the beauty of the universe around him, in the sacred feelings of human
emotion, a sacredness as worthy and as earnest, though less concentrated
in character, as that which exists in the more direct function of
religious worship. To the great poet, however he works, all things are
sacred. He it is who reveals the heaven that lies around us. He opens
the portals of Nature, and we enter in to find strength and consolation.
Bach does all this in the masterly work we are considering. Not to the
Italian, but to the German, did Nature at length disclose her choicest
method of expression, and this because the German had ever lived in
close contact with her. In all Bach's works at this period the work of
emancipation goes forward. Take, for instance, the Brandenburg concertos
leading to the combination of the present orchestra.
But a new sphere of action here again opens to Bach. His master and
friend, the Prince of Koethen, was distracted from the pursuit of music
by his wife's want of interest therein, and so Bach sorrowfully looks
around him for a more congenial appointment. This he found at Leipsic,
in 1723, as cantor to the school of St. Thomas. Leipsic, like Weimar,
was celebrated for its intellectual life; but the various vexations
which the great musician encountered from the action of the authorities
reflects but little credit upon them. Bach's labors here were simply
Titanic. There were four churches at Leipsic, the principal being St.
Nicholas and St. Thomas. Bach seems to have been responsible for the
musical service at each. How innate and healthy was his genius may be
inferred from the fact that for these musical services alone three
hundred eighty cantatas seem to have been composed. Bach entered upon
his labors at Leipsic at the age of thirty-eight, and continued therein
until his death, in 1750. Let us examine briefly the nature of these
labors, and endeavor to glean from them their characteristic principles.
When Bach came to Leipsic he came full of experience and power. As a
youth he had devoted himself to the perfecting of church music.
Untiringly, unceasingly, with steadfast love, he had brought the laws of
counterpoint and fugue to mingle with the grace of melody and the genius
of a noble imagination. At Koethen his poetic and artistic temperament
roamed through the realms of nature, and brought us near to the
understanding of their varied utterance. At Leipsic he finished the
education of his life and his career as a tone-poet. He seeks again the
shelter of the temple, but his genius has matured and ripened. He has
examined the mysteries of life. His enthusiasm for the pure and good is
stronger than ever, but life is still a mystery. Evil, pain, love deep
as hell and high as heaven, the Titanic conflict of opposing principles,
Nature and her decrees, sorrow, remorse, sweet, unaffected joy, and
tranquil resignation--what mean they all? The answer, the solution, is
on Calvary. There is no other solution. Intellect, deny it how it will,
is baffled by the complex problem. The solution is of love through
trouble and anguish. The Passion music of Bach rises to the sublime
understanding of this grand mystery, and again the evolution of the old
mystery and Passion-play consummates in a kindred mind. Again the
triumph of faith is with the German. Luther frees the understanding from
tyranny. Bach raises it to the region of genius and sympathy, and closes
the labors of a thousand years of Christian tonal effort by his Passion
music of the Redeemer. But while this is so, he initiated the modern
period of tonal art, leaving, however, this Passion music as his noblest
legacy, as if to warn men that no other solution of life exists.
But though Bach's genius was thus supreme, it was not because he was
undisturbed by the vexations of daily life. Rarely, if ever, has an
artist equally great produced in such boundless profusion the highest
works of genius, when engaged with men most frequently unable to
understand his thought, and immersed in the arduous duties of teacher in
an art noteworthy of producing fatigue and exhaustion of spirit. But his
enthusiasm and strength were equal to the task. With grand integrity,
and desire for the welfare of the congregations of the churches alluded
to, he obtained from their respective ministers the texts of their
discourses for the ensuing Sundays, and produced, apparently without
effort, hundreds of cantatas to convey to the hearers the inner meaning
of the words which fell from the preacher's lips. These cantatas
frequently opened with orchestral introduction followed by a chorus,
usually very impressive, and imbued with the meaning of the text. The
recitatives and solo airs would still further convey this meaning, while
a chorale or hymn in four parts, with elaborate instrumental
accompaniment, served to express the feelings of the whole congregation.
To each instrument was assigned a separate part, and the whole
accompaniment was separate from the singing.
But if Bach in the consummation of the chorale perfected Luther's work
in the realm of music, he in his Passion music finds worthy expression
of a nation's devotion. His genius, as it were, felt the spirit-life of
the past. His soul vibrated to the yearnings of the unknown millions of
his race who had passed away in the centuries preceding him, and whose
consolation in their humble toil, in the various hardships of their
lives, was the narrative of this Passion music of the Saviour Christ.
The rough, dramatic presentation accorded to this narrative gathered, as
time went on, elements of beauty and traditional treatment around it. It
was powerfully to affect the drama proper and oratorio, but in its
direct and proper functions it was to inspire the first, and in some
respects the greatest, of the great musicians of Germany to his utmost
effort, to his most lofty flight of genius, as his winged spirit soared
through the ages of the past toward the future ages yet to come.
This Passion music of St. Matthew is the noblest presentment of the
characteristics of the German mind, and is unsurpassed in the realm of
religious art. It is an unfolding of the German spirit, and evidences
qualities the possession of which makes for national greatness.
As we have said, Bach is the great lyric poet of his nation, the first
great German genius after the devastating horrors of war. Looming on the
sight, or as contemporaries, are Handel, Leibnitz, Wolf, Klopstock,
Lessing, and Winckelmann. The modern era, with its philosophy and
revolution, has arrived. The domain of thought is enwidened, and the
Middle Ages blend and fade in the historic vista of the past. But the
modern era commences with these great affirmations in art and poetry.
Bach takes the narrative of the Passion, and erects the Cross anew with
sympathetic genius of art and love. Handel, as if he had caught Isaiah's
prophetic fire, gave to Europe its most beautiful and noble epic, the
_Messiah_; and Klopstock, the first of the great line of Germany's
modern poets, devoted his genius and labor to the same subject. But with
Bach and Handel no miserable conflicting elements of theology sully the
conception of the Saviour Christ. These great artists rise to the
universal and the true. The highest art is absolute and knows no appeal.
It is in harmony with universal law, both spiritual and physical.
FOOTNOTES:
[28] Naumann.
SETTLEMENT OF GEORGIA
A.D. 1732
WILLIAM B. STEVENS
It was not only the beginning of a new commonwealth, destined to
become an important State of the American Union, but also the spirit
and purpose which led to it, that made the English colonization of
Georgia a great and unique event in the history of this country.
Seldom have military and philanthropic achievements been combined in
the career of one man. James Oglethorpe was already a distinguished
soldier and a member of the English Parliament when in 1732 he
sailed with one hundred twenty men and founded Savannah. His express
object was the settlement of Georgia, not only as a home for
insolvent debtors, who suffered in English jails, but also for
persecuted Protestants of the Continent. It was not the least of his
services that on his second visit to the future "Empire State of the
South" he took with him John and Charles Wesley, whose influence has
been so marked among the American people.
Prior to the undertaking of Sir Robert Montgomery in 1717, with
which Stevens' narrative begins, few white men had visited the
Georgia country, which was the home of various Indian tribes. De
Soto traversed it on his great westward expedition (1539-1542), but
little was known of it when in 1629 it was included in King Charles
I's Carolina grant to Sir Robert Heath, or even at the time of the
next Carolina grant (1663), when it passed to Monk, Clarendon, and
others. Under the later proprietors it became known to Englishmen
through such glowing descriptions as naturally aroused an interest
in its settlement.
It was not until 1717 that any effort was made to improve the lands
between the Savannah and the Altamaha. In that year Sir Robert
Montgomery, Bart., whose father was joined with Lord Cardross in his
measures for establishing a Scots colony in Port Royal, published _A
Discourse Concerning the Designed Establishment of a new Colony to the
South of Carolina_, in what he termed "the most delightful country in
the universe." This pamphlet was accompanied by a beautiful but fanciful
plan representing the form of settling the districts or county divisions
in his province, which he styled "the Margraviate of Azilia." In his
description of the country he writes "that Nature has not blessed the
world with any tract which can be preferable to it; that Paradise, with
all her virgin beauties, may be modestly supposed, at most, but equal to
its native excellencies."
Having obtained, from the Lords Proprietors of Carolina a grant of the
lands between Savannah and the Altamaha, he issued his proposals for
settling this "future Eden"; but, though garnished with the most glowing
descriptions, and set forth under the most captivating attractions, they
were issued in vain; and the three years having expired within which he
was to make the settlement or forfeit the land, the territory reverted
to Carolina, and his scheme of colonization came to an end. The
Margraviate of Azilia was magnificent upon the map, but was
impracticable in reality.
The Lords Proprietors of Carolina having failed in their scheme of
government, and their authority being crushed by the provincial
revolution of 1719, they sold their titles and interest in that province
to Parliament in 1729; reserving to Lord John Carteret, one of their
number, the remaining eight shares of the country, as he refused to join
the others in disposing of the colony. After the purchase of the
territory of Carolina, which then extended from the St. John's to
Albemarle Sound, it was deemed too large for one government, and was
therefore divided into two provinces, under the respective titles of
North and South Carolina. The territorial boundary of South Carolina,
however, on the south, was the Savannah River; the remaining portion
being then held in reserve by the British Crown.
The same year that the House of Commons resolved on an address to the
King to purchase the rights of the Lords Proprietors to this territory,
a committee was appointed by Parliament "to inquire into the state of
the gaols of the kingdom, and to report the same and their opinion
thereupon to the House." This committee, raised on the motion of James
Oglethorpe, Esq., in consequence of the barbarities which had fallen
under his own observation while visiting some debtors in the Fleet and
Marshalsea prisons, consisted of ninety-six persons, and Oglethorpe was
made its chairman. A more honorable or effective committee could
scarcely have been appointed. It embraced some of the first men in
England; among them thirty-eight noblemen, the chancellor of the
exchequer, the master of rolls, Admiral Vernon and Field Marshal Wade.
They entered upon their labors with zeal and diligence, and not only
made inquiries, through the Fleet prison, but also into the Marshalsea,
the prison of the king's bench, and the jail for the county of Surrey.
The philanthropy of Oglethorpe, whose feelings were easily enlisted in
the cause of misery, rested not with the discharge of his Parliamentary
duty, nor yet in the further benefit of relaxing the rigorous laws which
thrust the honest debtor into prisons which seemed to garner up disease
in its most loathsome forms--crime in its most fiend-like
works--humanity in its most shameless and degraded aspect; but it
prompted still further efforts--efforts to combine present relief with
permanent benefits, by which honest but unfortunate industry could be
protected, and the laboring poor be enabled to reap some gladdening
fruit from toils which now wrung out their lives with bitter and
unrequited labors. To devise and carry out such efforts himself Lord
Percival and a few other noblemen and gentlemen addressed a memorial to
the privy council, stating "that the cities of London, Westminster, and
parts adjacent do abound with great numbers of indigent persons who are
reduced to such necessity as to become burthensome to the public, and
who would be willing to seek a livelihood in any of his majesty's
plantations in America if they were provided with a passage and means of
settling there."
The memorialists promised to take upon themselves the entire charge of
this affair, to erect a province into a proprietary government, provided
the crown would grant them a portion of the land bought in 1729 by
Parliament from the Lords Proprietors of South Carolina, lying south of
the Savannah River; together with such powers as shall enable them to
receive the charitable contributions and benefactions of all such
persons as are willing to encourage so good a design.
This petition, referred at first to a committee of the privy council,
was by them submitted to the consideration of the board of trade, who,
after a second commitment, made their report, that the attorney and
solicitor-general should be directed to prepare a draft of the charter.
This report, being laid before his majesty, was by him approved and he
directed the proper officer to make out the charter. The charter thus
prepared was approved by the King, but in consequence of the formalities
of office did not pass under the great seal until June 9, 1732.
This instrument constituted twenty noblemen and gentlemen a body
corporate, by the name and style of "The Trustees for establishing a
Colony of Georgia, in America"; giving to the projected colony the name
of the monarch who had granted to them such a liberal territory for the
development of their benevolence.
The charter revealed two purposes as the object of this colonization:
the settling of poor but unfortunate people on lands now waste and
desolate, and the interposing of this colony as a barrier between the
northern colonies and the French, Spanish, and Indians on the south and
west. These designs the trustees amplified and illustrated in their
printed papers and official correspondence.
Oglethorpe, in his _New and Accurrate Account_, declares: "These
trustees not only give land to the unhappy who go thither, but are also
empowered to receive the voluntary contributions of charitable persons
to enable them to furnish the poor adventurers with all necessaries for
the expense of the voyage, occupying the land, and supporting them till
they find themselves comfortably settled. So that now the unfortunate
will not be obliged to bind themselves to a long servitude, to pay for
their passage, for they may be carried gratis into a land of liberty and
plenty, where they immediately find themselves in possession of a
competent estate in a happier climate than they knew before; and they
are unfortunate, indeed, if here they cannot forget their sorrows."
This was the main purpose of the settlement; and such noble views were
"worthy to be the source of an American republic." Other colonies had
been planted by individuals and companies for wealth and dominion; but
the trustees of this, at their own desire, were restrained by the
charter "from receiving any grant of lands in the province, or any
salary, fee, perquisite, or profit whatsoever, by or from this
undertaking." The proprietors of other colonies were looking to their
own interests; the motto of the trustees of this was "_Non sibi, sed
aliis_." The proprietors of other colonies were anxious to build up
cities and erect states that should bear their names to a distant
posterity; the trustees of this only busied themselves in erecting an
asylum, whither they invited the indigent of their own and the exiled
Protestants of other lands. It was the first colony ever founded by
charity. New England had been settled by Puritans, who fled thither for
conscience' sake; New York by a company of merchants and adventurers in
search of gain; Maryland, by papists retiring from Protestant
intolerance; Virginia, by ambitious cavaliers; Carolina by the scheming
and visionary Shaftesbury, and others, for private aims and individual
aggrandizement; but Georgia was planted by the hand of benevolence, and
reared into being by the nurturings of a disinterested charity.
But the colony was not to be confined to the poor and unfortunate. The
trustees granted portions of five hundred acres to such as went over at
their own expense, on condition that they carried over one servant to
every fifty acres, and did military service in time of war or alarm.
Thus the materials of the new colony consisted of three classes: the
upper, or large landed proprietors and officers; the middle, or
freeholders, sent over by the trustees; and the servants indented to
that corporation or to private individuals.
Subsidiary to the great design of philanthropy was the further purpose
of making Georgia a silk, wine, oil, and drug-growing colony. "Lying,"
as the trustees remark, "about the same latitude with part of China,
Persia, Palestine, and the Madeiras, it is highly probable that when
hereafter it shall be well peopled and rightly cultivated England may be
supplied from thence with raw silk, wine, oil, dyes, drugs, and many
other materials for manufactures which she is obliged to purchase from
southern countries."
Such were the principal purposes of the trustees in settling Georgia.
Extravagance was their common characteristic; for in the excited visions
of its enthusiastic friends, Georgia was not only to rival Virginia and
South Carolina, but to take the first rank in the list of provinces
depending on the British Crown. Neither the El Dorado of Raleigh nor the
Utopia of More could compare with the garden of Georgia; and the poet,
the statesman, and the divine lauded its beauties and prophesied its
future greatness. Oglethorpe, in particular, was quite enthusiastic in
his description of the climate, soil, productions, and beauties of this
American Canaan. "Such an air and soil," he writes, "can only be fitly
described by a poetical pen, because there is but little danger of
exceeding the truth."
With such blazoned exaggerations, strengthened by the interested efforts
of a noble and learned body of trustees, and by the personal supervision
of its distinguished originator, it is no matter of wonder that all
Europe was aroused to attention; and that Swiss and German, Scotch and
English, alike pressed forward to this promised land. Appeals were made
by the trustees to the liberal, the philanthropic, the public-spirited,
the humane, the patriotic, the Christian, to aid in this design of
mercy, closing their arguments with the noble thought: "To consult the
welfare of mankind, regardless of any private views, is the perfection
of virtue, as the accomplishing and consciousness of it are the
perfection of happiness."
These preliminaries settled, we are brought to the period when the plan,
the charity, the labors of the trustees, were to be put into efficient
operation. Fortunate was it for the corporation that they had among
their number one whose benevolence, whose fortune, and whose patriotism,
as well as his military distinction conspired to make him the fittest
leader and pioneer of so noble an undertaking. That one was James
Oglethorpe, the originator, the chief promotor, the most zealous
advocate of the colony; an honor conceded by his associates, and
acknowledged by all.
We are brought now to the dock-yard at Deptford, to behold the first
embarkation of the Georgia pilgrims.
The trustees, having selected from the throng of emigrants thirty-five
families, numbering in all about one hundred twenty-five "sober,
industrious, and moral persons," chartered the Ann, a galley of two
hundred tons, Captain John Thomas, and stationed her at Deptford, four
miles below London, to receive her cargo and passengers. In the mean
time the men were drilled to arms by sergeants of the guards; and all
needed stores were gathered to make them comfortable on the voyage and
to establish them on land.
It was not until the early part of November that the embarkation was
ready for sailing.
On the 16th they were visited by the trustees, "to see nothing was
wanting, and to take leave" of Oglethorpe; and having called the
families separately before them in the great cabin they inquired if they
liked their usage and voyage; or if they had rather return, giving them
even then the alternative of remaining in England if they preferred it;
and having found but one man who declined--on account of his wife, left
sick in Southwark--they bid Oglethorpe and the emigrants an affectionate
farewell. The ship sailed the next day, November 17, 1732, from
Gravesend, skirted slowly along the southern coast of England, and,
taking its departure from Sicily light, spread out its white sails to
the breezes of the Atlantic.
Day after day and week after week the voyagers seem the centre of the
same watery circle canopied by the same bending sky. No mile-stones tell
of their progress. The way-marks of the mariner are the sun by day and
the moon and stars by night; no kindred ship answers back its red-cross
signal; but there they float, the germ of a future nation, upon the
desert waters. Sailing a circuitous route, they did not reach the coast
of America until January 13, 1733, when they cast anchor in Rebellion
Roads, and furled their sails at last in the harbor of Charleston.
Oglethorpe immediately landed, and was received by the Governor and
Council of South Carolina with every mark of civility and attention. The
King's pilot was directed by them to carry the ship into Port Royal, and
small vessels were furnished to take the emigrants to the river
Savannah. Thus assisted, in about ten hours they resumed their voyage
and shortly dropped anchor within Port Royal bar.
The colony landed at Beaufort on January 20th, and had quarters given
them in the new barracks. Here they received every attention from the
officers of His Majesty's Independent Company and the gentlemen of the
neighborhood, and refreshed themselves after the fatigues and
discomforts of their long voyage and cramped accommodations.
Leaving his people here, Oglethorpe, accompanied by Colonel William
Bull, of South Carolina, went forward to the Savannah River to select a
site for the projected settlement. Winding among the inlets, which break
into numerous islands the low flat seaboard, their canoe at last shot
into the broad stream of the Savannah; and bending their course upward
they soon reached a bold, pine-crowned bluff, at the foot of which they
landed to inspect its localities.