The ancient classical writers of the world are thought to have shown but
little sensibility to that natural beauty with which the earth has been
clothed, as with a magnificent garment, by her Almighty Creator. Those
of their works which have been preserved to us are declared by critics
rarely to bear evidence of much depth of feeling of this kind. The
German scholars are understood to have been the first to broach this
opinion—the first to point out the fact, and to comment on what appears
a singular inconsistency.
“If we bear in mind,” says Schiller, “the beautiful scenery with which
the Greeks were surrounded, and remember the opportunities possessed by
a people living in so genial a climate, of entering into the free
enjoyment of the contemplation of nature, and observe how conformable
were their mode of thought, the bent of their imaginations, and the
habits of their lives to the simplicity of nature, which was so
faithfully reflected in their poetic works, we can not fail to remark
with surprise how few traces are to be met among them of the sentimental
interest with which we in modern times attach ourselves to the
individual characteristics of natural scenery. The Greek poet is
certainly in the highest degree correct, faithful, and circumstantial in
his descriptions of nature, but his heart has more share in his words
than if he were treating of a garment, a shield, or a suit of armor.
Nature seems to interest his understanding more than his moral
perceptions; he does not cling to her charms with the fervor and the
plaintive passion of the poet of modern times.”
This passage of Schiller, quoted in “Cosmos,” is supported by similar
observations of M. de Humboldt himself: “Specific descriptions of nature
occur only as accessories, for in Grecian art all things are centered in
the sphere of human life.” And, again: “The description of nature in its
manifold richness of form, as a distinct branch of poetic literature,
was wholly unknown to the Greeks. The landscape appears among them
merely as the background of the picture, of which human figures
constitute the main subject.” Touches of description must of course
occasionally occur, and whenever these are found, the harmony of Grecian
taste gives them the highest beauty possible. The many noble similes and
comparisons scattered through the greater poems, form admirable detached
pictures; but they occupy the attention very briefly; a rapid glance is
thrown upon the hill, the river, or the wood, rather for the purpose of
affording greater relief to the figures in the foreground than of
enduing the sketch of these features of the earth with any charm or
importance in itself. But it is quite impossible to believe for a moment
that the Greeks, so fully alive to the spirit of beauty in all its other
forms, should have been blind to its effects in the natural world. Other
ways of accounting for the apparent inconsistency must be sought for,
and the peculiar character and position of the people would seem to
suggest these. It was quite consistent with the condition of the world
at that early period, and of the Greeks in particular, that nature and
art should not then hold the same relative places which they occupy
to-day. Art was still in its youth, and of more importance to them than
it is to us. Nature, with all her untold wealth, her unharvested
magnificence, lay before them, close at hand, always within reach; there
was no fear that she should fail them. But human Art was in its earliest
stages of culture; every successive step was watched with most lively
interest; every progressive movement became of great importance, while
the genius of the Greeks particularly led them to feel extreme delight
in every achievement of the kind. In fact, all their highest enjoyments
flowed from this source, and into
this sphere they threw themselves with their whole soul. Whatever
susceptibility to the grandeur and beauty of the inanimate creation was
felt among them, sought therefore rather to express itself in forms more
positive than the voice of song. What, for instance, was the most noble
of their temples but the image in Dorian marble of some grand primeval
grove, whose gray, columnar trunks they found reflected in the waves of
the Ægean Sea? What were the vase, and the vine wreathed about its lip,
but the repetition of living forms of fruits and foliage growing in the
vale of Tempe, or at the foot of Hymettus? The Greek mind thus beheld
the whole external world chiefly through the medium of human Art. An
interesting and very striking instance of this peculiarity occurs in the
Iliad; no natural object which has a place in the poem—neither the sea
nor the skies, neither the streams nor the mountains, all glowing as
these were with the purple light of a Grecian atmosphere—could draw from
Homer a description filling half the space allotted by him to the shield
of Achilles; nay, more, observe that where rural life and its
accessories appear the most distinctly in his verse, it is not the
reality which he shows us; we do not ourselves tread the brown soil of
the freshly-tilled fallow; we do not pass along the one narrow path in
the vineyard, amid the purple clusters, but we are called upon to behold
these objects—“sight to be admired of all!”—as they lie curiously graven
by the hand of Vulcan on the bronze buckler of the hero, where he
* * * “With devices multiform, the disk
Capacious charged, toiling with skill divine.”[1]
Their very religion was but a work of art, a brilliant web of the human
imagination, into which, as on the metal of Vulcan, their poets had
wrought
“Borders beauteous, dazzling bright,”
where Olympic deities passed to and fro, with grace and spirit
unequaled, but moving ever by the springs of the most common
of human passions. All the inanimate objects of the visible creation had
their allotted places in this gorgeous, imaginative tissue, though still
appearing under associations purely human. They had, in short, no
conceptions of nature independent of man; to them the whole world was
but the shield of Achilles.
With the same mythology, the same philosophy as the Greeks, the Romans
are admitted to have been essentially plagiarists. They saw the earth,
in this sense, with the eyes of the Greeks. Their literature has even
been accused of a greater dearth of poetical observation, as regards the
natural world, than that of their predecessors. The practical realities
of life engrossed their attention more exclusively. A colossal
selfishness was their striking national characteristic—a characteristic
which was alike the cause, first, of their political prosperity, and
later of their downfall. Rome was their deity; to her daily needs, or
interests, or pleasures, all was sacrificed; they cared little for the
mountains, and forests, and streams of the earth, provided all the
wealth and magnificence of these were brought over Roman ways to swell
the triumph of the Forum. It has been remarked that Cæsar could pass the
Alps, then comparatively an unknown region, without one allusion to
their sublime character. Still, a body of men like the great Latin
writers could not, of course, exist devoid of susceptibility to the
beauty of the inanimate world, and many passages may be drawn from their
poems bearing witness to this fact. Although, says M. de Humboldt, there
is no individual rural portraiture in the Æneid, yet “a deep and
intimate comprehension of nature is depicted in soft colors. Where, for
instance, has the gentle play of the waves, or the stillness of night,
been more happily described?” The modern reader, however, is still left
to wonder that poets so great should not have delighted more frequently
in enlarging upon similar topics, and that even in many of their elegiac
works social life should so exclusively fill up the space.[2] We
should have rather supposed that when the earth stood in her primitive
freshness, in the morning of her existence, her wealth of beauty as yet
unsung, that the works of the first great poets would have been filled
with the simple reflection of her natural glory. But, as we have seen,
such was not the case with the writers of Greece or of Rome; and, as we
have already ventured to intimate, it would appear that the great
intellectual activity of those races, connected with the period of time
filled by them, where so wide a field opened in every direction, became
in itself a prominent cause of this peculiar deficiency of their
literature. Whatever admiration they felt for nature expressed itself in
positive forms of art, or in an imaginative system of mythology, rather
than in song.
But something of a different spirit appears to have actuated the old
Asiatic nations. The ancient Indian races, for instance, were more
contemplative in character, and more vivid impressions of natural
objects are revealed in their writings. The Sanscrit Hymns, and the
heroic poems of the same language, are said to contain fine descriptive
passages. “The main subject of these writings,” says M. de Humboldt,
speaking of the Sanscrit Vedas, “are the veneration and praise of
Nature.” A poem, called “The Seasons”—and one starts at the familiar
name—with another work, called “The Messenger of the Clouds,” are full,
we are told, of the same spirit; they were written by Kalidasa, a
cotemporary of Virgil and Horace. It would have given us pleasure to
offer the reader a few fragments from writings so ancient and so
interesting; one would have liked to compare a passage from the Sanscrit
Seasons with those so celebrated and so familiar from our own language
and modern time, but no English versions are found within reach. The
fact, however, of this
characteristic of the Sanscrit poems is placed beyond reasonable doubt
by the declarations of many distinguished men of learning, more
particularly among the German scholars.
The Chinese, that singular people which for ages have separated
themselves from the rest of the earth by impassable barriers of
prejudice and mystery, are now found—as glimpses are opening into their
interior—to have long shown some partiality for natural beauty. Among
other poems, touching more or less upon subjects of this kind, they have
one bearing the simple name of “The Garden,” which was written by
Seema-kuang, a celebrated statesman, some eight or nine centuries since,
and which is said to contain agreeable descriptive passages; the sketch
of a hermitage among rocks and evergreen woods, and a fine, extensive
water view over one of their great rivers, are especially referred to.
Lieu-schew, another ancient writer of theirs, dwells at length on the
subject of pleasure-grounds, for which he gives admirable directions, in
the English style, at a period when a really fine garden was not to be
found in all Northern Europe; a short translation from a passage of his
will be found in the following selections.[3] Gardening, in fact,
appears to have been the sphere in which Chinese love of nature has
especially sought to unfold itself; that perception of beauty of
coloring and of nicety of detail, very general among them, shows itself
here in perfection; they have long been great florists, and have
delighted in writing verses upon particular flowers and fruit-trees.
Garden and song were thus closely connected by them; and if one may
judge from brief views received through others, their poetry has very
frequently indeed something of a horticultural character. Their busy,
practical habits and close inspection of detail would easily incline
them in this direction; but as yet nothing grand or very elevated has
been given to us by translators.
The Hebrew poets stand alone. Their position is absolutely different
from that of all profane writers, and places them at a distance from the
usual limits of a mere literary
comparison. They only, as priests and prophets of the One Living God,
beheld the natural world in the holy light of truth. Small as was the
space the children of Israel filled among the nations of the earth, the
humblest individual of their tribes knew that the God of Abraham was the
Lord God of Hosts, and that all things visible were but the works of his
hands. “The Lord made the heavens, and the earth, and the sea, and all
that in them is;” they bowed the knee to no one object “in the heaven
above, or in the earth beneath, or in the water under the earth.” Truth
is, of its nature, sublime. No fiction of the human imagination, even in
the highest and richest forms which it is capable of assuming, can
approach to that majesty which is her inherent prerogative. The views of
the earth, open to the children of Israel, had naturally, therefore, a
grandeur far beyond what the Greeks, with all the luxuriance of their
florid mythology, could attain to. Of this fact—thanks to the
translations of the Sacred Writings in the hands of all who speak the
English tongue—any one of us is capable of judging; the extreme
excellence of the Psalms, merely in the sense of literary compositions,
and independently of the far higher claims they have upon mankind, has
never failed to impress itself deeply on all minds open to such
perceptions. The nineteenth Psalm, with the unequaled grandeur of its
opening verses; the twenty-third, with its pastoral sweetness; the
hundred and fourth, with the fullness of its natural pictures; the
hundred and seventh; the ninety-sixth; the hundred and forty-fifth; the
hundred and forty-eighth, with others of a similar character, will recur
to every reader. It is generally admitted that, throughout the range of
ancient profane writing, nothing has yet been brought to light which can
equal these, or other great passages of the Psalms, of the Pentateuch,
the Prophets, or the Book of Job. Even for sweetness, also, the old
Hebrew writers were very remarkable. The most celebrated author and
literary artist of modern Germany, and one little likely to have been
influenced on such a subject by warmth of religious feeling, has left it
as his written opinion that the Book of Ruth, usually
attributed to the prophet Samuel, is “the loveliest specimen of epic and
idyl poetry which we possess.”[4] But the history of Jacob and his
family, and the personal story of David in all its details, with other
episodes easily pointed out, are almost equally full of this beautiful
pastoral spirit. The same inspired pens which have dwelt on the grandest
events of which time has any knowledge, have not disdained to move the
lesser chords of human sympathies and affections. It was the most
honored of the Prophets who so nobly recorded the greatest of all
physical facts, the creation of light: “And God said, Let there be
light, and there was light.” And on the page immediately following,
while still occupied in recording the grand successive stages of the
creation, he condescends to note that out of the earth “the Lord God
made to grow _every tree that is pleasant to the sight_.” This simple
phrase, taken in connection with all its sublime relations of time and
place, has a gracious tenderness, a compassionate beneficence of detail
which moves the heart deeply; all the delight which the trees of the
wood have afforded to men, independently of their uses; the many
peaceful homes they have overshadowed; the many eyes they have
gladdened; all the festal joys of the race in which their branches have
waved, seem to crowd the mind in one grateful picture, and force from
our lips the familiar invocation, “O all ye green things upon earth,
bless ye the Lord; praise him, and magnify him forever.”
The most ancient writings of the world thus afford evidence that in
those remote ages the perception of natural beauty was not wanting in
the human heart. Different races and individual men may have varied
greatly in giving expression to the feeling. David and Homer, the Indian
and the Roman, may have sung in very different tones, but wherever
intellectual life was at all active, there some strain, at least, from
the great Hymn was heard.
But very early, in what may be called Christian literature, this feeling
began to receive a fresh impulse and a new direction. On the same soil,
and among the same races, where,
in the height of heathen civilization it had never received adequate
expression, both in Italy and in Greece, the eye of the believer was
gradually opening to clearer and more worthy views of the creation.
“Look upward,” says St. Chrysostom, “to the vault of heaven, and around
thee on the open fields in which herds graze by the water-side; who does
not despise all the creations of art, when, in the stillness of his
spirit, he watches with admiration the rising of the sun, as it pours
its golden light over the face of the earth; when, resting on the thick
grass beside the murmuring spring, or beneath the somber shade of a
thick and leafy tree, the eye rests on the far-receding and hazy
distance.”
Similar passages may also be gathered from the letters of St. Basil and
St. Gregory,[5] fathers of the Greek Church. And still earlier instances
of this Christian view of the earth are quoted from the writings of a
Roman lawyer, Minucius Felix, who lived in the beginning of the third
century; his evening rambles on the shores of the Mediterranean, in the
neighborhood of Ostia, were very feelingly described in pages which have
been preserved to our own time. The Christian Church possessed a most
rich inheritance in the Hebrew literature; and the constant use of the
Psalms of the Temple in her public services would alone suffice to
produce in the minds of the people a deep impression of the goodness and
majesty of the Divine Creator as revealed in his works. The Canticle of
the Three Children, composed before the foundation of Rome, and which
from the early ages of Christianity to the present hour has formed a
portion of public worship, is an exalted offering of praise with which
we are all familiar: “O all ye works of the Lord, bless ye the Lord,
praise him and magnify him forever!” And in the sublime anthem of the Te
Deum we have another earnest, unceasing expression of a feeling
inseparable from Christianity: “We praise thee, O God, we acknowledge
thee to be the Lord. Heaven _and
earth_ are full of the majesty of thy glory!” It is, indeed, revealed
truth only which has opened to the human mind views of the creation at
all worthy of its dignity. It is from her teaching that we learn to
appreciate justly the different works of the Deity, in their distinctive
characters, to allot to each its own definite position. There is no
confusion in her views. She shows us the earth, and the creatures which
people it, in a clear light. She tells us positively that all things are
but the works of His holy hands—the visible expression of an Almighty
wisdom, and power, and love; and as she speaks, the idle phantoms of the
human imagination, the puerile deities of the heathen world, the
wretched fallacies of presumptuous philosophy vanish and flee away from
the face of the earth, like the mists and shadows of night at the
approach of the light of day. Not one of the thousand banners of
idolatry, whether unfurled on the mountain-tops, or waving in the
groves, or floating on the streams, but falls before her. She points out
to man his own position, and that of all about him; he is lord of the
earth and of all its creatures. The herb of the field, the trees of the
wood, the fowls of the air, the fishes of the sea—every living thing
that moveth upon earth—all have been given into his hand—all are subject
to his dominion—all are the gifts of Jehovah.
But, ere time had enabled Christian civilization and its ennobling
lessons to make any positive progress, or to produce any lasting
impression on the character of general literature, the Empire was
overwhelmed by races wholly barbarous. A period of darkness and disorder
ensued, during which the very art of writing seems to have been all but
forgotten. A few rude, unfinished sketches were all that could be
expected from such an age, and in these man himself would naturally
engross the attention. In societies only half civilized, man, as an
individual, must always fill a bolder and more prominent position than
in those where order, and knowledge, and truth are more widely diffused;
he has in such a state of things far greater power for evil over his
fellows; every step becomes of immediate importance, for it is
associated with a thousand perils;
every turn of private passion, unchecked by vital vigor of law or
religion, may work out a fatal tragedy, and consequently the individual,
either as tyrant, or victim, or champion, excites unceasing fear and
flattery, or pity and commiseration, or gratitude and admiration. Wild
legends, now warlike, now religious in spirit, naturally belonged to
those centuries. No doubt the birds of heaven sang, and the flowers of
the field bloomed in those ages; but we have scanty record of their
existence; the eye of man was fixed on darker objects; his ear was
filled with fiercer sounds.
Slowly, however, civilization and social order—those natural accessories
of the Christian faith—were making progress; but the most striking
efforts of reviving intelligence at this period did not assume the shape
of letters. That latent poetical spirit, never wholly extinct in the
human heart, sought for development during those ages through other
channels. Under the hand of the religious architect, pious, though
lamentably superstitious, the dignity of the forest was once more
embodied in novel and imposing labors of art; scarce a fine effect of
the branching woods which was not successfully repeated with great
richness of detail in Gothic stone. The beauty of the vegetation, in its
noblest forms, must have been deeply impressed on the hearts of the men
who, with Teutonic patience, raised those magnificent piles. Every
American familiar with the beautiful and varied effects of old forests
of blended growth, where fir and pine cross their evergreen branches
amid the lighter tracery of deciduous trees, may have often noted some
single fir, rising tall and spire-like far above the lesser grove, into
the light of sun and star; some similar evergreen, rooted in the soil of
Europe, was doubtless the original of that most beautiful of Christian
architectural forms, the church spire of the Middle Ages:
* * * * “Preacher to the wise,
Less’ning from earth her spiral honors rise,
Till, as a spear-point rear’d, the topmost spray,
Points to the Eden of eternal day.”[6]
It was about the time when those mediæval churches were rising from the
towns of central Europe—slow in their stately growth as the forest
whence their forms were drawn—that Troubadour and Trouvère, Minstrel and
Minnesinger, began their wanderings in the same region; and amid the
strange medley of human passion and religious superstition to which they
gave utterance, some strains of great natural sweetness were heard. It
was then that the returning cuckoo was greeted in England with song:
“Sumer is ycumen in,
Lhude sing cuccu!”
It was then that merle and mavis, nightingale and lark, were saluted
with responsive music by the listening poet; it was then that daisy and
lily, _la douce Marguerite_ and the _Flower of Light_, were so fondly
cherished and so highly honored; it was then that the May-pole was
raised in the castle court and on the village green, and that high and
low, like Arcite, hurried afield on May-day morning “for to fetch some
grene.” It was then, in short, that the blossoms and the fowls of Europe
were first sung in the modern dialects of the people.
Those old wandering minstrels, troubadour and minnesinger, were, in
fact, the heralds of reviving letters; they struck the first sparks of
national, indigenous literary feeling in its modern forms. It was from
them that Petrarch and Dante learned to speak the language of the
living, rather than that of the dead. It was from their example that
those great poets took, what was then a very daring step, and, rejecting
the Latin, chose their native language as a medium of compositions of
the highest order. How they succeeded, the whole world knows; and among
the writings of those great Italian masters there are very beautiful
descriptive passages, a few of which, in the form of translations, may
be found in the later pages of this volume.[7]
Fortunately for all who speak the English tongue, Chaucer,
“the morning star” of British verse, as he has been hailed by Denham,
followed in the track of the Italian poets; the fountains of his
inspiration flowed fresh and full from his native soil. How keenly alive
was he to every detail of natural beauty in the green fields of England;
to the sweetness and freshness of the opening daisy; of the growing
grass; of the unfolding leaf, with its “glad, light green!” He was
followed by others with the same happy instincts, and a love of nature
was thus infused into the earliest literature of our language. All the
great poets of the sixteenth, and those of the best years of the
seventeenth centuries, were more or less under the influence of this
spirit—Shakspeare, Jonson, Spenser, Drayton, the Fletchers, Milton,
Cowley, Denham, Dryden, Walker, Herbert, Herrick. How long is the noble
roll of names of that period, who have all contributed something to our
wealth in this way! There came a moment, however, when a colder and more
artificial style acquired in England the same influence which long
proved so paralyzing in France, when poets were content to copy those
who had preceded them; when they trod the London pavement and the
coffeehouse floors much more frequently than the narrow paths about the
fields. Mr. Wordsworth has remarked, that during a period of sixty
years, between the publication of “Paradise Lost” and that of the
“Seasons,” all the poetry of England, with the exception of a passage or
two, does not contain “a single new image of external nature.” Poets
were courtiers in those times, or they aimed at becoming so; they prided
themselves upon a neatly turned compliment, upon a farfetched
dedication; they were wits—they were pretty fellows about town; like
Horace Walpole’s lively old friend, Madame du Deffand, they could very
conscientiously avow, “_Je n’aime pas les plaisirs innocents!_”
Mr. Wordsworth dates the dawn of the modern era in poetry from the
appearance of the “Seasons,” which were first published in the year
1726. A single great work will no doubt often produce surprisingly
general effects in the literary world, when the atmosphere is prepared
for it. And such
was the case when Thomson wrote. Many different influences were
gradually combining to work out the same result. A high degree of
general education, in connection with the prevalence of Christian
religious truth, must always naturally dispose the mind to a more just
appreciation of the works of the Deity, as compared with the works of
man. The wider our views of each, the higher will be our admiration of
the first. We say general civilization, however; for where the
advantages of education are confined to a small class, that class will
usually be found only in the large towns of a country, and its tastes
and habits will therefore necessarily be more or less artificial. The
rustic population, in such a state of things, will be rude, coarse, and
deemed only fit for ridicule and burlesque. The poet of such a period
has no sooner tried his strength, than he is eager to turn his back on
the fields; he hurries “to town,” to the center of all enlightenment,
and soon becomes metamorphosed into a cockney or a courtier. In their
day Paris and London have probably thus swallowed up many a man of
genius, country born and country bred, who, had he remained in his
native haunts, could never have failed in real honest feeling for that
natural beauty which, like the mercy of God, is new every morning. Had
Cowper lived all his days in Bond Street he never could have written the
“Task.” Conceive a man like Crabbe, or Burns, transported for life to
Grub Street, and imagine what would be the inevitable effects of the
change on a spirit like theirs. But a general diffusion of civilization
produces an entirely different state of things. An intellectual man may
now live most of his days in the country without disgrace and without
annoyance. He may read and he may write there with pleasure and with
impunity. A wide horizon for observation opens about him to-day in the
fields, as elsewhere. Science, commerce, painting, sculpture,
horticulture—all the higher arts, in fact—are so many noble laborers
hourly toiling for his benefit, as well as for that of the townsman.
General education is also daily enlarging the public audience, and thus
giving more healthful play to diversity of
tastes. No single literary class is likely, in such a state of things,
to usurp undue authority over others—to impose academical fetters on
even the humblest of its cotemporaries. Whatever is really natural and
really worthy, may therefore hope in the end for a share of success. But
we conceive that it would still be possible for all these circumstances
to unite in favoring the literature of the age, without leading it into
those views of the natural world which have so decidedly marked its
course in our own day, without producing at least results so striking, a
change so marked. It is, we believe, the union of Christianity with this
general diffusion of a high degree of civilization which has led us to a
more deeply felt appreciation of the works of the creation. It has
always been from lands blessed with the light of revealed truth that the
choir of praise has risen with the greatest fullness. And it would be
easy, also, to prove that those individual writers who have sung the
natural beauty of the earth with the greatest fervor of feeling and
truth of description have been more or less actuated by a religious
spirit. Take as examples the poets of our own language; how many of
those who have touched upon similar subjects were moved by what may be
called Christian impulses? Go back as far even as Chaucer and Dunbar,
Shakspeare and Spenser, Milton and Fletcher; if these were not all what
is called religious men, yet the writings of even Chaucer and
Shakspeare, though tainted with the grossness of their times, were the
works of believing Christian hearts. If we look nearer to our own day,
from the period of Thomson and Dyer to the present hour, the fact is
self-evident, and needs no repetition of names. There have been
instances, no doubt, among the greater English poets of the last fifty
years, where success in natural description has been combined with an
avowed or implied religious skepticism. But no man can be born and bred
in a Christian community, taught in its schools, governed by its laws,
educated by its literature, without unconsciously, and, as it were, in
spite of himself, imbibing many influences of the prevailing faith. Even
the greatest English poets of
the skeptical school are forced to resort to what appears to the reader
a combination of an imperfect, enfeebled Christianity with an incomplete
and lifeless Paganism. Their views of the material world almost
invariably assume a Greek aspect; and we must adhere to the opinion,
that, in spite of their florid character, their grace of outline, their
richness of detail, these fall unspeakably, immeasurably short of the
grandeur, the healthful purity, the living beauty, the power and
tenderness of feeling which belong to revealed truth. With the Greek, as
with so many others, man was, more or less palpably, the great center of
all. Not so with the Christian; while Revelation allots to him a
position elevated and ennobling, she also reads him the lowliest
lessons. No system connects man by more close and endearing ties, with
the earth and all its holds, than Christianity, which leaves nothing to
chance, nothing to that most gloomy and most impossible of chimeras,
fate, but refers all to Providence, to the omniscient wisdom of a God
who is love; but at the same time she warns him that he is himself but
the steward and priest of the Almighty Father, responsible for the use
of every gift; she plainly proclaims the fact, that even here on earth,
within his own domains, his position is subordinate. The highest
relation of every created object is that which connects it with its
Maker: “For thy pleasure they are, and were created!” This sublime truth
Christianity proclaims to us, and there is breadth enough in this single
point to make up much of the wide difference between the Christian and
the heathen poet. And which of these two views is the most ennobling,
each of us may easily decide for himself. Look at the simple flower of
the field; behold it blooming at the gracious call of the Almighty,
beaming with the light of heavenly mercy, fragrant with the holy
blessing, and say if it be not thus more noble to the eye of reason,
dearer to the heart, than when fancy dyed its petals with the blood of a
fabled Adonis or Hyacinthus? Go out and climb the highest of all the
Alps, or stand beside the trackless, ever-moving sea, or look over the
broad, unpeopled prairie, and tell us whence
it is that the human spirit is so deeply moved by the spectacle which is
there unfolded to its view. Go out at night—stand uncovered beneath the
star-lit heavens, and acknowledge the meaning of the silence which has
closed your lips. Is it not an overpowering, heartfelt, individual
humility, blended with an instinctive adoration or acknowledgment in
every faculty of the holy majesty of the One Living God, in whom we
live, and move, and have our being? And where, at such a moment, are all
the gods with which Homer peopled his narrow world? An additional sense
of humiliation for the race to which we belong, and which could so long
endure fallacies so puerile, weighs on the spirit at the question, and
with a greater than Homer we exclaim: “O worship the Lord in the beauty
of holiness; let all the earth stand in awe of Him!”
A distinguished living poet of England, Mr. Keble, has a very pleasing
theory in connection with this subject. In his view, the three great
divisions of poetry belong naturally to three successive periods of the
world: the epic flows from the heroic youth of a race; the drama, with
its varied scenes and rival interests, from the ambitious maturity of
middle age; while, as civilization advances farther in the cycle of
time, the human heart oppressed with the strife of passion, the eye
wearied with the restless pageant of vanity, turn instinctively to more
simple and more healthful sources of enjoyment, and seeking refreshment
from the sweetness and beauty of the natural world, give expression to
the feeling in the poetry of rural life. In this sense the verse of the
fields—the rural hymn—becomes the last form of song, instead of being
the first. Something similar to this has doubtless often been the course
of individual life; many of the greatest minds and best hearts of our
race have successively gone through these different stages—the aspiring
dream of youthful enthusiasm, the struggle in the crowded arena of life,
and the placid calm of thoughtful repose and voluntary retirement under
the shade of the vine and the fig-tree. Happy will it be for the
civilized world, for these latter ages of the earth, if such should
indeed prove the general course of the race! Most happy will it be for
us, the latest born of the nations, we who belong to the aged times of
the world, if such should be our own direction!
Probably there never was a people needing more than ourselves all the
refreshments, all the solace, to be derived from country life in its
better forms. The period at which we have arrived is rife with high
excitement; the fever of commercial speculations, the agitation of
political passions, the mental exertion required by the rapid progress
of science, by the ever-recurring controversies of philosophy, and,
above all, that spirit of personal ambition and emulation so wearing
upon the individual, and yet so very common in America, all unite to
produce a combination of circumstances rendering it very desirable that
we should turn, as frequently as possible, into paths of a more quiet
and peaceful character. We need repose of mind. We need the shade of the
trees and the play of healthful breezes to refresh our heated brow. We
need the cup of water, pure from the spring, to cool our parched lips;
we need the flowers, to soothe without flattery; the birds, to cheer
without excitement; we need the view of the green turf, to teach us the
humility of the grave; and we need the view of the open heavens, to tell
us where all human hopes should center.
Happily, in spite of the eagerness with which our people throw
themselves upon every rallying point of excitement, they are by no means
wanting in feeling for a country life. It is true they delight in
building up towns; but still, a large portion of those who have a choice
look forward to some future day when a country roof shall cover their
heads. They hurry to the cities to grow rich; but very many take
pleasure in returning at a later hour to their native village, or at
least put up a suburban cottage, with a garden and grass-plat of their
own. The rural aspect which has been given to our villages and smaller
country towns, and which is often preserved with some pains—the space
between the buildings, the trees lining the streets and shading every
wall, with the
little door-yard of flowers—all these are evidences of healthful
instincts. But another, and very striking proof of the existence of the
love of nature in our people may be found in the character of American
verse. A very large proportion of the poetical writing of the country
partakes of this spirit; how many noble passages, how many pleasing
lines, will immediately recur to the mind as the remark suggests itself;
scarce a poet of note among us who has not contributed largely to our
national riches in this way; and one often meets, in some village paper
or inferior magazine, with very pleasing verses of this kind, from pens
quite unknown. Probably if an experienced critic were called upon to
point out some general characteristic of American poetry, more marked
than any other, he would, without hesitation, declare it to be a
deeply-felt appreciation of the beauty of the natural world.
But although as a people we have given ample evidence of an instinctive
love of nature, yet we have only made a beginning in these pleasant
paths. There still remains much for us to do. This natural taste, like
all others, is capable of much healthful cultivation; it would be easy
to name many steps by which, both as individuals and as communities, it
lies in our power to advance the national progress in this course; but
to do so would carry us beyond the limits allotted to our present task.
It is hoped, however, that we may be forgiven for detaining the reader a
moment longer, while we allude at least to one view of the subject which
is not altogether without importance. The social condition of
Christendom has, in many respects, very materially changed within the
last fifty years. Town and country no longer fill what for ages seemed
the unalterable relative position of each. A countryman is no longer
inevitably a boor, nor a townsman necessarily a cockney; all have, in
their turn, trod the pavement and the green turf. This is especially the
case in America; the life, the movement in which our people delight, is
constantly bringing all classes into contact, one with another, and
diffusing the same influences throughout the entire population.
Something of that individuality which gives interest and variety to the
face
of society is lost in this way; but, on the other hand, we gain many
facilities for general improvement by these means. The interchange
between town and country has become rapid, ceaseless, regular, as the
returns of dawn and dusk. But yet, in spite of the unbroken
communication, the perpetual intermingling, there still remains to each
a distinctive, inalienable character; the moving spirit of the town must
always continue artificial, while that of the country is, by a happy
necessity, more natural. We believe that the moment has come when
American civilization may assume, in this respect, a new aspect. The
wonderful increase of commercial and manufacturing luxury, which is
characteristic of the age, must inevitably produce a degree of excess in
the cities; all the follies of idle ostentation and extravagant
expenditure will, as a matter of course, flourish in such an atmosphere,
until, as they expand right and left, they overshadow many things of
healthier growth, and give a false glare of coloring to the whole
society which fosters them. There are many reasons why our own towns are
especially in danger from this state of things; they have no Past; they
lack Experience; Time for them has no individual teachings beyond those
of yesterday; there are no grave monuments of former generations
standing in the solemn silence of a thousand warning years along their
streets.
[Illustration: [Pastoral Scene]]
Probably there never has been a social condition in which the present is
more absolutely absorbing, more encroaching, in fact, than in our
American towns. The same influences may extend into the country; but it
is impossible for them to be equally powerful in the open fields, where
they are weakened by the want of concentration, and by many
counteracting circumstances. The situation of the countryman is in this
sense favorable; he is surrounded by great natural teachers, by noble
monitors, in the works of the Deity; many are the salutary lessons to be
learned on the mountain-tops, within the old groves beside the flowing
stream. The everlasting hills—the ancient woods—these are his
monuments—these tell him of the past, and not a seed drops from his hand
but prophesies of the future. The influences which surround the
countryman are essentially ennobling, elevating, civilizing, in fact.
Strange as the remark might have appeared a hundred years ago, we shall
venture deliberately to repeat it at the present hour: We conceive that
the spirit which pervades country life to-day, to be more truly
civilizing in its nature than that which glitters in our towns. All that
is really desirable of the facilities of life may now be readily
procured in the fields, while the excesses of luxury and frivolous
fashion are more easily avoided there. Many different elements are
blended in the composition of true elegance, and some of these are of a
very homely, substantial nature; plain common sense, and even a vein of
sterner wisdom are requisite; that moderation which avoids excess is
absolutely indispensable; order and harmony of combination are needed;
dignity and self-respect are essentials; natural feeling must be there,
with all its graceful shades of deference and consideration for the
rights and tastes of others; intellectual strength, which has no
sympathy with the merely vapid and frivolous, is a matter of course; and
while cheerfulness and gayety, easy and unforced as the summer breezes,
should not fail, yet a spirit of repose is equally desirable; it is
evident, also, that a healthful moral tone is requisite, since, where
this is wanting, the semblance of it is invariably assumed; and to all
these must be added that high finish of culture which years and
reflection can alone give. What element is there among these which may
not be readily fostered in country life? On the other hand, that very
concentration which was formerly so favorable to the progress of the
towns, is now producing injurious effects by leading to excesses, and
perversion of healthful tastes. The horizon of the townsman becomes
fictitiously narrowed; he needs a wider field for observation—greater
space for movement—more leisure for reflection. He learns to attach too
much importance by far to the trappings of life; he has forgotten, in
short, the old adage: “_Non è l’abito che fà il monaco!_” It can
scarcely, therefore, be an error of judgment to believe that while in
past generations the
country has received all its wisdom from the town, the moment has come
when in American society many of the higher influences of civilization
may rather be sought in the fields, when we may learn there many
valuable lessons of life, and particularly all the happy lessons of
simplicity.
I.
=The Flower and the Leaf.=
This charming fairy tale of Chaucer has never yet, it is believed, been
reprinted entire in America. The poem, complete, in its quaint, original
garb, has been placed among these selections with the hope that its
intrinsic beauty and its rarity may alike prove sources of interest to
the reader. Unfortunately there is much of Chaucer which will not bear
to be generally read—much against which we are justly cautioned. But the
grossness with which he is reproached must have been rather the fault of
the age to which he belonged, than of the man himself, for the passages
open to us are full of sweetness and delicacy, so fresh and original, so
quaintly fanciful, so altogether delightful, that one can never cease to
deplore that all his pages should not be equally fair and clean. Here,
however, we have a complete work of the old master quite free from
objection; in this instance the delicacy of the fancy appears to have
shielded him from the prevailing coarseness
of the period in which he wrote. The uncouth old spelling need not
deprive any one of the pleasure of enjoying the poem, as a few minutes’
practice will accustom the eye and the ear to the strangeness of the
orthography and rhythm. It would have been very easy to obviate those
last obstacles entirely by giving the reader Dryden’s version, instead
of the original; but there are a thousand charming touches in Chaucer
quite peculiar to himself, and which Dryden, with all his higher polish,
could never really improve. Every original work of a man of genius, even
when imperfect and faulty, must always possess a life and reality which
no imitation, even the most finished, can hope to equal; and in this, as
in every other instance, we have preferred carrying our bucket to the
fountain head. Let us hope the reader will enjoy the draught offered to
him from
“Dan Chaucer, well of English undefiled.”