that the young Sultan looked like a candidate for

the hospital. His aspect excited compassion, and corresponded with the

description given to us of him by the German sculptor Streichenberg, who

certainly contemplated his Highness more closely and minutely than the

‘Fragment’ writer, seeing that his business was to carve the Padisha’s

likeness in ivory. As an artist, Mr Streichenberg was not particularly

edified by the lean frame and flabby countenance of so young a prince.

Not to displease his sublime patron, he was compelled to follow the

example of that other German sculptor, who, commissioned by his royal

Mæcenas to model his hand and leg for a celebrated dancer, adopted,

instead of the meagre reality, the graceful ideal of the Belvidere

Apollo, and so earned both praise and guerdon. The person of the Grand

Seignior appeared to Streichenberg, as it did to me, emaciated, relaxed,

narrow-breasted, and faded. Two years later, when I again saw the

Sultan, in the solemn procession of the Kur-ban-Beiram, a renegade, who

stood beside me, exclaimed, ‘Were I the Sultan, and looked as he looks,

I would never show myself in public.’”

Close behind the Sultan rode the chief of the eunuchs, a fat negro from

Sudan, mounted upon a horse as black as himself; and behind him came a

young Turk of remarkable beauty, whose thick raven-black beard

contrasted with the whiteness of his complexion, as did his whole

appearance with that of the sickly sovereign, and with the dingy,

monkey-like physiognomy of the Kisslar Aga. Beside such foils, no wonder

that the picturesque young Oriental, with his profile like that of some

Saracen warrior, and his dreamy thoughtful eyes, found favour with the

fair. Riza Pasha was his name; he was then the seraglio-favourite, the

lover of Valide, the mother of the Sultan. He alone pulled the strings

of Turkish politics, and made the lame old Grand Vizier, Rauf Pasha,

dance like a puppet to whatever tune he piped.

The Sultan and his suite were attired in the reformed costume—in blue

frocks of Polish cut, red trousers, and the red fez, with its abundant

blue tassel drooping over it on all sides. Scarcely had they ridden out

of sight when a group of very different character and appearance issued

from the chief gate of the mosque, gathering on its way far more

demonstrations of popularity than did Abdul Meschid and his Kisslar Aga.

It was composed of Turkish priests and doctors—_Ulemas_, with their

_Mufti_ at their head—all in the old Turkish garb, with ample turbans

and huge beards. The sympathy of the people with these representatives

of the old régime was expressed by far lower bows, by more fervent

pressure of hand on heart, than had greeted the Sultan’s passage. The

holy men looked kindly upon the crowd, amongst whom the Mufti

occasionally threw small coins, which naturally augmented his

popularity, and secured him many followers and good wishes. Dr Wagner

remarks upon the present contradictory and anomalous state of Turkish

dress. At the festival of the Kurban-Beiram he saw the Sultan and all

the state officials, from the Grand Vizier downwards, in European

uniforms—narrow trousers, gold epaulets, tight-buttoned coats, collars

stiff with embroidery. But at the collar the Frank ceased, and the

Oriental reappeared. There was the long beard, and the brimless fez.

With this last item of costume, the boldest Turkish reformer has not as

yet dared to interfere. The covering of the forehead with a peak or brim

to the cap is an innovation for which the Turks are not yet ripe. It is

considered the outward and visible sign of the Giaour, and a Turk who

should walk the streets of Constantinople in a hat, or in a cap with a

peak, would be stoned by the mob. The prejudice springs from the duty

stringently enjoined upon every true believer, to touch the ground with

his forehead when praying. Hence, to wear a vizard over the brow appears

to the Turk like contempt of a religious law. A bold European in the

service of the Porte advised Sultan Mahmoud to put leathern peaks to his

soldiers’ caps. On duty they would keep off the sun; at prayer-time the

caps might be turned round upon the head. But Mahmoud, passionate

reformer though he was, shrank from offering so deadly an affront to

Turkish fanaticism. Neither did he dare, like Peter the Great, to crop

his subjects’ beards. The well-intended changes which he did introduce

were sufficiently startling, and to many of them, even at the present

day, the nation is scarcely reconciled. In a picturesque point of view,

the new style of dress, intended as the signal of a general change in

Turkish usages and institutions, is anything but an improvement upon the

old one. The physical prestige of the Oriental departed with his flowing

robe, with his shawls and his rich turban.

“These fat-paunched, crooked-legged pashas,” exclaims Dr Wagner, “what

caricatures they appear in their buttoned-up uniforms! Formerly, when

the folds of their wide garments concealed bodily imperfections, the

Turks were held to be a handsome race. Now, in Constantinople, a

handsome man, in the reformed dress, is an exception to the rule. The

Turks of the towns are rarely slender and well-built; and the tall,

muscular figures which one so commonly finds amongst Arabs, Persians,

and Tyrolese, are scarcely ever to be seen in Turkey. Neither do we see

in Turkish cities anything to remind us of the fine knightly figures of

the Circassians—although, from the female side, so much Circassian blood

runs in the veins of the higher classes of Turks. The indolent manner of

life, the bringing up of boys in the harem until the age of puberty, too

early indulgence in tschibouk-smoking and coffee-drinking, and premature

excesses of another kind, have all contributed to enervate and degrade

an originally vigorous and handsome race.”