There are some passages in an unpublished sermon, preached by my father
at Church Green, in 1858, which I will quote presently, as illustrative
of the same tone of thought shown in these letters. His clinging to
the miraculous element in the life of Jesus, while refusing to base
any positive authority upon it, is equally characteristic of him,
arising from the caution, at once reverent and intellectual, which
made him extremely slow to remove any belief, consecrated by time
and affection, till it was proved false and dangerous, and from his
thorough conviction that every man stands or falls by so much of the
Infinite Light and Love as he is able to receive directly into his
being. He was conservative by [297] feeling, and radical by thought,
and the two wrought in him a grand charity of judgment, far above what
is ordinarily called toleration.
These are the extracts referred to:
"Society as truly as nature, nay, as truly as the holy church, is a
grand organism for human culture. I say emphatically,--as truly as the
holy church; for we are prone to take a narrow view of man's spiritual
growth, and to imagine that there is nothing to help it, out of the
pale of Christianity. We make a sectarism of our Christian system, even
as the Jews did of the Hebrew, though ours was designed to break down
all such narrow bounds; so that I should not wonder if some one said
to me,--Are you preaching the Christian religion when you thus speak
of nature and society?' And I answer, 'No; I am speaking of a religion
elder than the Christian.' . . .
"There was a righteousness, then, before and beside the Christian. Am I
to be told that Socrates and Plato, and Marcus Antoninus and Boethius,
had no right culture, no religion, no rectitude? and they were cast
upon the bosom of nature and of society for their instruction, and of
that light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.'"
To his Daughter Mary.
ST. DAVID'S, Sept. 20, 1867.
. . . THINK of my having read the whole of Voltaire's "Henriade" last
week! But think especially of eminent French critics, and Marmontel
among them (in the preface), praising it to the stars, saying that some
of the [298] passages are superior to Homer and Virgil! However, it is
really better than I expected, and I read on, partly from curiosity and
partly for the history. The French would have been very glad to find
it an epic worthy of the name, for they have n't one. Voltaire frankly
confesses that the French have not a genius for great poetry,--too much
in love, he says, with exactness and elegance.
I have--read--through--"Very Hard Cash;" and very hard it is to read.
Reade has some pretty remarkable powers,--powers of description and of
characterization; but the moment he touches the social relations, and
should be dramatic, he is struck with total incapacity. Indeed, what
one novelist has been perfect in dialogue, making each person say just
what he should and nothing else, but glorious Sir Walter?
To the Same.
SHEFFIELD, Sept. 20, 1867.
DEAR MARY,--"Live and learn." Next time, if it ever come, I shall put
up peaches in a little box by themselves. But the fact is, peaches
can't travel, unless they are plucked so early as nearly to spoil them
of all their "deliciarunz,"--which we are enjoying in those we eat
here. And Bryant with us,--fruity fellow that he is!--I am glad we have
some good fruit to give him. Yesterday we had a very good cantelope,
and pears are on hand all the while. I am sorry that I could not get
the pears to you just in eating condition, and the Hurlbut apples too;
but they'll all come right.
Yes, fruity,--that 's what Bryant is; but rather of the quality of
dried fruits,--not juicy, still less gushing, but [299] with a good
deal of concentrated essence in him (rather "frosty, but kindly "),
exuding often in little bits of poetical quotations, fitly brought in
from everywhere, and of which there seems to be no end in his memory.
The woods are beginning to show lovely bits of color, but the great
burden of leaves remains untouched. Bryant and I walked out to the
Pine Grove, and on to Sugar-Maple Hill. Your mother admires him for
his much walking; but I insist that he is possessed and driven about
by a demon. . . . By the bye, just keep that "article" for me; I have
no other copy. Bryant commended it, and said he thought the argument
against the Incomprehensible's being totally unintelligible, was new.
To his Daughter, Mrs. C.
ST. DAVID'S, July 22, 1868.
DEAR KATE,--I am going to have no more to do with the weather. You
need n't expostulate with me. It 's no use talking. My mind is made
up. You may tell M. so. It will be hardest for her to believe it. She
has partaken with me in that infirmity of noble minds,--a desire to
look through the haze of this mundane atmospheric environment, and
predict the future. But, alas I there is an infirmity of vision; we see
through a glass darkly. We can't see through a millstone. The firmament
has been very like that, for some days,--all compact with clouds. We
thought something was grinding for us. "Now it is coming!" we said last
evening. But no. It was no go,--or no come, rather. And this morning,
at the breakfast table, sitting up [300] there, clothed, and in my
right mind, I said to my sister, "I am not a-going to predict about the
weather any more!"
Ask my dear M., pray her, to try to come up to the height of that great
resolution. I know the difficulty,-the strain to which it will put all
her faculties; but ask her, implore her, to try.
To his Daughters, then living in London Terrace, New York.
1868.
ST. DAVID'S sends a challenge to all the Terrace birds.
Show us a bird that sings in the night. We have a nightingale,--a
bird that has sung, for two evenings past, between ten and twelve, as
gayly as the nightingales of Champel. It is the cat-bird, the same
that comes flying and pecking at our windows. What has come over the
little creature? I suppose the season of nest-building and incubation
is one of great excitement,--the bird's honeymoon. And then, the full
moon shining down, and the nights warm as summer, and thoughts of the
nice new house and the pretty eggs, and the chicks that are coming,--it
could not contain itself.
Well, as I sit in my porch and look at the birds, they seem to me
a revelation, as beautiful, if not so profound, as the Apocalypse.
What but Goodness could have made a creature at once so beautiful and
so happy? Mansel and Spencer may talk about the incomprehensibility
of the First Cause; I say, here is manifestation. The little Turdus
Felivox,--oho! ye ignorant children, that is he of the cat,--it sits
on the bough, ten feet from me, and sings and trills and whistles, and
sends [301] out little jets of music, little voluntaries, as if it were
freely and irrepressibly singing a lovely hymn.
This morning there is the slightest little drizzle, a mere tentative
experimenting towards rain, no more,-I keep to facts. Well, all the
township is saying, no doubt, "Now it is coming!" Catch me a-doing so!
I was left to say, in an unguarded moment, "If C. had mowed his meadow
two or three days ago, he would have got it all in dry." I feel a
little guilty. I am afraid that incautious observation was the nuance
of the shadow of an intimation of an opinion, bearing the faintest
adumbration of a prediction: I am sorry for it. I am very sorry. I
ought to have kept my lips shut. I ought to have put sealing-wax upon
them the moment I got up. I won't,--I won't speak one word again.
Yours, wet or dry,