and for a special object. The old religions were dead, from the Pillars
of Hercules to the Euphrates and the Nile, and the principles on which
human society had been constructed were dead also. There remained of
spiritual conviction only the common and human sense of justice and
morality; and out of this sense some ordered system of government had to
be constructed, under which quiet men could live, and labor, and eat the
fruit of their industry. Under a rule of this material kind there can be
no enthusiasm, no chivalry, no saintly aspirations, no patriotism of the
heroic type. It was not to last forever. A new life was about to dawn
for mankind. Poetry, and faith, and devotion were to spring again out of
the seeds which were sleeping in the heart of humanity. But the life
which is to endure grows slowly; and as the soil must be prepared before
the wheat can be sown, so before the Kingdom of Heaven could throw up
its shoots there was needed a kingdom of this world where the nations
were neither torn in pieces by violence nor were rushing after false
ideals and spurious ambitions. Such a kingdom was the Empire of the
Caesars--a kingdom where peaceful men could work, think, and speak as
they pleased, and travel freely among provinces ruled for the most part
by Gallios who protected life and property, and forbade fanatics to tear
each other in pieces for their religious opinions. "It is not lawful for
us to put any man to death," was the complaint of the Jewish priests to
the Roman governor. Had Europe and Asia been covered with independent
nations, each with a local religion represented in its ruling powers,
Christianity must have been stifled in its cradle. If St. Paul had
escaped the Sanhedrim at Jerusalem, he would have been torn to pieces by
the silversmiths at Ephesus. The appeal to Caesar's judgment-seat was the
shield of his mission, and alone made possible his success.
LXXXVII. OF THE MYSTERY OF LIFE.
JOHN RUSKIN--1819-
_From_ SESAME AND LILIES.
And now, returning to the broader question what these arts and labors of
life have to teach us of its mystery, this is the first of their
lessons--that the more beautiful the art, the more it is essentially the
work of people who _feel themselves wrong_;--who are striving for the
fulfilment of a law, and the grasp of a loveliness, which they have not
yet attained, which they feel even farther and farther from attaining,
the more they strive for it. And yet, in still deeper sense, it is the
work of people who know also that they are right. The very sense of
inevitable error from their purpose marks the perfectness of that
purpose, and the continued sense of failure arises from the continued
opening of the eyes more clearly to all the sacredest laws of truth.
This is one lesson. The second is a very plain, and greatly precious
one, namely:--that whenever the arts and labors of life are fulfilled
in this spirit of striving against misrule, and doing whatever we have
to do, honorably and perfectly, they invariably bring happiness, as much
as seems possible to the nature of man. In all other paths, by which
that happiness is pursued, there is disappointment, or destruction: for
ambition and for passion there is no rest--no fruition; the fairest
pleasures of youth perish in a darkness greater than their past light;
and the loftiest and purest love too often does but inflame the cloud of
life with endless fire of pain. But, ascending from lowest to highest,
through every scale of human industry, that industry worthily followed,
gives peace. Ask the laborer in the field, at the forge, or in the mine;
ask the patient, delicate-fingered artisan, or the strong-armed,
fiery-hearted worker in bronze, and in marble, and with the colors of
light; and none of these, who are true workmen, will ever tell you, that
they have found the law of heaven an unkind one--that in the sweat of
their face they should eat bread, till they return to the ground; nor
that they ever found it an unrewarded obedience, if, indeed, it was
rendered faithfully to the command--"Whatsoever thy hand findeth to
do--do it with thy might."
These are the two great and constant lessons which our laborers teach us
of the mystery of life. But there is another, and a sadder one, which
they cannot teach us, which we must read on their tombstones.
"Do it with thy might." There have been myriads upon myriads of
human creatures who have obeyed this law--who have put every breath
and nerve of their being into its toil--who have devoted every hour,
and exhausted every faculty--who have bequeathed their unaccomplished
thoughts at death--who being dead, have yet spoken, by majesty of
memory, and strength of example. And, at last, what has all this
"Might" of humanity accomplished, in six thousand years of labor and
sorrow? What has it _done_? Take the three chief occupations and arts
of men, one by one, and count their achievements. Begin with the
first--the lord of them all--agriculture. Six thousand years have
passed since we were set to till the ground, from which we were
taken. How much of it is tilled? How much of that which is, wisely or
well? In the very centre and chief garden of Europe--where the two
forms of parent Christianity have had their fortresses--where the
noble Catholics of the Forest Cantons, and the noble Protestants of
the Vaudois valleys, have maintained, for dateless ages, their faiths
and liberties--there the unchecked Alpine rivers yet run wild in
devastation: and the marshes, which a few hundred men could redeem
with a year's labor, still blast their helpless inhabitants into
fevered idiotism. That is so, in the centre of Europe! While, on the
near coast of Africa, once the Garden of the Hesperides, an Arab
woman, but a few sunsets since, ate her child, for famine. And, with
all the treasures of the East at our feet, we, in our own dominion,
could not find a few grains of rice, for a people that asked of us
no more; but stood by, and saw five hundred thousand of them perish
of hunger.
Then, after agriculture, the art of kings, take the next head of human
arts--weaving; the art of queens, honored of all noble Heathen women, in
the person of their virgin goddess--honored of all Hebrew women, by the
word of their wisest king--"She layeth her hands to the spindle, and her
hands hold the distaff; she stretcheth out her hand to the poor. She is
not afraid of the snow for her household, for all her household are
clothed with scarlet. She maketh herself covering of tapestry, her
clothing is silk and purple. She maketh fine linen, and selleth it, and
delivereth girdles to the merchant." What have we done in all these
thousands of years with this bright art of Greek maid and Christian
matron? Six thousand years of weaving, and have we learned to weave?
Might not every naked wall have been purple with tapestry, and every
feeble breast fenced with sweet colors from the cold? What have we done?
Our fingers are too few, it seems, to twist together some poor covering
for our bodies. We set our streams to work for us, and choke the air
with fire, to turn our spinning-wheels,--and--_are we yet clothed_? Are
not the streets of the capitals of Europe foul with the sale of cast
clouts and rotten rags? Is not the beauty of your sweet children left in
wretchedness of disgrace, while, with better honor, nature clothes the
brood of the bird in its nest, and the suckling of the wolf in her den?
And does not every winter's snow robe what you have not robed, and
shroud what you have not shrouded; and every winter's wind bear up to
heaven its wasted souls, to witness against you hereafter, by the voice
of their Christ,--"I was naked, and ye clothed me not"?
Lastly--take the Art of Building--the strongest-proudest--most
orderly--most enduring of the arts of man, that of which the produce is
in the surest manner accumulative, and need not perish, or be replaced;
but if once well done will stand more strongly than the unbalanced
rocks--more prevalently than the crumbling hills. The art which is
associated with all civic pride and sacred principle; with which men
record their power--satisfy their enthusiasm--make sure their
defence--define and make dear their habitation. And, in six thousand
years of building, what have we done? Of the greater part of all that
skill and strength, _no_ vestige is left, but fallen stones, that
encumber the fields and impede the streams. But from this waste of
disorder, and of time, and of rage, what _is_ left to us? Constructive
and progressive creatures, that we are, with ruling brains, and forming
hands; capable of fellowship, and thirsting for fame, can we not
contend, in comfort, with the insects of the forest, or, in achievement,
with the worm of the sea? The white surf rages in vain against the
ramparts built by poor atoms of scarcely nascent life; but only ridges
of formless ruin mark the places where once dwelt our noblest
multitudes. The ant and the moth have cells for each of their young, but
our little ones lie in festering heaps, in homes that consume them like
graves; and night by night, from the corners of our streets, rises up
the cry of the homeless--"I was a stranger, and ye took me not in."
Must it be always thus? Is our life forever to be without
profit--without possession? Shall the strength of its generations be as
barren as death; or cast away their labor, as the wild fig-tree casts
her untimely figs? Is it all a dream then--the desire of the eyes and
the pride of life--or, if it be, might we not live in nobler dream than
this? The poets and prophets, the wise men, and the scribes, though they
have told us nothing about a life to come, have told us much about the
life that is now. They have had--they also,--their dreams, and we have
laughed at them. They have dreamed of mercy, and of justice; they have
dreamed of peace and good-will; they have dreamed of labor
undisappointed, and of rest undisturbed; they have dreamed of fulness in
harvest, and overflowing in store; they have dreamed of wisdom in
council, and of providence in law; of gladness of parents, and strength
of children, and glory of gray hairs. And at these visions of theirs we
have mocked, and held them for idle and vain, unreal and
unaccomplishable. What have we accomplished with our realities? Is this
what has come of our worldly wisdom, tried against their folly? this our
mightiest possible, against their impotent ideal? or have we only
wandered among the spectra of a baser felicity, and chased phantoms of
the tombs, instead of visions of the Almighty; and walked after the
imaginations of our evil hearts, instead of after the counsels of
Eternity, until our lives--not in the likeness of the cloud of heaven,
but of the smoke of hell--have become "as a vapor, that appeareth for a
little time, and then vanisheth away"?
_Does_ it vanish then? Are you sure of that?--sure, that the nothingness
of the grave will be a rest from this troubled nothingness; and that the
coiling shadow, which disquiets itself in vain, cannot change into the
smoke of the torment that ascends forever? Will any answer that they
_are_ sure of it, and that there is no fear, nor hope, nor desire, nor
labor, whither they go? Be it so; will you not, then, make as sure of
the Life, that now is, as you are of the Death that is to come? Your
hearts are wholly in this world--will you not give them to it wisely,
as well as perfectly? And see, first of all, that you _have_ hearts,
and sound hearts, too, to give. Because you have no heaven to look
for, is that any reason that you should remain ignorant of this
wonderful and infinite earth, which is firmly and instantly given you
in possession? Although your days are numbered, and the following
darkness sure, is it necessary that you should share the degradation
of the brute, because you are condemned to its mortality; or live the
life of the moth, and of the worm, because you are to companion them
in the dust? Not so; we may have but a few thousands of days to
spend, perhaps hundreds only--perhaps tens; nay, the longest of our
time and best, looked back on, will be but as a moment, as the
twinkling of an eye; still, we are men, not insects; we are living
spirits, not passing clouds. "He maketh the winds His messengers; the
momentary fire, His minister;" and shall we do less than _these_? Let
us do the work of men while we bear the form of them; and, as we
snatch our narrow portion of time out of Eternity, snatch also our
narrow inheritance of passion out of Immortality--even though our
lives _be_ as a vapor, that appeareth for a little time, and then
vanisheth away.
But there are some of you who believe not this--who think this cloud of
life has no such close--that it is to float, revealed and illumined,
upon the floor of heaven, in the day when He cometh with clouds, and
every eye shall see Him. Some day, you believe, within these five, or
ten, or twenty years, for every one of us the judgment will be set, and
the books opened. If that be true, far more than that must be true. Is
there but one day of judgment? Why, for us every day is a day of
judgment--every day is a Dies Irae, and writes its irrevocable verdict in
the flame of its West. Think you that judgment waits till the doors of
the grave are opened? It waits at the doors of your houses--it waits at
the corners of your streets; we are in the midst of judgment--the
insects that we crush are our judges--the moments we fret away are our
judges--the elements that feed us, judge, as they minister--and the
pleasures that deceive us, judge as they indulge. Let us, for our lives,
do the work of Men while we bear the Form of them, if indeed those lives
are _Not_ as a vapor, and do _Not_ vanish away.
LXXXVIII. THE ROBIN.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.--1819-
_From_ MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE.
The return of the robin is commonly announced by the newspapers, like
that of eminent or notorious people to a watering-place, as the first
authentic notification of spring. And such his appearance in the orchard
and garden undoubtedly is. But, in spite of his name of migratory
thrush, he stays with us all winter, and I have seen him when the
thermometer marked 15 degrees below zero of Fahrenheit, armed
impregnably within, like Emerson's Titmouse, and as cheerful as he. The
robin has a bad reputation among people who do not value themselves less
for being fond of cherries. There is, I admit, a spice of vulgarity in
him, and his song is rather of the Bloomfield sort, too largely
ballasted with prose. His ethics are of the Poor Richard school, and the
main chance which calls forth all his energy is altogether of the belly.
He never has those fine intervals of lunacy into which his cousins, the
catbird and the mavis, are apt to fall. But for a' that and twice as
muckle 's a' that, I would not exchange him for all the cherries that
ever came out of Asia Minor. With whatever faults, he has not wholly
forfeited that superiority which belongs to the children of nature. He
has a finer taste in fruit than could be distilled from many successive
committees of the Horticultural Society, and he eats with a relishing
gulp not inferior to Dr. Johnson's. He feels and freely exercises his
right of eminent domain. His is the earliest mess of green peas; his all
the mulberries I had fancied mine. But if he get also the lion's share
of the raspberries, he is a great planter, and sows those wild ones in
the woods, that solace the pedestrian and give a momentary calm even to
the jaded victims of the White Hills. He keeps a strict eye over one's
fruit, and knows to a shade of purple when your grapes have cooked long
enough in the sun. During a severe drought a few years ago, the robins
wholly vanished from my garden. I neither saw nor heard one for three
weeks. Meanwhile a small foreign grape-vine, rather shy of bearing,
seemed to find the dusty air congenial, and, dreaming perhaps of its
sweet Argos across the sea, decked itself, with a score or so of fair
bunches. I watched them from day to day till they should have secreted
sugar enough from the sunbeams, and at last made up my mind that I would
celebrate my vintage the next morning. But the robins too had somehow
kept note of them. They must have sent out spies, as did the Jews into
the promised land, before I was stirring. When I went with my basket, at
least a dozen of these winged vintagers bustled out from among the
leaves, and alighting on the nearest trees interchanged some shrill
remarks about me of a derogatory nature. They had fairly sacked the
vine. Not Wellington's veterans made cleaner work of a Spanish town; not
Federals or Confederates were ever more impartial in the confiscation of
neutral chickens. I was keeping my grapes a secret to surprise the fair
Fidele with, but the robins made them a profounder secret to her than I
had meant. The tattered remnant of a single bunch was all my
harvest-home. How paltry it looked at the bottom of my basket,--as if a
humming-bird had laid her egg in an eagle's nest! I could not help
laughing; and the robins seemed to join heartily in the merriment. There
was a native grape-vine close by, blue with its less refined abundance,
but my cunning thieves preferred the foreign flavor. Could I tax them
with want of taste?
The robins are not good solo singers, but their chorus, as, like
primitive fire-worshippers, they hail the return of light and warmth
to the world, is unrivalled. There are a hundred singing like one.
They are noisy enough then, and sing, as poets should, with no
afterthought. But when they come after cherries to the tree near my
window, they muffle their voices, and their faint _pip, pip, pop_!
sounds far away at the bottom of the garden, where they know I shall
not suspect them of robbing the great black-walnut of its
bitter-rinded store.[P] They are feathered Pecksniffs, to be sure,
but then how brightly their breasts, that look rather shabby in the
sunlight, shine in a rainy day against the dark green of the
fringe-tree! After they have pinched and shaken all the life out of
an earthworm, as Italian cooks pound all the spirit out of a steak,
and then gulped him, they stand up in honest self-confidence, expand
their red waistcoats with the virtuous air of a lobby member, and
outface you with an eye that calmly challenges inquiry. "Do _I_ look
like a bird that knows the flavor of raw vermin? I throw myself upon
a jury of my peers. Ask any robin if he ever ate anything less
ascetic than the frugal berry of the juniper, and he will answer that
his vow forbids him." Can such an open bosom cover such depravity?
Alas, yes! I have no doubt his breast was redder at that very moment
with the blood of my raspberries. On the whole, he is a doubtful
friend in the garden. He makes his dessert of all kinds of berries,
and is not averse from early pears. But when we remember how
omnivorous he is, eating his own weight in an incredibly short time,
and that Nature seems exhaustless in her invention of new insects
hostile to vegetation, perhaps we may reckon that he does more good
than harm. For my own part, I would rather have his cheerfulness and
kind neighborhood than many berries.
FOOTNOTES:
[P] The screech-owl, whose cry, despite his ill name, is one of the
sweetest sounds in nature, softens his voice in the same way with the
most beguiling mockery of distance.--AUTHOR'S NOTE.
LXXXIX. THE OLD CRADLE.
FREDERICK LOCKER.--1821-
And this was your Cradle? Why, surely, my Jenny,
Such cosy dimensions go clearly to show
You were an exceedingly small pickaninny
Some nineteen or twenty short summers ago.
Your baby-days flow'd in a much-troubled channel;
I see you, as then, in your impotent strife,
A tight little bundle of wailing and flannel,
Perplex'd with the newly-found fardel of Life.
To hint at an infantile frailty's a scandal;
Let bygones be bygones, for somebody knows
It was bliss such a Baby to dance and to dandle,--
Your cheeks were so dimpled, so rosy your toes.
Ay, here is your Cradle; and Hope, a bright spirit,
With Love now is watching beside it, I know.
They guard the wee nest it was yours to inherit
Some nineteen or twenty short summers ago.
It is Hope gilds the future, Love welcomes it smiling,
Thus wags this old world, therefore stay not to ask,
"My future bids fair, is my future beguiling?"
If mask'd, still it pleases--then raise not its mask.
Is Life a poor coil some would gladly be doffing?
He is riding post-haste who their wrongs will adjust;
For at most 'tis a footstep from cradle to coffin--
From a spoonful of pap to a mouthful of dust.
Then smile as your future is smiling, my Jenny;
I see you, except for those infantine woes,
Little changed since you were but a small pickaninny--
Your cheeks were so dimpled, so rosy your toes!
Ay, here is your Cradle, much, much to my liking,
Though nineteen or twenty long winters have sped.
Hark! As I'm talking there's six o'clock striking,--
It is time JENNY'S BABY should be in its bed.
XC. RUGBY CHAPEL.
NOVEMBER, 1857.
MATTHEW ARNOLD.--1822-
Coldly, sadly descends
The autumn-evening. The field
Strewn with its dank yellow drifts
Of wither'd leaves, and the elms,
Fade into dimness apace,
Silent;--hardly a shout
From a few boys late at their play!
The lights come out in the street,
In the school-room windows--but cold,
Solemn, unlighted, austere,
Through the gathering darkness, arise
The chapel-walls, in whose bound
Thou, my father! art laid.
There thou dost lie, in the gloom
Of the autumn evening. But ah!
That word, _gloom_, to my mind
Brings thee back in the light
Of thy radiant vigor again:
In the gloom of November we pass'd
Days not dark at thy side;
Seasons impair'd not the ray
Of thy buoyant cheerfulness clear.
Such thou wast! and I stand
In the autumn evening, and think
Of bygone autumns with thee.
Fifteen years have gone round
Since thou arosest to tread,
In the summer-morning, the road
Of death, at a call unforeseen,
Sudden. For fifteen years,
We who till then in thy shade
Rested as under the boughs
Of a mighty oak, have endured
Sunshine and rain as we might,
Bare, unshaded, alone,
Lacking the shelter of thee.
O strong soul, by what shore
Tarriest thou now? For that force,
Surely, has not been left vain!
Somewhere, surely, afar,
In the sounding labor-house vast
Of being, is practis'd that strength,
Zealous, beneficent, firm!
Yes, in some far-shining sphere,
Conscious or not of the past,
Still thou performest the word
Of the Spirit in whom thou dost live--
Prompt, unwearied, as here!
Still thou upraisest with zeal
The humble good from the ground,
Sternly repressest the bad!
Still, like a trumpet, dost rouse
Those who with half-open eyes
Tread the border-land dim
'Twixt vice and virtue; reviv'st,
Succorest!--this was thy work.
This was thy life upon earth.
What is the course of the life
Of mortal men on the earth?--
Most men eddy about
Here and there--eat and drink,
Chatter and love and hate,
Gather and squander, are rais'd
Aloft, are hurl'd in the dust,
Striving blindly, achieving
Nothing; and then they die--
Perish--and no one asks
Who or what they have been,
More than he asks what waves,
In the moonlit solitudes mild
Of the midmost Ocean, have swell'd,
Foam'd for a moment, and gone.
And there are some, whom a thirst
Ardent, unquenchable, fires,
Not with the crowd to be spent,
Not without aim to go round
In an eddy of purposeless dust
Effort unmeaning and vain.
Ah yes! some of us strive
Not without action to die
Fruitless, but something to snatch
From dull oblivion, nor all
Glut the devouring grave!
We, we have chosen our path--
Path to a clear-purpos'd goal,
Path of advance!--but it leads
A long, steep journey, through sunk
Gorges, o'er mountains in snow.
Cheerful, with friends, we set forth--
Then, on the height, comes the storm.
Thunder crashes from rock
To rock, the cataracts reply;
Lightnings dazzle our eyes;
Roaring torrents have breach'd
The track, the stream-bed descends
In the place where the wayfarer once
Planted his footstep--the spray
Boils o'er its borders! aloft
The unseen snow-beds dislodge
Their hanging ruin!--alas,
Havoc is made in our train!
Friends, who set forth at our side,
Falter, are lost in the storm.
We, we only are left!--
With frowning foreheads, with lips
Sternly compress'd, we strain on
On--and at nightfall at last
Come to the end of our way,
To the lonely inn 'mid the rocks;
Where the gaunt and taciturn host
Stands on the threshold, the wind
Shaking his thin white hairs--
Holds his lantern to scan
Our storm-beat figures, and asks:
Whom in our party we bring?
Whom we have left in the snow?
Sadly we answer: We bring
Only ourselves! we lost
Sight of the rest in the storm.
Hardly ourselves we fought through,
Stripp'd, without friends, as we are.
Friends, companions, and train,
The avalanche swept from our side.