I know that most men think differently from myself; but those whose

lives are by profession devoted to the study of these or kindred

subjects, content me as little as any. Statesmen and legislators,

standing so completely within the institution, never distinctly and

nakedly behold it. They speak of moving society, but have no

resting-place without it. They may be men of a certain experience and

discrimination, and have no doubt invented ingenious and even useful

systems, for which we sincerely thank them; but all their wit and

usefulness lie within certain not very wide limits. They are wont to

forget that the world is not governed by policy and expediency. Webster

never goes behind government, and so cannot speak with authority about

it. His words are wisdom to those legislators who contemplate no

essential reform in the existing government; but for thinkers, and those

who legislate for all time, he never once glances at the subject. I know

of those whose serene and wise speculations on this theme would soon

reveal the limits of his mind’s range and hospitality. Yet, compared

with the cheap professions of most reformers, and the still cheaper

wisdom and eloquence of politicians in general, his are almost the only

sensible and valuable words, and we thank Heaven for him. Comparatively,

he is always strong, original, and, above all, practical. Still his

quality is not wisdom, but prudence. The lawyer’s truth is not Truth,

but consistency, or a consistent expediency. Truth is always in harmony

with herself, and is not concerned chiefly to reveal the justice that

may consist with wrong-doing. He well deserves to be called, as he has

been called, the Defender of the Constitution. There are really no blows

to be given by him but defensive ones. He is not a leader, but a

follower. His leaders are the men of ’87. “I have never made an effort,”

he says, “and never propose to make an effort; I have never countenanced

an effort, and never mean to countenance an effort, to disturb the

arrangement as originally made, by which the various States came into

the Union.” Still thinking of the sanction which the Constitution gives

to slavery, he says, “Because it was a part of the original compact,—let

it stand.” Notwithstanding his special acuteness and ability, he is

unable to take a fact out of its merely political relations, and behold

it as it lies absolutely to be disposed of by the intellect,—what, for

instance, it behooves a man to do here in America to-day with regard to

slavery, but ventures, or is driven, to make some such desperate answer

as the following, while professing to speak absolutely, and as a private

man,—from which what new and singular code of social duties might be

inferred? “The manner,” says he, “in which the governments of those

States where slavery exists are to regulate it, is for their own

consideration, under their responsibility to their constituents, to the

general laws of propriety, humanity, and justice, and to God.

Associations formed elsewhere, springing from a feeling of humanity, or

any other cause, have nothing whatever to do with it. They have never

received any encouragement from me, and they never will.”[5]

Footnote 5:

These extracts have been inserted since the Lecture was read.

They who know of no purer sources of truth, who have traced up its

stream no higher, stand, and wisely stand, by the Bible and the

Constitution, and drink at it there with reverence and humility; but

they who behold where it comes trickling into this lake or that pool,

gird up their loins once more, and continue their pilgrimage toward its

fountain-head.

No man with a genius for legislation has appeared in America. They are

rare in the history of the world. There are orators, politicians, and

eloquent men, by the thousand; but the speaker has not yet opened his

mouth to speak, who is capable of settling the much-vexed questions of

the day. We love eloquence for its own sake, and not for any truth which

it may utter, or any heroism it may inspire. Our legislators have not

yet learned the comparative value of free-trade and of freedom, of

union, and of rectitude, to a nation. They have no genius or talent for

comparatively humble questions of taxation and finance, commerce and

manufactures and agriculture. If we were left solely to the wordy wit of

legislators in Congress for our guidance, uncorrected by the seasonable

experience and the effectual complaints of the people, America would not

long retain her rank among the nations. For eighteen hundred years,

though perchance I have no right to say it, the New Testament has been

written; yet where is the legislator who has wisdom and practical talent

enough to avail himself of the light which it sheds on the science of

legislation?

The authority of government, even such as I am willing to submit to,—for

I will cheerfully obey those who know and can do better than I, and in

many things even those who neither know nor can do so well,—is still an

impure one: to be strictly just, it must have the sanction and consent

of the governed. It can have no pure right over my person and property

but what I concede to it. The progress from an absolute to a limited

monarchy, from a limited monarchy to a democracy, is a progress toward a

true respect for the individual. Even the Chinese philosopher was wise

enough to regard the individual as the basis of the empire. Is a

democracy, such as we know it, the last improvement possible in

government? Is it not possible to take a step further towards

recognizing and organizing the rights of man? There will never be a

really free and enlightened State, until the State comes to recognize

the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own

power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly. I please

myself with imagining a State at last which can afford to be just to all

men, and to treat the individual with respect as a neighbor; which even

would not think it inconsistent with its own repose, if a few were to

live aloof from it, not meddling with it, nor embraced by it, who

fulfilled all the duties of neighbors and fellow-men. A State which bore

this kind of fruit, and suffered it to drop off as fast as it ripened,

would prepare the way for a still more perfect and glorious State, which

also I have imagined, but not yet anywhere seen.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

A PLEA FOR CAPTAIN JOHN BROWN.[6]

Footnote 6:

Read to the citizens of Concord, Mass., Sunday Evening, October 30,

1859.

I trust that you will pardon me for being here. I do not wish to force

my thoughts upon you, but I feel forced myself. Little as I know of

Captain Brown, I would fain do my part to correct the tone and the

statements of the newspapers, and of my countrymen generally, respecting

his character and actions. It costs us nothing to be just. We can at

least express our sympathy with, and admiration of, him and his

companions, and that is what I now propose to do.

First, as to his history. I will endeavor to omit, as much as possible,

what you have already read. I need not describe his person to you, for

probably most of you have seen and will not soon forget him. I am told

that his grandfather, John Brown, was an officer in the Revolution; that

he himself was born in Connecticut about the beginning of this century,

but early went with his father to Ohio. I heard him say that his father

was a contractor who furnished beef to the army there, in the war of

1812; that he accompanied him to the camp, and assisted him in that

employment, seeing a good deal of military life,—more, perhaps, than if

he had been a soldier; for he was often present at the councils of the

officers. Especially, he learned by experience how armies are supplied

and maintained in the field,—a work which, he observed, requires at

least as much experience and skill as to lead them in battle. He said

that few persons had any conception of the cost, even the pecuniary

cost, of firing a single bullet in war. He saw enough, at any rate, to

disgust him with a military life; indeed, to excite in him a great

abhorrence of it; so much so, that though he was tempted by the offer of

some petty office in the army, when he was about eighteen, he not only

declined that, but he also refused to train when warned, and was fined

for it. He then resolved that he would never have anything to do with

any war, unless it were a war for liberty.

When the troubles in Kansas began, he sent several of his sons thither

to strengthen the party of the Free State men, fitting them out with

such weapons as he had; telling them that if the troubles should

increase, and there should be need of him, he would follow, to assist

them with his hand and counsel. This, as you all know, he soon after

did; and it was through his agency, far more than any other’s, that

Kansas was made free.

For a part of his life he was a surveyor, and at one time he was engaged

in wool-growing, and he went to Europe as an agent about that business.

There, as everywhere, he had his eyes about him, and made many original

observations. He said, for instance, that he saw why the soil of England

was so rich, and that of Germany (I think it was) so poor, and he

thought of writing to some of the crowned heads about it. It was because

in England the peasantry live on the soil which they cultivate, but in

Germany they are gathered into villages, at night. It is a pity that he

did not make a book of his observations.

I should say that he was an old-fashioned man in his respect for the

Constitution, and his faith in the permanence of this Union. Slavery he

deemed to be wholly opposed to these, and he was its determined foe.

He was by descent and birth a New England farmer, a man of great common

sense, deliberate and practical as that class is, and tenfold more so.

He was like the best of those who stood at Concord Bridge once, on

Lexington Common, and on Bunker Hill, only he was firmer and higher

principled than any that I have chanced to hear of as there. It was no

abolition lecturer that converted him. Ethan Allen and Stark, with whom

he may in some respects be compared, were rangers in a lower and less

important field. They could bravely face their country’s foes, but he

had the courage to face his country herself, when she was in the wrong.

A Western writer says, to account for his escape from so many perils,

that he was concealed under a “rural exterior”; as if, in that prairie

land, a hero should, by good rights, wear a citizen’s dress only.

He did not go to the college called Harvard, good old Alma Mater as she

is. He was not fed on the pap that is there furnished. As he phrased it,

“I know no more of grammar than one of your calves.” But he went to the

great university of the West, where he sedulously pursued the study of

Liberty, for which he had early betrayed a fondness, and having taken

many degrees, he finally commenced the public practice of Humanity in

Kansas, as you all know. Such were _his humanities_ and not any study of

grammar. He would have left a Greek accent slanting the wrong way, and

righted up a falling man.

He was one of that class of whom we hear a great deal, but, for the most

part, see nothing at all,—the Puritans. It would be in vain to kill him.

He died lately in the time of Cromwell, but he reappeared here. Why

should he not? Some of the Puritan stock are said to have come over and

settled in New England. They were a class that did something else than

celebrate their forefathers’ day, and eat parched corn in remembrance of

that time. They were neither Democrats nor Republicans, but men of

simple habits, straightforward, prayerful; not thinking much of rulers

who did not fear God, not making many compromises, nor seeking after

available candidates.

“In his camp,” as one has recently written, and as I have myself heard

him state, “he permitted no profanity; no man of loose morals was

suffered to remain there, unless, indeed, as a prisoner of war. ‘I would

rather,’ said he, ‘have the small-pox, yellow-fever, and cholera, all

together in my camp, than a man without principle.... It is a mistake,

sir, that our people make, when they think that bullies are the best

fighters, or that they are the fit men to oppose these Southerners. Give

me men of good principles,—God-fearing men,—men who respect themselves,

and with a dozen of them I will oppose any hundred such men as these

Buford ruffians.’” He said that if one offered himself to be a soldier

under him, who was forward to tell what he could or would do, if he

could only get sight of the enemy, he had but little confidence in him.

He was never able to find more than a score or so of recruits whom he

would accept, and only about a dozen, among them his sons, in whom he

had perfect faith. When he was here, some years ago, he showed to a few

a little manuscript book,—his “orderly book” I think he called

it,—containing the names of his company in Kansas, and the rules by

which they bound themselves; and he stated that several of them had

already sealed the contract with their blood. When some one remarked

that, with the addition of a chaplain, it would have been a perfect

Cromwellian troop, he observed that he would have been glad to add a

chaplain to the list, if he could have found one who could fill that

office worthily. It is easy enough to find one for the United States

army. I believe that he had prayers in his camp morning and evening,

nevertheless.

He was a man of Spartan habits, and at sixty was scrupulous about his

diet at your table, excusing himself by saying that he must eat

sparingly and fare hard, as became a soldier, or one who was fitting

himself for difficult enterprises, a life of exposure.

A man of rare common sense and directness of speech, as of action; a

transcendentalist above all, a man of ideas and principles,—that was

what distinguished him. Not yielding to a whim or transient impulse, but

carrying out the purpose of a life. I noticed that he did not overstate

anything, but spoke within bounds. I remember, particularly, how, in his

speech here, he referred to what his family had suffered in Kansas,

without ever giving the least vent to his pent-up fire. It was a volcano

with an ordinary chimney-flue. Also referring to the deeds of certain

Border Ruffians, he said, rapidly paring away his speech, like an

experienced soldier, keeping a reserve of force and meaning, “They had a

perfect right to be hung.” He was not in the least a rhetorician, was

not talking to Buncombe or his constituents anywhere, had no need to

invent anything but to tell the simple truth, and communicate his own

resolution; therefore he appeared incomparably strong, and eloquence in

Congress and elsewhere seemed to me at a discount. It was like the

speeches of Cromwell compared with those of an ordinary king.

As for his tact and prudence, I will merely say, that at a time when

scarcely a man from the Free States was able to reach Kansas by any

direct route, at least without having his arms taken from him, he,

carrying what imperfect guns and other weapons he could collect, openly

and slowly drove an ox-cart through Missouri, apparently in the capacity

of a surveyor, with his surveying compass exposed in it, and so passed

unsuspected, and had ample opportunity to learn the designs of the

enemy. For some time after his arrival he still followed the same

profession. When, for instance, he saw a knot of the ruffians on the

prairie, discussing, of course, the single topic which then occupied

their minds, he would, perhaps, take his compass and one of his sons,

and proceed to run an imaginary line right through the very spot on

which that conclave had assembled, and when he came up to them, he would

naturally pause and have some talk with them, learning their news, and,

at last, all their plans perfectly; and having thus completed his real

survey he would resume his imaginary one, and run on his line till he

was out of sight.

When I expressed surprise that he could live in Kansas at all, with a

price set upon his head, and so large a number, including the

authorities, exasperated against him, he accounted for it by saying, “It

is perfectly well understood that I will not be taken.” Much of the time

for some years he has had to skulk in swamps, suffering from poverty and

from sickness, which was the consequence of exposure, befriended only by

Indians and a few whites. But though it might be known that he was

lurking in a particular swamp, his foes commonly did not care to go in

after him. He could even come out into a town where there were more

Border Ruffians than Free State men, and transact some business, without

delaying long, and yet not be molested; for, said he, “No little handful

of men were willing to undertake it, and a large body could not be got

together in season.”

As for his recent failure, we do not know the facts about it. It was

evidently far from being a wild and desperate attempt. His enemy, Mr.

Vallandigham, is compelled to say, that “it was among the best planned

and executed conspiracies that ever failed.”

Not to mention his other successes, was it a failure, or did it show a

want of good management, to deliver from bondage a dozen human beings,

and walk off with them by broad daylight, for weeks if not months, at a

leisurely pace, through one State after another, for half the length of

the North, conspicuous to all parties, with a price set upon his head,

going into a court-room on his way and telling what he had done, thus

convincing Missouri that it was not profitable to try to hold slaves in

his neighborhood?—and this, not because the government menials were

lenient, but because they were afraid of him.

Yet he did not attribute his success, foolishly, to “his star,” or to

any magic. He said, truly, that the reason why such greatly superior

numbers quailed before him was, as one of his prisoners confessed,

because they _lacked a cause_,—a kind of armor which he and his party

never lacked. When the time came, few men were found willing to lay down

their lives in defence of what they knew to be wrong; they did not like

that this should be their last act in this world.

But to make haste to _his_ last act, and its effects.

The newspapers seem to ignore, or perhaps are really ignorant of the

fact, that there are at least as many as two or three individuals to a

town throughout the North who think much as the present speaker does

about him and his enterprise. I do not hesitate to say that they are an

important and growing party. We aspire to be something more than stupid

and timid chattels, pretending to read history and our Bibles, but

desecrating every house and every day we breathe in. Perhaps anxious

politicians may prove that only seventeen white men and five negroes

were concerned in the late enterprise; but their very anxiety to prove

this might suggest to themselves that all is not told. Why do they still

dodge the truth? They are so anxious because of a dim consciousness of

the fact, which they do not distinctly face, that at least a million of

the free inhabitants of the United States would have rejoiced if it had

succeeded. They at most only criticise the tactics. Though we wear no

crape, the thought of that man’s position and probable fate is spoiling

many a man’s day here at the North for other thinking. If any one who

has seen him here can pursue successfully any other train of thought, I

do not know what he is made of. If there is any such who gets his usual

allowance of sleep, I will warrant him to fatten easily under any

circumstances which do not touch his body or purse. I put a piece of

paper and a pencil under my pillow, and when I could not sleep, I wrote

in the dark.

On the whole, my respect for my fellow-men, except as one may outweigh a

million, is not being increased these days. I have noticed the

cold-blooded way in which newspaper writers and men generally speak of

this event, as if an ordinary malefactor, though one of unusual

“pluck,”—as the Governor of Virginia is reported to have said, using the

language of the cock-pit, “the gamest man he ever saw,”—had been caught,

and were about to be hung. He was not dreaming of his foes when the

governor thought he looked so brave. It turns what sweetness I have to

gall, to hear, or hear of, the remarks of some of my neighbors. When we

heard at first that he was dead, one of my townsmen observed that “he

died as the fool dieth”; which, pardon me, for an instant suggested a

likeness in him dying to my neighbor living. Others, craven-hearted,

said disparagingly, that “he threw his life away,” because he resisted

the government. Which way have they thrown _their_ lives, pray?—such as

would praise a man for attacking singly an ordinary band of thieves or

murderers. I hear another ask, Yankee-like, “What will he gain by it?”

as if he expected to fill his pockets by this enterprise. Such a one has

no idea of gain but in this worldly sense. If it does not lead to a

“surprise” party, if he does not get a new pair of boots, or a vote of

thanks, it must be a failure. “But he won’t gain anything by it.” Well,

no, I don’t suppose he could get four-and-sixpence a day for being hung,

take the year round; but then he stands a chance to save a considerable

part of his soul,—and _such_ a soul!—when _you_ do not. No doubt you can

get more in your market for a quart of milk than for a quart of blood,

but that is not the market that heroes carry their blood to.

Such do not know that like the seed is the fruit, and that, in the moral

world, when good seed is planted, good fruit is inevitable, and does not

depend on our watering and cultivating; that when you plant, or bury, a

hero in his field, a crop of heroes is sure to spring up. This is a seed

of such force and vitality, that it does not ask our leave to germinate.

The momentary charge at Balaclava, in obedience to a blundering command,

proving what a perfect machine the soldier is, has, properly enough,

been celebrated by a poet-laureate; but the steady, and for the most

part successful, charge of this man, for some years, against the legions

of Slavery, in obedience to an infinitely higher command, is as much

more memorable than that, as an intelligent and conscientious man is

superior to a machine. Do you think that that will go unsung?

“Served him right,”—“A dangerous man,”—“He is undoubtedly insane.” So

they proceed to live their sane, and wise, and altogether admirable

lives, reading their Plutarch a little, but chiefly pausing at that feat

of Putnam, who was let down into a wolf’s den; and in this wise they

nourish themselves for brave and patriotic deeds some time or other. The

Tract Society could afford to print that story of Putnam. You might open

the district schools with the reading of it, for there is nothing about

Slavery or the Church in it; unless it occurs to the reader that some

pastors are _wolves_ in sheep’s clothing. “The American Board of

Commissioners for Foreign Missions” even, might dare to protest against

_that_ wolf. I have heard of boards, and of American boards, but it

chances that I never heard of this particular lumber till lately. And

yet I hear of Northern men, and women, and children, by families, buying

a “life membership” in such societies as these. A life membership in the

grave! You can get buried cheaper than that.

Our foes are in our midst and all about us. There is hardly a house but

is divided against itself, for our foe is the all but universal

woodenness of both head and heart, the want of vitality in man, which is

the effect of our vice; and hence are begotten fear, superstition,

bigotry, persecution, and slavery of all kinds. We are mere figure-heads

upon a hulk, with livers in the place of hearts. The curse is the

worship of idols, which at length changes the worshipper into a stone

image himself; and the New-Englander is just as much an idolater as the

Hindoo. This man was an exception, for he did not set up even a

political graven image between him and his God.

A church that can never have done with excommunicating Christ while it

exists! Away with your broad and flat churches, and your narrow and tall

churches! Take a step forward, and invent a new style of out-houses.

Invent a salt that will save you, and defend our nostrils.

The modern Christian is a man who has consented to say all the prayers

in the liturgy, provided you will let him go straight to bed and sleep

quietly afterward. All his prayers begin with “Now I lay me down to

sleep,” and he is forever looking forward to the time when he shall go

to his “_long_ rest.” He has consented to perform certain

old-established charities, too, after a fashion, but he does not wish to

hear of any new-fangled ones; he doesn’t wish to have any supplementary

articles added to the contract, to fit it to the present time. He shows

the whites of his eyes on the Sabbath, and the blacks all the rest of

the week. The evil is not merely a stagnation of blood, but a stagnation

of spirit. Many, no doubt, are well disposed, but sluggish by

constitution and by habit, and they cannot conceive of a man who is

actuated by higher motives than they are. Accordingly they pronounce

this man insane, for they know that _they_ could never act as he does,

as long as they are themselves.

We dream of foreign countries, of other times and races of men, placing

them at a distance in history or space; but let some significant event

like the present occur in our midst, and we discover, often, this

distance and this strangeness between us and our nearest neighbors.

_They_ are our Austrias, and Chinas, and South Sea Islands. Our crowded

society becomes well spaced all at once, clean and handsome to the

eye,—a city of magnificent distances. We discover why it was that we

never got beyond compliments and surfaces with them before; we become

aware of as many versts between us and them as there are between a

wandering Tartar and a Chinese town. The thoughtful man becomes a hermit

in the thoroughfares of the market-place. Impassable seas suddenly find

their level between us, or dumb steppes stretch themselves out there. It

is the difference of constitution, of intelligence, and faith, and not

streams and mountains, that make the true and impassable boundaries

between individuals and between states. None but the like-minded can

come plenipotentiary to our court.

I read all the newspapers I could get within a week after this event,

and I do not remember in them a single expression of sympathy for these

men. I have since seen one noble statement, in a Boston paper, not

editorial. Some voluminous sheets decided not to print the full report

of Brown’s words to the exclusion of other matter. It was as if a

publisher should reject the manuscript of the New Testament, and print

Wilson’s last speech. The same journal which contained this pregnant

news, was chiefly filled, in parallel columns, with the reports of the

political conventions that were being held. But the descent to them was

too steep. They should have been spared this contrast,—been printed in

an extra, at least. To turn from the voices and deeds of earnest men to

the _cackling_ of political conventions! Office-seekers and

speech-makers, who do not so much as lay an honest egg, but wear their

breasts bare upon an egg of chalk! Their great game is the game of

straws, or rather that universal aboriginal game of the platter, at

which the Indians cried _hub, bub!_ Exclude the reports of religious and

political conventions, and publish the words of a living man.

But I object not so much to what they have omitted, as to what they have

inserted. Even the _Liberator_ called it “a misguided, wild, and

apparently insane—effort.” As for the herd of newspapers and magazines,

I do not chance to know an editor in the country who will deliberately

print anything which he knows will ultimately and permanently reduce the

number of his subscribers. They do not believe that it would be

expedient. How then can they print truth? If we do not say pleasant

things, they argue, nobody will attend to us. And so they do like some

travelling auctioneers, who sing an obscene song, in order to draw a

crowd around them. Republican editors, obliged to get their sentences

ready for the morning edition, and accustomed to look at everything by

the twilight of politics, express no admiration, nor true sorrow even,

but call these men “deluded fanatics,”—“mistaken men,”—“insane,” or

“crazed.” It suggests what a _sane_ set of editors we are blessed with,

_not_ “mistaken men”; who know very well on which side their bread is

buttered, at least.

A man does a brave and humane deed, and at once, on all sides, we hear

people and parties declaring, “I didn’t do it, nor countenance _him_ to

do it, in any conceivable way. It can’t be fairly inferred from my past

career.” I, for one, am not interested to hear you define your position.

I don’t know that I ever was, or ever shall be. I think it is mere

egotism, or impertinent at this time. Ye needn’t take so much pains to

wash your skirts of him. No intelligent man will ever be convinced that

he was any creature of yours. He went and came, as he himself informs

us, “under the auspices of John Brown and nobody else.” The Republican

party does not perceive how many his _failure_ will make to vote more

correctly than they would have them. They have counted the votes of

Pennsylvania & Co., but they have not correctly counted Captain Brown’s

vote. He has taken the wind out of their sails,—the little wind they

had,—and they may as well lie to and repair.

What though he did not belong to your clique! Though you may not approve

of his method or his principles, recognize his magnanimity. Would you

not like to claim kindredship with him in that, though in no other thing

he is like, or likely, to you? Do you think that you would lose your

reputation so? What you lost at the spile, you would gain at the bung.

If they do not mean all this, then they do not speak the truth, and say

what they mean. They are simply at their old tricks still.

“It was always conceded to him,” _says one who calls him crazy_, “that

he was a conscientious man, very modest in his demeanor, apparently

inoffensive, until the subject of Slavery was introduced, when he would

exhibit a feeling of indignation unparalleled.”

The slave-ship is on her way, crowded with its dying victims; new

cargoes are being added in mid-ocean; a small crew of slaveholders,

countenanced by a large body of passengers, is smothering four millions

under the hatches, and yet the politician asserts that the only proper

way by which deliverance is to be obtained, is by “the quiet diffusion

of the sentiments of humanity,” without any “outbreak.” As if the

sentiments of humanity were ever found unaccompanied by its deeds, and

you could disperse them, all finished to order, the pure article, as

easily as water with a watering-pot, and so lay the dust. What is that

that I hear cast overboard? The bodies of the dead that have found

deliverance. That is the way we are “diffusing” humanity, and its

sentiments with it.

Prominent and influential editors, accustomed to deal with politicians,

men of an infinitely lower grade, say, in their ignorance, that he acted

“on the principle of revenge.” They do not know the man. They must

enlarge themselves to conceive of him. I have no doubt that the time

will come when they will begin to see him as he was. They have got to

conceive of a man of faith and of religious principle, and not a

politician or an Indian; of a man who did not wait till he was

personally interfered with or thwarted in some harmless business before

he gave his life to the cause of the oppressed.

If Walker may be considered the representative of the South, I wish I

could say that Brown was the representative of the North. He was a

superior man. He did not value his bodily life in comparison with ideal

things. He did not recognize unjust human laws, but resisted them as he

was bid. For once we are lifted out of the trivialness and dust of

politics into the region of truth and manhood. No man in America has

ever stood up so persistently and effectively for the dignity of human

nature, knowing himself for a man, and the equal of any and all

governments. In that sense he was the most American of us all. He needed

no babbling lawyer, making false issues, to defend him. He was more than

a match for all the judges that American voters, or office-holders of

whatever grade, can create. He could not have been tried by a jury of

his peers, because his peers did not exist. When a man stands up

serenely against the condemnation and vengeance of mankind, rising above

them literally _by a whole body_,—even though he were of late the vilest

murderer, who has settled that matter with himself,—the spectacle is a

sublime one,—didn’t ye know it, ye _Liberators_, ye _Tribunes_, ye

_Republicans?_—and we become criminal in comparison. Do yourselves the

honor to recognize him. He needs none of your respect.

As for the Democratic journals, they are not human enough to affect me

at all. I do not feel indignation at anything they may say.

I am aware that I anticipate a little,—that he was still, at the last

accounts, alive in the hands of his foes; but that being the case, I

have all along found myself thinking and speaking of him as physically

dead.

I do not believe in erecting statues to those who still live in our

hearts, whose bones have not yet crumbled in the earth around us, but I

would rather see the statue of Captain Brown in the Massachusetts

State-House yard, than that of any other man whom I know. I rejoice that

I live in this age, that I am his contemporary.

What a contrast, when we turn to that political party which is so

anxiously shuffling him and his plot out of its way, and looking around

for some available slaveholder, perhaps, to be its candidate, at least

for one who will execute the Fugitive Slave Law, and all those other

unjust laws which he took up arms to annul!

Insane! A father and six sons, and one son-in-law, and several more men

besides,—as many at least as twelve disciples,—all struck with insanity

at once; while the same tyrant holds with a firmer gripe than ever his

four millions of slaves, and a thousand sane editors, his abettors, are

saving their country and their bacon! Just as insane were his efforts in

Kansas. Ask the tyrant who is his most dangerous foe, the sane man or

the insane? Do the thousands who know him best, who have rejoiced at his

deeds in Kansas, and have afforded him material aid there, think him

insane? Such a use of this word is a mere trope with most who persist in

using it, and I have no doubt that many of the rest have already in

silence retracted their words.

Read his admirable answers to Mason and others. How they are dwarfed and

defeated by the contrast! On the one side, half-brutish, half-timid

questioning; on the other, truth, clear as lightning, crashing into

their obscene temples. They are made to stand with Pilate, and Gesler,

and the Inquisition. How ineffectual their speech and action! and what a

void their silence! They are but helpless tools in this great work. It

was no human power that gathered them about this preacher.

What have Massachusetts and the North sent a few _sane_ representatives

to Congress for, of late years?—to declare with effect what kind of

sentiments? All their speeches put together and boiled down,—and

probably they themselves will confess it,—do not match for manly

directness and force, and for simple truth, the few casual remarks of

crazy John Brown, on the floor of the Harper’s Ferry engine-house,—that

man whom you are about to hang, to send to the other world, though not

to represent _you_ there. No, he was not our representative in any

sense. He was too fair a specimen of a man to represent the like of us.

Who, then, _were_ his constituents? If you read his words

understandingly you will find out. In his case there is no idle

eloquence, no made, nor maiden speech, no compliments to the oppressor.

Truth is his inspirer, and earnestness the polisher of his sentences. He

could afford to lose his Sharpe’s rifles, while he retained his faculty

of speech,—a Sharpe’s rifle of infinitely surer and longer range.

And the New York _Herald_ reports the conversation _verbatim_! It does

not know of what undying words it is made the vehicle.

I have no respect for the penetration of any man who can read the report

of that conversation, and still call the principal in it insane. It has

the ring of a saner sanity than an ordinary discipline and habits of

life, than an ordinary organization, secure. Take any sentence of

it,—“Any questions that I can honorably answer, I will; not otherwise.

So far as I am myself concerned, I have told everything truthfully. I

value my word, sir.” The few who talk about his vindictive spirit, while

they really admire his heroism, have no test by which to detect a noble

man, no amalgam to combine with his pure gold. They mix their own dross

with it.

It is a relief to turn from these slanders to the testimony of his more

truthful, but frightened jailers and hangmen. Governor Wise speaks far

more justly and appreciatingly of him than any Northern editor, or

politician, or public personage, that I chance to have heard from. I

know that you can afford to hear him again on this subject. He says:

“They are themselves mistaken who take him to be a madman..... He is

cool, collected, and indomitable, and it is but just to him to say, that

he was humane to his prisoners..... And he inspired me with great trust

in his integrity as a man of truth. He is a fanatic, vain and

garrulous,” (I leave that part to Mr. Wise,) “but firm, truthful, and

intelligent. His men, too, who survive, are like him..... Colonel

Washington says that he was the coolest and firmest man he ever saw in

defying danger and death. With one son dead by his side, and another

shot through, he felt the pulse of his dying son with one hand, and held

his rifle with the other, and commanded his men with the utmost

composure, encouraging them to be firm, and to sell their lives as dear

as they could. Of the three white prisoners, Brown, Stephens, and

Coppic, it was hard to say which was most firm.”

Almost the first Northern men whom the slaveholder has learned to

respect!

The testimony of Mr. Vallandigham, though less valuable, is of the same

purport, that “it is vain to underrate either the man or his

conspiracy..... He is the farthest possible removed from the ordinary

ruffian, fanatic, or madman.”

“All is quiet at Harper’s Ferry,” say the journals. What is the

character of that calm which follows when the law and the slaveholder

prevail? I regard this event as a touchstone designed to bring out, with

glaring distinctness, the character of this government. We needed to be

thus assisted to see it by the light of history. It needed to see

itself. When a government puts forth its strength on the side of

injustice, as ours to maintain slavery and kill the liberators of the

slave, it reveals itself a merely brute force, or worse, a demoniacal

force. It is the head of the Plug-Uglies. It is more manifest than ever

that tyranny rules. I see this government to be effectually allied with

France and Austria in oppressing mankind. There sits a tyrant holding

fettered four millions of slaves; here comes their heroic liberator.

This most hypocritical and diabolical government looks up from its seat

on the gasping four millions, and inquires with an assumption of

innocence: “What do you assault me for? Am I not an honest man? Cease

agitation on this subject, or I will make a slave of you, too, or else

hang you.”

We talk about a _representative_ government; but what a monster of a

government is that where the noblest faculties of the mind, and the

_whole_ heart, are not _represented_. A semi-human tiger or ox, stalking

over the earth, with its heart taken out and the top of its brain shot

away. Heroes have fought well on their stumps when their legs were shot

off, but I never heard of any good done by such a government as that.

The only government that I recognize,—and it matters not how few are at

the head of it, or how small its army,—is that power that establishes

justice in the land, never that which establishes injustice. What shall

we think of a government to which all the truly brave and just men in

the land are enemies, standing between it and those whom it oppresses? A

government that pretends to be Christian and crucifies a million Christs

every day!

Treason! Where does such treason take its rise? I cannot help thinking

of you as you deserve, ye governments. Can you dry up the fountains of

thought? High treason, when it is resistance to tyranny here below, has

its origin in, and is first committed by, the power that makes and

forever recreates man. When you have caught and hung all these human

rebels, you have accomplished nothing but your own guilt, for you have

not struck at the fountain-head. You presume to contend with a foe

against whom West Point cadets and rifled cannon _point_ not. Can all

the art of the cannon-founder tempt matter to turn against its maker? Is

the form in which the founder thinks he casts it more essential than the

constitution of it and of himself?

The United States have a coffle of four millions of slaves. They are

determined to keep them in this condition; and Massachusetts is one of

the confederated overseers to prevent their escape. Such are not all the

inhabitants of Massachusetts, but such are they who rule and are obeyed

here. It was Massachusetts, as well as Virginia, that put down this

insurrection at Harper’s Ferry. She sent the marines there, and she will

have _to pay the penalty of her sin_.

Suppose that there is a society in this State that out of its own purse

and magnanimity saves all the fugitive slaves that run to us, and

protects our colored fellow-citizens, and leaves the other work to the

government, so-called. Is not that government fast losing its

occupation, and becoming contemptible to mankind? If private men are

obliged to perform the offices of government, to protect the weak and

dispense justice, then the government becomes only a hired man, or

clerk, to perform menial or indifferent services. Of course, that is but

the shadow of a government whose existence necessitates a Vigilant

Committee. What should we think of the Oriental Cadi even, behind whom

worked in secret a vigilant committee? But such is the character of our

Northern States generally; each has its Vigilant Committee. And, to a

certain extent, these crazy governments recognize and accept this

relation. They say, virtually, “We’ll be glad to work for you on these

terms, only don’t make a noise about it.” And thus the government, its

salary being insured, withdraws into the back shop, taking the

Constitution with it, and bestows most of its labor on repairing that.

When I hear it at work sometimes, as I go by, it reminds me, at best, of

those farmers who in winter contrive to turn a penny by following the

coopering business. And what kind of spirit is their barrel made to

hold? They speculate in stocks, and bore holes in mountains, but they

are not competent to lay out even a decent highway. The only _free_

road, the Underground Railroad, is owned and managed by the Vigilant

Committee. _They_ have tunnelled under the whole breadth of the land.

Such a government is losing its power and respectability as surely as

water runs out of a leaky vessel, and is held by one that can contain

it.

I hear many condemn these men because they were so few. When were the

good and the brave ever in a majority? Would you have had him wait till

that time came?—till you and I came over to him? The very fact that he

had no rabble or troop of hirelings about him would alone distinguish

him from ordinary heroes. His company was small indeed, because few

could be found worthy to pass muster. Each one who there laid down his

life for the poor and oppressed was a picked man, culled out of many

thousands, if not millions; apparently a man of principle, of rare

courage, and devoted humanity; ready to sacrifice his life at any moment

for the benefit of his fellow-man. It may be doubted if there were as

many more their equals in these respects in all the country;—I speak of

his followers only;—for their leader, no doubt, scoured the land far and

wide, seeking to swell his troop. These alone were ready to step between

the oppressor and the oppressed. Surely they were the very best men you

could select to be hung. That was the greatest compliment which this

country could pay them. They were ripe for her gallows. She has tried a

long time, she has hung a good many, but never found the right one

before.

When I think of him, and his six sons, and his son-in-law, not to

enumerate the others, enlisted for this fight, proceeding coolly,

reverently, humanely to work, for months if not years, sleeping and

waking upon it, summering and wintering the thought, without expecting

any reward but a good conscience, while almost all America stood ranked

on the other side,—I say again that it affects me as a sublime

spectacle. If he had had any journal advocating “_his cause_,” any

organ, as the phrase is, monotonously and wearisomely playing the same

old tune, and then passing round the hat, it would have been fatal to

his efficiency. If he had acted in any way so as to be let alone by the

government, he might have been suspected. It was the fact that the

tyrant must give place to him, or he to the tyrant, that distinguished

him from all the reformers of the day that I know.

It was his peculiar doctrine that a man has a perfect right to interfere

by force with the slaveholder, in order to rescue the slave. I agree

with him. They who are continually shocked by slavery have some right to

be shocked by the violent death of the slaveholder, but no others. Such

will be more shocked by his life than by his death. I shall not be

forward to think him mistaken in his method who quickest succeeds to

liberate the slave. I speak for the slave when I say, that I prefer the

philanthropy of Captain Brown to that philanthropy which neither shoots

me nor liberates me. At any rate, I do not think it is quite sane for

one to spend his whole life in talking or writing about this matter,

unless he is continuously inspired, and I have not done so. A man may

have other affairs to attend to. I do not wish to kill nor to be killed,

but I can foresee circumstances in which both these things would be by

me unavoidable. We preserve the so-called peace of our community by

deeds of petty violence every day. Look at the policeman’s billy and

handcuffs! Look at the jail! Look at the gallows! Look at the chaplain

of the regiment! We are hoping only to live safely on the outskirts of

_this_ provisional army. So we defend ourselves and our hen-roosts, and

maintain slavery. I know that the mass of my countrymen think that the

only righteous use that can be made of Sharpe’s rifles and revolvers is

to fight duels with them, when we are insulted by other nations, or to

hunt Indians, or shoot fugitive slaves with them, or the like. I think

that for once the Sharpe’s rifles and the revolvers were employed in a

righteous cause. The tools were in the hands of one who could use them.

The same indignation that is said to have cleared the temple once will

clear it again. The question is not about the weapon, but the spirit in

which you use it. No man has appeared in America, as yet, who loved his

fellow-man so well, and treated him so tenderly. He lived for him. He

took up his life and he laid it down for him. What sort of violence is

that which is encouraged, not by soldiers, but by peaceable citizens,

not so much by laymen as by ministers of the Gospel, not so much by the

fighting sects as by the Quakers, and not so much by Quaker men as by

Quaker women?

This event advertises me that there is such a fact as death,—the

possibility of a man’s dying. It seems as if no man had ever died in

America before; for in order to die you must first have lived. I don’t

believe in the hearses, and palls, and funerals that they have had.

There was no death in the case, because there had been no life; they

merely rotted or sloughed off, pretty much as they had rotted or

sloughed along. No temple’s veil was rent, only a hole dug somewhere.

Let the dead bury their dead. The best of them fairly ran down like a

clock. Franklin,—Washington,—they were let off without dying; they were

merely missing one day. I hear a good many pretend that they are going

to die; or that they have died, for aught that I know. Nonsense! I’ll

defy them to do it. They haven’t got life enough in them. They’ll

deliquesce like fungi, and keep a hundred eulogists mopping the spot

where they left off. Only half a dozen or so have died since the world

began. Do you think that you are going to die, sir? No! there’s no hope

of you. You haven’t got your lesson yet. You’ve got to stay after

school. We make a needless ado about capital punishment,—taking lives,

when there is no life to take. _Memento mori!_ We don’t understand that

sublime sentence which some worthy got sculptured on his gravestone

once. We’ve interpreted it in a grovelling and snivelling sense; we’ve

wholly forgotten how to die.

But be sure you do die nevertheless. Do your work, and finish it. If you

know how to begin, you will know when to end.

These men, in teaching us how to die, have at the same time taught us

how to live. If this man’s acts and words do not create a revival, it

will be the severest possible satire on the acts and words that do. It

is the best news that America has ever heard. It has already quickened

the feeble pulse of the North, and infused more and more generous blood

into her veins and heart, than any number of years of what is called

commercial and political prosperity could. How many a man who was lately

contemplating suicide has now something to live for!

One writer says that Brown’s peculiar monomania made him to be “dreaded

by the Missourians as a super natural being.” Sure enough, a hero in the

midst of us cowards is always so dreaded. He is just that thing. He

shows himself superior to nature. He has a spark of divinity in him.

“Unless above himself he can

Erect himself, how poor a thing is man!”

Newspaper editors argue also that it is a proof of his _insanity_ that

he thought he was appointed to do this work which he did,—that he did

not suspect himself for a moment! They talk as if it were impossible

that a man could be “divinely appointed” in these days to do any work

whatever; as if vows and religion were out of date as connected with any

man’s daily work; as if the agent to abolish slavery could only be

somebody appointed by the President, or by some political party. They

talk as if a man’s death were a failure, and his continued life, be it

of whatever character, were a success.

When I reflect to what a cause this man devoted himself, and how

religiously, and then reflect to what cause his judges and all who

condemn him so angrily and fluently devote themselves, I see that they

are as far apart as the heavens and earth are asunder.

The amount of it is, our “_leading men_” are a harmless kind of folk,

and they know _well enough_ that _they_ were not divinely appointed, but

elected by the votes of their party.

Who is it whose safety requires that Captain Brown be hung? Is it

indispensable to any Northern man? Is there no resource but to cast this

man also to the Minotaur? If you do not wish it, say so distinctly.

While these things are being done, beauty stands veiled and music is a

screeching lie. Think of him,—of his rare qualities!—such a man as it

takes ages to make, and ages to understand; no mock hero, nor the

representative of any party. A man such as the sun may not rise upon

again in this benighted land. To whose making went the costliest

material, the finest adamant; sent to be the redeemer of those in

captivity; and the only use to which you can put him is to hang him at

the end of a rope! You who pretend to care for Christ crucified,

consider what you are about to do to him who offered himself to be the

savior of four millions of men.

Any man knows when he is justified, and all the wits in the world cannot

enlighten him on that point. The murderer always knows that he is justly

punished; but when a government takes the life of a man without the

consent of his conscience, it is an audacious government, and is taking

a step towards its own dissolution. Is it not possible that an

individual may be right and a government wrong? Are laws to be enforced

simply because they were made? or declared by any number of men to be

good, if they are _not_ good? Is there any necessity for a man’s being a

tool to perform a deed of which his better nature disapproves? Is it the

intention of law-makers that _good_ men shall be hung ever? Are judges

to interpret the law according to the letter, and not the spirit? What

right have _you_ to enter into a compact with yourself that you _will_

do thus or so, against the light within you? Is it for _you_ to _make

up_ your mind,—to form any resolution whatever,—and not accept the

convictions that are forced upon you, and which ever pass your

understanding? I do not believe in lawyers, in that mode of attacking or

defending a man, because you descend to meet the judge on his own

ground, and, in cases of the highest importance, it is of no consequence

whether a man breaks a human law or not. Let lawyers decide trivial

cases. Business men may arrange that among themselves. If they were the

interpreters of the everlasting laws which rightfully bind man, that

would be another thing. A counterfeiting law-factory, standing half in a

slave land and half in a free! What kind of laws for free men can you

expect from that?

I am here to plead his cause with you. I plead not for his life, but for

his character,—his immortal life; and so it becomes your cause wholly,

and is not his in the least. Some eighteen hundred years ago Christ was

crucified; this morning, perchance, Captain Brown was hung. These are

the two ends of a chain which is not without its links. He is not Old

Brown any longer; he is an angel of light.

I see now that it was necessary that the bravest and humanest man in all

the country should be hung. Perhaps he saw it himself. I _almost fear_

that I may yet hear of his deliverance, doubting if a prolonged life, if

_any_ life, can do as much good as his death.

“Misguided”! “Garrulous”! “Insane”! “Vindictive”! So ye write in your

easy-chairs, and thus he wounded responds from the floor of the Armory,

clear as a cloudless sky, true as the voice of nature is: “No man sent

me here; it was my own prompting and that of my Maker. I acknowledge no

master in human form.”

And in what a sweet and noble strain he proceeds, addressing his

captors, who stand over him: “I think, my friends, you are guilty of a

great wrong against God and humanity, and it would be perfectly right

for any one to interfere with you so far as to free those you wilfully

and wickedly hold in bondage.”

And, referring to his movement: “It is, in my opinion, the greatest

service a man can render to God.”

“I pity the poor in bondage that have none to help them; that is why I

am here; not to gratify any personal animosity, revenge, or vindictive

spirit. It is my sympathy with the oppressed and the wronged, that are

as good as you, and as precious in the sight of God.”

You don’t know your testament when you see it.

“I want you to understand that I respect the rights of the poorest and

weakest of colored people, oppressed by the slave power, just as much as

I do those of the most wealthy and powerful.”

“I wish to say, furthermore, that you had better, all you people at the

South, prepare yourselves for a settlement of that question, that must

come up for settlement sooner than you are prepared for it. The sooner

you are prepared the better. You may dispose of me very easily. I am

nearly disposed of now; but this question is still to be settled,—this

negro question, I mean; the end of that is not yet.”

I foresee the time when the painter will paint that scene, no longer

going to Rome for a subject; the poet will sing it; the historian record

it; and, with the Landing of the Pilgrims and the Declaration of

Independence, it will be the ornament of some future national gallery,

when at least the present form of slavery shall be no more here. We

shall then be at liberty to weep for Captain Brown. Then, and not till

then, we will take our revenge.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

PARADISE (TO BE) REGAINED.[7]

[“Democratic Review,” New York, November, 1843.]

Footnote 7:

The Paradise within the Reach of all Men, without Labor, by Powers of

Nature and Machinery. An Address to all intelligent Men. In Two Parts.

By J. A. Etzler. Part First. Second English Edition. London. 1842. pp.

55.

We learn that Mr. Etzler is a native of Germany, and originally

published his book in Pennsylvania, ten or twelve years ago; and now a

second English edition, from the original American one, is demanded by

his readers across the water, owing, we suppose, to the recent spread of

Fourier’s doctrines. It is one of the signs of the times. We confess

that we have risen from reading this book with enlarged ideas, and

grander conceptions of our duties in this world. It did expand us a

little. It is worth attending to, if only that it entertains large

questions. Consider what Mr. Etzler proposes:

“Fellow-men! I promise to show the means of creating a paradise within

ten years, where everything desirable for human life may be had by every

man in superabundance, without labor, and without pay; where the whole

face of nature shall be changed into the most beautiful forms, and man

may live in the most magnificent palaces, in all imaginable refinements

of luxury, and in the most delightful gardens; where he may accomplish,

without labor, in one year, more than hitherto could be done in

thousands of years; may level mountains, sink valleys, create lakes,

drain lakes and swamps, and intersect the land everywhere with beautiful

canals, and roads for transporting heavy loads of many thousand tons,

and for travelling one thousand miles in twenty-four hours; may cover

the ocean with floating islands movable in any desired direction with

immense power and celerity, in perfect security, and with all comforts

and luxuries, bearing gardens and palaces, with thousands of families,

and provided with rivulets of sweet water; may explore the interior of

the globe, and travel from pole to pole in a fortnight; provide himself

with means, unheard of yet, for increasing his knowledge of the world,

and so his intelligence; lead a life of continual happiness, of

enjoyments yet unknown; free himself from almost all the evils that

afflict mankind, except death, and even put death far beyond the common

period of human life, and finally render it less afflicting. Mankind may

thus live in and enjoy a new world, far superior to the present, and

raise themselves far higher in the scale of being.”

It would seem from this and various indications beside, that there is a

transcendentalism in mechanics as well as in ethics. While the whole

field of the one reformer lies beyond the boundaries of space, the other

is pushing his schemes for the elevation of the race to its utmost

limits. While one scours the heavens, the other sweeps the earth. One

says he will reform himself, and then nature and circumstances will be

right. Let us not obstruct ourselves, for that is the greatest friction.

It is of little importance though a cloud obstruct the view of the

astronomer compared with his own blindness. The other will reform nature

and circumstances, and then man will be right. Talk no more vaguely,

says he, of reforming the world,—I will reform the globe itself. What

matters it whether I remove this humor out of my flesh, or this

pestilent humor from the fleshy part of the globe? Nay, is not the

latter the more generous course? At present the globe goes with a

shattered constitution in its orbit. Has it not asthma, and ague, and

fever, and dropsy, and flatulence, and pleurisy, and is it not afflicted

with vermin? Has it not its healthful laws counteracted, and its vital

energy which will yet redeem it? No doubt the simple powers of nature,

properly directed by man, would make it healthy and a paradise; as the

laws of man’s own constitution but wait to be obeyed, to restore him to

health and happiness. Our panaceas cure but few ails, our general

hospitals are private and exclusive. We must set up another Hygeia than

is now worshipped. Do not the quacks even direct small doses for

children, larger for adults, and larger still for oxen and horses? Let

us remember that we are to prescribe for the globe itself.

This fair homestead has fallen to us, and how little have we done to

improve it, how little have we cleared and hedged and ditched! We are

too inclined to go hence to a “better land,” without lifting a finger,

as our farmers are moving to the Ohio soil; but would it not be more

heroic and faithful to till and redeem this New England soil of the

world? The still youthful energies of the globe have only to be directed

in their proper channel. Every gazette brings accounts of the untutored

freaks of the wind,—shipwrecks and hurricanes which the mariner and

planter accept as special or general providences; but they touch our

consciences, they remind us of our sins. Another deluge would disgrace

mankind. We confess we never had much respect for that antediluvian

race. A thoroughbred business man cannot enter heartily upon the

business of life without first looking into his accounts. How many

things are now at loose ends. Who knows which way the wind will blow

to-morrow? Let us not succumb to nature. We will marshal the clouds and

restrain tempests; we will bottle up pestilent exhalations; we will

probe for earthquakes, grub them up, and give vent to the dangerous gas;

we will disembowel the volcano, and extract its poison, take its seed

out. We will wash water, and warm fire, and cool ice, and underprop the

earth. We will teach birds to fly, and fishes to swim, and ruminants to

chew the cud. It is time we had looked into these things.

And it becomes the moralist, too, to inquire what man might do to

improve and beautify the system; what to make the stars shine more

brightly, the sun more cheery and joyous, the moon more placid and

content. Could he not heighten the tints of flowers and the melody of

birds? Does he perform his duty to the inferior races? Should he not be

a god to them? What is the part of magnanimity to the whale and the

beaver? Should we not fear to exchange places with them for a day, lest

by their behavior they should shame us? Might we not treat with

magnanimity the shark and the tiger, not descend to meet them on their

own level, with spears of sharks’ teeth and bucklers of tiger’s skin? We

slander the hyena; man is the fiercest and cruellest animal. Ah! he is

of little faith; even the erring comets and meteors would thank him, and

return his kindness in their kind.

How meanly and grossly do we deal with nature! Could we not have a less

gross labor? What else do these fine inventions suggest,—magnetism, the

daguerreotype, electricity? Can we not do more than cut and trim the

forest,—can we not assist in its interior economy, in the circulation of

the sap? Now we work superficially and violently. We do not suspect how

much might be done to improve our relation to animated nature even; what

kindness and refined courtesy there might be.

There are certain pursuits which, if not wholly poetic and true, do at

least suggest a nobler and finer relation to nature than we know. The

keeping of bees, for instance, is a very slight interference. It is like

directing the sunbeams. All nations, from the remotest antiquity, have

thus fingered nature. There are Hymettus and Hybla, and how many

bee-renowned spots beside? There is nothing gross in the idea of these

little herds,—their hum like the faintest low of kine in the meads. A

pleasant reviewer has lately reminded us that in some places they are

led out to pasture where the flowers are most abundant. “Columella tells

us,” says he, “that the inhabitants of Arabia sent their hives into

Attica to benefit by the later-blowing flowers.” Annually are the hives,

in immense pyramids, carried up the Nile in boats, and suffered to float

slowly down the stream by night, resting by day, as the flowers put

forth along the banks; and they determine the richness of any locality,

and so the profitableness of delay, by the sinking of the boat in the

water. We are told, by the same reviewer, of a man in Germany, whose

bees yielded more honey than those of his neighbors, with no apparent

advantage; but at length he informed them, that he had turned his hives

one degree more to the east, and so his bees, having two hours the start

in the morning, got the first sip of honey. True, there is treachery and

selfishness behind all this; but these things suggest to the poetic mind

what might be done.

Many examples there are of a grosser interference, yet not without their

apology. We saw last summer, on the side of a mountain, a dog employed

to churn for a farmer’s family, travelling upon a horizontal wheel, and

though he had sore eyes, an alarming cough, and withal a demure aspect,

yet their bread did get buttered for all that. Undoubtedly, in the most

brilliant successes, the first rank is always sacrificed. Much useless

travelling of horses, _in extenso_, has of late years been improved for

man’s behoof, only two forces being taken advantage of,—the gravity of

the horse, which is the centripetal, and his centrifugal inclination to

go ahead. Only these two elements in the calculation. And is not the

creature’s whole economy better economized thus? Are not all finite

beings better pleased with motions relative than absolute? And what is

the great globe itself but such a wheel,—a larger treadmill,—so that our

horse’s freest steps over prairies are oftentimes balked and rendered of

no avail by the earth’s motion on its axis? But here he is the central

agent and motive-power; and, for variety of scenery, being provided with

a window in front, do not the ever-varying activity and fluctuating

energy of the creature himself work the effect of the most varied

scenery on a country road? It must be confessed that horses at present

work too exclusively for men, rarely men for horses; and the brute

degenerates in man’s society.

* * * * *

It will be seen that we contemplate a time when man’s will shall be law

to the physical world, and he shall no longer be deterred by such

abstractions as time and space, height and depth, weight and hardness,

but shall indeed be the lord of creation. “Well,” says the faithless

reader, “‘life is short, but art is long’; where is the power that will

effect all these changes?” This it is the very object of Mr. Etzler’s

volume to show. At present, he would merely remind us that there are

innumerable and immeasurable powers already existing in nature,

unimproved on a large scale, or for generous and universal ends, amply

sufficient for these purposes. He would only indicate their existence,

as a surveyor makes known the existence of a water-power on any stream;

but for their application he refers us to a sequel to this book, called

the “Mechanical System.” A few of the most obvious and familiar of these

powers are, the Wind, the Tide, the Waves, the Sunshine. Let us consider

their value.

First, there is the power of the Wind, constantly exerted over the

globe. It appears from observation of a sailing-vessel, and from

scientific tables, that the average power of the wind is equal to that

of one horse for every one hundred square feet. We do not attach much

value to this statement of the comparative power of the wind and horse,

for no common ground is mentioned on which they can be compared.

Undoubtedly, each is incomparably excellent in its way, and every

general comparison made for such practical purposes as are contemplated,

which gives a preference to the one, must be made with some unfairness

to the other. The scientific tables are, for the most part, true only in

a tabular sense. We suspect that a loaded wagon, with a light sail, ten

feet square, would not have been blown so far by the end of the year,

under equal circumstances, as a common racer or dray horse would have

drawn it. And how many crazy structures on our globe’s surface, of the

same dimensions, would wait for dry-rot if the traces of one horse were

hitched to them, even to their windward side? Plainly, this is not the

principle of comparison. But even the steady and constant force of the

horse may be rated as equal to his weight at least. Yet we should prefer

to let the zephyrs and gales bear, with all their weight, upon our

fences, than that Dobbin, with feet braced, should lean ominously

against them for a season.

Nevertheless, here is an almost incalculable power at our disposal, yet

how trifling the use we make of it. It only serves to turn a few mills,

blow a few vessels across the ocean, and a few trivial ends besides.

What a poor compliment do we pay to our indefatigable and energetic

servant!

Men having discovered the power of falling water, which, after all, is

comparatively slight, how eagerly do they seek out and improve these

_privileges_? Let a difference of but a few feet in level be discovered

on some stream near a populous town, some slight occasion for gravity to

act, and the whole economy of the neighborhood is changed at once. Men

do indeed speculate about and with this power as if it were the only

privilege. But meanwhile this aerial stream is falling from far greater

heights with more constant flow, never shrunk by drought, offering

mill-sites wherever the wind blows; a Niagara in the air, with no Canada

side;—only the application is hard.

There are the powers, too, of the Tide and Waves, constantly ebbing and

flowing, lapsing and relapsing, but they serve man in but few ways. They

turn a few tide-mills, and perform a few other insignificant and

accidental services only. We all perceive the effect of the tide; how

imperceptibly it creeps up into our harbors and rivers, and raises the

heaviest navies as easily as the lightest chip. Everything that floats

must yield to it. But man, slow to take nature’s constant hint of

assistance, makes slight and irregular use of this power, in careening

ships and getting them afloat when aground.

This power may be applied in various ways. A large body, of the heaviest

materials that will float, may first be raised by it, and being attached

to the end of a balance reaching from the land, or from a stationary

support, fastened to the bottom, when the tide falls, the whole weight

will be brought to bear upon the end of the balance. Also, when the tide

rises, it may be made to exert a nearly equal force in the opposite

direction. It can be employed wherever a _point d’appui_ can be

obtained.

Verily, the land would wear a busy aspect at the spring and neap tide,

and these island ships, these _terræ infirmæ_, which realize the fables

of antiquity, affect our imagination. We have often thought that the

fittest locality for a human dwelling was on the edge of the land, that

there the constant lesson and impression of the sea might sink deep into

the life and character of the landsman, and perhaps impart a marine tint

to his imagination. It is a noble word, that _mariner_,—one who is

conversant with the sea. There should be more of what it signifies in

each of us. It is a worthy country to belong to,—we look to see him not

disgrace it. Perhaps we should be equally mariners and terreners, and

even our Green Mountains need some of that sea-green to be mixed with

them.

The computation of the power of the Waves is less satisfactory. While

only the average power of the wind, and the average height of the tide,

were taken before, now the extreme height of the waves is used, for they

are made to rise ten feet above the level of the sea, to which, adding

ten more for depression, we have twenty feet, or the extreme height of a

wave. Indeed, the power of the waves, which is produced by the wind

blowing obliquely and at disadvantage upon the water, is made to be, not

only three thousand times greater than that of the tide, but one hundred

times greater than that of the wind itself, meeting its object at right

angles. Moreover, this power is measured by the area of the vessel, and

not by its length mainly, and it seems to be forgotten that the motion

of the waves is chiefly undulatory, and exerts a power only within the

limits of a vibration, else the very continents, with their extensive

coasts, would soon be set adrift.

Finally, there is the power to be derived from Sunshine, by the

principle on which Archimedes contrived his burning-mirrors, a

multiplication of mirrors reflecting the rays of the sun upon the same

spot, till the requisite degree of heat is obtained. The principal

application of this power will be to the boiling of water and production

of steam. So much for these few and more obvious powers, already used to

a trifling extent. But there are innumerable others in nature, not

described nor discovered. These, however, will do for the present. This

would be to make the sun and the moon equally our satellites. For, as

the moon is the cause of the tides, and the sun the cause of the wind,

which, in turn, is the cause of the waves, all the work of this planet

would be performed by these far influences.

“We may store up water in some eminent pond, and take out of this store,

at any time, as much water through the outlet as we want to employ, by

which means the original power may react for many days after it has

ceased.... Such reservoirs of moderate elevation or size need not be

made artificially, but will be found made by nature very frequently,

requiring but little aid for their completion. They require no

regularity of form. Any valley, with lower grounds in its vicinity,

would answer the purpose. Small crevices may be filled up. Such places

may be eligible for the beginning of enterprises of this kind.”

The greater the height, of course, the less water required. But suppose

a level and dry country; then hill and valley, and “eminent pond,” are

to be constructed by main force; or, if the springs are unusually low,

then dirt and stones may be used, and the disadvantage arising from

friction will be counterbalanced by their greater gravity. Nor shall a

single rood of dry land be sunk in such artificial ponds as may be

wanted, but their surfaces “may be covered with rafts decked with

fertile earth, and all kinds of vegetables which may grow there as well

as anywhere else.”

And, finally, by the use of thick envelopes retaining the heat, and

other contrivances, “the power of steam caused by sunshine may react at

will, and thus be rendered perpetual, no matter how often or how long

the sunshine may be interrupted.”

Here is power enough, one would think, to accomplish somewhat. These are

the Powers below. O ye millwrights, ye engineers, ye operatives and

speculators of every class, never again complain of a want of power: it

is the grossest form of infidelity. The question is, not how we shall

execute, but what. Let us not use in a niggardly manner what is thus

generously offered.

Consider what revolutions are to be effected in agriculture. First, in

the new country a machine is to move along, taking out trees and stones

to any required depth, and piling them up in convenient heaps; then the

same machine, “with a little alteration,” is to plane the ground

perfectly, till there shall be no hills nor valleys, making the

requisite canals, ditches, and roads as it goes along. The same machine,

“with some other little alterations,” is then to sift the ground

thoroughly, supply fertile soil from other places if wanted, and plant

it; and finally the same machine, “with a little addition,” is to reap

and gather in the crop, thresh and grind it, or press it to oil, or

prepare it any way for final use. For the description of these machines

we are referred to “Etzler’s Mechanical System,” pages 11 to 27. We

should be pleased to see that “Mechanical System.” We have great faith

in it. But we cannot stop for applications now.

Who knows but by accumulating the power until the end of the present

century, using meanwhile only the smallest allowance, reserving all that

blows, all that shines, all that ebbs and flows, all that dashes, we may

have got such a reserved accumulated power as to run the earth off its

track into a new orbit, some summer, and so change the tedious

vicissitude of the seasons? Or, perchance, coming generations will not

abide the dissolution of the globe, but, availing themselves of future

inventions in aerial locomotion, and the navigation of space, the entire

race may migrate from the earth, to settle some vacant and more western

planet, it may be still healthy, perchance unearthy, not composed of

dirt and stones, whose primary strata only are strewn, and where no

weeds are sown. It took but little art, a simple application of natural

laws, a canoe, a paddle, and a sail of matting, to people the isles of

the Pacific, and a little more will people the shining isles of space.

Do we not see in the firmament the lights carried along the shore by

night, as Columbus did? Let us not despair nor mutiny.

“The dwellings also ought to be very different from what is known, if

the full benefit of our means is to be enjoyed. They are to be of a

structure for which we have no name yet. They are to be neither palaces,

nor temples, nor cities, but a combination of all, superior to whatever

is known.

“Earth may be baked into bricks, or even vitrified stone by heat,—we may

bake large masses of any size and form, into stone and vitrified

substance of the greatest durability, lasting even thousand of years,

out of clayey earth, or of stones ground to dust, by the application of

burning-mirrors. This is to be done in the open air, without other

preparation than gathering the substance, grinding and mixing it with

water and cement, moulding or casting it, and bringing the focus of the

burning-mirrors of proper size upon the same.”

The character of the architecture is to be quite different from what it

ever has been hitherto; large solid masses are to be baked or cast in

one piece, ready shaped in any form that may be desired. The building

may, therefore, consist of columns two hundred feet high and upwards, of

proportionate thickness, and of one entire piece of vitrified substance;

huge pieces are to be moulded so as to join and hook on to each other

firmly, by proper joints and folds, and not to yield in any way without

breaking.

“Foundries, of any description, are to be heated by burning-mirrors, and

will require no labor, except the making of the first moulds and the

superintendence for gathering the metal and taking the finished articles

away.”

Alas! in the present state of science, we must take the finished

articles away; but think not that man will always be the victim of

circumstances.

The countryman who visited the city, and found the streets cluttered

with bricks and lumber, reported that it was not yet finished; and one

who considers the endless repairs and reforming of our houses might well

wonder when they will be done. But why may not the dwellings of men on

this earth be built, once for all, of some durable material, some Roman

or Etruscan masonry, which will stand, so that time shall only adorn and

beautify them? Why may we not finish the outward world for posterity,

and leave them leisure to attend to the inner? Surely, all the gross

necessities and economies might be cared for in a few years. All might

be built and baked and stored up, during this, the term-time of the

world, against the vacant eternity, and the globe go provisioned and

furnished, like our public vessels, for its voyage through space, as

through some Pacific Ocean, while we would “tie up the rudder and sleep

before the wind,” as those who sail from Lima to Manilla.

But, to go back a few years in imagination, think not that life in these

crystal palaces is to bear any analogy to life in our present humble

cottages. Far from it. Clothed, once for all, in some “flexible stuff,”

more durable than George Fox’s suit of leather, composed of “fibres of

vegetables,” “glutinated” together by some “cohesive substances,” and

made into sheets, like paper, of any size or form, man will put far from

him corroding care and the whole host of ills.

“The twenty-five halls in the inside of the square are to be each two

hundred feet square and high; the forty corridors, each one hundred feet

long and twenty wide; the eighty galleries, each from 1,000 to 1,250

feet long; about 7,000 private rooms, the whole surrounded and

intersected by the grandest and most splendid colonnades imaginable;

floors, ceilings, columns, with their various beautiful and fanciful

intervals, all shining, and reflecting to infinity all objects and

persons, with splendid lustre of all beautiful colors, and fanciful

shapes and pictures.

“All galleries, outside and within the halls, are to be provided with

many thousand commodious and most elegant vehicles, in which persons may

move up and down like birds, in perfect security, and without

exertion.... Any member may procure himself all the common articles of

his daily wants, by a short turn of some crank, without leaving his

apartment.

“One or two persons are sufficient to direct the kitchen business. They

have nothing else to do but to superintend the cookery, and to watch the

time of the victuals being done, and then to remove them, with the table

and vessels, into the dining-hall, or to the respective private

apartments, by a slight motion of the hand at some crank.... _Any very

extraordinary desire of any person may be satisfied by going to the

place where the thing is to be had; and anything that requires a

particular preparation in cooking or baking may be done by the person

who desires it._”

This is one of those instances in which the individual genius is found

to consent, as indeed it always does, at last, with the universal. This

last sentence has a certain sad and sober truth, which reminds us of the

scripture of all nations. All expression of truth does at length take

this deep ethical form. Here is hint of a place the most eligible of any

in space, and of a servitor, in comparison with whom all other helps

dwindle into insignificance. We hope to hear more of him anon, for even

a Crystal Palace would be deficient without his invaluable services.

And as for the environs of the establishment:—

“There will be afforded the most enrapturing views to be fancied, out of

the private apartments, from the galleries, from the roof, from its

turrets and cupolas,—gardens, as far as the eye can see, full of fruits

and flowers, arranged in the most beautiful order, with walks,

colonnades, aqueducts, canals, ponds, plains, amphitheatres, terraces,

fountains, sculptural works, pavilions, gondolas, places for public

amusement, etc., to delight the eye and fancy, the taste and smell....

The walks and roads are to be paved with hard vitrified large plates, so

as to be always clean from all dirt in any weather or season....

“The walks may be covered with porticos adorned with magnificent

columns, statues, and sculptural works; all of vitrified substance, and

lasting forever. At night the roof, and the inside and outside of the

whole square, are illuminated by gas-light, which, in the mazes of

many-colored crystal-like colonnades and vaultings, is reflected with a

brilliancy that gives to the whole a lustre of precious stones, as far

as the eye can see. Such are the future abodes of men.... Such is the

life reserved to true intelligence, but withheld from ignorance,

prejudice, and stupid adherence to custom.”

Thus is Paradise to be Regained, and that old and stern decree at length

reversed. Man shall no more earn his living by the sweat of his brow.

All labor shall be reduced to “a short turn of some crank,” and “taking

the finished articles away.” But there is a crank,—O, how hard to be

turned! Could there not be a crank upon a crank,—an infinitely small

crank?—we would fain inquire. No,—alas! not. But there is a certain

divine energy in every man, but sparingly employed as yet, which may be

called the crank within,—the crank after all,—the prime mover in all

machinery,—quite indispensable to all work. Would that we might get our

hands on its handle! In fact, no work can be shirked. It may be

postponed indefinitely, but not infinitely. Nor can any really important

work be made easier by co-operation or machinery. Not one particle of

labor now threatening any man can be routed without being performed. It

cannot be hunted out of the vicinity like jackals and hyenas. It will

not run. You may begin by sawing the little sticks, or you may saw the

great sticks first, but sooner or later you must saw them both.

We will not be imposed upon by this vast application of forces. We

believe that most things will have to be accomplished still by the

application called Industry. We are rather pleased after all to consider

the small private, but both constant and accumulated force, which,

stands behind every spade in the field. This it is that makes the

valleys shine, and the deserts really bloom. Sometimes, we confess, we

are so degenerate as to reflect with pleasure on the days when men were

yoked liked cattle, and drew a crooked stick for a plough. After all,

the great interests and methods were the same.

It is a rather serious objection to Mr. Etzler’s schemes, that they

require time, men, and money, three very superfluous and inconvenient

things for an honest and well-disposed man to deal with. “The whole

world,” he tells us, “might therefore be really changed into a paradise,

within less than ten years, commencing from the first year of an

association for the purpose of constructing and applying the machinery.”

We are sensible of a startling incongruity when time and money are

mentioned in this connection. The ten years which are proposed would be

a tedious while to wait, if every man were at his post and did his duty,

but quite too short a period, if we are to take time for it. But this

fault is by no means peculiar to Mr. Etzler’s schemes. There is far too

much hurry and bustle, and too little patience and privacy, in all our

methods, as if something were to be accomplished in centuries. The true

reformer does not want time, nor money, nor co-operation, nor advice.

What is time but the stuff delay is made of? And depend upon it, our

virtue will not live on the interest of our money. He expects no income,

but outgoes; so soon as we begin to count the cost, the cost begins. And

as for advice, the information floating in the atmosphere of society is

as evanescent and unserviceable to him as gossamer for clubs of

Hercules. There is absolutely no common sense; it is common nonsense. If

we are to risk a cent or a drop of our blood, who then shall advise us?

For ourselves, we are too young for experience. Who is old enough? We

are older by faith than by experience. In the unbending of the arm to do

the deed there is experience worth all the maxims in the world.

“It will now be plainly seen that the execution of the proposals is not

proper for individuals. Whether it be proper for government at this

time, before the subject has become popular, is a question to be

decided; all that is to be done is to step forth, after mature

reflection, to confess loudly one’s conviction, and to constitute

societies. Man is powerful but in union with many. Nothing great, for

the improvement of his own condition, or that of his fellow-men, can

ever be effected by individual enterprise.”

Alas! this is the crying sin of the age, this want of faith in the

prevalence of a man. Nothing can be effected but by one man. He who

wants help wants everything. True, this is the condition of our

weakness, but it can never be the means of our recovery. We must first

succeed alone, that we may enjoy our success together. We trust that the

social movements which we witness indicate an aspiration not to be thus

cheaply satisfied. In this matter of reforming the world, we have little

faith in corporations; not thus was it first formed.

But our author is wise enough to say, that the raw materials for the

accomplishment of his purposes are “iron, copper, wood, earth chiefly,

and a union of men whose eyes and understanding are not shut up by

preconceptions.” Ay, this last may be what we want mainly,—a company of

“odd fellows” indeed.

“Small shares of twenty dollars will be sufficient,”—in all, from

“200,000 to 300,000,”—“to create the first establishment for a whole

community of from 3,000 to 4,000 individuals,”—at the end of five years

we shall have a principal of 200 millions of dollars, and so paradise

will be wholly regained at the end of the tenth year. But, alas, the ten

years have already elapsed, and there are no signs of Eden yet, for want

of the requisite funds to begin the enterprise in a hopeful manner. Yet

it seems a safe investment. Perchance they could be hired at a low rate,

the property being mortgaged for security, and, if necessary, it could

be given up in any stage of the enterprise, without loss, with the

fixtures.

But we see two main difficulties in the way. First, the successful

application of the powers by machinery, (we have not yet seen the

“Mechanical System,”) and, secondly, which is infinitely harder, the

application of man to the work by faith. This it is, we fear, which will

prolong the ten years to ten thousand at least. It will take a power

more than “80,000 times greater than all the men on earth could effect

with their nerves,” to persuade men to use that which is already offered

them. Even a greater than this physical power must be brought to bear

upon that moral power. Faith, indeed, is all the reform that is needed;

it is itself a reform. Doubtless, we are as slow to conceive of Paradise

as of Heaven, of a perfect natural as of a perfect spiritual world. We

see how past ages have loitered and erred; “Is perhaps our generation

free from irrationality and error? Have we perhaps reached now the

summit of human wisdom, and need no more to look out for mental or

physical improvement?” Undoubtedly, we are never so visionary as to be

prepared for what the next hour may bring forth.

Μελλει τὸ θεῖον δ ἔστι τοιοῦτον φύσει.

The Divine is about to be, and such is its nature. In our wisest moments

we are secreting a matter, which, like the lime of the shell-fish,

incrusts us quite over, and well for us if, like it, we cast our shells

from time to time, though they be pearl and of fairest tint. Let us

consider under what disadvantages Science has hitherto labored before we

pronounce thus confidently on her progress.

Mr. Etzler is not one of the enlightened practical men, the pioneers of

the actual, who move with the slow, deliberate tread of science,

conserving the world; who execute the dreams of the last century, though

they have no dreams of their own; yet he deals in the very raw but still

solid material of all inventions. He has more of the practical than

usually belongs to so bold a schemer, so resolute a dreamer. Yet his

success is in theory, and not in practice, and he feeds our faith rather

than contents our understanding. His book wants order, serenity,

dignity, everything,—but it does not fail to impart what only man can

impart to man of much importance, his own faith. It is true his dreams

are not thrilling nor bright enough, and he leaves off to dream where he

who dreams just before the dawn begins. His castles in the air fall to

the ground, because they are not built lofty enough; they should be

secured to heaven’s roof. After all, the theories and speculations of

men concern us more than their puny accomplishment. It is with a certain

coldness and languor that we loiter about the actual and so-called

practical. How little do the most wonderful inventions of modern times

detain us. They insult nature. Every machine, or particular application,

seems a slight outrage against universal laws. How many fine inventions

are there which do not clutter the ground? We think that those only

succeed which minister to our sensible and animal wants, which bake or

brew, wash or warm, or the like. But are those of no account which are

patented by fancy and imagination, and succeed so admirably in our

dreams that they give the tone still to our waking thoughts? Already

nature is serving all those uses which science slowly derives on a much

higher and grander scale to him that will be served by her. When the

sunshine falls on the path of the poet, he enjoys all those pure

benefits and pleasures which the arts slowly and partially realize from

age to age. The winds which fan his cheek waft him the sum of that

profit and happiness which their lagging inventions supply.

The chief fault of this book is, that it aims to secure the greatest

degree of gross comfort and pleasure merely. It paints a Mahometan’s

heaven, and stops short with singular abruptness when we think it is

drawing near to the precincts of the Christian’s,—and we trust we have

not made here a distinction without a difference. Undoubtedly if we were

to reform this outward life truly and thoroughly, we should find no duty

of the inner omitted. It would be employment for our whole nature; and

what we should do thereafter would be as vain a question as to ask the

bird what it will do when its nest is built and its brood reared. But a

moral reform must take place first, and then the necessity of the other

will be superseded, and we shall sail and plough by its force alone.

There is a speedier way than the “Mechanical System” can show to fill up

marshes, to drown the roar of the waves, to tame hyenas, secure

agreeable environs, diversify the land, and refresh it with “rivulets of

sweet water,” and that is by the power of rectitude and true behavior.

It is only for a little while, only occasionally, methinks, that we want

a garden. Surely a good man need not be at the labor to level a hill for

the sake of a prospect, or raise fruits and flowers, and construct

floating islands, for the sake of a paradise. He enjoys better prospects

than lie behind any hill. Where an angel travels it will be paradise all

the way, but where Satan travels it will be burning marl and cinders.

What says Veeshnoo Sarma? “He whose mind is at ease is possessed of all

riches. Is it not the same to one whose foot is enclosed in a shoe, as

if the whole surface of the earth were covered with leather?”

He who is conversant with the supernal powers will not worship these

inferior deities of the wind, waves, tide, and sunshine. But we would

not disparage the importance of such calculations as we have described.

They are truths in physics, because they are true in ethics. The moral

powers no one would presume to calculate. Suppose we could compare the

moral with the physical, and say how many horse-power the force of love,

for instance, blowing on every square foot of a man’s soul, would equal.

No doubt we are well aware of this force; figures would not increase our

respect for it; the sunshine is equal to but one ray of its heat. The

light of the sun is but the shadow of love. “The souls of men loving and

fearing God,” says Raleigh, “receive influence from that divine light

itself, whereof the sun’s clarity, and that of the stars, is by Plato

called but a shadow. _Lumen est umbra Dei, Deus est Lumen Luminis._

Light is the shadow of God’s brightness, who is the light of light,”

and, we may add, the heat of heat. Love is the wind, the tide, the

waves, the sunshine. Its power is incalculable; it is many horse-power.

It never ceases, it never slacks; it can move the globe without a

resting-place; it can warm without fire; it can feed without meat; it

can clothe without garments; it can shelter without roof; it can make a

paradise within which will dispense with a paradise without. But though

the wisest men in all ages have labored to publish this force, and every

human heart is, sooner or later, more or less, made to feel it, yet how

little is actually applied to social ends. True, it is the motive-power

of all successful social machinery; but, as in physics, we have made the

elements do only a little drudgery for us, steam to take the place of a

few horses, wind of a few oars, water of a few cranks and hand-mills; as

the mechanical forces have not yet been generously and largely applied

to make the physical world answer to the ideal, so the power of love has

been but meanly and sparingly applied, as yet. It has patented only such

machines as the almshouse, the hospital, and the Bible Society, while

its infinite wind is still blowing, and blowing down these very

structures too, from time to time. Still less are we accumulating its

power, and preparing to act with greater energy at a future time. Shall

we not contribute our shares to this enterprise, then?

------------------------------------------------------------------------

HERALD OF FREEDOM.[8]

[From “The Dial,” Boston, April, 1844.]

Footnote 8:

Herald of Freedom. Published weekly by the New Hampshire Anti-Slavery

Society, Concord, N. H., Vol. X. No. 4.

We had occasionally, for several years, met with a number of this

spirited journal, edited, as abolitionists need not to be informed, by

Nathaniel P. Rogers, once a counsellor at law in Plymouth, still farther

up the Merrimack, but now, in his riper years, come down the hills thus

far, to be the Herald of Freedom to these parts. We had been refreshed

not a little by the cheap cordial of his editorials, flowing like his

own mountain-torrents, now clear and sparkling, now foaming and gritty,

and always spiced with the essence of the fir and the Norway pine; but

never dark nor muddy, nor threatening with smothered murmurs, like the

rivers of the plain. The effect of one of his effusions reminds us of

what the hydropathists say about the electricity in fresh spring-water,

compared with that which has stood over night, to suit weak nerves. We

do not know of another notable and public instance of such pure,

youthful, and hearty indignation at all wrong. The Church itself must

love it, if it have any heart, though he is said to have dealt rudely

with its sanctity. His clean attachment to the right, however, sanctions

the severest rebuke we have read.

Mr. Rogers seems to us to have occupied an honorable and manly position

in these days, and in this country, making the press a living and

breathing organ to reach the hearts of men, and not merely “fine paper

and good type,” with its civil pilot sitting aft, and magnanimously

waiting for the news to arrive,—the vehicle of the earliest news, but

the _latest intelligence_,—recording the indubitable and last results,

the marriages and deaths, alone. This editor was wide awake, and

standing on the beak of his ship; not as a scientific explorer under

government, but a Yankee sealer rather, who makes those unexplored

continents his harbors in which to refit for more adventurous cruises.

He was a fund of news and freshness in himself,—had the gift of speech,

and the knack of writing; and if anything important took place in the

Granite State, we might be sure that we should hear of it in good

season. No other paper that we know kept pace so well with one forward

wave of the restless public thought and sentiment of New England, and

asserted so faithfully and ingenuously the largest liberty in all

things. There was beside more unpledged poetry in his prose than in the

verses of many an accepted rhymer; and we were occasionally advertised

by a mellow hunter’s note from his trumpet, that, unlike most reformers,

his feet were still where they should be, on the turf, and that he

looked out from a serener natural life into the turbid arena of

politics. Nor was slavery always a sombre theme with him, but invested

with the colors of his wit and fancy, and an evil to be abolished by

other means than sorrow and bitterness of complaint. He will fight this

fight with what cheer may be.

But to speak of his composition. It is a genuine Yankee style, without

fiction,—real guessing and calculating to some purpose, and reminds us

occasionally, as does all free, brave, and original writing, of its

great master in these days, Thomas Carlyle. It has a life above grammar,

and a meaning which need not be parsed to be understood. But like those

same mountain-torrents, there is rather too much slope to his channel,

and the rainbow sprays and evaporations go double-quick-time to heaven,

while the body of his water falls headlong to the plain. We would have

more pause and deliberation, occasionally, if only to bring his tide to

a head,—more frequent expansions of the stream,—still, bottomless,

mountain tarns, perchance inland seas, and at length the deep ocean

itself.

Some extracts will show in what sense he was a poet as well as a

reformer. He thus raises the anti-slavery “war-whoop” in New Hampshire,

when an important convention is to be held, sending the summons,—

“To none but the whole-hearted, fully-committed,

cross-the-Rubicon spirits.... From rich ‘old Cheshire,’ from

Rockingham, with her horizon setting down away to the salt sea

... from where the sun sets behind Kearsarge, even to where he

rises gloriously over _Moses Norris’s_ own town of

_Pittsfield_,—and from Amoskeag to Ragged Mountains,—Coos—Upper

Coos, home of the everlasting hills,—send out your bold

advocates of human rights, wherever they lay, scattered by

lonely lake, or Indian stream, or ‘Grant’ or ‘Location,’ from

the trout-haunted brooks of the Amoriscoggin, and where the

adventurous streamlet takes up its mountain march for the St.

Lawrence.

“Scattered and insulated men, wherever the light of philanthropy

and liberty has beamed in upon your solitary spirits, come down

to us like your streams and clouds; and our own Grafton, all

about among your dear hills, and your mountain-flanked

valleys,—whether you _home_ along the swift Ammonoosuck, the

cold Pemigewassett, or the ox-bowed Connecticut....

“We are slow, brethren, dishonorably slow, in a cause like ours.

Our feet should be as ‘hinds’ feet.’ ‘Liberty lies bleeding.’

The leaden-colored wing of slavery obscures the land with its

baleful shadow. Let us come together, and inquire at the hand of

the Lord, what is to be done.”

And again; on occasion of a New England Convention, in the Second-Advent

Tabernacle, in Boston, he desires to try one more blast, as it were, “on

Fabyan’s White Mountain horn.”

“Ho, then, people of the Bay State,—men, women, and children;

children, women, and men, scattered friends of the _friendless_,

wheresoever ye inhabit,—if habitations ye have, as such friends

have not _always_,—along the sea-beat border of Old Essex and

the Puritan Landing, and up beyond sight of the sea-cloud, among

the inland hills, where the sun rises and sets upon the dry

land, in that vale of the Connecticut, too fair for human

content and too fertile for virtuous industry,—where deepens the

haughtiest of earth’s streams, on its seaward way, proud with

the pride of old Massachusetts. Are there any friends of the

friendless negro haunting such a valley as this? In God’s name,

I fear there are none, or few; for the very scene looks apathy

and oblivion to the genius of humanity. I blow you the summons,

though. Come, if any of you are there.

“And gallant little Rhode Island; _transcendent_ abolitionists

of the tiny Commonwealth. I need not call you. You are _called_

the year round, and, instead of sleeping in your tents, stand

harnessed, and with trumpets in your hands,—every one!

“Connecticut! yonder, the home of the Burleighs, the Monroes,

and the Hudsons, and the native land of old George Benson! are

you ready? ‘All ready!’

“Maine here, off east, looking from my mountain post like an

everglade. Where is your Sam. Fessenden, who stood storm-proof

’gainst New Organization in ’38? Has he too much name as a

jurist and orator, to be found at a New England Convention in

’43? God forbid. Come one and all of you from ‘Down East’ to

Boston, on the 30th, and let the sails of your coasters whiten

all the sea-road. Alas! there are scarce enough of you to man a

fishing boat. Come up mighty in your fewness.”

Such timely, pure, and unpremeditated expressions of a public sentiment,

such publicity of genuine indignation and humanity, as abound everywhere

in this journal, are the most generous gifts which a man can make.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

THOMAS CARLYLE AND HIS WORKS.[9]

Footnote 9:

Graham’s Magazine, Philadelphia, March, 1847.

Thomas Carlyle is a Scotchman, born about fifty years ago, “at

Ecclefechan, Annandale,” according to one authority. “His parents ‘good

farmer people,’ his father an elder in the Secession church there, and a

man of strong native sense, whose words were said to ‘nail a subject to

the wall.’” We also hear of his “excellent mother,” still alive, and of

“her fine old covenanting accents, concerting with his transcendental

tones.” He seems to have gone to school at Annan, on the shore of the

Solway Frith, and there, as he himself writes, “heard of famed

professors, of high matters classical, mathematical, a whole Wonderland

of Knowledge,” from Edward Irving, then a young man “fresh from

Edinburgh, with college prizes, ... come to see our schoolmaster, who

had also been his.” From this place, they say, you can look over into

Wordsworth’s country. Here first he may have become acquainted with

Nature, with woods, such as are there, and rivers and brooks, some of

whose names we have heard, and the last lapses of Atlantic billows. He

got some of his education, too, more or less liberal, out of the

University of Edinburgh, where, according to the same authority, he had

to “support himself,” partly by “private tuition, translations for the

booksellers, &c.,” and afterward, as we are glad to hear, “taught an

academy in Dysart, at the same time that Irving was teaching in

Kirkaldy,” the usual middle passage of a literary life. He was destined

for the Church, but not by the powers that rule man’s life; made his

literary _début_ in Fraser’s Magazine, long ago; read here and there in

English and French, with more or less profit, we may suppose, such of us

at least as are not particularly informed, and at length found some

words which spoke to his condition in the German language, and set

himself earnestly to unravel that mystery,—with what success many

readers know.

After his marriage he “resided partly at Comely Bank, Edinburgh; and for

a year or two at Craigenputtock, a wild and solitary farm-house in the

upper part of Dumfriesshire,” at which last place, amid barren heather

hills, he was visited by our countryman, Emerson. With Emerson he still

corresponds. He was early intimate with Edward Irving, and continued to

be his friend until the latter’s death. Concerning this “freest,

brotherliest, bravest human soul,” and Carlyle’s relation to him, those

whom it concerns will do well to consult a notice of his death in

Fraser’s Magazine for 1835, reprinted in the Miscellanies. He also

corresponded with Goethe. Latterly, we hear, the poet Sterling was his

only intimate acquaintance in England.

He has spent the last quarter of his life in London, writing books; has

the fame, as all readers know, of having made England acquainted with

Germany, in late years, and done much else that is novel and remarkable

in literature. He especially is the literary man of those parts. You may

imagine him living in altogether a retired and simple way, with small

family, in a quiet part of London, called Chelsea, a little out of the

din of commerce, in “Cheyne Row,” there, not far from the “Chelsea

Hospital.” “A little past this, and an old ivy-clad church, with its

buried generations lying around it,” writes one traveller, “you come to

an antique street running at right angles with the Thames, and, a few

steps from the river, you find Carlyle’s name on the door.” “A Scotch

lass ushers you into the second story front chamber, which is the

spacious workshop of the world maker.” Here he sits a long time

together, with many books and papers about him; many new books, we have

been told, on the upper shelves, uncut, with the “author’s respects” in

them; in late months, with many manuscripts in an old English hand, and

innumerable pamphlets, from the public libraries, relating to the

Cromwellian period; now, perhaps, looking out into the street on brick

and pavement, for a change, and now upon some rod of grass ground in the

rear; or, perchance, he steps over to the British Museum, and makes that

his studio for the time. This is the fore part of the day; that is the

way with literary men commonly; and then in the afternoon, we presume,

he takes a short run of a mile or so through the suburbs out into the

country; we think he would run that way, though so short a trip might

not take him to very sylvan or rustic places. In the mean while, people

are calling to _see_ him, from various quarters, few very worthy of

being _seen_ by him; “distinguished travellers from America,” not a few;

to all and sundry of whom he gives freely of his yet unwritten rich and

flashing soliloquy, in exchange for whatever they may have to offer;

speaking his English, as they say, with a “broad Scotch accent,”

talking, to their astonishment and to ours, very much as he writes, a

sort of Carlylese, his discourse “coming to its climaxes, ever and anon,

in long, deep, chest-shaking bursts of laughter.”

He goes to Scotland sometimes, to visit his native heath-clad hills,

having some interest still in the earth there; such names as

Craigenputtock and Ecclefechan, which we have already quoted, stand for

habitable places there to him; or he rides to the seacoast of England in

his vacations, upon his horse Yankee, bought by the sale of his books

here, as we have been told.

How, after all, he gets his living; what proportion of his daily bread

he earns by day-labor or job-work with his pen, what he inherits, what

steals,—questions whose answers are so significant, and not to be

omitted in his biography,—we, alas! are unable to answer here. It may be

worth the while to state that he is not a Reformer in our sense of the

term,—eats, drinks, and sleeps, thinks and believes, professes and

practises, not according to the New England standard, nor to the Old

English wholly. Nevertheless, we are told that he is a sort of lion in

certain quarters there, “an amicable centre for men of the most opposite

opinions,” and “listened to as an oracle,” “smoking his perpetual pipe.”

A rather tall, gaunt figure, with intent face, dark hair and complexion,

and the air of a student; not altogether well in body, from sitting too

long in his workhouse,—he, born in the border country and descended from

moss-troopers, it may be. We have seen several pictures of him here;

one, a full-length portrait, with hat and overall, if it did not tell us

much, told the fewest lies; another, we remember, was well said to have

“too combed a look”; one other also we have seen in which we discern

some features of the man we are thinking of; but the only ones worth

remembering, after all, are those which he has unconsciously drawn of

himself.

When we remember how these volumes came over to us, with their

encouragement and provocation from month to month, and what commotion

they created in many private breasts, we wonder that the country did not

ring, from shore to shore, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, with its

greeting; and the Boones and Crockets of the West make haste to hail

him, whose wide humanity embraces them too. Of all that the packets have

brought over to us, has there been any richer cargo than this? What else

has been English news for so long a season? What else, of late years,

has been England to us,—to us who read books, we mean? Unless we

remembered it as the scene where the age of Wordsworth was spending

itself, and a few younger muses were trying their wings, and from time

to time, as the residence of Landor, Carlyle alone, since the death of

Coleridge, has kept the promise of England. It is the best apology for

all the bustle and the sin of commerce, that it has made us acquainted

with the thoughts of this man. Commerce would not concern us much if it

were not for such results as this. New England owes him a debt which she

will be slow to recognize. His earlier essays reached us at a time when

Coleridge’s were the only recent words which had made any notable

impression so far, and they found a field unoccupied by him, before yet

any words of moment had been uttered in our midst. He had this

advantage, too, in a teacher, that he stood near to his pupils; and he

has no doubt afforded reasonable encouragement and sympathy to many an

independent but solitary thinker.

It is remarkable, but on the whole, perhaps, not to be lamented, that

the world is so unkind to a new book. Any distinguished traveller who

comes to our shores is likely to get more dinners and speeches of

welcome than he can well dispose of, but the best books, if noticed at

all, meet with coldness and suspicion, or, what is worse, gratuitous,

off-hand criticism. It is plain that the reviewers, both here and

abroad, do not know how to dispose of this man. They approach him too

easily, as if he were one of the men of letters about town, who grace

Mr. Somebody’s administration, merely; but he already belongs to

literature, and depends neither on the favor of reviewers, nor the

honesty of booksellers, nor the pleasure of readers for his success. He

has more to impart than to receive from his generation. He is another

such a strong and finished workman in his craft as Samuel Johnson was,

and, like him, makes the literary class respectable. Since few are yet

out of their apprenticeship, or, even if they learn to be able writers,

are at the same time able and valuable thinkers. The aged and critical

eye, especially, is incapacitated to appreciate the works of this

author. To such their meaning is impalpable and evanescent, and they

seem to abound only in obstinate mannerisms, Germanisms, and whimsical

ravings of all kinds, with now and then an unaccountably true and

sensible remark. On the strength of this last, Carlyle is admitted to

have what is called genius. We hardly know an old man to whom these

volumes are not hopelessly sealed. The language, they say, is

foolishness and a stumbling-block to them; but to many a clear-headed

boy, they are plainest English, and despatched with such hasty relish as

his bread and milk. The fathers wonder how it is that the children take

to this diet so readily, and digest it with so little difficulty. They

shake their heads with mistrust at their free and easy delight, and

remark that “Mr. Carlyle is a very learned man”; for they, too, not to

be out of fashion, have got grammar and dictionary, if the truth were

known, and with the best faith cudgelled their brains to get a little

way into the jungle, and they could not but confess, as often as they

found the clew, that it was as intricate as Blackstone to follow, if you

read it honestly. But merely reading, even with the best intentions, is

not enough: you must almost have written these books yourself. Only he

who has had the good fortune to read them in the nick of time, in the

most perceptive and recipient season of life, can give any adequate

account of them.

Many have tasted of this well with an odd suspicion, as if it were some

fountain Arethuse which had flowed under the sea from Germany, as if the

materials of his books had lain in some garret there, in danger of being

appropriated for waste-paper. Over what German ocean, from what

Hercynian forest, he has been imported, piecemeal, into England, or

whether he has now all arrived, we are not informed. This article is not

invoiced in Hamburg nor in London. Perhaps it was contraband. However,

we suspect that this sort of goods cannot be imported in this way. No

matter how skilful the stevedore, all things being got into sailing

trim, wait for a Sunday, and aft wind, and then weigh anchor, and run up

the main-sheet,—straightway what of transcendent and permanent value is

there resists the aft wind, and will doggedly stay behind that

Sunday,—it does not travel Sundays; while biscuit and pork make headway,

and sailors cry heave-yo! It must part company, if it open a seam. It is

not quite safe to send out a venture in this kind, unless yourself go

supercargo. Where a man goes, there he is; but the slightest virtue is

immovable,—it is real estate, not personal; who would keep it, must

consent to be bought and sold with it.

However, we need not dwell on this charge of a German extraction, it

being generally admitted, by this time, that Carlyle is English, and an

inhabitant of London. He has the English for his mother-tongue, though

with a Scotch accent, or never so many accents, and thoughts also, which

are the legitimate growth of native soil, to utter therewith. His style

is eminently colloquial, and no wonder it is strange to meet with in a

book. It is not literary or classical; it has not the music of poetry,

nor the pomp of philosophy, but the rhythms and cadences of conversation

endlessly repeated. It resounds with emphatic, natural, lively, stirring

tones, muttering, rattling, exploding, like shells and shot, and with

like execution. So far as it is a merit in composition, that the written

answer to the spoken word, and the spoken word to a fresh and pertinent

thought in the mind, as well as to the half thoughts, the tumultuary

misgivings and expectancies, this author is, perhaps, not to be matched

in literature.