James Arnold was a person too remarkable to be passed over in this

account of the New Bedford men. With great wealth, with the most

beautiful situation in the town, and, yet more, with the aid of his

wife, never mentioned or remembered but to be admired, his house was

the acceptable resort of strangers, more than any other among us. Mr.

Arnold was not only a man of unshaken integrity, but of strong thought;

and if a liberal education had given him powers of utterance, the habit

of marshalling his thoughts, equal to the powers of his mind, he would

have been known as one of the remarkable men in the State.

One other figure rises to my recollection, which seems hardly to belong

to the modern world, and that is Dr. Whittredge of Tiverton. In his

religious faith he belonged to us, and occasionally came over to attend

our church. I used, from time to time, to pay him visits of a day or

two, always made pleasant by the placid and gentle presence of his

wife, and by the brisk and eager conversation of the old gentleman. He

was acquainted in his earlier days with my predecessor, of twenty-five

years previous date, Dr. West, himself a remarkable man in his day,

[72] and almost equally so, both for his eccentricity and his sense.

An eccentric clergyman, by the by, is rarely seen now; but in former

times it was a character as common as now it is rare. The commanding

position of the clergy the freedom they felt to say and do what they

pleased brought that trait out in high relief. The great democratic

pressure has passed like a roller over society: everybody is afraid of

everybody; everybody wants something, office, appointment, business,

position, and he is to receive it, not from a high patron, but from the

common vote or opinion.

Dr. West's eccentricity arose from absorption into his own thoughts,

and forgetfulness of everything around him. He would pray in the family

in the evening till everybody went to sleep, and in the morning till

the breakfast was spoiled. He would preach upon some Scripture passage

till some one went and moved his mark forward. He once paid a visit

to the Governor in Boston, and, having got drenched in the rain, was

supplied with a suit of his host's, which unconsciously, he wore home,

and arrayed in which, he appeared in his pulpit on Sunday morning. At

the same time he was a man of strong and independent thought. I have

read a "Reply" of his to Edwards on the Will, in which the subject was

ably discussed, but without the needful logical coherence, perhaps,

to make its mark in the debate. [73] The conversations of West with

his friend, Dr. Whittredge, as the latter told me, ran constantly into

theological questions, upon which they differed. West was a frequent

visitor at Tiverton, and, when the debate drew on towards midnight,

Whittredge was obliged to say, "Well, I can't sit here talking with

you all night; for I must sleep, that I may go and see my patients

to-morrow." He was vexed, he said, that he should thus seem to "cry

quarter" in the controversy again and again, and he resolved that the

next time he met West, he would not stop, be they where they might.

It so happened that their next meeting was at the head of Acushnet

River, three miles above New Bedford, where Whittredge was visiting his

patients, and West his parishioners. This done, they set out towards

evening to walk to New Bedford. Whittredge throwing the bridle-rein

over his arm, they walked on slowly, every now and then turning aside

into some crook of the fence, the horse meantime getting his advantage

in a bit of green grass, and thus they talked and walked, and walked

and talked, till the day broke!

But the most remarkable thing about my venerable parishioner remains

to be mentioned. Dr. Whittredge was an alchemist. He had a furnace, in

a little building separate from his house, where he kept a fire for

forty years, till he was more than eighty, visiting it every night,

of summer and winter alike, to be sure of keeping it alive; [74] and

melting down, as his family said, many a good guinea, and all to find

the philosopher's stone, the mysterious metal that should turn all to

gold. From delicacy I never alluded to the subject with him, I am sorry

now that I did not. And he never adverted to it with me but once, and

that was in a way which showed that he had no mean or selfish aims in

his patient and mysterious search; and, indeed, no one could doubt that

he was a most benevolent and kind-hearted man. The occasion was this:

He had been to our church one day, indeed, it was his last attendance,

and as we came down from the pulpit, where he always sat, the better

to hear me, and as we were walking slowly through the broad aisle, he

laid his hand upon my shoulder, and said, "Ah, sir, this is the true

doctrine! But it wants money, it wants money, sir, to spread it, and I

hope it will have it before long."

While in Europe I had kept a journal, and I low published it under the

title of "The Old World and the New," and about the same time, I forget

which was first, a volume of sermons entitled, "Discourses on Various

Subjects." The idea of my book of travels, I think, was a good me, to

survey the Old World from the experience of the New, and the New from

the observation of the Old; but it was so ill carried out hat what

I mainly proposed to myself on my second visit to Europe, ten years

after, was to [75] fulfil, as far as I could, my original design. But

my health did not allow of it. I made many notes, but brought nothing

into shape for publication. I still believe that America has much to

teach to Europe, especially in the energy, development, and progress

lent to a people by the working of the free principle; and that Europe

has much to teach to America, in the value of order, routine, thorough

discipline, thorough education, division of labor, economy of means,

adjustment of the means to living, etc. As to my first volume of

sermons, if any one would see his thoughts laid out in a winding-sheet,

let them be laid before him in printer's proofs; that which had been

to me alive and glowing, and had had at least the life of earnest

utterance, now, through this weary looking over of proof-sheets, seemed

dead and shrouded for the grave. It did not seem to me possible that

anybody would find it alive. I have hardly ever had a sadder feeling

than that with which I dismissed this volume from my hands.

At the time of my retirement to Sheffield, the Second Congregational

Church in New York, which had formerly invited me to its pulpit, was

without a pastor, and I was asked to go down there and preach. I

could preach, though I could not write; my sermons, with their five

earmarks upon them in New Bedford, would be new in another pulpit, and

I consented. I was soon [76] invited to take charge of the church,

but declined it. It was even proposed to me to be established simply

as preacher, and to be relieved from parochial visiting; but as the

congregation was small, and could not support a pastor beside me, I

declined that also. But I went on preaching, and after about a year,

feeling myself stronger, I consented to be settled in the church with

full charge, and was installed on the 8th November, 1835, Dr. Walker

preaching the sermon.

The church was on the corner of Mercer and Prince Streets; a bad

situation, inasmuch as it was on a corner, that is, it was noisy,

and the annoyance became so great that I seriously thought more than

once of proposing to the congregation to sell and build elsewhere. On

other accounts the church was always very pleasant to me. It was of

moderate size, holding seven or eight hundred people, and became in the

course of a year or two quite full. The stairs to the galleries went

up on the inside, giving it, I know not what, a kind of comfortable

and domestic air, very social and agreeable; and last, not least, it

was easy to speak in. This last consideration, I am convinced, is of

more importance, and is so in more ways, than is commonly supposed.

A place hard to speak in is apt to create, especially in the young

preacher just forming his habits, a hard and unnatural manner of

speaking. More than one young preacher have I known, who began with

good natural tones, in the course of a [77] year or two, to fall into

a loud, pulpit monotone, or to bring out all his cadences with a

jerk, or with a disagreeable stress of voice, to be heard. One must

be heard, that is the first requisite, and to have one and another

come out of church Sunday after Sunday, and touch your elbow, and say,

"Sir, I could n't hear you; I was interested in what I could hear,

but just at the point of greatest interest, half of the time, I lost

your cadence," is more than any man can bear for a long time, and so

he resorts to loud tones and monotonous cadences, and he is obliged to

think, much of the time, more of the mere dry fact of being heard, than

of the themes that should pour themselves out in full unfolding ease

and freedom. I have fought through my whole professional life against

this criticism, striving to keep some freedom and nature in my speech,

though I have made every effort consistent with that to be heard. I

have not always succeeded; but I have tried, and have always been

grateful, a considerable virtue, especially when the hearer was himself

a little deaf to every one who admonished me. This is really a matter

that seriously concerns the very religion that we preach. Everybody

knows what the preaching tone is; it can be distinguished the moment

it is heard, outside of any church, school-house, or barn where it is

uplifted; but few consider, I believe, of what immense disservice it is

to the great cause we have at heart. Preaching is the [78] principal

ministration of religion, and if it be hard and unnatural, the very

idea of religion is likely to be hard and unnatural, far away from the

every-day life and affections of men. Stamp upon music a character as

hard, technical, unnatural as most preaching has, and would men be won

by it? I do not say that what I have mentioned is the sole cause of

the "preaching tone;" false ideas of religion have, doubtless, even

more to do with it. But still it is of such importance that I think

no church interior should be built without especial nay, without sole

reference to the end for which it is built, namely, to speak in. Let

what can be done for the architecture of the exterior building; but let

not an interior be made with recesses and projections and pillars and

domes, only to please the eye, while it is to hurt the edification of

successive generations, for two or for ten centuries. No ornamentation

can compensate for that injury. The science of acoustics is as yet but

little understood; all that we seem to know thus far is that the plain,

unadorned parallelogram is the best form. And even if we must stick to

that, I had rather have it than a church half ruined by architectural

devices. Our Protestant churches are built, not for ceremonies and

spectacles and processions, but for prayer and preaching. And the

fitness of means to ends that first law of architecture is sacrificed

by a church interior made more to be looked at than to be heard in.

[79] But to return: we were not long to occupy the pleasant little

church in Mercer Street, pleasant memories I hope there are of it to

others besides myself. On Sunday morning, the 26th November, 1837, it

was burned to the ground. Nothing was saved but my library, which was

flung out of the vestry window, and the pulpit Bible, which I have, a

present from the trustees.

The congregation immediately took a hall for temporary worship in the

Stuyvesant Institute, and directed its thoughts to the building of a

new church. Much discussion there was as to the style and the locality

of the new structure, and at length it was determined to build in a

semi-Gothic style, on Broadway. I was not myself in favor of Broadway,

it being the great city thoroughfare, and ground very expensive; but it

was thought best to build there. It was contended that a propagandist

church should occupy a conspicuous situation, and perhaps that view

has been borne out by the result. One parishioner, I remember, had an

odd, or at least an old-fashioned, idea about the matter. "Sir," said

he, "you don't understand our feeling about Broadway. Sir, there is but

one Broadway in the world." It is now becoming a street of shops and

hotels, and is fast losing its old fashionable prestige.

The building was completed in something more than a year, and on

the 2d May, 1839, it was dedicated, under the name of the Church of

the Messiah. The burning of our sanctuary had [80] proved to be our

upbuilding; the position of the Stuyvesant Institute on Broadway, and

the plan of free seats, had increased our numbers, and we entered the

new church with a congregation one third larger than that with which

we left the old. The building had cost about $90,000, and it was a

critical moment to us all, but to me especially, when the pews came to

be sold. It may be judged what was my relief from anxiety when word was

brought me, two hours after the auction was opened, that $70,000 worth

of pews were taken.

It was a strong desire with me that the church should have some

permanent name. I did not want that it should be called Dewey 's

church, and then by the name of my successor, and so on; but that it

should be known by some fixed designation, and so pass down, gathering

about it the sacred associations of years and ages to come. I believe

that it was the first instance in our Unitarian body of solemnly

dedicating a church by some sacred name.

Another wish of mine was to enter the new church with the Liturgy

of King's Chapel in Boston for our form of service. The subject was

repeatedly discussed in meetings of the congregation; but although it

became evident that there would be a majority in favor of it, yet as

these did not demand it, and there was a considerable minority strongly

opposed to it, we judged that there was not a state of feeling among

us that would justify the introduction of what so essentially [81]

required unanimity and heartiness as a new form of worship. And I am

now glad that it was not introduced. For while I am as much satisfied

as ever of the great utility of a Liturgy, I have become equally

convinced that original, spontaneous prayer is likely to open the

preacher's heart, or to stir up the gift in him in a way very important

to his own ministration and to the edification of his people. The best

service, I think, should consist of both.

And I cannot help believing that a church service will yet be arranged

which will be an improvement upon all existing ones, Roman Catholic,

Church of England, or any other. If in the highest ranges of human

attainment there is to be an advancement of age beyond age, surely

there is to be a progress in the spirit and language of prayer. From

some forming hand and heart, by the united aid of consecrated genius,

wisdom, and piety, something is to come greater than we have yet seen.

No Homeric poem or vision of Dante is so grand as that will be. What is

the highest idea of God, excluding superstition, anthropomorphism, and

vague impersonality alike, what is the fit and true utterance of the

deepest and divinest heart to God, this, I must think, may well occupy

the sublimest meditations of human intellect and devotion. Not that

the entire Liturgy, however, should be the product of any one man's

thought. I would have in a Liturgy some of the time-hallowed prayers,

some of the Litanies [82] that have echoed in the ear of all the ages

from the early Christian time. The churches of Rome and England and

Germany have some of these; and in a service-book, supposed to be

compiled by the Chevalier Bunsen, there are others, prayers of Basil

and of Jerome and Augustine, and of the old German time. There are

beautiful things in them, especially in the old German prayers there is

something very filial, free, and touching; but they would want a great

deal of expurgation, and I believe that better prayers are uttered

today than were ever heard before; and it is from uttered, not written

prayers, if I could do so by the aid of a stenographer or of a perfect

memory, that I would draw contributions to a book of devotion. What

would I not give for some prayers of Channing or of Henry Ware! some

that I have heard by their own firesides, or of Dr. Gardiner Spring,

or of Dr. Payson of Portland, that I heard in church many years ago,

for the very words that fell from their lips! I do not believe that the

right prayers were ever composed, Dr ever will be.

After the dedication of our church I went on with my duties for three

years, and then again broke down in health, able indeed, that is,

with physical strength, to preach, but not able to write sermons. The

congregation increased; many of is members became communicants; in the

last Tear before I went abroad once more, the church [83] was crowded;

in the evening especially, the aisles as well as pews were sometimes

filled.

It was this fulness of the attendance in the evening that reconciled

me to a second service; especially it was that many strangers came, to

whom I had no other opportunity to declare my views of religion. For

I judge that, for any given congregation, one service of worship, and

of meditation such as the sermon is designed to awaken, is enough for

one day. In the "Christian Examiner," two or three years after this,

I think it was; I published an article on this subject, in which I

maintained that there was too much preaching, too much preaching for

the preacher, and too much preaching for the people. It was received

with great surprise and little favor, I believe, at the time; but since

then not a few persons, both of the clergy and laity, have expressed

to me their entire agreement with it. What I said, and say, is that

one sermon, one discourse of solemn meditation, designed to make a

distinct and abiding impression upon the heart and life, is all that

anybody should preach or hear in one day, and that the other part of

Sunday should be used for conference or Sunday-school, or instructive

lecture, or something with a character and purpose different from the

morning meditation, something to instruct the people in the history, or

evidences, or theory, or scriptural exposition of our religion. Indeed,

I did this myself as often as I was able, though it tried the [84]

religious prejudices of some of my people, and my own too, about what a

sermon should be. I discussed the morals of trade, political morality,

civic duty, that of voters, jurymen, etc., social questions, peace and

war, and the problem of the human life and condition. Some portions

of these last were incorporated into the course of Lowell Lectures on

this subject, which I afterwards published. And it is high time to take

this matter into serious consideration; for in all churches where the

hearing of two or three sermons on Sunday is not held to be a positive

religious duty, the second service is falling away into a thin and

spectral shadow of public worship, discouraging to the attendants upon

it, and dishonoring to religion itself.

The pastor of a large congregation in the city of New York has no

sinecure. The sermons to be written, the parochial visiting, once a

year, at least, to each family, and weekly or daily to the sick and

afflicted, my walks commonly extended to from four to seven miles a

day, the calls of the poor and distressed, laboring under every kind

of difficulty, the charities to be distributed, I was in part the

almoner of the congregation, the public meetings, the committees to

be attended, the constantly widening circle of social relations and

engagements, the pressure, in fine, of all sorts of claims upon time

and thought, all this made a very laborious life for me. Yet it was

pleasant, and very interesting. I thought when I [85]first went to the

great city, when I first found myself among those busy throngs, none

of whom knew me, beside those ranges of houses, none of which had any

association for me, that I should never feel at home in New York. But

it became very home-like to me. The walls became familiar to my eye;

the pavement grew soft to my foot. I built me a house, that first

requisite for feeling at home. I chanced to see a spot that I fancied:

it was in Mercer Street, between Waverley Place and Eighth Street, just

in the centre of everything, a step from Broadway and my church, just

out of the noise of everything; there we passed many happy days. I have

been quite a builder of houses in my life. I built one in New Bedford.

My study had the loveliest outlook upon Buzzard's Bay and the Elizabeth

Islands, I shall never have such a study again. Oh, the joy of that sea

view! When I came to it again, after a vacation's absence, it moved me

like the sight of an old friend. And I have built about the old home in

Sheffield, till it is almost a new erection.

But to return to New York: I was very happy there. I had a

congregation, I believe, that was interested in me. I made friends that

were and are dear to me. When I first went to New York, I was elected

a member of the Artists' Club, or Club of the Twenty-one, as it was

called; by what good fortune or favor I know not, for I was the first

clergyman that had ever been a member of it. It consisted of artists

and other gentlemen, [86] an equal number of each. Cole and Durand

and Ingham and Inman and Chapman and Bryant and Verplanck and Charles

Hoffman were in it when I first became acquainted with it; and younger

artists have been brought into it since, Gray and Huntingdon and

Kensett, and other non-professional gentlemen interested in art, and

the meetings have been always pleasant. It was a kind of heart's home

to me while I lived in New York, and I always resort to it now when I

go there, sure of welcome and kindly greeting.{8}

{FN 8: The well-known Century Club of New York is the modern

development of what was first known as the Sketch Club, or the

XXI. M. E. D.}

Then, again, I had in William Ware, the pastor of the First Church,

a friend and fellow-laborer, than whom, if I were to seek the world

over, I could not find one more to my liking. Our friendship was as

intimate as I ever had with any man, and our constant intercourse,

to enter his house as freely as my own, his coming to mine was as

a sunbeam, as cheering and undisturbing, I thought I could not get

along without it. But I was obliged to do so. He had often talked of

resigning his situation, and I had obtained from him a promise that

he would never do it without consulting me. Great was my surprise,

then, to learn, one day while in the country, that he had sent in his

resignation. My first word to him on going to town was, "What is this?

You have broken your promise." "I did not consult even [87] my father

or my brothers," was his reply. I could say nothing. The truth was,

that things had come to that pass in his mind that the case was beyond

consultation. He considered himself as having made a fatal mistake in

his choice of a profession. I have some very touching letters from him,

in which he dwells upon it as his "mistake for a life." His nature was

essentially artistic; he would have made a fine painter. He could have

worked between silent walls. He could write admirably, as all the world

knows; I need only mention "Zenobia" and "Aurelian" and "Probus." But

there was a certain delicacy and shrinking in his nature that made it

difficult for him to pour himself out freely in the presence of an

audience. And yet a congregation, consisting in part of some of the

most cultivated persons in New York, held him, as preacher and pastor,

in an esteem and affection that any man might have envied.

And to repair the circle of my happy social relations, broken by Ware's

departure, came Bellows to fill his place. I gave him the right hand of

fellowship at his ordination; and I remember saying in it, that I would

not have believed it possible for me to welcome anybody to the place of

his predecessor with the pleasure with which I welcomed him. The augury

of that hour has been fulfilled in most delightful intercourse with one

of the noblest and most generous men I ever knew. With a singularly

clear insight and penetration [88] into the deepest things of our

spiritual nature, with an earnestness and fearlessness breaking through

all technical rules and theories, with a buoyancy and cheerfulness that

nothing can dampen, with a fitness and readiness for all occasions, his

power as a preacher and his pleasantness as a companion have made him

one of the most marked men of his day.

As to my general intercourse with society, whether in New York or

elsewhere, I have always felt that its freedom lay under disagreeable

restrictions, if not under a lay-interdict; and when travelling as

a stranger I have always chosen not to be known as a clergyman, and

commonly was not. I once had a curious and striking illustration of

the feeling about clergymen to which I am alluding. I was invited by

Mr. Prescott Hall, the eminent lawyer, to meet the Kent Club at his

house, a law club then just formed. As I arrived a little before the

company, I said to him: "Mr. Hall, I am sorry you have formed this kind

of club, a club exclusively of lawyers. In Boston they have one of long

standing, consisting of our professions, and four members of each, that

is of lawyers, doctors, clergymen, and merchants." "To tell you the

truth," he answered, "I don't like the clergy." I said that I could

conceive of reasons, but I should like to hear him state them. "Why,"

said, he, "they come over me; they don't put themselves on a level

with me; they talk [89] ex cathedra." I was obliged to bow my head in

acquiescence; but I did say, "I think I know a class of clergymen of

whom that is not true; and, besides, if I could bring all the clergy of

this city into clubs of the Boston description, I believe those habits

would be broken up in a single year."

There were two men who came to our church whose coming seemed to be by

chance, but was of great interest to me, for I valued them greatly.

They were Peter Cooper and Joseph Curtis. Neither of them, then,

belonged to any religious society, or regularly attended upon any

church. They happened to be walking down Broadway one Sunday evening

as the congregation were altering Stuyvesant Hall, where we then

temporarily worshipped, and they said, "Let us go in were, and see

what this is." When they came out, is they both told me, they said to

one another, "This is the place for us" And they immediately connected

themselves with the congregation, to be among its most valued members.

Peter Cooper was even then meditating that plan of a grand Educational

Institute which he afterwards carried out. He was engaged in a large

and successful business, and his one idea which he often discussed with

me was to obtain the means of building that Institute. A man of the

gentlest nature and the simplest habits; yet his religious nature was

his most remarkable quality. It seemed to breathe through his life as

[90] fresh and tender as if it were in some holy retreat, instead of

a life of business. Mr. Cooper has become a distinguished man, much

engaged in public affairs, and much in society. I have seen him but

little of late years; but I trust he has not lost that which is worth

more than all the distinctions and riches in the world.

Joseph Curtis was a man much less known generally, and yet, in one

respect, much more, and that was in the sphere of the public schools.

He did more, I think, than any man to bring up the free schools of New

York to such a point as compelled our Boston visitors to confess that

they were not a whit inferior to their own. And his were voluntary and

unpaid services, though his means were always moderate. He neither had,

nor made, nor cared to make, a fortune. He cared for the schools as

for nothing else; and there is no wiser or nobler care. For more than

twenty years he spent half of his time in the schools, walking among

them with such intelligent and gentle oversight as to win universal

confidence and affection, so that he was commonly called, by teachers

and pupils, "Father Curtis."

At the same time, his hand and heart were open to every call of

charity. I remember once making him umpire between me and Horace

Greeley, the only time that I ever met the latter in company. He was

saying, after his fashion in the "Tribune,"--he was from nature and

training a Democrat, and had no natural right ever to be in [91] the

Whig party, he was saying that the miseries of the poor in New York

were all owing to the rich; when I said, "Mr. Greeley, here sits Mr.

Joseph Curtis, who has walked the streets of New York for more years

than you and I have been here, and I propose that we listen to him." He

could not refuse to make the appeal, and so I put a series of questions

upon the point to Mr. Curtis. The answers did not please Mr. Greeley.

He broke in once or twice, saying, "Am not I to have a chance to speak?

". But I persisted and said, "Nay, but we have agreed to listen to Mr.

Curtis." The upshot was, that, in his opinion, the miseries of the poor

in New York were not owing to the rich, but mainly to themselves; that

there was ordinarily remunerative labor enough for them; and that,

but in exceptional cases of sickness and especial misfortune, those

who fell into utter destitution and beggary came to that pass through

their idleness, their recklessness, or their vices. That was always

my opinion. They besieged our door from morning till night, and I was

obliged to help them, to look after them, to go to their houses; my

family was worn out with these offices. But I looked upon beggary as,

in all ordinary cases, prima facie evidence that there was something

wrong behind it.

The great evil and mischief lay in indiscriminate charity. Many were

the walks we took to avoid this, and often with little satisfaction. I

have walked across the whole breadth of the city, [92] on a winter's

day, to find a man dressed better than I was, with blue broadcloth

and metal buttons and new boots, and just sitting down to a very

comfortable dinner. The wife was rather taken aback by my entrance, it

was she who had come to me, and the man, of course, must say something

for himself, and this it was: He "had fallen behind of late, in

consequence of not receiving his rents from England. He was the owner

of two houses in Sheffield." "Well," I said, "If that is so, you are

better off than I am;" and I took a not very courteous leave of them.

To give help in a better way, an Employment Society was formed in

our church to cut out and prepare garments for poor women to sew,

and be paid for it. A salesroom was opened in Amity Street, to sell

the articles made up, at a trifling addition to their cost. The

ladies of the congregation were in attendance at the church, in a

large ante-room, to prepare the garments and give them out, and a

hundred or more poor women came every Thursday to bring their work and

receive more; and they have been coming to this day. It was thought

an excellent plan, and was adopted by other churches. The ladies of

All Souls joined in it, and the institution is now transferred to that

church.

One day, in the winter I think of 1837, I heard of an association of

gentlemen formed to investigate this terrible subject of mendacity in

our city, and to find some way of methodizing our chari-[93] ties and

protecting them from abuse. I went down immediately to Robert Minturn,

who, I was told, took a leading part in this movement, and told him

that I had come post-haste to inquire what he and his friends were

doing, for that nothing in our city life pressed upon my mind like

this. I used, indeed, to feel at times and Bellows had the same feeling

as if I would fain fling up my regular professional duties, and plunge

into this great sea of city pauperism and misery.

Mr. Minturn told me that he, with four or five others, had taken up

this subject; that, for more than a year past, they had met together

one evening in the week to confer with one another upon it; that they

had opened a correspondence with all our great cities, and with some in

Europe; and sometimes had sent out agents to inquire into the methods

that had been adopted to stem these enormous city evils. Mr. Minturn

wished me to join them, and I expected to be formally invited to do

so; but I was not, nor to a great public meeting called soon after,

under their auspices. I suppose there was no personal feeling against

me, only an Orthodox one. Well, no matter. It was a noble enterprise,

better than any sectarianism ever suggested, and worthy of record,

especially considering its spontaneity, labor, and expense.

Their plan, when matured, was this: to district the city; to appoint

one person in each district to receive all applications for aid; to

sell tickets [94] of various values, which we could buy and give the

applicant at our doors, to be taken to the agent, who would render the

needed help, according to his judgment. Of course the beggars did not

like it. I found that, half the time, they would not take the tickets.

It would give them some trouble, but the special trouble, doubtless,

with the reckless and dishonest among them, was that it would prevent

them from availing themselves of the aid of twenty families, all acting

in ignorance of what each was doing.

Jonathan Goodhue was a man whom nobody that knew him can ever forget.

Tall and fine-looking in person, simple and earnest in manners, with

such a warmth in his accost that to shake hands with him was to feel

happier for it all the day after. I remember passing down Wall Street

one day when old Robert Lenox was standing by his side. After one of

those warm greetings, I passed on, and Mr. Lenox said, "Who is that?"

"Mr. Dewey, a clergyman of a church in the city." "Of which church?"

said Mr. Lenox. "Of the Unitarian church." "The Lord have mercy upon

him!" said the old man. It was a good prayer, and I have no doubt it

was kindly made.

Alas! What I am writing is a necrology: they are all gone of whom I

speak. George Curtis, too; he died before I left the Church of the

Messiah, died in his prime. George William Curtis is [95] his son,

well known as one of our most graceful writers and eloquent men:

something hereditary in that, for his father had one of the clearest

heads I knew, and a gifted tongue, though he was too modest to be a

great talker. He could make a good speech, and once he made one that

was more effective than I could have wished. The question was about

electing Thomas Starr King to be my colleague. The congregation was

immensely taken with him; but Mr. Curtis opposed on the ground that

King was a Universalist, and he carried everything before him. He

said, as it was reported to me, "I was born a Unitarian; I have lived

a Unitarian; and, if God please, I mean to die a Unitarian!" He had

the old-fashioned, and indeed well-founded, dislike of Universalism.

But all that is changed now, was changing then; for the Universalists

have given up their preaching of no retribution hereafter. They are in

other respects, also, Unitarians, and the two bodies affiliate and are

friends.

Moses Grinnell was a marked man in New York. A successful and popular

merchant, his generosity was ample as his means; and I have known him

in circumstances that required a higher generosity than that of giving

money, and he stood the test perfectly. His mind, too, grew with his

rise in the world. He was sent to Congress, and his acquaintance from

that time with many distinguished men gave a new turn to his thoughts

and a higher tone to his character and [96] conversation. At his house,

where I was often a guest, I used to meet Washington Irving, whose

niece he married. Of course everybody knows of Washington Irving; but

there are one or two anecdotes, of which I doubt whether they appear

in his biography, and which I am tempted to relate. He told me that

he once went to a theatre in London to hear some music. (They use

theatres in London as music-halls, and I went to one myself, once, to

hear Paganini, and enjoyed an evening that I can never forget. His one

string for he broke all the others was a heart-string.) Mr. Irving

said that on entering the theatre he found in the pit only three or

four English gentleman, who had evidently come early, as he had, to

find a good place. Accordingly, he took his seat near them, when one

of them rather loftily said, "That seat is engaged, sir." He got up

and took a seat a little farther off, when they said, "That, too, is

engaged." Again he meekly rose, and took another place. Pretty soon one

of the party said, "Do you remember Washington Irving's description of

a band of music?" (It is indeed a most amusing caricature. One of the

performers had blown his visnomy to a point. Another blew as if he were

blowing his whole estate, real and personal, through his instrument.

I quote from memory.) Mr. Irving said they went over with the whole

description, with much entertainment and laughter. They little knew

that they had thrust aside [97] the author of their pleasure, who sat

there, like the great Caliph, incognito, and they would have paid him

homage enough if they had known him.

Mrs. S. told me that one evening he strolled up to their piazza, they

lived near to one another in the country, and fell into one of those

easy and unpremeditated talks, in which, to be sure, he was always most

pleasant, when he said, among other things, "Don't be anxious about the

education of your daughters: they will do very well; don't teach them

so many things,--teach them one thing." "What is that, Mr. Irving?" she

asked. "Teach them," he said, "to be easily pleased."

Bryant, too, everybody knows of. Now he is chiefly known as poet; but

when I went to New York-people thought most about him as editor of the

"Evening Post," and that with little enough complacency in the circles

where I moved. How many a fight I had for him with my Whig friends! For

he was my parishioner, and it was known that we were much together. The

"Evening Post" was a thorn in their sides, and every now and then, when

some keen editorial appeared in it, they used to say, "There! What do

you say of that?" I always said the same thing: Whether you and I like

what he says or not, whether we think it fair or not, of one thing be

sure, he is a man of perfect integrity; he is so almost to a fault, if

that be possible, regarding [98] neither feelings nor friendships, nor

anything else, when justice and truth are in question.

Speaking of Bryant brings to mind Audubon, the celebrated naturalist. I

became acquainted with him through his family's attending our church,

and one day proposed to Mr. Bryant to go with me to see him. Seating

himself before the poet, Audubon quietly said, "You are our flower,"--a

very pretty compliment, I thought, from a man of the woods.

I happened to fall in with Mr. Audubon one day in the cars going to

Philadelphia, when he was setting out, I think, on his last great tour

across the American wilderness. He described to me his outfit, to be

assumed when he arrived at the point of departure, a suit of dressed

deerskin, his only apparel. In this he was to thread the forest and

swim the rivers; with his rifle, of course, and powder and shot; a

tin case to hold his drawing-paper and pencils, and a blanket. Meat,

the produce of the chase, was to be his only food, and the earth his

bed, for two or three months. I said, shrinking from such hardship, "I

could n't stand that."--"If you were to go with me," he replied, "I

would bring you out on the other side a new man." He broke down under

it, however, rather prematurely; for in that condition I saw him once

more,--his health and faculties shattered,--near the end of his life.

[99] But to return,--turning and returning upon one's self must be the

course of an autobiography, my health having a second time completely

failed, I determined again to go abroad; and to make the measure of

relief more complete, I determined to go for two years, and to take my

family with me. The sea was a horror to me, but beyond it lay pleasant

lands that I wanted to look upon once more, galleries of art by which

I wished to sit down and study at my leisure, and, above all, rest: I

wanted to be where no one could call on me to preach or lecture, to do

this or do that.

We sailed for Havre in October, 1841, passed the winter in Paris,

the summer following in Switzerland, the next winter in Italy, and,

returning through Germany, spent two months in England, and came home

in August, 1843.

While in Geneva I was induced for my health to make trial of the

"water-cure," and first to try what they call the "Arve bath." The

Campagne at Champel, where we were passing the summer, is washed for

half a mile by the Arve. In hot August days I walked slowly by the

river-bank, with cloak on, till a moderate perspiration was induced,

then jumped in,--and out as quick! for the river, though it had run

sixty miles from its source, seemed as cold as when it left the glacier

of the Arveiron at Chamouni. Experiencing no ill effect, however, I

determined to try the regular water-cure, and for this purpose, in

[100] our travel through Switzerland, stopped at Meyringen in the Vale

of Hasli. I was "packed,"-bundled up in bed blankets every morning at

daybreak, went through the consequent furnace of heat and drench of

perspiration for two or three hours,--then was taken by a servant on

his back, me and my wrappages, the whole bundle, and carried down to

the great bath, only 6 of Reaumur above ice (45 degrees Fahrenheit),

plunged in, got out again in no deliberate way, was pushed under a

shower-bath of the same glacier water, fought my way out of that, at

arm's end with the attendant, when he enveloped me in warm, dry sheets,

and made me comfortable in one minute. It was of no use, however. My

brain grew more nervous, the doctor agreed that it did not suit me, and

shortly I gave it up.

At Rome we were introduced with a small American party to the Pope,

Gregory XVI. It was just after the Carnival and just before Lent. The

old man expressed his pleasure that the people had enjoyed themselves

in Carnival, "But now," said he, "I suppose a great many of them will

find themselves out of health in Lent, and will want indulgences." I

could not help thinking how much that last was like a Puritan divine.

What a life is life in Rome!--not common, not like any other, but as

if the pressure of stupendous and crowding histories were upon every

day. A presence haunts you that is more than all you see. We Americans,

with some invited [101] guests, celebrated Washington's birthday by a

dinner. In a speech I said, "I was asked the other day, what struck

me most in Rome, and I answered,--To think that this is Rome!" Lucien

Bonaparte, who sat opposite me at table, bowed his head with emphasis,

as if he said, "That is true." He was entitled to know what great

historic memories are; and those of his family, criticise them as we

may,--and I am not one of their admirers,--do not, perhaps, fall below

much of the Roman imperial grandeur.

On coming to England from the Continent, among many things to admire,

there were two things we were especially thankful for,--comfort

and hospitality. We had not been in London half a day before I had

rented a furnished house, and we were established in it. That is,

the owner, occupying the basement, gave us the parlors above and

ample sleeping-rooms, and the use of her servants,-we defraying the

expense of our table,--for so much a month. We took possession of our

apartments an hour after we had engaged them, and had nothing to do but

order our dinner and walk out; and all this for less, I think, than it

would have cost us to live at a good boarding-house in Broadway.

We visited various parts of England,--Warwick, Kenilworth, Oxford,

Birmingham, and Liverpool, and made acquaintance with persons whom

to know was worth going far, and whom [102] to remember has been a

constant pleasure ever since.

Well, we came back in August, 1843, in the steamer "Hibernia." What

a joy to return home! We landed in Boston. The railroad across

Massachusetts had been completed during our absence, and brought us to

Sheffield in six or seven hours; it had always been a weary journey

before, of three days by coach, or a week with our own horse. A few

days' rest, and then six or eight hours more took us to New York, where

we found the water fountains opened; the Croton had been brought in

that summer. Did it not seem all very fit and festal to us? For we had

come home!

My health, however, was only partially reestablished, and the

recruiting which had got me for constant service in my church but three

years more. The winter of 1846-47 I passed in Washington, serving the

little church there. En the spring I returned to New York, struggled

on with my duties in the church for another year; in the spring of

1848 sold my house, and retired to the Sheffield home, continuing to

preach occasionally in New York for a number of months longer, when,

early in 1849, my connection with the Church of the Messiah was finally

dissolved. I would willingly have remained with it on condition of

discharging a partial service, with a colleague to assist me: it

was the only chance I saw [103] of continuing in my profession. The

congregation, at my instance, had sought for a colleague, both during

my absence in Europe and in the later years of my continuance with it,

but had failed,--there appearing to be some singular reluctance in our

young preachers to enter into that relation,--and there seemed nothing

for the church to do but to inaugurate a new ministration.

It was in this crisis of my worldly affairs, so trying to a clergyman

who is dependent on his salary, that I experienced the benefit of a

rule that early in life I prescribed to myself; and that was, always to

lay up for a future day some portion of my annual income. I insisted

upon it that, with as much foresight as the ant or the bee, I might

be allowed without question so to use the salary appointed to me as

to make some provision for the winter-day of life, or for the spring

that would come after, and might be to others bleak and cold and

desolate without it. So often have I witnessed this, that I am most

heartily thankful that, on leaving New York, I was not reduced to

utter destitution, and that with some moderate exertion I am able to

provide for our modest wants. At the same time I do not feel obliged to

conceal the conviction, and never did, that the service of religion in

our churches meets with no just remuneration. One may suffer martyrdom

and not complain; but I do not think one is bound to say that it is

a reasonable or pleasant thing. [104] Another thing I will be so

frank as to say on leaving New York, and that is, that it was a great

moral relief to me to lay down the burden of the parochial charge. I

regretted to leave New York; I could have wished to live and die among

the friends I had there; I should make it my plan now to spend my

winters there, if I could afford it: but that particular relation to

society,--no man, it seems to me, can heartily enter into it without

feeling it to weigh heavily upon him. Sympathy with affliction is the

trial-point of the clergyman's office. In the natural and ordinary

relations of life every man has enough of it. But to take into one's

heart, more or less, the personal and domestic sorrows of two or three

hundred families, is a burden which no man who has not borne it can

conceive of. I sometimes doubt whether it was ever meant that any man,

or at least any profession of men, should bear it; whether the general

ministrations of the pulpit to affliction should not suffice, leaving

the application to the hearer in this case as in other cases; whether

the clergyman's relations to distress and suffering should not be

like every other man's,--general with his acquaintance, intimate with

his friends; whether, if there were nothing conventional or customary

about this matter, most families would not prefer to be left to

themselves, without a professional call from their minister. Suppose

that there were no rule with regard to it; that the clergyman, like

every [105] other man, went where his feelings carried him, or his

relations warranted; that it was no more expected of him, as a matter

of course, to call upon a bereaved family, than of any other of their

acquaintance,--would not that be a better state of things? I am sure I

should prefer it, if I were a parishioner. When, indeed, the minister

of religion wishes to turn to wise account the suffering of sickness

or of bereavement, let him choose the proper time: reflection best

comes after; it is not in the midst of groans and agonies, of sobs and

lamentations, that deep religious impressions are usually made.

I have a suspicion withal, that there is something semi-barbaric in

these immediate and urgent ministrations to affliction, something of

the Indian or Oriental fashion, or something derived from the elder

time, when the priest was wise and the people rude. For ignorant

people, who have no resources nor reflections of their own, such

ministrations may be proper and needful now. I may be in the wrong

about all this. Perhaps I ought to suspect it. There is more that is

hereditary in us all, I suppose, than we know. My father never could

bear the sight of sickness or distress: it made him faint. There is a

firmness, doubtless, that is better than this; but I have it not. Very

likely I am wrong. My friend Putnam{8} lately tried to convince me of

it, in a conversation we had; maintaining that the [106] parochial

relation ought not to be, and need not be, that burden upon the mind

which I found it. And I really feel bound on such a point, rather than

myself, to trust him, one of the most finely balanced natures I ever

knew. Why, then, do I say all these things? Because, in giving an

account of myself, I suppose I ought to say and confess what a jumble

of pros and cons I am.

{FN 8: Rev. George Putnam, D. D., of Roxbury, Mass.--M. E. D.}

Heaven knows I have tried hard to keep right; and if I am not as

full as I can hold of one-sided and erratic opinions, I think it

some praise. . . . I do strive to keep in my mind a whole rounded

circle of truth and opinion. It would be pleasant to let every mental

tendency run its length; but I could not do so. It may be pride or

narrowness; but I must keep on some terms with myself. I cannot find my

understanding falling into contradiction with the judgments it formed

last month or last year, without suspecting not only that there was

something wrong then, but that there is something wrong now, to be

resisted. That "there is a mean in things" is held, I believe, to be

but a mean apothegm now-a-days; but I do not hold it to be such. All

my life I have endeavored to hold a balance against the swayings of my

mind to the one side and the other of every question. I suppose this

appears in my course, such as it has been, in religion, in politics, on

the subject of slavery, of peace, of temperance, etc. It may appear to

be dulness or tameness or time-serving or cowardice [107] or folly, but

I simply do not believe it to be either.

But to return: we were now once more in Sheffield, and I was without

employment,--a condition always most irksome to me. Hard work, I am

persuaded, is the highest pleasure in the world, and, from the day when

I was in college, vacations have always proved to me the most tedious

times in my life.

I determined, therefore, to pursue some study as far as I could, and my

subject,--the choice of years before,--was the philosophy of history

and humanity. While thus engaged, I received an invitation from Mr.

John A. Lowell, trustee of the Lowell Institute, to deliver one of its

annual popular courses of lectures in Boston. This immediately gave a

direction to my thoughts, and by the winter of 1850-51 I was prepared

to write the lectures, which I ventured to denominate, "Lectures on

the Problem of Human Destiny," and I gave them in the autumn of 1851.

My reason for adopting such a title I gave in the first lecture, and

I might add that, with my qualifications, I was ashamed to put at the

head of my humble work such great words as "Philosophy of History and

Humanity,"--the title of Herder's celebrated treatise. The truth was,

I had, or thought I had, something to say upon the philosophy of the

human condition,--upon the end for man, and upon the only way in which

it could be [108] achieved,--upon the terrible problem of sin and

suffering in this world,--and I tried to say it. I so far succeeded

with my audience in Boston, that, either from report of that, or from

the intrinsic interest of the subject, I was invited to repeat the

lectures in various parts of the country; and during the four or five

years following I repeated them fifteen times,--in New Bedford, New

York, Brooklyn, Washington, Baltimore, St. Louis, Louisville, Madison,

Cincinnati, Nashville, Sheffield, Worcester, Charleston, S. C., New

Orleans, and Savannah in part, and the second time also, I gave them,

by Mr. Lowell's request, in the Boston Institute. At the same time,

I was not idle as a preacher, having preached every Sunday in the

places where I lectured, besides serving the church in Washington two

long winters. I also wrote another course of lectures for the Lowell

Institute, on the "Education of the Human Race," and repeated it in

several places.

At the time that I was invited to Washington, I received, in February,

1851, a document from the Government, which took me so much by surprise

that I supposed it must be a mistake. It was no other than a commission

as chaplain in the Navy. I wrote to a gentleman in Washington, asking

him to make inquiry for me, and ascertain what it meant. He replied

that there was no mistake about it, and that it was intended for

me. I then concluded, as there was a Navy Yard in Washington, and

as the President, Mr.[109] Fillmore, attended the church to which I

was invited, that he intended by the appointment to help both the

church and me, and I accepted it. On going to Washington I found that

there was a chaplain already connected with the Navy Yard, and on his

retirement some months later, and my offering to perform any duties

required there, being answered that there was really nothing to be

done, I resigned the commission.

Life in Washington was not agreeable to me, and yet I felt a

singular attachment to the people there. This mixture of repulsion

and attraction I could not understand at the time, or rather,-as is

usually the case with our experience while passing,--did not try to;

but walking those streets two or three years later, when experience

had become history, I could read it. In London or Paris the presence

of the government is hardly felt; the action of public affairs is

merged and lost in the life of a great city; but in Washington it is

the one, all-absorbing business of the place. Now, whether it be pride

or sympathy, one does not enjoy a great movement of things going on

around him in which he has no part, and the thoughts and aims of a

retired and studious man, especially, sever him from the views and

interests of public men. But, on the other hand, this very pressure

of an all-surrounding public life brings private men closer together.

There they stand, while the tides of successive Administrations sweep

by them, and their relation be-[110] comes constantly more interesting

from the fluctuation of everything else. It is really curious to see

how the private and resident society of Washington breathes freer, and

prepares to enjoy itself when Congress is about to rise and leave it to

itself.

Among the remarkable persons with whom I became acquainted in

Washington, at this or a-former time, was John C. Calhoun. I had with

him three interviews of considerable length, and remember each of

them, the more distinctly from the remarkable habit he had of talking

Ton subjects,--not upon the general occurences of the day, but upon

some particular topic. The first two were at an earlier period than

that to which this part of my narrative creates; it was when he was

Vice-President of the United States, under the administration of John

Quincy Adams. I went to his room in the Capitol to present my letter of

introduction; it was just before the assembling of the Senate, and I

said, of course, that I would not intrude upon his time at that moment,

and was about to withdraw; but he kindly detained me, saying, "No: it

will >e twenty minutes before I go to the Senate; sit down." And then,

in two minutes, I found him talking upon a purely literary point,--I

am sure do not know how he got to it; but it was this, hat the first

or second book of every author, so le maintained, was always his best.

He cited a [111] number of instances in support of his position. I

do not remember what they were; but it occurred to me in reflecting

upon it afterwards, that, in purely literary composition, there were

some reasons why it might be true. An author writes his first books

with the greatest care; he naturally puts into them his best and most

original thoughts, which he cannot use again; and if he succeeds, and

gains reputation, he is liable to grow both careless and confident,--to

think that the things which people admire are his peculiarities, and

not his general merits, and so to fall into mannerism and repetition.

I remember Mrs. George Lee, of Boston, a sagacious woman, saying to

me one day, when I told her I was going to write a second sermon on a

certain subject,--she had praised the first,--"I have observed that

the second sermon, on any subject, is never so good as the first; even

Channing's are not."

Mr. Calhoun, on my leaving him, invited me to pass the evening with

him at his house in Georgetown. I went, expecting to meet company, but

found myself alone with him, and then the subject of conversation was

the advantage and necessity of an Opposition in Government. He was

himself then, of course, in the Opposition, and he was very candid: he

said he did not question the motives of the Administration, while he

felt bound to oppose it. I was struck with his candor,--a thing I did

not look for in a political [112] opponent,--but especially with what

he said about the benefit of an Opposition; both were rather new to me.

My third interview with him was at a later period, when his discourse

turned upon this question: What is the greatest thing that a man can

do? His answer was characteristic of the statesman. "It is," he said,

"to speak the true and saving word in a great national emergency.

For it implies," he continued, "the fullest knowledge of the past,

the largest comprehension of the present, and the clearest foresight

of the future." He might have added, to complete the idea, that this

word was sometimes to be spoken when it involved the greatest peril

to the position and prospects of the speaker. But how much moral

considerations were apt to be present to his mind, I do not know. He

was mostly known--so we of the North thought--as an impracticable

reasoner. Miss Martineau said, "He was like a cast-iron man on a

railroad."

I was introduced to Mr. Adams, but saw him little, and heard him less,

as I will relate. Mr. Reed, of Barnstable, introduced me,--"Father

Reed," as they used to call him, from his having been longer a member

of Congress than any other man in the House,--and I said to him, as we

were entering the White House, "Now tell Mr. Adams who I am and where

from; for I think he must be puzzled what to talk about, with so many

strangers coming to him." Well, I was intro-[113]duced accordingly, and

Mr. Reed retired. I was offered a seat, and took it. I was a young man,

and felt that it did not become me to open a conversation. And there

we sat, five minutes, with>tit a word being spoken by either of us! I

rose, took my leave, and went away, I don't know whether more angered

or astonished. I once, by the by, visited his father, old John Adams,

then lying in retirement at Quincy. Mr. Josiah Quincy took me to see

him. He was not silent, but talked, I remember, full ten minutes--for

ye did not interrupt him--about Machiavelli and in language so well

chosen that I thought it night have been printed.

But the most interesting person, as statesman, hat I saw in Washington,

was Thomas Corwin, of Ohio, commonly called Tom Corwin. This was a

later period.

Circumstances, or the chances of conversation, sometimes lead to

acquaintance and friendship, which years of ordinary intercourse fail

to bring about. It happened, the first time I saw Mr. Corwin, that some

observation I made upon political normality seemed to strike him as a

new thought; suppose it was a topic seldom touched upon in Washington

society. It led to a good deal of conversation, then and afterwards;

and I must say that a more high-principled and religiously minded

statesman I have never met with than Mr. Corwin.

When he was preparing to deliver his celebrated [114] speech in the

Senate against the war with Mexico, he told me what he was going to

say, and asked me if I thought he could say it and not be politically

ruined by it. I answered that I did not know; but that I would say it

if it did ruin me.

The day came for his speech, and I never saw the Senate Chamber so

densely packed as it was to hear him. He told me that he should not

speak; more than half an hour; but he did speak three hours, not only

against the Mexican war, but against the system of slavery, in the

bitterest language. His friends in Ohio told me, years after, that it

did ruin him. But for that, they said, he would have been President of

the United States.

Thackeray came to Washington while I was here. He gave his course of

lectures on "the English Humorists of the Eighteenth Century." His

style, especially in his earlier writings, had one quality which the

critics did not seem to notice; it was not conventional, but spun out

of the brain. With the power of thought to take hold of the mind, and

a rich, deep, melodius voice, he contrived, without one gesture, or my

apparent emotion in his delivery, to charm away an hour as pleasantly

as I have ever felt it in a lecture. What he told me of his way of

composing confirms me in my criticism on his style.-He did not dash his

pen on paper, like Walter Scott, and write off twenty pages without

stop-[115] ping, but, dictating to an amanuensis,--a plan which leaves

the brain to work undisturbed by the pen-labor,--dictating from his

chair, and often from his bed, he gave out sentence by sentence,

slowly, as they were moulded in his mind.

Thackeray was sensitive about public opinion; no writer, I imagine,

was ever otherwise. I remember, one morning, he was sitting in our

parlor, when letters from the mail came in. They were received with

some eagerness, of course, and he said, "You seem to be pleased to

have letters; I am not."--"No?" we said.--"No. I have had letters from

England this morning, and they tell me that 'Henry Esmond' is not

liked."

This led to some conversation on novels and novel-writing, and I

ventured to say: "How is it that not one of the English novelists

has ever drawn any high or adequate character of the clergyman?

Walter Scott never gave us anything beyond the respectable official.

Goldsmith's Dr. Primrose is a good man, the best we have in your

English fiction, but odd and amusing rather than otherwise. Then

Dickens has given us Chadband and Stiggins, and you Charles Honeyman.

Can you not conceive," I went on to say, "that a man, without any

chance of worldly profit, for a bare stipend, giving his life to

promote what you must know are the highest interests of mankind, is

engaged in a noble calling, worthy of being nobly described? Or have

you no examples in England to draw from?" [116] This last sentence

touched him, and I meant it should.

With considerable excitement he said, "I delivered a lecture the other

evening in your church in New York, for the Employment Society; would

you let me read to you a passage from it?" Of course I said I should

be very glad to hear it, and added, "I thank you for doing that."--"I

don't know why you should thank me," he said; "it cost me but an hour's

reading, and I got $1,500 for them. I thought I was the party obliged.

But I did tell them they should have a dozen shirts made up for me,

and they did it." He then went and brought his lecture, and read the

passage, which told of a curate's taking him to visit a poor family in

London, where he witnessed a scene of distress and of disinterestedness

very striking and beautiful to see. It was a very touching description,

and Thackeray nearly broke sown in reading it.

A part of the winter of 1856-57 I passed with my family at Charleston,

S. C. I went to preach in Dr. Gilman's pulpit, and to lecture. I had

been there the spring before, and made very agreeable acquaintance

with the people. My reception, both in public and in private, was as

kindly and hospitable as I could desire. I was much interested in

society there, and strongly attached to it. But in August following,

in an address under our Old Elm-tree in Sheffield,[117] I made some

observations upon the threatened extension of the slave-system, that

dashed nearly all my agreeable relations with Charleston. I am not a

person to regard such a breach with indifference: it pained me deeply.

My only comfort was, that what I said was honestly said; that no

honorable man can desire to be respected or loved through ignorance

of his character or opinions; and that the ground then recently taken

at the South--that the institution of human slavery is intrinsically

right, just, and good--seems to me to involve such a wrong to humanity,

such evil to the South, and such peril to the Union of the States, that

it was a proper occasion for speaking earnestly and decidedly.

I was altogether unprepared for the treatment I received. One year

before, I had been in the great Charleston Club, when the question of

the perpetuity of the slave-system was discussed; when, indeed, an

elaborate essay was read by one of the members, in which the ground was

taken, that the dark cloud would sink away to the southwest, to Central

America perhaps, from whence the slave population would find an exodus

across the water to Africa; and of twenty members present, seventeen

agreed with the essayist.

And I take occasion here to say, that this position of the seventeen

was mainly satisfactory to me. I would, indeed, have had the South go

farther. I would have had it take in hand the business of putting an

end to slavery, by laws [118] providing for its gradual abolition, and

by preparing the slaves for it; but I did not believe then, and do not

now,{9} that immediate emancipation was theoretically the best plan.

It was forced upon us by the exigencies of the war. And, independently

of that, such was the infatuation of the Southern mind on the subject

that there seemed to be no prospect of its ever being brought to

take that view of it which was prevailing through the civilized and

Christian world. But if it had taken that view, and had gone about the

business of preparing for emancipation, I think the general public

sentiment would have been satisfied; and I believe the result would

have been better for the slaves, and better for the country. To be

sure, things are working better perhaps now than could have been

expected, and it may turn out that instant emancipation was the best

thing. But the results of great social changes do not immediately

reveal themselves. We are feeling, for instance, the pressure and peril

of the free system in government more than we did fifty years ago, and

may have to feel and fear it more than we do now. The freedmen are, at

present, upon their good behavior, and are acting under the influence

of a previous condition. But when I look to the future, and see them

rising to wealth, culture, and refinement, and, as human beings,

entitled to consideration as much as any other, [119] and yet forbidden

intermarriage with the whites, as they should be for physiological

reasons,-when, in fine, they see that they have not any fair and just

position in American society and government,--they may be sorry that

they were not gradually emancipated, and colonized to their own native

country; and for ourselves-for our own country--the seeds may be

sowing, in the dark bosom of the future, which may spring up in civil

wars more terrible than ever were seen before.

{FN 9: The date of this passage must be in or about 1868.-M. E.

D.}

Such speculations and opinions, I am sensible, would meet with no

favor among us now. The espousal of the slave-man's cause among our

Northern people is so humane and hearty that they can stop nowhere,

for any consideration of expediency, in doing him justice, after

all his wrongs; and I honor their feeling, go to what lengths it

will. Nevertheless, I put down these my thoughts, for my children to

understand, regard them as they may.

But what it is in my style or manner of writing that has called forth

such a hard feeling towards me, from extremists both North and South,

upon this slavery question, I cannot understand. In every instance

in which I have spoken of it, I have been drawn out by a sense of

duty,-there certainly was no pleasure in it. I have never assailed the

motives of any man or party; I have spoken in no feeling of unkindness

to anybody; there can have been no bitterness in my speech. [120] And

yet something, I suppose, there must have been in my way of expressing

myself, to offend. It may have been a fault, it may have been a merit

for aught I know; for truly I do not know what it was.

After all, how little does any man know of his own personality,--of

his personality in action? He may study himself; he may find out what

his faculties, what his traits of character are, in the abstract as it

were; but what they are in action, in movement,--how they appear to

others,--he cannot know. The eye that looks around upon a landscape

sees everything but itself. It is just as a man may look in the glass

and see himself there every day; but he sees only the framework, only

the "still life" in his face; he does not see it in the free play of

expression,--in the strong workings of thought and feeling. I was one

day sitting with Robert Walsh in Paris, and there was a large mirror

behind him. Suddenly he said, "Ah, what a vain fellow you are!"-"How

so?" I asked.--"Why," said he, "you are not looking at me as you talk,

but you are looking at yourself in the glass."--"It is a fact!" I

exclaimed, "I never saw myself talking before,--never saw the play of

my own features in conversation." Had the mind a glass thus to look in,

it would see things, see wonders, it knows nothing of now. It might see

worse things, it might see better things, than it expected. And yet

I have been endeavoring in these pages [121] to give some account of

myself, while, after all, I am obliged to say that it is little more

than a post mortem examination. If I had been dealing with the living

subject, I suppose I could not have dealt so freely with myself. The

last thing which I ever thought of doing is this which I have now done.

Autobiographies are often pleasant reading; but I confess that I have

always had a kind of prejudice against them. They have seemed to me to

imply something of vanity, or a want of dignified reserve. The apology

lies, perhaps, in the writer's ignorance, after all, of his own and

very self. He has only told the story of a life. He has not come much

nearer to himself than statistics come to the life of a people.

All that I know is, that I have lived a life mainly happy in its

experience, not merely according to the average, not merely as things

go in this world, but far more than that; which I should be willing

to live again for the happiness that has blessed it, yet more for the

interests which have animated it, and which has always been growing

happier from the beginning. I have lived a life mainly fortunate in

its circumstances both of early nurture and active pursuit; marred by

no vice,--I do not remember even ever to have told a lie,--stained by

no dishonor; laborious, but enjoying labor, especially in the sphere

to which my life has been devoted; suffering from no pressing want,

though moderate in means, and successful in every way, as much as I

had any [122] right or reason to expect. I have been happy (the word

is weak to express it) in my domestic relations, happy in the dearest

and holiest friendships, and happy in the respect of society. And I

have had a happiness (I dread the appearance of profession in saying

it) in things divinest, in religion, in God,-in associating with him

all the beauty of nature and the blessedness of life, beyond all

other possible joy. And, therefore, notwithstanding all that I have

suffered, notwithstanding all the pain and weariness and anxiety and

sorrow that necessarily enter into life, and the inward errings that

are worse than all, I would end my record with a devout thanksgiving

to the great Author of my being. For more and more am I unwilling to

make my gratitude to him what is commonly called "a thanksgiving for

mercies,"--for any benefits or blessings that are peculiar to myself,

or my friends, or indeed to any man. Instead of this, I would have it

to be gratitude for all that belongs to my life and being,--for joy and

sorrow, for health and sickness, for success and disappointment, for

virtue and for temptation, for life and death; because I believe that

all is meant for good.

Something of what I here say seems to require another word or two

to be added, and perhaps it is not unmeet for me to subjoin, as the

conclusion of the whole matter, my theory and view and summing up of

what life is; for on it, to my apprehension, the virtue and happiness

of life [123] mainly repose. It revealed itself dimly in my earlier, it

has become clearer to me in my later, years; and the best legacy, as I

conceive, that I could leave to my children would be this view of life.

I know that we are not, all the while, thinking of any theory of life.

So neither are we all the while thinking of the laws of nature; the

attraction of gravitation, for instance. But unless there were some

ultimate reference to laws, both material and moral, our minds would

lose their balance and security. If I believed that the hill by my

side, or the house I live in, were liable any moment to be unseated and

hurled through the air by centrifugal force, I should be ill at ease.

And if I believed that the world was made by a malignant Power, or that

the fortunes of men were the sport of a doubtful conflict between good

and evil deities or principles, my life, like that of the ancients,

would be filled with superstitions and painful fears. The foundation of

all rational human tranquillity, cheerfulness, and courage, whether we

are distinctly conscious of it or not, lies in the ultimate conviction,

that God is good,--that his providence, his order of things in the

world, is good; and theology, in the largest sense of the term, is as

vital to us as the air we breathe.

If, then, I thought that this world were a castoff, or a wrecked and

ruined, world; if I thought that the human generations had come out

from the dark eclipse of some pre-existent state, or [124] from the

dark shadow of Adam's fall, broken, blighted, accursed, propense

to all evil, and disabled for all good; and if, in consequence, I

believed that unnumbered millions of ignorant heathens, and thousands

around me,--children but a day old in their conscious moral probation,

and men, untaught, nay, ill-taught, misled and blind,--were doomed,

as the result of this life-experiment, to intense, to unending, to

infinite pain and anguish,--most certainly I should be miserable in

such a state, and nothing could make life tolerable to me. Most of all

should I detest myself, if the idea that I was to escape that doom

could assuage and soothe in my breast the bitter pain of all generous

humanity and sympathy for the woes and horrors of such a widespread and

overwhelming catastrophe.

What, then, do I say and think? I say, and I maintain, that the

constitution of the world is good, and that the constitution of human

nature is good; that the laws of nature and the laws of life are

ordained for good. I believe that man was made and destined by his

Creator ultimately to be an adoring, holy, and happy being; that his

spiritual and physical constitution was designed to lead to that end;

but that end, it is manifest from the very nature of the case, can be

attained only by a free struggle; and this free struggle, with its

mingled success and failure, is the very story of the world. A sublime

story it is, therefore. The life of men and nations has not been [125]

a floundering on through useless disorder and confusion, trial and

strife, war and bloodshed; but it has been a struggling onward to an

end.

This, I believe, has been the story of the world from the beginning.

Before the Christian, before the Hebrew, system appeared, there was

religion, worship, faith, morality, in the world, and however erring,

yet always improving from age to age. Those systems are great steps in

the human progress; but they are not the only steps. Moses is venerable

to me. The name of Jesus is "above every name;" but my reverence

for him does not require me to lose all interest in Confucius and

Zoroaster, in Socrates and Plato.

In short, the world is a school; men are pupils in this school; God

is its builder and ordainer. And he has raised up for its instruction

sages and seers, teachers and guides; ay, martyred lives, and

sacrificial toils and tears and blood, have been poured out for

it. The greatest teaching, the greatest life, the most affecting,

heart-regenerating sacrifice, was that of the Christ. From him I have

a clearer guidance, and a more encouraging reliance upon the help and

mercy of God, than from all else. I do not say the only reliance, but

the greatest.

This school of life I regard as the infant-school of eternity. The

pupils, I believe, will go on forever learning. There is solemn

retribution in this system,--the future must forever answer for the

past; I would not have it otherwise. I must fight [126] the battle,

if I would win the prize; and for all failure, for all cowardice, for

all turning aside after ease and indulgence in preference to virtue

and sanctity, I must suffer; I would not have it otherwise. There is

help divine offered to me, there is encouragement wise and gracious; I

welcome it. There is a blessed hereafter opened to prayer and penitence

and faith; I lift my hopes to that immortal life. This view of the

system of things spreads for me a new light over the heavens and the

earth. It is a foundation of peace and strength and happiness more to

be valued, in my account, than the title-deed of all the world.

[127] LETTERS.

THE foregoing pages, selected from many written at intervals between

1857 and 1870, tell nearly all of their writer's story which it can be

of interest to the public to know; and although I have been tempted

here and there to add some explanatory remarks, I have thought it best

on the whole to leave them in their original and sometimes abrupt

simplicity. The author did not intend them for publication, but for

his family alone; and in sharing a part with a larger audience than he

contemplated, we count upon a measure of that responsive sympathy with

which we ourselves read frequently between the Lines, and enter into

his meaning without many words.

But there is one point I cannot leave untouched. There is one subject

on which some of those who nevertheless honor him have scarcely

understood his position.

Twenty-five years ago slavery was a question upon which feeling was

not only strong, but roused, stung, and goaded to a height of passion

[128] where all argument was swept away by the common emotion as

futile, if not base. My father, thinking the system hateful in itself

and productive of nearly unmingled evil, held nevertheless that, like

all great and established wrongs, it must be met with wise and patient

counsel; and that in the highest interest of the slave, of the white

race, of the country, and of constitutional liberty, its abolition

must be gradual. To the uncompromising Abolitionists such views were

intolerable; and by some of those who demanded immediate emancipation,

even at the cost of the Union and all that its destruction involved,

it was said that he was influenced by a mean spirit of expediency and

a base truckling to the rank and wealth which sustained this insult to

humanity.

They little knew him. The man who at twenty-five had torn himself from

the associations and friendships of his youth, and, moved solely by

love of truth, had imperilled all his worldly hopes by joining himself

to a small religious body, despised and hated as heretics by most of

those whom he had been trained to love and respect, was not the man

at fifty to blanch from the expression of any honest conviction; and,

to sum up all in one word, he held his views upon this subject, as

upon all others, bravely and honestly, and stated them clearly and

positively, when he felt it his duty to speak, although evasion or

silence would have been the more comfortable alternative. "I doubt,"

says Mr. [129]Chadwick,{10} "if Garrison or Parker had a keener

sense than his of the enormity of human slavery. Before the first

Abolitionist Society had been organized, he was one of the organizers

of a committee for the discussion and advancement of emancipation. I

have read all of his principal writings upon slavery, and it would be

hard to find more terrible indictments of its wickedness. He stated its

defence in terms that Foote and Yancey might have made their own, only

to sweep it all away with the blazing ubiquity that the negro was a man

and an immortal soul. Yet when the miserable days of fugitive-slave

rendition were upon us, he was with Gannett in the sad conviction that

the law must be obeyed. We could not see it then; but we can see to-day

that it was possible for men as good and true as any men alive to take

this stand. And nothing else brings out the nobleness of Dewey into

such bold relief as the fact, that the immeasurable torrent of abuse

that greeted his expressed opinion did not in any least degree avail

to make him one of the pro-slavery faction. The concession of 1850 was

one which he would not have made, and it must be the last. Welcome to

him the iron flail of war, whose tribulation saved the immortal wheat

of justice and purged away the chaff of wrong to perish in unquenchable

fire!"

{FN 10: The Rev. John W. Chadwick, of Brooklyn, N. Y., In a

sermon preached after Dr. Dewey's death.}

His feelings retained their early sensitiveness [130] in a somewhat

remarkable degree. In a letter written when he was near seventy he

says, "I do believe there never was a man into whose manhood and

later life so much of his foolish boyhood flowed as into mine. I am

as anxious to go home, I shall be all the way to-morrow as eager and

restless, and all the while thinking of the end of my journey, as if

I were a boy going from school, or a young lover six weeks after his

wedding-day. Shall I ever learn to be an old man?"

But it was this very simplicity and tenderness that gave such a charm

to his personal intercourse. His emotions, like his thoughts, had a

plain directness about them which assured you of their honesty. With a

profound love of justice, he had an eminently judicial mind, and could

not be content without viewing a subject from every side, and casting

light upon all its points. The light was simple sunshine, untinged by

artificial mixtures; the views were direct and straightforward, with

no subtle slants of odd or recondite position; and in his feelings,

also, there was the same large and natural simplicity. You felt

the ground-swell of humanity in them, and it was this breadth and

genuineness which laid the foundation of his power as a preacher,

making him strike unerringly those master chords that are common and

universal in every audience. Gifts of oratory he had, both natural and

acquired,--a full, melodious voice, so sympathetic in modulation and so

attuned to [131] reverence that I have heard more than one person say

that his first few words in the pulpit did more towards lifting them to

a truly religious frame of mind than the whole service from any other

lips,--a fine dramatic power, enough to have given him distinction

as an actor, had that been the profession of his choice,--a striking

dignity of presence, and an easy and appropriate gesticulation. But

these, as well as his strong common sense, that balance-wheel of

character, were brought into the service of his earnest convictions.

What he had to say, he put into the simplest form; and if his love of

art and beauty, and his imaginative faculty, gave wealth and ornament

to his style, he never sacrificed a particle of direct force for any

rhetorical advantage. His function in life--he felt it to his inmost

soul--was to present to human hearts and minds the essential verities

of their existence in such a manner that they could not choose but

believe in them. His strength was in his reverent perception of the

majesty of Right as accordant with the Divine and Eternal Will; his

power over men was in the sublimity of his appeal to an answering faith

in themselves.

He was greatest as a preacher, and it is as a preacher that he will be

best remembered by the public. The printed page, though far inferior to

the fervid eloquence of the same words when spoken, will corroborate

by its beauty, its pathos, and its logical force, the traditions that

still linger [132] of his deep impressiveness in the pulpit. In making

the following selections from his letters, I have been influenced by

the desire to let them show him in his daily and familiar life, with

the easy gayety and love of humor which was as natural to him as the

deep and solemn meditations which absorbed the larger part of his mind.

They are very far from elaborate compositions, being rather relaxations

from labor, and he thought very slightly of them himself; yet I think

they will present the real man as nothing but such careless and

conversational writing can.

No letters of his boyhood have been preserved, and very few of his

youth. This, to Dr. Channing, was probably written at Plymouth, while

there on an exchange of pulpits, soon after his ordination at New

Bedford:--

To Rev. William Ellery Charming, D.D.

PLYMOUTH, Dec. 27, 1823.

DEAR SIR,--I was scarcely disappointed at your not coming to my

ordination, and indeed I have felt all along that, if you could not

preach, I had much rather see you at a more quiet and leisurely time.

I thank you for the hope you have given me of this in the suggestion

you made to Mr. Tuckerman. When the warm season comes, I pray you to

give Mrs. Dewey and me the pleasure of trying what we can do to promote

your comfort and health, and of enjoying your society for a week.

[133] Our ordination was indeed very pleasant, and our prospects are

becoming every day more encouraging. The services of that occasion were

attended with the most gratifying and useful impression. Our friend,

Mr. Tuckerman, preached more powerfully, and produced a neater effect,

than I had supposed he ever did. I must remind you, however, that his

sermon, like every good sermon, had its day when it was delivered. We

cannot print the pathos, nor you read the fervor, with which it was

spoken.

I have had no opportunity to express to you the very peculiar and high

gratification with which I have received the late expression of the

liberality and kindness of your society, nor can it be necessary. I

cannot fail to add, however, that the pleasure is greatly enhanced by

the knowledge that I owe the occasion of it to your suggestion.

I hope to visit Boston this winter, or early in the spring. I often

feel as if I had a burden of questions which I wish to propose to you

for conversation. The want of this resource and satisfaction is one of

the principal reasons that make me regret my distance from Boston. I

shall always remember the weeks I spent with you, two years ago, with

more interest than I shall ever feel it proper to express to you. It is

one of my most joyful hopes of heaven, that such intercourse shall be

renewed, and exalted and perpetuated forever.

To the Same.

NEW BEDFORD, Sept. 21, 1824.

DEAR SIR,--I thank you for your letter and invitation [See p. 50] . . .

. The result of your going to Boston is what I [134] feared, and it

seems too nearly settled that nothing will give you health, but a

different mind, or a different mode of life.

Quintilian advises the orator to retire before he is spent, and says

that he can still advance the object of his more active and laborious

pursuits by conversing, by publishing, and by teaching others, youths,

to follow in his steps. I do not quote this advice to recommend it, if

it were proper for me to recommend anything. But I have often revolved

the courses that might preserve your life, and make it at once happy

to yourself and useful to us, for many years to come. I cannot admit

any plan that would dismiss you altogether from the pulpit, nor do I

believe that any such could favor your happiness or your health. But

could you not limit yourself to preaching, say ten times in a year

(provided one of them be in New Bedford)? and will you permit me to

ask, nor question my modesty in doing so, if you could not spend a part

of the year in a leisurely preparation of something for the press? I

fear that your MSS., and I mean your sermons now, would suffer by any

other revisal and publication than your own. With regard to the last

suggestion of Quintilian's, I have supposed that it has been fairly

before you; but perhaps I have already said more than becomes me. If

so, I am confident at least that I deserve your pardon for my good

intentions; and with these, I am, dear sir, most truly as well as

Respectfully your friend,