He is no mystic, either, more than Newton or Arkwright or Davy, and

tolerates none. Not one obscure line, or half line, did he ever write.

His meaning lies plain as the daylight, and he who runs may read;

indeed, only he who runs _can_ read, and keep up with the meaning. It

has the distinctness of picture to his mind, and he tells us only what

he sees printed in largest English type upon the face of things. He

utters substantial English thoughts in plainest English dialects; for it

must be confessed, he speaks more than one of these. All the shires of

England, and all the shires of Europe, are laid under contribution to

his genius; for to be English does not mean to be exclusive and narrow,

and adapt one’s self to the apprehension of his nearest neighbor only.

And yet no writer is more thoroughly Saxon. In the translation of those

fragments of Saxon poetry, we have met with the same rhythm that occurs

so often in his poem on the French Revolution. And if you would know

where many of those obnoxious Carlyleisms and Germanisms came from, read

the best of Milton’s prose, read those speeches of Cromwell which he has

brought to light, or go and listen once more to your mother’s tongue. So

much for his German extraction.

Indeed, for fluency and skill in the use of the English tongue, he is a

master unrivalled. His felicity and power of expression surpass even his

special merits as historian and critic. Therein his experience has not

failed him, but furnished him with such a store of winged, ay and legged

words, as only a London life, perchance, could give account of. We had

not understood the wealth of the language before. Nature is ransacked,

and all the resorts and purlieus of humanity are taxed, to furnish the

fittest symbol for his thought. He does not go to the dictionary, the

word-book, but to the word-manufactory itself, and has made endless work

for the lexicographers. Yes, he has that same English for his

mother-tongue that you have, but with him it is no dumb, muttering,

mumbling faculty, concealing the thoughts, but a keen, unwearied,

resistless weapon. He has such command of it as neither you nor I have;

and it would be well for any who have a lost horse to advertise, or a

town-meeting warrant, or a sermon, or a letter to write, to study this

universal letter-writer, for he knows more than the grammar or the

dictionary.

The style is worth attending to, as one of the most important features

of the man which we at this distance can discern. It is for once quite

equal to the matter. It can carry all its load, and never breaks down

nor staggers. His books are solid and workmanlike, as all that England

does; and they are graceful and readable also. They tell of huge labor

done, well done, and all the rubbish swept away, like the bright cutlery

which glitters in shop windows, while the coke and ashes, the turnings,

filings, dust, and borings lie far away at Birmingham, unheard of. He is

a masterly clerk, scribe, reporter, writer. He can reduce to writing

most things,—gestures, winks, nods, significant looks, patois, brogue,

accent, pantomime, and how much that had passed for silence before, does

he represent by written words. The countryman who puzzled the city

lawyer, requiring him to write, among other things, his call to his

horses, would hardly have puzzled him; he would have found a word for

it, all right and classical, that would have started his team for him.

Consider the ceaseless tide of speech forever flowing in countless

cellars, garrets, _parlors_; that of the French, says Carlyle, “only

ebbs toward the short hours of night,” and what a drop in the bucket is

the printed word. Feeling, thought, speech, writing, and, we might add,

poetry, inspiration,—for so the circle is completed; how they gradually

dwindle at length, passing through successive colanders, into your

history and classics, from the roar of the ocean, the murmur of the

forest, to the squeak of a mouse; so much only parsed and spelt out, and

punctuated, at last. The few who can talk like a book, they only get

reported commonly. But this writer reports a new “Lieferung.”

One wonders how so much, after all, was expressed in the old way, so

much here depends upon the emphasis, tone, pronunciation, style, and

spirit of the reading. No writer uses so profusely all the aids to

intelligibility which the printer’s art affords. You wonder how others

had contrived to write so many pages without emphatic or italicized

words, they are so expressive, so natural, so indispensable here, as if

none had ever used the demonstrative pronouns demonstratively before. In

another’s sentences the thought, though it may be immortal, is as it

were embalmed, and does not _strike_ you, but here it is so freshly

living, even the body of it not having passed through the ordeal of

death, that it stirs in the very extremities, and the smallest particles

and pronouns are all alive with it. It is not simple dictionary _it_,

yours or mine, but IT. The words did not come at the command of grammar,

but of a tyrannous, inexorable meaning; not like standing soldiers, by

vote of Parliament, but any able-bodied countryman pressed into the

service, for “Sire, it is not a revolt, it is a revolution.”

We have never heard him speak, but we should say that Carlyle was a rare

talker. He has broken the ice, and streams freely forth like a spring

torrent. He does not trace back the stream of his thought, silently

adventurous, up to its fountain-head, but is borne away with it, as it

rushes through his brain like a torrent to overwhelm and fertilize. He

holds a talk with you. His audience is such a tumultuous mob of thirty

thousand, as assembled at the University of Paris, before printing was

invented. Philosophy, on the other hand, does not talk, but write, or,

when it comes personally before an audience, lecture or read; and

therefore it must be read to-morrow, or a thousand years hence. But the

talker must naturally be attended to at once; he does not talk on

without an audience; the winds do not long bear the sound of his voice.

Think of Carlyle reading his French Revolution to any audience. One

might say it was never written, but spoken; and thereafter reported and

printed, that those not within sound of his voice might know something

about it. Some men read to you something which they have written in a

dead _language_, of course, but it may be in a living _letter_, in a

Syriac, or Roman, or Runic character. Men must _speak_ English who can

_write_ Sanscrit; they must speak a modern language who write,

perchance, an ancient and universal one. We do not live in those days

when the learned used a learned language. There is no writing of Latin

with Carlyle; but as Chaucer, with all reverence to Homer, and Virgil,

and Messieurs the Normans, sung his poetry in the homely Saxon

tongue,—and Locke has at least the merit of having done philosophy into

English,—so Carlyle has done a different philosophy still further into

English, and thrown open the doors of literature and criticism to the

populace.

Such a style,—so diversified and variegated! It is like the face of a

country; it is like a New England landscape, with farm-houses and

villages, and cultivated spots, and belts of forests and

blueberry-swamps round about, with the fragrance of shad-blossoms and

violets on certain winds. And as for the reading of it, it is novel

enough to the reader who has used only the diligence, and old line

mail-coach. It is like travelling, sometimes on foot, sometimes in a gig

tandem; sometimes in a full coach, over highways, mended and unmended,

for which you will prosecute the town; on level roads, through French

departments, by Simplon roads over the Alps, and now and then he hauls

up for a relay, and yokes in an unbroken colt of a Pegasus for a leader,

driving off by cart-paths, and across lots, by corduroy roads and

gridiron bridges; and where the bridges are gone, not even a

string-piece left, and the reader has to set his breast and swim. You

have got an expert driver this time, who has driven ten thousand miles,

and was never known to upset; can drive six in hand on the edge of a

precipice, and touch the leaders anywhere with his snapper.

With wonderful art he grinds into paint for his picture all his moods

and experiences, so that all his forces may be brought to the encounter.

Apparently writing without a particular design or responsibility,

setting down his soliloquies from time to time, taking advantage of all

his humors, when at length the hour comes to declare himself, he puts

down in plain English, without quotation-marks, what he, Thomas Carlyle,

is ready to defend in the face of the world, and fathers the rest, often

quite as defensible, only more modest, or plain spoken, or insinuating,

upon “Sauerteig,” or some other gentleman long employed on the subject.

Rolling his subject how many ways in his mind, he meets it now face to

face, wrestling with it at arm’s length, and striving to get it down, or

throw it over his head; and if that will not do, or whether it will do

or not, tries the back-stitch and side-hug with it, and downs it again,

scalps it, draws and quarters it, hangs it in chains, and leaves it to

the winds and dogs. With his brows knit, his mind made up, his will

resolved and resistless, he advances, crashing his way through the host

of weak, half-formed, _dilettante_ opinions, honest and dishonest ways

of thinking, with their standards raised, sentimentalities and

conjectures, and tramples them all into dust. See how he prevails; you

don’t even hear the groans of the wounded and dying. Certainly it is not

so well worth the while to look through any man’s eyes at history, for

the time, as through his; and his way of looking at things is fastest

getting adopted by his generation.

It is not in man to determine what his style shall be. He might as well

determine what his thoughts shall be. We would not have had him write

always as in the chapter on Burns, and the Life of Schiller, and

elsewhere. No; his thoughts were ever irregular and impetuous. Perhaps

as he grows older and writes more he acquires a truer expression; it is

in some respects manlier, freer, struggling up to a level with its

fountain-head. We think it is the richest prose style we know of.

Who cares what a man’s style is, so it is intelligible,—as intelligible

as his thought. Literally and really, the style is no more than the

_stylus_, the pen he writes with; and it is not worth scraping and

polishing, and gilding, unless it will write his thoughts the better for

it. It is something for use, and not to look at. The question for us is,

not whether Pope had a fine style, wrote with a peacock’s feather, but

whether he uttered useful thoughts. Translate a book a dozen times from

one language to another, and what becomes of its style? Most books would

be worn out and disappear in this ordeal. The pen which wrote it is soon

destroyed, but the poem survives. We believe that Carlyle has, after

all, more readers, and is better known to-day for this very originality

of style, and that posterity will have reason to thank him for

emancipating the language, in some measure, from the fetters which a

merely conservative, aimless, and pedantic literary class had imposed

upon it, and setting an example of greater freedom and naturalness. No

man’s thoughts are new, but the style of their expression is the

never-failing novelty which cheers and refreshes men. If we were to

answer the question, whether the mass of men, as we know them, talk as

the standard authors and reviewers write, or rather as this man writes,

we should say that he alone begins to write their language at all, and

that the former is, for the most part, the mere effigies of a language,

not the best method of concealing one’s thoughts even, but frequently a

method of doing without thoughts at all.

In his graphic description of Richter’s style, Carlyle describes his own

pretty nearly; and no doubt he first got his own tongue loosened at that

fountain, and was inspired by it to equal freedom and originality. “The

language,” as he says of Richter, “groans with indescribable metaphors

and allusions to all things, human and divine, flowing onward, not like

a river, but like an inundation; circling in complex eddies, chafing and

gurgling, now this way, now that”; but in Carlyle, “the proper current”

never “sinks out of sight amid the boundless uproar.” Again: “His very

language is Titanian,—deep, strong, tumultuous, shining with a thousand

hues, fused from a thousand elements, and winding in labyrinthic mazes.”

In short, if it is desirable that a man be eloquent, that he talk much,

and address himself to his own age mainly, then this is not a bad style

of doing it. But if it is desired rather that he pioneer into unexplored

regions of thought, and speak to silent centuries to come, then, indeed,

we could wish that he had cultivated the style of Goethe more, that of

Richter less; not that Goethe’s is the kind of utterance most to be

prized by mankind, but it will serve for a model of the best that can be

successfully cultivated.

But for style, and fine writing, and Augustan ages, that is but a poor

style, and vulgar writing, and a degenerate age, which allows us to

remember these things. This man has something to communicate. Carlyle’s

are not, in the common sense, works of art in their origin and aim; and

yet, perhaps, no living English writer evinces an equal literary talent.

They are such works of art only as the plough and corn-mill and

steam-engine,—not as pictures and statues. Others speak with greater

emphasis to scholars, as such, but none so earnestly and effectually to

all who can read. Others give their advice, he gives his sympathy also.

It is no small praise that he does not take upon himself the airs, has

none of the whims, none of the pride, the nice vulgarities, the

starched, impoverished isolation, and cold glitter of the spoiled

children of genius. He does not need to husband his pearl, but excels by

a greater humanity and sincerity.

He is singularly serious and untrivial. We are everywhere impressed by

the rugged, unwearied, and rich sincerity of the man. We are sure that

he never sacrificed one jot of his honest thought to art or whim, but to

utter himself in the most direct and effectual way,—that is the

endeavor. These are merits which will wear well. When time has worn

deeper into the substance of these books, this grain will appear. No

such sermons have come to us here out of England, in late years, as

those of this preacher,—sermons to kings, and sermons to peasants, and

sermons to all intermediate classes. It is in vain that John Bull, or

any of his cousins, turns a deaf ear, and pretends not to hear them:

nature will not soon be weary of repeating them. There are words less

obviously true, more for the ages to hear, perhaps, but none so

impossible for this age not to hear. What a cutting cimeter was that

“Past and Present,” going through heaps of silken stuffs, and glibly

through the necks of men, too, without their knowing it, leaving no

trace. He has the earnestness of a prophet. In an age of pedantry and

dilettantism, he has no grain of these in his composition. There is

nowhere else, surely, in recent readable English, or other books, such

direct and effectual teaching, reproving, encouraging, stimulating,

earnestly, vehemently, almost like Mahomet, like Luther; not looking

behind him to see how his _Opera Omnia_ will look, but forward to other

work to be done. His writings are a gospel to the young of this

generation; they will hear his manly, brotherly speech with responsive

joy, and press forward to older or newer gospels.

* * * * *

We should omit a main attraction in these books, if we said nothing of

their humor. Of this indispensable pledge of sanity, without some

leaven, of which the abstruse thinker may justly be suspected of

mysticism, fanaticism, or insanity, there is a superabundance in

Carlyle. Especially the transcendental philosophy needs the leaven of

humor to render it light and digestible. In his later and longer works

it is an unfailing accompaniment, reverberating through pages and

chapters, long sustained without effort. The very punctuation, the

italics, the quotation-marks, the blank spaces and dashes, and the

capitals, each and all are pressed into its service.

Carlyle’s humor is vigorous and Titanic, and has more sense in it than

the sober philosophy of many another. It is not to be disposed of by

laughter and smiles merely; it gets to be too serious for that: only

they may laugh who are not hit by it. For those who love a merry jest,

this is a strange kind of fun,—rather too practical joking, if they

understand it. The pleasant humor which the public loves is but the

innocent pranks of the ball-room, harmless flow of animal spirits, the

light plushy pressure of dandy pumps, in comparison. But when an

elephant takes to treading on your corns, why then you are lucky if you

sit high, or wear cowhide. His humor is always subordinate to a serious

purpose, though often the real charm for the reader is not so much in

the essential progress and final upshot of the chapter, as in this

indirect side-light illustration of every hue. He sketches first, with

strong, practical English pencil, the essential features in outline,

black on white, more faithfully than Dryasdust would have done, telling

us wisely whom and what to mark, to save time, and then with brush of

camel’s hair, or sometimes with more expeditious swab, he lays on the

bright and fast colors of his humor everywhere. One piece of solid work,

be it known, we have determined to do, about which let there be no

jesting, but all things else under the heavens, to the right and left of

that, are for the time fair game. To us this humor is not wearisome, as

almost every other is. Rabelais, for instance, is intolerable; one

chapter is better than a volume,—it may be sport to him, but it is death

to us. A mere humorist, indeed, is a most unhappy man; and his readers

are most unhappy also.

Humor is not so distinct a quality as, for the purposes of criticism, it

is commonly regarded, but allied to every, even the divinest faculty.

The familiar and cheerful conversation about every hearthside, if it be

analyzed, will be found to be sweetened by this principle. There is not

only a never-failing, pleasant, and earnest humor kept up there,

embracing the domestic affairs, the dinner, and the scolding, but there

is also a constant run upon the neighbors, and upon Church and State,

and to cherish and maintain this, in a great measure, the fire is kept

burning, and the dinner provided. There will be neighbors, parties to a

very genuine, even romantic friendship, whose whole audible salutation

and intercourse, abstaining from the usual cordial expressions, grasping

of hands, or affectionate farewells, consists in the mutual play and

interchange of a genial and healthy humor, which excepts nothing, not

even themselves, in its lawless range. The child plays continually, if

you will let it, and all its life is a sort of practical humor of a very

pure kind, often of so fine and ethereal a nature, that its parents, its

uncles and cousins, can in no wise participate in it, but must stand

aloof in silent admiration, and reverence even. The more quiet the more

profound it is. Even Nature is observed to have her playful moods or

aspects, of which man seems sometimes to be the sport.

But, after all, we could sometimes dispense with the humor, though

unquestionably incorporated in the blood, if it were replaced by this

author’s gravity. We should not apply to himself, without qualification,

his remarks on the humor of Richter. With more repose in his inmost

being, his humor would become more thoroughly genial and placid. Humor

is apt to imply but a half satisfaction at best. In his pleasantest and

most genial hour, man smiles but as the globe smiles, and the works of

nature. The fruits _dry_ ripe, and much as we relish some of them in

their green and pulpy state, we lay up for our winter store, not out of

these, but the rustling autumnal harvests. Though we never weary of this

vivacious wit, while we are perusing its work, yet when we remember it

from afar, we sometimes feel balked and disappointed, missing the

security, the simplicity, and frankness, even the occasional magnanimity

of acknowledged dulness and bungling. This never-failing success and

brilliant talent become a reproach.

Besides, humor does not wear well. It is commonly enough said, that a

joke will not bear repeating. The deepest humor will not keep. Humors do

not circulate but stagnate, or circulate partially. In the oldest

literature, in the Hebrew, the Hindoo, the Persian, the Chinese, it is

rarely humor, even the most divine, which still survives, but the most

sober and private, painful or joyous thoughts, maxims of duty, to which

the life of all men may be referred. After time has sifted the

literature of a people, there is left only their SCRIPTURE, for that is

WRITING, _par excellence_. This is as true of the poets, as of the

philosophers and moralists by profession; for what subsides in any of

these is the moral only, to reappear as dry land at some remote epoch.

We confess that Carlyle’s humor is rich, deep, and variegated, in direct

communication with the backbone and risible muscles of the globe,—and

there is nothing like it; but much as we relish this jovial, this rapid

and delugeous way of conveying one’s views and impressions, when we

would not converse but meditate, we pray for a man’s diamond edition of

his thought, without the colored illuminations in the margin,—the fishes

and dragons, and unicorns, the red or the blue ink, but its initial

letter in distinct skeleton type, and the whole so clipped and condensed

down to the very essence of it, that time will have little to do. We

know not but we shall immigrate soon, and would fain take with us all

the treasures of the East; and all kinds of _dry_, portable soups, in

small tin canisters, which contain whole herds of English beeves boiled

down, will be acceptable.

The difference between this flashing, fitful writing and pure philosophy

is the difference between flame and light. The flame, indeed, yields

light; but when we are so near as to observe the flame, we are apt to be

incommoded by the heat and smoke. But the sun, that old Platonist, is

set so far off in the heavens, that only a genial summer-heat and

ineffable daylight can reach us. But many a time, we confess, in wintry

weather, we have been glad to forsake the sunlight, and warm us by these

Promethean flames. Carlyle must undoubtedly plead guilty to the charge

of mannerism. He not only has his vein, but his peculiar manner of

working it. He has a style which can be imitated, and sometimes is an

imitator of himself.

Certainly, no critic has anywhere said what is more to the purpose, than

this which Carlyle’s own writings furnish, which we quote, as well for

its intrinsic merit as for its pertinence here. “It is true,” says he,

thinking of Richter, “the beaten paths of literature lead the safeliest

to the goal; and the talent pleases us most which submits to shine with

new gracefulness through old forms. Nor is the noblest and most peculiar

mind too noble or peculiar for working by prescribed laws; Sophocles,

Shakespeare, Cervantes, and in Richter’s own age, Goethe, how little did

they innovate on the given forms of composition, how much in the spirit

they breathed into them! All this is true; and Richter must lose of our

esteem in proportion.” And again, in the chapter on Goethe, “We read

Goethe for years before we come to see wherein the distinguishing

peculiarity of his understanding, of his disposition, even of his way of

writing, consists! It seems quite a simple style, [that of his?]

remarkable chiefly for its calmness, its perspicuity, in short, its

commonness; and yet it is the most uncommon of all styles.” And this,

too, translated for us by the same pen from Schiller, which we will

apply not merely to the outward form of his works, but to their inner

form and substance. He is speaking of the artist. “Let some beneficent

divinity snatch him, when a suckling, from the breast of his mother, and

nurse him with the milk of a better time, that he may ripen to his full

stature beneath a distant Grecian sky. And having grown to manhood, let

him return, a foreign shape, into his century; not, however, to delight

it by his presence, but, dreadful, like the son of Agamemnon, to purify

it. The matter of his works he will take from the present, but their

form he will derive from a nobler time; nay, from beyond all time, from

the absolute unchanging unity of his own nature.”

But enough of this. Our complaint is already out of all proportion to

our discontent.

Carlyle’s works, it is true, have not the stereotyped success which we

call classic. They are a rich but inexpensive entertainment, at which we

are not concerned lest the host has strained or impoverished himself to

feed his guests. It is not the most lasting word, nor the loftiest

wisdom, but rather the word which comes last. For his genius it was

reserved to give expression to the thoughts which were throbbing in a

million breasts. He has plucked the ripest fruit in the public garden;

but this fruit already least concerned the tree that bore it, which was

rather perfecting the bud at the foot of the leaf-stalk. His works are

not to be studied, but read with a swift satisfaction. Their flavor and

gust is like what poets tell of the froth of wine, which can only be

tasted once and hastily. On a review we can never find the pages we had

read. Yet they are in some degree true natural products in this respect.

All things are but once, and never repeated. These works were designed

for such complete success that they serve but for a single occasion.

But he is wilfully and pertinaciously unjust, even scurrilous, impolite,

ungentlemanly; calls us “Imbeciles,” “Dilettants,” “Philistines,”

implying sometimes what would not sound well expressed. If he would

adopt the newspaper style, and take back these hard names—But where is

the reader who does not derive some benefit from these epithets,

applying them to himself?

He is, in fact, the best tempered, and not the least impartial of

reviewers. He goes out of his way to do justice to profligates and

quacks. There is somewhat even Christian, in the rarest and most

peculiar sense, in his universal brotherliness, his simple, child-like

endurance, and earnest, honest endeavor, with sympathy for the like.

Carlyle, to adopt his own classification, is himself the hero as

literary man. There is no more notable workingman in England, in

Manchester or Birmingham, or the mines round about. We know not how many

hours a day he toils, nor for what wages, exactly: we only know the

results for us.

Notwithstanding the very genuine, admirable, and loyal tributes to

Burns, Schiller, Goethe, and others, Carlyle is not a critic of poetry.

In the book of heroes, Shakespeare, the hero as poet, comes off rather

slimly. His sympathy, as we said, is with the men of endeavor; not using

the life got, but still bravely getting their life. “In fact,” as he

says of Cromwell, “everywhere we have to notice the decisive practical

_eye_ of this man; how he drives toward the practical and practicable;

has a genuine insight into what _is_ fact.” You must have very stout

legs to get noticed at all by him. He is thoroughly English in his love

of practical men, and dislike for cant, and ardent enthusiastic heads

that are not supported by any legs. He would kindly knock them down that

they may regain some vigor by touching their mother earth. We have often

wondered how he ever found out Burns, and must still refer a good share

of his delight in him to neighborhood and early association. The Lycidas

and Comus, appearing in Blackwood’s Magazine, would probably go unread

by him, nor lead him to expect a Paradise Lost. The condition-of-England

question is a practical one. The condition-of-England demands a hero,

not a poet. Other things demand a poet; the poet answers other demands.

Carlyle in London, with this question pressing on him so urgently, sees

no occasion for minstrels and rhapsodists there. Kings may have their

bards when there are any kings. Homer would _certainly_ go a-begging

there. He lives in Chelsea, not on the plains of Hindostan, nor on the

prairies of the West, where settlers are scarce, and a man must at least

go _whistling_ to himself.

What he says of poetry is rapidly uttered, and suggestive of a thought,

rather than the deliberate development of any. He answers your question,

What is poetry? by writing a special poem, as that Norse one, for

instance, in the Book of Heroes, altogether wild and original;—answers

your question, What is light? by kindling a blaze which dazzles you, and

pales sun and moon, and not as a peasant might, by opening a shutter.

Carlyle is not a _seer_, but a brave looker-on and _reviewer_; not the

most free and catholic observer of men and events, for they are likely

to find him preoccupied, but unexpectedly free and catholic when they

fall within the focus of his lens. He does not live in the present hour,

and read men and books as they occur for his theme, but having chosen

this, he directs his studies to this end. If we look again at his page,

we are apt to retract somewhat that we have said. Often a genuine poetic

feeling dawns through it, like the texture of the earth seen through the

dead grass and leaves in the spring. The History of the French

Revolution is a poem, at length translated into prose,—an Iliad, indeed,

as he himself has it,—“The destructive wrath of Sansculotism: this is

what we speak, having unhappily no voice for singing.”

One improvement we could suggest in this last, as indeed in most

epics,—that he should let in the sun oftener upon his picture. It does

not often enough appear, but it is all revolution, the old way of human

life turned simply bottom upward, so that when at length we are

inadvertently reminded of the “Brest Shipping,” a St. Domingo colony,

and that anybody thinks of owning plantations, and simply turning up the

soil there, and that now at length, after some years of this revolution,

there is a falling off in the importation of sugar, we feel a queer

surprise. Had they not sweetened their water with revolution then? It

would be well if there were several chapters headed “Work for the

Month,”—Revolution-work inclusive, of course,—“Altitude of the Sun,”

“State of the Crops and Markets,” “Meteorological Observations,”

“Attractive Industry,” “Day-Labor,” &c., just to remind the reader that

the French peasantry did something beside go without breeches, burn

châteaus, get ready knotted cords, and embrace and throttle one another

by turns. These things are sometimes hinted at, but they deserve a

notice more in proportion to their importance. We want not only a

background to the picture, but a ground under the feet also. We remark,

too, occasionally, an unphilosophical habit, common enough elsewhere, in

Alison’s History of Modern Europe, for instance, of saying, undoubtedly

with effect, that if a straw had not fallen this way or that, why

then—but, of course, it is as easy in philosophy to make kingdoms rise

and fall as straws.

The poet is blithe and cheery ever, and as well as nature. Carlyle has

not the simple Homeric health of Wordsworth, nor the deliberate

philosophic turn of Coleridge, nor the scholastic taste of Landor, but,

though sick and under restraint, the constitutional vigor of one of his

old Norse heroes, struggling in a lurid light, with Jötuns still,

striving to throw the old woman, and “she was Time,”—striving to lift

the big cat, and that was “the Great World-Serpent, which, tail in

mouth, girds and keeps up the whole created world.” The smith, though so

brawny and tough, I should not call the healthiest man. There is too

much shop-work, too great extremes of heat and cold, and incessant

ten-pound-ten and thrashing of the anvil, in his life. But the

haymaker’s is a true sunny perspiration, produced by the extreme of

summer heat only, and conversant with the blast of the zephyr, not of

the forge-bellows. We know very well the nature of this man’s sadness,

but we do not know the nature of his gladness.

The poet will maintain serenity in spite of all disappointments. He is

expected to preserve an unconcerned and healthy outlook over the world,

while he lives. _Philosophia practica est eruditionis meta_,—Philosophy

practised is the goal of learning; and for that other, _Oratoris est

celare artem_, we might read, _Herois est celare pugnam_,—the hero will

conceal his struggles. Poetry is the only life got, the only work done,

the only pure product and free labor of man, performed only when he has

put all the world under his feet, and conquered the last of his foes.

Carlyle speaks of Nature with a certain unconscious pathos for the most

part. She is to him a receded but ever memorable splendor, casting still

a reflected light over all his scenery. As we read his books here in New

England, where there are potatoes enough, and every man can get his

living peacefully and sportively as the birds and bees, and need think

no more of that, it seems to us as if by the world he often meant

London, at the head of the tide upon the Thames, the sorest place on the

face of the earth, the very citadel of conservatism.

In his writings, we should say that he, as conspicuously as any, though

with little enough expressed or even conscious sympathy, represents the

Reformer class, and all the better for not being the acknowledged leader

of any. In him the universal plaint is most settled, unappeasable, and

serious. Until a thousand named and nameless grievances are righted,

there will be no repose for him in the lap of nature, or the seclusion

of science and literature. By foreseeing it, he hastens the crisis in

the affairs of England, and is as good as many years added to her

history.

To do himself justice, and set some of his readers right, he should give

us some transcendent hero at length, to rule his demigods and Titans;

develop, perhaps, his reserved and dumb reverence for Christ, not

speaking to a London or Church of England audience merely. Let _not_

“sacred silence meditate that sacred matter” forever, but let us have

sacred speech and sacred scripture thereon.

Every man will include in his list of worthies those whom he himself

best represents. Carlyle, and our countryman Emerson, whose place and

influence must erelong obtain a more distinct recognition, are, to a

certain extent, the complement of each other. The age could not do with

one of them, it cannot do with both. To make a broad and rude

distinction, to suit our present purpose, the former, as critic, deals

with the men of action,—Mahomet, Luther, Cromwell; the latter with the

thinkers,—Plato, Shakespeare, Goethe; for, though both have written upon

Goethe, they do not meet in him. The one has more sympathy with the

heroes, or practical reformers, the other with the observers, or

philosophers. Put their worthies together, and you will have a pretty

fair representation of mankind; yet with one or more memorable

exceptions. To say nothing of Christ, who yet awaits a just appreciation

from literature, the peacefully practical hero, whom Columbus may

represent, is obviously slighted; but above and after all, the Man of

the Age, come to be called workingman, it is obvious that none yet

speaks to his condition, for the speaker is not yet in his condition.

Like speaks to like only; labor to labor, philosophy to philosophy,

criticism to criticism, poetry to poetry. Literature speaks how much

still to the past, how little to the future, how much to the East, how

little to the West,—

In the East fames are won,

In the West deeds are done.

One merit in Carlyle, let the subject be what it may, is the freedom of

prospect he allows, the entire absence of cant and dogma. He removes

many cart-loads of rubbish, and leaves open a broad highway. His

writings are all unfenced on the side of the future and the possible.

Though he does but inadvertently direct our eyes to the open heavens,

nevertheless he lets us wander broadly underneath, and shows them to us

reflected in innumerable pools and lakes.

* * * * *

These volumes contain not the highest, but a very practicable wisdom,

which startles and provokes, rather than informs us. Carlyle does not

oblige us to think; we have thought enough for him already, but he

compels us to act. We accompany him rapidly through an endless gallery

of pictures, and glorious reminiscences of experiences unimproved. “Have

you not had Moses and the prophets? Neither will ye be persuaded if one

should rise from the dead.” There is no calm philosophy of life here,

such as you might put at the end of the Almanac, to hang over the

farmer’s hearth, how men shall live in these winter, in these summer

days. No philosophy, properly speaking, of love, or friendship, or

religion, or politics, or education, or nature, or spirit; perhaps a

nearer approach to a philosophy of kingship, and of the place of the

literary man, than of anything else. A rare preacher, with prayer, and

psalm, and sermon, and benediction, but no contemplation of man’s life

from the serene oriental ground, nor yet from the stirring occidental.

No thanksgiving sermon for the holydays, or the Easter vacations, when

all men submit to float on the full currents of life. When we see with

what spirits, though with little heroism enough, wood-choppers, drovers,

and apprentices take and spend life, playing all day long, sunning

themselves, shading themselves, eating, drinking, sleeping, we think

that the philosophy of their life written would be such a level natural

history as the Gardener’s Calendar and the works of the early botanists,

inconceivably slow to come to practical conclusions.

There is no philosophy here for philosophers, only as every man is said

to have his philosophy. No system but such as is the man himself; and,

indeed, he stands compactly enough; no progress beyond the first

assertion and challenge, as it were, with trumpet blast. One thing is

certain,—that we had best be doing something in good earnest henceforth

forever; that’s an indispensable philosophy. The before impossible

precept, “_know thyself_,” he translates into the partially possible

one, “_know what thou canst work at_.” Sartor Resartus is, perhaps, the

sunniest and most philosophical, as it is the most autobiographical of

his works, in which he drew most largely on the experience of his youth.

But we miss everywhere a calm depth, like a lake, even stagnant, and

must submit to rapidity and whirl, as on skates, with all kinds of

skilful and antic motions, sculling, sliding, cutting punch-bowls and

rings, forward and backward. The talent is very nearly equal to the

genius. Sometimes it would be preferable to wade slowly through a

Serbonian bog, and feel the juices of the meadow.

Beside some philosophers of larger vision, Carlyle stands like an

honest, half-despairing boy, grasping at some details only of their

world systems. Philosophy, certainly, is some account of truths, the

fragments and very insignificant parts of which man will practise in

this workshop; truths infinite and in harmony with infinity; in

respect to which the very objects and ends of the so-called practical

philosopher will be mere propositions, like the rest. It would be no

reproach to a philosopher, that he knew the future better than the

past, or even than the present. It is better worth knowing. He will

prophesy, tell what is to be, or in other words, what alone is, under

appearances, laying little stress on the boiling of the pot, or the

condition-of-England question. He has no more to do with the condition

of England than with her national debt, which a vigorous generation

would not inherit. The philosopher’s conception of things will, above

all, be truer than other men’s, and his philosophy will subordinate

all the circumstances of life. To live like a philosopher is to live,

not foolishly, like other men, but wisely and according to universal

laws. If Carlyle does not take two steps in philosophy, are there any

who take three? Philosophy having crept clinging to the rocks, so far,

puts out its feelers many ways in vain. It would be hard to surprise

him by the relation of any important human experience, but in some

nook or corner of his works you will find that this, too, was

sometimes dreamed of in his philosophy.

To sum up our most serious objections in a few words, we should say that

Carlyle indicates a depth,—and we mean not impliedly, but

distinctly,—which he neglects to fathom. We want to know more about that

which he wants to know as well. If any luminous star or undissolvable

nebula is visible from his station which is not visible from ours, the

interests of science require that the fact be communicated to us. The

universe expects every man to do his duty in his parallel of latitude.

We want to hear more of his inmost life; his hymn and prayer more; his

elegy and eulogy less; that he should speak more from his character, and

less from his talent; communicate centrally with his readers, and not by

a side; that he should say what he believes, without suspecting that men

disbelieve it, out of his never-misunderstood nature. His genius can

cover all the land with gorgeous palaces, but the reader does not abide

in them, but pitches his tent rather in the desert and on the

mountain-peak.

When we look about for something to quote, as the fairest specimen of

the man, we confess that we labor under an unusual difficulty; for his

philosophy is so little of the proverbial or sentential kind, and opens

so gradually, rising insensibly from the reviewer’s level, and

developing its thought completely and in detail, that we look in vain

for the brilliant passages, for point and antithesis, and must end by

quoting his works entire. What in a writer of less breadth would have

been the proposition which would have bounded his discourse, his column

of victory, his Pillar of Hercules, and _ne plus ultra_, is in Carlyle

frequently the same thought unfolded; no Pillar of Hercules, but a

considerable prospect, north and south, along the Atlantic coast. There

are other pillars of Hercules, like beacons and light-houses, still

further in the horizon, toward Atlantis, set up by a few ancient and

modern travellers; but, so far as this traveller goes, he clears and

colonizes, and all the surplus population of London is bound thither at

once. What we would quote is, in fact, his vivacity, and not any

particular wisdom or sense, which last is ever synonymous with sentence

[_sententia_], as in his contemporaries Coleridge, Landor, and

Wordsworth. We have not attempted to discriminate between his works, but

have rather regarded them all as one work, as is the man himself. We

have not examined so much as remembered them. To do otherwise would have

required a more indifferent, and perhaps even less just review, than the

present.

All his works might well enough be embraced under the title of one of

them, a good specimen brick, “On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in

History.” Of this department he is the Chief Professor in the World’s

University, and even leaves Plutarch behind. Such intimate and living,

such loyal and generous sympathy with the heroes of history, not one in

one age only, but forty in forty ages, such an unparalleled reviewing

and greeting of all past worth, with exceptions, to be sure,—but

exceptions were the rule before,—it was, indeed, to make this the age of

review writing, as if now one period of the human story were completing

itself, and getting its accounts settled. This soldier has told the

stories with new emphasis, and will be a memorable hander-down of fame

to posterity. And with what wise discrimination he has selected his men,

with reference both to his own genius and to theirs,—Mahomet, Dante,

Cromwell, Voltaire, Johnson, Burns, Goethe, Richter, Schiller,

Mirabeau,—could any of these have been spared? These we wanted to hear

about. We have not as commonly the cold and refined judgment of the

scholar and critic merely, but something more human and affecting. These

eulogies have the glow and warmth of friendship. There is sympathy, not

with mere fames, and formless, incredible things, but with kindred

men,—not transiently, but life long he has walked with them.

No doubt, some of Carlyle’s worthies, should they ever return to earth,

would find themselves unpleasantly put upon their good behavior, to

sustain their characters; but if he can return a man’s life more perfect

to our hands than it was left at his death, following out the design of

its author, we shall have no great cause to complain. We do not want a

daguerreotype likeness. All biography is the life of Adam,—a

much-experienced man,—and time withdraws something partial from the

story of every individual, that the historian may supply something

general. If these virtues were not in this man, perhaps they are in his

biographer,—no fatal mistake. Really, in any other sense, we never do,

nor desire to, come at the historical man,—unless we rob his grave, that

is the nearest approach. Why did he die, then? _He_ is with his bones,

surely.

No doubt Carlyle has a propensity to _exaggerate_ the heroic in history,

that is, he creates you an ideal hero rather than another thing: he has

most of that material. This we allow in all its senses, and in one

narrower sense it is not so convenient. Yet what were history if he did

not exaggerate it? How comes it that history never has to wait for

facts, but for a man to write it? The ages may go on forgetting the

facts never so long, he can remember two for every one forgotten. The

musty records of history, like the catacombs, contain the perishable

remains, but only in the breast of genius are embalmed the souls of

heroes. There is very little of what is called criticism here; it is

love and reverence, rather, which deal with qualities not relatively,

but absolutely great; for whatever is admirable in a man is something

infinite, to which we cannot set bounds. These sentiments allow the

mortal to die, the immortal and divine to survive. There is something

antique, even, in his style of treating his subject, reminding us that

Heroes and Demi-gods, Fates and Furies, still exist; the common man is

nothing to him, but after death the hero is apotheosized and has a place

in heaven, as in the religion of the Greeks.

Exaggeration! was ever any virtue attributed to a man without

exaggeration? was ever any vice, without infinite exaggeration? Do we

not exaggerate ourselves to ourselves, or do we recognize ourselves for

the actual men we are? Are we not all great men? Yet what are we

actually to speak of? We live by exaggeration. What else is it to

anticipate more than we enjoy? The lightning is an exaggeration of the

light. Exaggerated history is poetry, and truth referred to a new

standard. To a small man every greater is an exaggeration. He who cannot

exaggerate is not qualified to utter truth. No truth, we think, was ever

expressed but with this sort of emphasis, so that for the time there

seemed to be no other. Moreover, you must speak loud to those who are

hard of hearing, and so you acquire a habit of shouting to those who are

not. By an immense exaggeration we appreciate our Greek poetry and

philosophy, and Egyptian ruins; our Shakespeares and Miltons, our

Liberty and Christianity. We give importance to this hour over all other

hours. We do not live by justice, but by grace. As the sort of justice

which concerns us in our daily intercourse is not that administered by

the judge, so the historical justice which we prize is not arrived at by

nicely balancing the evidence. In order to appreciate any, even the

humblest man, you must first, by some good fortune, have acquired a

sentiment of admiration, even of reverence, for him, and there never

were such exaggerators as these.

To try him by the German rule of referring an author to his own

standard, we will quote the following from Carlyle’s remarks on history,

and leave the reader to consider how far his practice has been

consistent with his theory. “Truly, if History is Philosophy teaching by

Experience, the writer fitted to compose history is hitherto an unknown

man. The Experience itself would require All-knowledge to record it,

were the All-wisdom, needful for such Philosophy as would interpret it,

to be had for asking. Better were it that mere earthly Historians should

lower such pretensions, more suitable for Omniscience than for human

science; and aiming only at some picture of the things acted, which

picture itself will at best be a poor approximation, leave the

inscrutable purport of them an acknowledged secret; or, at most, in

reverent faith, far different from that teaching of Philosophy, pause

over the mysterious vestiges of Him whose path is in the great deep of

Time, whom History indeed reveals, but only all History, and in

Eternity, will clearly reveal.”

* * * * *

Carlyle is a critic who lives in London to tell this generation who have

been the great men of our race. We have read that on some exposed place

in the city of Geneva, they have fixed a brazen indicator for the use of

travellers, with the names of the mountain summits in the horizon marked

upon it, “so that by taking sight across the index you can distinguish

them at once. You will not mistake Mont Blanc, if you see him, but until

you get accustomed to the panorama, you may easily mistake one of his

court for the king.” It stands there a piece of mute brass, that seems

nevertheless to know in what vicinity it is: and there perchance it will

stand, when the nation that placed it there has passed away, still in

sympathy with the mountains, forever discriminating in the desert.

So, we may say, stands this man, pointing as long as he lives, in

obedience to some spiritual magnetism, to the summits in the historical

horizon, for the guidance of his fellows.

Truly, our greatest blessings are very cheap. To have our sunlight

without paying for it, without any duty levied,—to have our poet there

in England, to furnish us entertainment, and, what is better,

provocation, from year to year, all our lives long, to make the world

seem richer for us, the age more respectable, and life better worth the

living,—all without expense of acknowledgment even, but silently

accepted out of the east, like morning light as a matter of course.

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

LIFE WITHOUT PRINCIPLE.[10]

Footnote 10:

Atlantic Monthly, Boston, October, 1863.

At a lyceum, not long since, I felt that the lecturer had chosen a theme

too foreign to himself, and so failed to interest me as much as he might

have done. He described things not in or near to his heart, but toward

his extremities and superficies. There was, in this sense, no truly

central or centralizing thought in the lecture. I would have had him

deal with his privatest experience, as the poet does. The greatest

compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what _I thought_,

and attended to my answer. I am surprised, as well as delighted, when

this happens, it is such a rare use he would make of me, as if he were

acquainted with the tool. Commonly, if men want anything of me, it is

only to know how many acres I make of their land,—since I am a

surveyor,—or, at most, what trivial news I have burdened myself with.

They never will go to law for my meat; they prefer the shell. A man once

came a considerable distance to ask me to lecture on Slavery; but on

conversing with him, I found that he and his clique expected seven

eighths of the lecture to be theirs, and only one eighth mine; so I

declined. I take it for granted, when I am invited to lecture

anywhere,—for I have had a little experience in that business,—that

there is a desire to hear what _I think_ on some subject, though I may

be the greatest fool in the country,—and not that I should say pleasant

things merely, or such as the audience will assent to; and I resolve,

accordingly, that I will give them a strong dose of myself. They have

sent for me, and engaged to pay for me, and I am determined that they

shall have me, though I bore them beyond all precedent.

So now I would say something similar to you, my readers. Since _you_ are

my readers, and I have not been much of a traveller, I will not talk

about people a thousand miles off, but come as near home as I can. As

the time is short, I will leave out all the flattery, and retain all the

criticism.

Let us consider the way in which we spend our lives.

This world is a place of business. What an infinite bustle! I am awaked

almost every night by the panting of the locomotive. It interrupts my

dreams. There is no sabbath. It would be glorious to see mankind at

leisure for once. It is nothing but work, work, work. I cannot easily

buy a blank-book to write thoughts in; they are commonly ruled for

dollars and cents. An Irishman, seeing me making a minute in the fields,

took it for granted that I was calculating my wages. If a man was tossed

out of a window when an infant, and so made a cripple for life, or

scared out of his wits by the Indians, it is regretted chiefly because

he was thus incapacitated for—business! I think that there is nothing,

not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life

itself, than this incessant business.

There is a coarse and boisterous money-making fellow in the outskirts of

our town, who is going to build a bank-wall under the hill along the

edge of his meadow. The powers have put this into his head to keep him

out of mischief, and he wishes me to spend three weeks digging there

with him. The result will be that he will perhaps get some more money to

hoard, and leave for his heirs to spend foolishly. If I do this, most

will commend me as an industrious and hard-working man; but if I choose

to devote myself to certain labors which yield more real profit, though

but little money, they may be inclined to look on me as an idler.

Nevertheless, as I do not need the police of meaningless labor to

regulate me, and do not see anything absolutely praise-worthy in this

fellow’s undertaking, any more than in many an enterprise of our own or

foreign governments, however amusing it may be to him or them, I prefer

to finish my education at a different school.

If a man walk in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in

danger of being regarded as a loafer; but if he spends his whole day as

a speculator, shearing off those woods and making earth bald before her

time, he is esteemed an industrious and enterprising citizen. As if a

town had no interest in its forests but to cut them down!

Most men would feel insulted, if it were proposed to employ them in

throwing stones over a wall, and then in throwing them back, merely that

they might earn their wages. But many are no more worthily employed now.

For instance: just after sunrise, one summer morning, I noticed one of

my neighbors walking beside his team, which was slowly drawing a heavy

hewn stone swung under the axle, surrounded by an atmosphere of

industry,—his day’s work begun,—his brow commenced to sweat,—a reproach

to all sluggards and idlers,—pausing abreast the shoulders of his oxen,

and half turning round with a flourish of his merciful whip, while they

gained their length on him. And I thought, Such is the labor which the

American Congress exists to protect,—honest, manly toil,—honest as the

day is long,—that makes his bread taste sweet, and keeps society

sweet,—which all men respect and have consecrated: one of the sacred

band, doing the needful but irksome drudgery. Indeed, I felt a slight

reproach, because I observed this from a window, and was not abroad and

stirring about a similar business. The day went by, and at evening I

passed the yard of another neighbor, who keeps many servants, and spends

much money foolishly, while he adds nothing to the common stock, and

there I saw the stone of the morning lying beside a whimsical structure

intended to adorn this Lord Timothy Dexter’s premises, and the dignity

forthwith departed from the teamster’s labor, in my eyes. In my opinion,

the sun was made to light worthier toil than this. I may add, that his

employer has since run off, in debt to a good part of the town, and,

after passing through Chancery, has settled somewhere else, there to

become once more a patron of the arts.

The ways by which you may get money almost without exception lead

downward. To have done anything by which you earned money _merely_ is to

have been truly idle or worse. If the laborer gets no more than the

wages which his employer pays him, he is cheated, he cheats himself. If

you would get money as a writer or lecturer, you must be popular, which

is to go down perpendicularly. Those services which the community will

most readily pay for, it is most disagreeable to render. You are paid

for being something less than a man. The State does not commonly reward

a genius any more wisely. Even the poet-laureate would rather not have

to celebrate the accidents of royalty. He must be bribed with a pipe of

wine; and perhaps another poet is called away from his muse to gauge

that very pipe. As for my own business, even that kind of surveying

which I could do with most satisfaction, my employers do not want. They

would prefer that I should do my work coarsely and not too well, ay, not

well enough. When I observe that there are different ways of surveying,

my employer commonly asks which will give him the most land, not which

is most correct. I once invented a rule for measuring cord-wood, and

tried to introduce it in Boston; but the measurer there told me that the

sellers did not wish to have their wood measured correctly,—that he was

already too accurate for them, and therefore they commonly got their

wood measured in Charlestown before crossing the bridge.

The aim of the laborer should be, not to get his living, to get “a good

job,” but to perform well a certain work; and, even in a pecuniary

sense, it would be economy for a town to pay its laborers so well that

they would not feel that they were working for low ends, as for a

livelihood merely, but for scientific, or even moral ends. Do not hire a

man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.

It is remarkable that there are few men so well employed, so much to

their minds, but that a little money or fame would commonly buy them off

from their present pursuit. I see advertisements for _active_ young men,

as if activity were the whole of a young man’s capital. Yet I have been

surprised when one has with confidence proposed to me, a grown man, to

embark in some enterprise of his, as if I had absolutely nothing to do,

my life having been a complete failure hitherto. What a doubtful

compliment this is to pay me! As if he had met me half-way across the

ocean beating up against the wind, but bound nowhere, and proposed to me

to go along with him! If I did, what do you think the underwriters would

say? No, no! I am not without employment at this stage of the voyage. To

tell the truth, I saw an advertisement for able-bodied seamen, when I

was a boy, sauntering in my native port, and as soon as I came of age I

embarked.

The community has no bribe that will tempt a wise man. You may raise

money enough to tunnel a mountain, but you cannot raise money enough to

hire a man who is minding _his own_ business. An efficient and valuable

man does what he can, whether the community pay him for it or not. The

inefficient offer their inefficiency to the highest bidder, and are

forever expecting to be put into office. One would suppose that they

were rarely disappointed.

Perhaps I am more than usually jealous with respect to my freedom. I

feel that my connection with and obligation to society are still very

slight and transient. Those slight labors which afford me a livelihood,

and by which it is allowed that I am to some extent serviceable to my

contemporaries, are as yet commonly a pleasure to me, and I am not often

reminded that they are a necessity. So far I am successful. But I

foresee, that, if my wants should be much increased, the labor required

to supply them would become a drudgery. If I should sell both my

forenoons and afternoons to society, as most appear to do, I am sure,

that for me there would be nothing left worth living for. I trust that I

shall never thus sell my birthright for a mess of pottage. I wish to

suggest that a man may be very industrious, and yet not spend his time

well. There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater

part of his life getting his living. All great enterprises are

self-supporting. The poet, for instance, must sustain his body by his

poetry, as a steam planing-mill feeds its boilers with the shavings it

makes. You must get your living by loving. But as it is said of the

merchants that ninety-seven in a hundred fail, so the life of men

generally, tried by this standard, is a failure, and bankruptcy may be

surely prophesied.

Merely to come into the world the heir of a fortune is not to be born,

but to be still-born, rather. To be supported by the charity of friends,

or a government-pension,—provided you continue to breathe,—by whatever

fine synonymes you describe these relations, is to go into the

almshouse. On Sundays the poor debtor goes to church to take an account

of stock, and finds, of course, that his outgoes have been greater than

his income. In the Catholic Church, especially, they go into Chancery,

make a clean confession, give up all, and think to start again. Thus men

will lie on their backs, talking about the fall of man, and never make

an effort to get up.

As for the comparative demand which men make on life, it is an important

difference between two, that the one is satisfied with a level success,

that his marks can all be hit by point-blank shots, but the other,

however low and unsuccessful his life may be, constantly elevates his

aim, though at a very slight angle to the horizon. I should much rather

be the last man,—though, as the Orientals say, “Greatness doth not

approach him who is forever looking down; and all those who are looking

high are growing poor.”

It is remarkable that there is little or nothing to be remembered

written on the subject of getting a living: how to make getting a living

not merely honest and honorable, but altogether inviting and glorious;

for if _getting_ a living is not so, then living is not. One would

think, from looking at literature, that this question had never

disturbed a solitary individual’s musings. Is it that men are too much

disgusted with their experience to speak of it? The lesson of value

which money teaches, which the Author of the Universe has taken so much

pains to teach us, we are inclined to skip altogether. As for the means

of living, it is wonderful how indifferent men of all classes are about

it, even reformers, so called,—whether they inherit, or earn, or steal

it. I think that Society has done nothing for us in this respect, or at

least has undone what she has done. Cold and hunger seem more friendly

to my nature than those methods which men have adopted and advise to

ward them off.

The title _wise_ is, for the most part, falsely applied. How can one be

a wise man, if he does not know any better how to live than other

men?—if he is only more cunning and intellectually subtle? Does Wisdom

work in a tread-mill? or does she teach how to succeed _by her example_?

Is there any such thing as wisdom not applied to life? Is she merely the

miller who grinds the finest logic? It is pertinent to ask if Plato got

his _living_ in a better way or more successfully than his

contemporaries,—or did he succumb to the difficulties of life like other

men? Did he seem to prevail over some of them merely by indifference, or

by assuming grand airs? or find it easier to live, because his aunt

remembered him in her will? The ways in which most men get their living,

that is, live, are mere make-shifts, and a shirking of the real business

of life,—chiefly because they do not know, but partly because they do

not mean, any better.

The rush to California, for instance, and the attitude, not merely of

merchants, but of philosophers and prophets, so called, in relation to

it, reflect the greatest disgrace on mankind. That so many are ready to

live by luck, and so get the means of commanding the labor of others

less lucky, without contributing any value to society! And that is

called enterprise! I know of no more startling development of the

immorality of trade, and all the common modes of getting a living. The

philosophy and poetry and religion of such a mankind are not worth the

dust of a puff-ball. The hog that gets his living by rooting, stirring

up the soil so, would be ashamed of such company. If I could command the

wealth of all the worlds by lifting my finger, I would not pay _such_ a

price for it. Even Mahomet knew that God did not make this world in

jest. It makes God to be a moneyed gentleman who scatters a handful of

pennies in order to see mankind scramble for them. The world’s raffle! A

subsistence in the domains of Nature a thing to be raffled for! What a

comment, what a satire, on our institutions! The conclusion will be,

that mankind will hang itself upon a tree. And have all the precepts in

all the Bibles taught men only this? and is the last and most admirable

invention of the human race only an improved muckrake? Is this the

ground on which Orientals and Occidentals meet? Did God direct us so to

get our living, digging where we never planted,—and He would, perchance,

reward us with lumps of gold?

God gave the righteous man a certificate entitling him to food and

raiment, but the unrighteous man found a _fac-simile_ of the same in

God’s coffers, and appropriated it, and obtained food and raiment like

the former. It is one of the most extensive systems of counterfeiting

that the world has seen. I did not know that mankind were suffering for

want of gold. I have seen a little of it. I know that it is very

malleable, but not so malleable as wit. A grain of gold will gild a

great surface, but not so much as a grain of wisdom.

The gold-digger in the ravines of the mountains is as much a gambler as

his fellow in the saloons of San Francisco. What difference does it

make, whether you shake dirt or shake dice? If you win, society is the

loser. The gold-digger is the enemy of the honest laborer, whatever

checks and compensations there may be. It is not enough to tell me that

you worked hard to get your gold. So does the Devil work hard. The way

of transgressors may be hard in many respects. The humblest observer who

goes to the mines sees and says that gold-digging is of the character of

a lottery; the gold thus obtained is not the same thing with the wages

of honest toil. But, practically, he forgets what he has seen, for he

has seen only the fact, not the principle, and goes into trade there,

that is, buys a ticket in what commonly proves another lottery, where

the fact is not so obvious.

After reading Howitt’s account of the Australian gold-diggings one

evening, I had in my mind’s eye, all night, the numerous valleys, with

their streams, all cut up with foul pits, from ten to one hundred feet

deep, and half a dozen feet across, as close as they can be dug, and

partly filled with water,—the locality to which men furiously rush to

probe for their fortunes,—uncertain where they shall break ground,—not

knowing but the gold is under their camp itself,—sometimes digging one

hundred and sixty feet before they strike the vein, or then missing it

by a foot,—turned into demons, and regardless of each other’s rights, in

their thirst for riches,—whole valleys, for thirty miles, suddenly

honeycombed by the pits of the miners, so that even hundreds are drowned

in them,—standing in water, and covered with mud and clay, they work

night and day, dying of exposure and disease. Having read this, and

partly forgotten it, I was thinking, accidentally, of my own

unsatisfactory life, doing as others do; and with that vision of the

diggings still before me, I asked myself, why _I_ might not be washing

some gold daily, though it were only the finest particles,—why _I_ might

not sink a shaft down to the gold within me, and work that mine. _There_

is a Ballarat, a Bendigo for you,—what though it were a sulky-gully? At

any rate, I might pursue some path, however solitary and narrow and

crooked, in which I could walk with love and reverence. Wherever a man

separates from the multitude, and goes his own way in this mood, there

indeed is a fork in the road, though ordinary travellers may see only a

gap in the paling. His solitary path across lots will turn out the

_higher way_ of the two.

Men rush to California and Australia as if the true gold were to be

found in that direction; but that is to go to the very opposite extreme

to where it lies. They go prospecting farther and farther away from the

true lead, and are most unfortunate when they think themselves most

successful. Is not our _native_ soil auriferous? Does not a stream from

the golden mountains flow through our native valley? and has not this

for more than geologic ages been bringing down the shining particles and

forming the nuggets for us? Yet, strange to tell, if a digger steal

away, prospecting for this true gold, into the unexplored solitudes

around us, there is no danger that any will dog his steps, and endeavor

to supplant him. He may claim and undermine the whole valley even, both

the cultivated and the uncultivated portions, his whole life long in

peace, for no one will ever dispute his claim. They will not mind his

cradles or his toms. He is not confined to a claim twelve feet square,

as at Ballarat, but may mine anywhere, and wash the whole wide world in

his tom.

Howitt says of the man who found the great nugget which weighed

twenty-eight pounds, at the Bendigo diggings in Australia: “He soon

began to drink; got a horse, and rode all about, generally at full

gallop, and, when he met people, called out to inquire if they knew who

he was, and then kindly informed them that he was ‘the bloody wretch

that had found the nugget.’ At last he rode full speed against a tree,

and nearly knocked his brains out.” I think, however, there was no

danger of that, for he had already knocked his brains out against the

nugget. Howitt adds, “He is a hopelessly ruined man.” But he is a type

of the class. They are all fast men. Hear some of the names of the

places where they dig: “Jackass Flat,”—“Sheep’s-Head Gully,”—“Murderer’s

Bar,” etc. Is there no satire in these names? Let them carry their

ill-gotten wealth where they will, I am thinking it will still be

“Jackass Flat,” if not “Murderer’s Bar,” where they live.

The last resource of our energy has been the robbing of graveyards on

the Isthmus of Darien, an enterprise which appears to be but in its

infancy; for, according to late accounts, an act has passed its second

reading in the legislature of New Granada, regulating this kind of

mining; and a correspondent of the “Tribune” writes: “In the dry season,

when the weather will permit of the country being properly prospected,

no doubt other rich. _guacas_ [that is, graveyards] will be found.” To

emigrants he says: “Do not come before December; take the Isthmus route

in preference to the Boca del Toro one; bring no useless baggage, and do

not cumber yourself with a tent; but a good pair of blankets will be

necessary; a pick, shovel, and axe of good material will be almost all

that is required”: advice which might have been taken from the “Burker’s

Guide.” And he concludes with this line in Italics and small capitals:

“_If you are doing well at home_, STAY THERE,” which may fairly be

interpreted to mean, “If you are getting a good living by robbing

graveyards at home, stay there.”

But why go to California for a text? She is the child of New England,

bred at her own school and church.

It is remarkable that among all the preachers there are so few moral

teachers. The prophets are employed in excusing the ways of men. Most

reverend seniors, the _illuminati_ of the age, tell me, with a gracious,

reminiscent smile, betwixt an aspiration and a shudder, not to be too

tender about these things,—to lump all that, that is, make a lump of

gold of it. The highest advice I have heard on these subjects was

grovelling. The burden of it was,—It is not worth your while to

undertake to reform the world in this particular. Do not ask how your

bread is buttered; it will make you sick, if you do,—and the like. A man

had better starve at once than lose his innocence in the process of

getting his bread. If within the sophisticated man there is not an

unsophisticated one, then he is but one of the Devil’s angels. As we

grow old, we live more coarsely, we relax a little in our disciplines,

and, to some extent, cease to obey our finest instincts. But we should

be fastidious to the extreme of sanity, disregarding the gibes of those

who are more unfortunate than ourselves.

In our science and philosophy, even, there is commonly no true and

absolute account of things. The spirit of sect and bigotry has planted

its hoof amid the stars. You have only to discuss the problem, whether

the stars are inhabited or not, in order to discover it. Why must we

daub the heavens as well as the earth? It was an unfortunate discovery

that Dr. Kane was a Mason, and that Sir John Franklin was another. But

it was a more cruel suggestion that possibly that was the reason why the

former went in search of the latter. There is not a popular magazine in

this country that would dare to print a child’s thought on important

subjects without comment. It must be submitted to the D. D.s. I would it

were the chickadee-dees.

You come from attending the funeral of mankind to attend to a natural

phenomenon. A little thought is sexton to all the world.

I hardly know an _intellectual_ man, even, who is so broad and truly

liberal that you can think aloud in his society. Most with whom you

endeavor to talk soon come to a stand against some institution in which

they appear to hold stock,—that is, some particular, not universal, way

of viewing things. They will continually thrust their own low roof, with

its narrow skylight, between you and the sky, when it is the

unobstructed heavens you would view. Get out of the way with your

cobwebs, wash your windows, I say! In some lyceums they tell me that

they have voted to exclude the subject of religion. But how do I know

what their religion is, and when I am near to or far from it? I have

walked into such an arena and done my best to make a clean breast of

what religion I have experienced, and the audience never suspected what

I was about. The lecture was as harmless as moonshine to them. Whereas,

if I had read to them the biography of the greatest scamps in history,

they might have thought that I had written the lives of the deacons of

their church. Ordinarily, the inquiry is, Where did you come from? or,

Where are you going? That was a more pertinent question which I

overheard one of my auditors put to another once,—“What does he lecture

for?” It made me quake in my shoes.

To speak impartially, the best men that I know are not serene, a world

in themselves. For the most part, they dwell in forms, and flatter and

study effect only more finely than the rest. We select granite for the

underpinning of our houses and barns; we build fences of stone; but we

do not ourselves rest on an underpinning of granitic truth, the lowest

primitive rock. Our sills are rotten. What stuff is the man made of who

is not coexistent in our thought with the purest and subtilest truth? I

often accuse my finest acquaintances of an immense frivolity; for, while

there are manners and compliments we do not meet, we do not teach one

another the lessons of honesty and sincerity that the brutes do, or of

steadiness and solidity that the rocks do. The fault is commonly mutual,

however; for we do not habitually demand any more of each other.

That excitement about Kossuth, consider how characteristic, but

superficial, it was!—only another kind of politics or dancing. Men were

making speeches to him all over the country, but each expressed only the

thought, or the want of thought, of the multitude. No man stood on

truth. They were merely banded together, as usual, one leaning on

another, and all together on nothing; as the Hindoos made the world rest

on an elephant, the elephant on a tortoise, and the tortoise on a

serpent, and had nothing to put under the serpent. For all fruit of that

stir we have the Kossuth hat.

Just so hollow and ineffectual, for the most part, is our ordinary

conversation. Surface meets surface. When our life ceases to be inward

and private, conversation degenerates into mere gossip. We rarely meet a

man who can tell us any news which he has not read in a newspaper, or

been told by his neighbor; and, for the most part, the only difference

between us and our fellow is, that he has seen the newspaper, or been

out to tea, and we have not. In proportion as our inward life fails, we

go more constantly and desperately to the post-office. You may depend on

it, that the poor fellow who walks away with the greatest number of

letters, proud of his extensive correspondence, has not heard from

himself this long while.

I do not know but it is too much to read one newspaper a week. I have

tried it recently, and for so long it seems to me that I have not dwelt

in my native region. The sun, the clouds, the snow, the trees say not so

much to me. You cannot serve two masters. It requires more than a day’s

devotion to know and to possess the wealth of a day.

We may well be ashamed to tell what things we have read or heard in our

day. I do not know why my news should be so trivial,—considering what

one’s dreams and expectations are, why the developments should be so

paltry. The news we hear, for the most part, is not news to our genius.

It is the stalest repetition. You are often tempted to ask, why such

stress is laid on a particular experience which you have had,—that,

after twenty-five years, you should meet Hobbins, Registrar of Deeds,

again on the sidewalk. Have you not budged an inch, then? Such is the

daily news. Its facts appear to float in the atmosphere, insignificant

as the sporules of fungi, and impinge on some neglected _thallus_, or

surface of our minds, which affords a basis for them, and hence a

parasitic growth. We should wash ourselves clean of such news. Of what

consequence, though our planet explode, if there is no character

involved in the explosion? In health we have not the least curiosity

about such events. We do not live for idle amusement. I would not run

round a corner to see the world blow up.

All summer, and far into the autumn, perchance, you unconsciously went

by the newspapers and the news, and now you find it was because the

morning and the evening were full of news to you. Your walks were full

of incidents. You attended, not to the affairs of Europe, but to your

own affairs in Massachusetts fields. If you chance to live and move and

have your being in that thin stratum in which the events that make the

news transpire,—thinner than the paper on which it is printed,—then

these things will fill the world for you; but if you soar above or dive

below that plane, you cannot remember nor be reminded of them. Really to

see the sun rise or go down every day, so to relate ourselves to a

universal fact, would preserve us sane forever. Nations! What are

nations? Tartars, and Huns, and Chinamen! Like insects, they swarm. The

historian strives in vain to make them memorable. It is for want of a

man that there are so many men. It is individuals that populate the

world. Any man thinking may say with the Spirit of Lodin,—

“I look down from my height on nations,

And they become ashes before me;—

Calm is my dwelling in the clouds;

Pleasant are the great fields of my rest.”

Pray, let us live without being drawn by dogs, Esquimaux-fashion,

tearing over hill and dale, and biting each other’s ears.

Not without a slight shudder at the danger, I often perceive how near I

had come to admitting into my mind the details of some trivial

affair,—the news of the street; and I am astonished to observe how

willing men are to lumber their minds with such rubbish,—to permit idle

rumors and incidents of the most insignificant kind to intrude on ground

which should be sacred to thought. Shall the mind be a public arena,

where the affairs of the street and the gossip of the tea-table chiefly

are discussed? Or shall it be a quarter of heaven itself,—an hypæthral

temple, consecrated to the service of the gods? I find it so difficult

to dispose of the few facts which to me are significant that I hesitate

to burden my attention with those which are insignificant, which only a

divine mind could illustrate. Such is, for the most part, the news in

newspapers and conversation. It is important to preserve the mind’s

chastity in this respect. Think of admitting the details of a single

case of the criminal court into our thoughts, to stalk profanely through

their very _sanctum sanctorum_ for an hour, ay, for many hours! to make

a very bar-room of the mind’s inmost apartment, as if for so long the

dust of the street had occupied us,—the very street itself, with all its

travel, its bustle, and filth, had passed through our thoughts’ shrine!

Would it not be an intellectual and moral suicide? When I have been

compelled to sit spectator and auditor in a court-room for some hours,

and have seen my neighbors, who were not compelled, stealing in from

time to time, and tiptoeing about with washed hands and faces, it has

appeared to my mind’s eye, that, when they took off their hats, their

ears suddenly expanded into vast hoppers for sound, between which even

their narrow heads were crowded. Like the vanes of windmills, they

caught the broad, but shallow stream of sound, which, after a few

titillating gyrations in their coggy brains, passed out the other side.

I wondered if, when they got home, they were as careful to wash their

ears as before their hands and faces. It has seemed to me, at such a

time, that the auditors and the witnesses, the jury and the counsel, the

judge and the criminal at the bar,—if I may presume him guilty before he

is convicted,—were all equally criminal, and a thunderbolt might be

expected to descend and consume them all together.

By all kinds of traps and signboards, threatening the extreme penalty of

the divine law, exclude such trespassers from the only ground which can

be sacred to you. It is so hard to forget what it is worse than useless

to remember! If I am to be a thoroughfare, I prefer that it be of the

mountain-brooks, the Parnassian streams, and not the town-sewers. There

is inspiration, that gossip which comes to the ear of the attentive mind

from the courts of heaven. There is the profane and stale revelation of

the bar-room and the police court. The same ear is fitted to receive

both communications. Only the character of the hearer determines to

which it shall be open, and to which closed. I believe that the mind can

be permanently profaned by the habit of attending to trivial things, so

that all our thoughts shall be tinged with triviality. Our very

intellect shall be macadamized, as it were,—its foundation broken into

fragments for the wheels of travel to roll over; and if you would know

what will make the most durable pavement, surpassing rolled stones,

spruce blocks, and asphaltum, you have only to look into some of our

minds which have been subjected to this treatment so long.

If we have thus desecrated ourselves,—as who has not?—the remedy will be

by wariness and devotion to reconsecrate ourselves, and make once more a

fane of the mind. We should treat our minds, that is, ourselves, as

innocent and ingenuous children, whose guardians we are, and be careful

what objects and what subjects we thrust on their attention. Read not

the Times. Read the Eternities. Conventionalities are at length as bad

as impurities. Even the facts of science may dust the mind by their

dryness, unless they are in a sense effaced each morning, or rather

rendered fertile by the dews of fresh and living truth. Knowledge does

not come to us by details, but in flashes of light from heaven. Yes,

every thought that passes through the mind helps to wear and tear it,

and to deepen the ruts, which, as in the streets of Pompeii, evince how

much it has been used. How many things there are concerning which we

might well deliberate whether we had better know them,—had better let

their peddling-carts be driven, even at the slowest trot or walk, over

that bridge of glorious span by which we trust to pass at last from the

farthest brink of time to the nearest shore of eternity! Have we no

culture, no refinement,—but skill only to live coarsely and serve the

Devil?—to acquire a little worldly wealth, or fame, or liberty, and make

a false show with it, as if we were all husk and shell, with no tender

and living kernel to us? Shall our institutions be like those

chestnut-burrs which contain abortive nuts, perfect only to prick the

fingers?

America is said to be the arena on which the battle of freedom is to be

fought; but surely it cannot be freedom in a merely political sense that

is meant. Even if we grant that the American has freed himself from a

political tyrant, he is still the slave of an economical and moral

tyrant. Now that the republic,—the _res-publica_,—has been settled, it

is time to look after the _res-privata_,—the private state,—to see, as

the Roman senate charged its consuls, “_ne quid res_-PRIVATA _detrimenti

caperet_,” that the _private_ state receive no detriment.

Do we call this the land of the free? What is it to be free from King

George and continue the slaves of King Prejudice? What is it to be born

free and not to live free? What is the value of any political freedom,

but as a means to moral freedom? Is it a freedom to be slaves, or a

freedom to be free, of which we boast? We are a nation of politicians,

concerned about the out-most defences only of freedom. It is our

children’s children who may perchance be really free. We tax ourselves

unjustly. There is a part of us which is not represented. It is taxation

without representation. We quarter troops, we quarter fools and cattle

of all sorts upon ourselves. We quarter our gross bodies on our poor

souls, till the former eat up all the latter’s substance.

With respect to a true culture and manhood, we are essentially

provincial still, not metropolitan,—mere Jonathans. We are provincial,

because we do not find at home our standards,—because we do not worship

truth, but the reflection of truth,—because we are warped and narrowed

by an exclusive devotion to trade and commerce and manufactures and

agriculture and the like, which are but means, and not the end.

So is the English Parliament provincial. Mere country-bumpkins, they

betray themselves, when any more important question arises for them to

settle, the Irish question, for instance,—the English question why did I

not say? Their natures are subdued to what they work in. Their “good

breeding” respects only secondary objects. The finest manners in the

world are awkwardness and fatuity, when contrasted with a finer

intelligence. They appear but as the fashions of past days,—mere

courtliness, knee-buckles and small-clothes, out of date. It is the

vice, but not the excellence of manners, that they are continually being

deserted by the character; they are cast-off clothes or shells, claiming

the respect which belonged to the living creature. You are presented

with the shells instead of the meat, and it is no excuse generally,

that, in the case of some fishes, the shells are of more worth than the

meat. The man who thrusts his manners upon me does as if he were to

insist on introducing me to his cabinet of curiosities, when I wished to

see himself. It was not in this sense that the poet Decker called Christ

“the first true gentleman that ever breathed.” I repeat, that in this

sense the most splendid court in Christendom is provincial, having

authority to consult about Transalpine interests only, and not the

affairs of Rome. A prætor or proconsul would suffice to settle the

questions which absorb the attention of the English Parliament and the

American Congress.

Government and legislation! these I thought were respectable

professions. We have heard of heaven-born Numas, Lyeurguses, and Solons,

in the history of the world, whose _names_ at least may stand for ideal

legislators; but think of legislating to _regulate_ the breeding of

slaves, or the exportation of tobacco! What have divine legislators to

do with the exportation or the importation of tobacco? what humane ones

with the breeding of slaves? Suppose you were to submit the question to

any son of God,—and has He no children in the nineteenth century? is it

a family which is extinct?—in what condition would you get it again?

What shall a State like Virginia say for itself at the last day, in

which these have been the principal, the staple productions? What ground

is there for patriotism in such a State? I derive my facts from

statistical tables which the States themselves have published.

A commerce that whitens every sea in quest of nuts and raisins, and

makes slaves of its sailors for this purpose! I saw, the other day, a

vessel which had been wrecked, and many lives lost, and her cargo of

rags, juniper-berries, and bitter almonds were strewn along the shore.

It seemed hardly worth the while to tempt the dangers of the sea between

Leghorn and New York for the sake of a cargo of juniper-berries and

bitter almonds. America sending to the Old World for her bitters! Is not

the sea-brine, is not shipwreck, bitter enough to make the cup of life

go down here? Yet such, to a great extent, is our boasted commerce; and

there are those who style themselves statesmen and philosophers who are

so blind as to think that progress and civilization depend on precisely

this kind of interchange and activity,—the activity of flies about a

molasses-hogshead. Very well, observes one, if men were oysters. And

very well, answer I, if men were mosquitoes.

Lieutenant Herndon, whom our Government sent to explore the Amazon, and,

it is said, to extend the area of slavery, observed that there was

wanting there “an industrious and active population, who know what the

comforts of life are, and who have artificial wants to draw out the

great resources of the country.” But what are the “artificial wants” to

be encouraged? Not the love of luxuries, like the tobacco and slaves of,

I believe, his native Virginia, nor the ice and granite and other

material wealth of our native New England; nor are “the great resources

of a country” that fertility or barrenness of soil which produces these.

The chief want, in every State that I have been into, was a high and

earnest purpose in its inhabitants. This alone draws out “the great

resources” of Nature, and at last taxes her beyond her resources; for

man naturally dies out of her. When we want culture more than potatoes,

and illumination more than sugar-plums, then the great resources of a

world are taxed and drawn out, and the result, or staple production, is,

not slaves, nor operatives, but men,—those rare fruits called heroes,

saints, poets, philosophers, and redeemers.

In short, as a snow-drift is formed where there is a lull in the wind,

so, one would say, where there is a lull of truth, an institution

springs up. But the truth blows right on over it, nevertheless, and at

length blows it down.

What is called politics is comparatively something so superficial and

inhuman, that, practically, I have never fairly recognized that it

concerns me at all. The newspapers, I perceive, devote some of their

columns specially to politics or government without charge; and this,

one would say, is all that saves it; but, as I love literature, and, to

some extent, the truth also, I never read those columns at any rate. I

do not wish to blunt my sense of right so much. I have not got to answer

for having read a single President’s Message. A strange age of the world

this, when empires, kingdoms, and republics come a-begging to a private

man’s door, and utter their complaints at his elbow! I cannot take up a

newspaper but I find that some wretched government or other, hard

pushed, and on its last legs, is interceding with me, the reader, to

vote for it,—more importunate than an Italian beggar; and if I have a

mind to look at its certificate, made, perchance, by some benevolent

merchant’s clerk, or the skipper that brought it over, for it cannot

speak a word of English itself, I shall probably read of the eruption of

some Vesuvius, or the overflowing of some Po, true or forged, which

brought it into this condition. I do not hesitate, in such a case, to

suggest work, or the almshouse; or why not keep its castle in silence,

as I do commonly? The poor President, what with preserving his

popularity and doing his duty, is completely bewildered. The newspapers

are the ruling power. Any other government is reduced to a few marines

at Fort Independence. If a man neglects to read the Daily Times,

government will go down on its knees to him, for this is the only

treason in these days.

Those things which now most engage the attention of men, as politics and

the daily routine, are, it is true, vital functions of human society,

but should be unconsciously performed, like the corresponding functions

of the physical body. They are _infra_-human, a kind of vegetation. I

sometimes awake to a half-consciousness of them going on about me, as a

man may become conscious of some of the processes of digestion in a

morbid state, and so have the dyspepsia, as it is called. It is as if a

thinker submitted himself to be rasped by the great gizzard of creation.

Politics is, as it were, the gizzard of society, full of grit and

gravel, and the two political parties are its two opposite

halves,—sometimes split into quarters, it may be, which grind on each

other. Not only individuals, but states, have thus a confirmed

dyspepsia, which expresses itself, you can imagine by what sort of

eloquence. Thus our life is not altogether a forgetting, but also, alas!

to a great extent, a remembering, of that which we should never have

been conscious of, certainly not in our waking hours. Why should we not

meet, not always as dyspeptics, to tell our bad dreams, but sometimes as

_eu_peptics, to congratulate each other on the ever-glorious morning? I

do not make an exorbitant demand, surely.

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

WENDELL PHILLIPS BEFORE THE CONCORD LYCEUM.[11]

Footnote 11:

From “The Liberator,” March 28, 1845.

CONCORD, MASS., March

12, 1845.

MR. EDITOR:—

We have now, for the third winter, had our spirits refreshed,

and our faith in the destiny of the Commonwealth strengthened,

by the presence and the eloquence of Wendell Phillips; and we

wish to tender to him our thanks and our sympathy. The admission

of this gentleman into the Lyceum has been strenuously opposed

by a respectable portion of our fellow-citizens, who themselves,

we trust,—whose descendants, at least, we know,—will be as

faithful conservers of the true order, whenever that shall be

the order of the day,—and in each instance the people have voted

that they _would hear him_, by coming themselves and bringing

their friends to the lecture-room, and being very silent that

they _might_ hear. We saw some men and women, who had long ago

_come out_, _going in_ once more through the free and hospitable

portals of the Lyceum; and many of our neighbors confessed, that

they had had a “sound season” this once.

It was the speaker’s aim to show what the State, and above all

the Church, had to do, and now, alas! have done, with Texas and

slavery, and how much, on the other hand, the individual should

have to do with Church and State. These were fair themes, and

not mistimed; and his words were addressed to “fit, audience,

_and not_ few.”

We must give Mr. Phillips the credit of being a clean, erect,

and what was once called a consistent man. He at least is not

responsible for slavery, nor for American Independence; for the

hypocrisy and superstition of the Church, nor the timidity and

selfishness of the State; nor for the indifference and willing

ignorance of any. He stands so distinctly, so firmly, and so

effectively alone, and one honest man is so much more than a

host, that we cannot but feel that he does himself injustice

when he reminds us of “the American Society, which he

represents.” It is rare that we have the pleasure of listening

to so clear and orthodox a speaker, who obviously has so few

cracks or flaws in his moral nature,—who, having words at his

command in a remarkable degree, has much more than words, if

these should fail, in his unquestionable earnestness and

integrity,—and, aside from their admiration at his rhetoric,

secures the genuine respect of his audience. He unconsciously

tells his biography as he proceeds, and we see him early and

earnestly deliberating on these subjects, and wisely and

bravely, without counsel or consent of any, occupying a ground

at first from which the varying tides of public opinion cannot

drive him.

No one could mistake the genuine modesty and truth with which he

affirmed, when speaking of the framers of the Constitution, “I

am wiser than they,” who with him has improved these sixty

years’ experience of its working; or the uncompromising

consistency and frankness of the prayer which concluded, not

like the Thanksgiving proclamations, with—“God save the

Commonwealth of Massachusetts,” but—God dash it into a thousand

pieces, till there shall not remain a fragment on which a man

can stand, and dare not tell his name,—referring to the case of

Frederick ——; to our disgrace we know not what to call him,

unless Scotland will lend us the spoils of one of her

Douglasses, out of history or fiction, for a season, till we be

hospitable and brave enough to hear his proper name,—a fugitive

slave in one more sense than we; who has proved himself the

possessor of a _fair_ intellect, and has won a colorless

reputation in these parts; and who, we trust, will be as

superior to degradation from the sympathies of Freedom, as from

the antipathies of Slavery. When, said Mr. Phillips, he

communicated to a New Bedford audience, the other day, his

purpose of writing his life, and telling his name, and the name

of his master, and the place he ran from, the murmur ran round

the room, and was anxiously whispered by the sons of the

Pilgrims, “He had better not!” and it was echoed under the

shadow of Concord monument, “He had better not!”

We would fain express our appreciation of the freedom and steady

wisdom, so rare in the reformer, with which he declared that he

was not born to abolish slavery, but to do right. We have heard

a few, a very few, good political speakers, who afforded us the

pleasure of great intellectual power and acuteness, of

soldier-like steadiness, and of a graceful and natural oratory;

but in this man the audience might detect a sort of moral

principle and integrity, which was more stable than their

firmness, more discriminating than his own intellect, and more

graceful than his rhetoric, which was not working for temporary

or trivial ends. It is so rare and encouraging to listen to an

orator who is content with another alliance than with the

popular party, or even with the sympathizing school of the

martyrs, who can afford sometimes to be his own auditor if the

mob stay away, and hears himself without reproof, that we feel

ourselves in danger of slandering all mankind by affirming, that

here is one, who is at the same time an eloquent speaker and a

righteous man.

Perhaps, on the whole, the most interesting fact elicited by

these addresses, is the readiness of the people at large, of

whatever sect or party, to entertain, with good will and

hospitality, the most revolutionary and heretical opinions, when

frankly and adequately, and in some sort cheerfully, expressed.

Such clear and candid declaration of opinion served like an

electuary to whet and clarify the intellect of all parties, and

furnished each one with an additional argument for that right he

asserted.

We consider Mr. Phillips one of the most conspicuous and

efficient champions of a true Church and State now in the field,

and would say to him, and such as are like him, “God speed you.”

If you know of any champion in the ranks of his opponents, who

has the valor and courtesy even of Paynim chivalry, if not the

Christian graces and refinement of this knight, you will do us a

service by directing him to these fields forthwith, where the

lists are now open, and he shall be hospitably entertained. For

as yet the Red-cross knight has shown us only the gallant device

upon his shield, and his admirable command of his steed,

prancing and curvetting in the empty lists; but we wait to see

who, in the actual breaking of lances, will come tumbling upon

the plain.

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

THE LAST DAYS OF JOHN BROWN.[12]

Footnote 12:

Read at North Elba, July 4, 1860.

John Brown’s career for the last six weeks of his life was meteor-like,

flashing through the darkness in which we live. I know of nothing so

miraculous in our history.

If any person, in a lecture or conversation at that time, cited any

ancient example of heroism, such as Cato or Tell or Winkelried, passing

over the recent deeds and words of Brown, it was felt by any intelligent

audience of Northern men to be tame and inexcusably far-fetched.

For my own part, I commonly attend more to nature than to man, but any

affecting human event may blind our eyes to natural objects. I was so

absorbed in him as to be surprised whenever I detected the routine of

the natural world surviving still, or met persons going about their

affairs indifferent. It appeared strange to me that the “little dipper”

should be still diving quietly in the river, as of yore; and it

suggested that this bird might continue to dive here when Concord should

be no more.

I felt that he, a prisoner in the midst of his enemies, and under

sentence of death, if consulted as to his next step or resource, could

answer more wisely than all his countrymen beside. He best understood

his position; he contemplated it most calmly. Comparatively, all other

men, North and South, were beside themselves. Our thoughts could not

revert to any greater or wiser or better man with whom to contrast him,

for he, then and there, was above them all. The man this country was

about to hang appeared the greatest and best in it.

Years were not required for a revolution of public opinion; days, nay

hours, produced marked changes in this case. Fifty who were ready to say

on going into our meeting in honor of him in Concord, that he ought to

be hung, would not say it when they came out. They heard his words read;

they saw the earnest faces of the congregation; and perhaps they joined

at last in singing the hymn in his praise.

The order of instructors was reversed. I heard that one preacher, who at

first was shocked and stood aloof, felt obliged at last, after he was

hung, to make him the subject of a sermon, in which, to some extent, he

eulogized the man, but said that his act was a failure. An influential

class-teacher thought it necessary, after the services, to tell his

grown-up pupils, that at first he thought as the preacher did then, but

now he thought that John Brown was right. But it was understood that his

pupils were as much ahead of the teacher as he was ahead of the priest;

and I know for a certainty, that very little boys at home had already

asked their parents, in a tone of surprise, why God did not interfere to

save him. In each case, the constituted teachers were only half

conscious that they were not _leading_, but being _dragged_, with some

loss of time and power.

The more conscientious preachers, the Bible men, they who talk about

principle, and doing to others as you would that they should do unto

you,—how could they fail to recognize him, by far the greatest preacher

of them all, with the Bible in his life and in his acts, the embodiment

of principle, who actually carried out the golden rule? All whose moral

sense had been aroused, who had a calling from on high to preach, sided

with him. What confessions he extracted from the cold and conservative!

It is remarkable, but on the whole it is well, that it did not prove the

occasion for a new sect of _Brownites_ being formed in our midst.

They, whether within the Church or out of it, who adhere to the spirit

and let go the letter, and are accordingly called infidel, were as usual

foremost to recognize him. Men have been hung in the South before for

attempting to rescue slaves, and the North was not much stirred by it.

Whence, then, this wonderful difference? We were not so sure of _their_

devotion to principle. We made a subtle distinction, forgot human laws,

and did homage to an idea. The North, I mean the _living_ North, was

suddenly all transcendental. It went behind the human law, it went

behind the apparent failure, and recognized eternal justice and glory.

Commonly, men live according to a formula, and are satisfied if the

order of law is observed, but in this instance they, to some extent,

returned to original perceptions, and there was a slight revival of old

religion. They saw that what was called order was confusion, what was

called justice, injustice, and that the best was deemed the worst. This

attitude suggested a more intelligent and generous spirit than that

which actuated our forefathers, and the possibility, in the course of

ages, of a revolution in behalf of another and an oppressed people.

Most Northern men, and a few Southern ones, were wonderfully stirred by

Brown’s behavior and words. They saw and felt that they were heroic and

noble, and that there had been nothing quite equal to them in their kind

in this country, or in the recent history of the world. But the minority

were unmoved by them. They were only surprised and provoked by the

attitude of their neighbors. They saw that Brown was brave, and that he

believed that he had done right, but they did not detect any further

peculiarity in him. Not being accustomed to make fine distinctions, or

to appreciate magnanimity, they read his letters and speeches as if they

read them not. They were not aware when they approached a heroic

statement,—they did not know when they _burned_. They did not feel that

he spoke with authority, and hence they only remembered that the _law_

must be executed. They remembered the old formula, but did not hear the

new revelation. The man who does not recognize in Brown’s words a wisdom

and nobleness, and therefore an authority, superior to our laws, is a

modern Democrat. This is the test by which to discover him. He is not

wilfully but constitutionally blind on this side, and he is consistent

with himself. Such has been his past life; no doubt of it. In like

manner he has read history and his Bible, and he accepts, or seems to

accept, the last only as an established formula, and not because he has

been convicted by it. You will not find kindred sentiments in his

common-place book, if he has one.

When a noble deed is done, who is likely to appreciate it? They who are

noble themselves. I was not surprised that certain of my neighbors spoke

of John Brown as an ordinary felon, for who are they? They have either

much flesh, or much office, or much coarseness of some kind. They are

not ethereal natures in any sense. The dark qualities predominate in

them. Several of them are decidedly pachydermatous. I say it in sorrow,

not in anger. How can a man behold the light, who has no answering

inward light? They are true to their _right_, but when they look this

way they _see_ nothing, they are blind. For the children of the light to

contend with them is as if there should be a contest between eagles and

owls. Show me a man who feels bitterly toward John Brown, and let me

hear what noble verse he can repeat. He’ll be as dumb as if his lips

were stone.

It is not every man who can be a Christian, even in a very moderate

sense, whatever education you give him. It is a matter of constitution

and temperament, after all. He may have to be born again many times. I

have known many a man who pretended to be a Christian, in whom it was

ridiculous, for he had no genius for it. It is not every man who can be

a freeman, even.

Editors persevered for a good while in saying that Brown was crazy; but

at last they said only that it was “a crazy scheme,” and the only

evidence brought to prove it was that it cost him his life. I have no

doubt that if he had gone with five thousand men, liberated a thousand

slaves, killed a hundred or two slaveholders, and had as many more

killed on his own side, but not lost his own life, these same editors

would have called it by a more respectable name. Yet he has been far

more successful than that. He has liberated many thousands of slaves,

both North and South. They seem to have known nothing about living or

dying for a principle. They all called him crazy then; who calls him

crazy now?

All through the excitement occasioned by his remarkable attempt and

subsequent behavior, the Massachusetts Legislature, not taking any steps

for the defence of her citizens who were likely to be carried to

Virginia as witnesses and exposed to the violence of a slaveholding mob,

was wholly absorbed in a liquor-agency question, and indulging in poor

jokes on the word “extension.” Bad spirits occupied their thoughts. I am

sure that no statesman up to the occasion could have attended to that

question at all at that time,—a very vulgar question to attend to at any

time!

When I looked into a liturgy of the Church of England, printed near the

end of the last century, in order to find a service applicable to the

case of Brown, I found that the only martyr recognized and provided for

by it was King Charles the First, an eminent scamp. Of all the

inhabitants of England and of the world, he was the only one, according

to this authority, whom that church had made a martyr and saint of; and

for more than a century it had celebrated his martyrdom, so called, by

an annual service. What a satire on the Church is that!

Look not to legislatures and churches for your guidance, nor to any

soulless _incorporated_ bodies, but to _in-spirited_ or inspired ones.

What avail all your scholarly accomplishments and learning, compared

with wisdom and manhood? To omit his other behavior, see what a work

this comparatively unread and unlettered man wrote within six weeks.

Where is our professor of _belles-lettres_ or of logic and rhetoric, who

can write so well? He wrote in prison, not a History of the World, like

Raleigh, but an American book which I think will live longer than that.

I do not know of such words, uttered under such circumstances, and so

copiously withal, in Roman or English or any history. What a variety of

themes he touched on in that short space! There are words in that letter

to his wife, respecting the education of his daughters, which deserve to

be framed and hung over every mantel-piece in the land. Compare this

earnest wisdom with that of Poor Richard.

The death of Irving, which at any other time would have attracted

universal attention, having occurred while these things were

transpiring, went almost unobserved. I shall have to read of it in the

biography of authors.

Literary gentlemen, editors, and critics, think that they know how to

write, because they have studied grammar and rhetoric; but they are

egregiously mistaken. The _art_ of composition is as simple as the

discharge of a bullet from a rifle, and its masterpieces imply an

infinitely greater force behind them. This unlettered man’s speaking and

writing are standard English. Some words and phrases deemed vulgarisms

and Americanisms before, he has made standard American; such as “_It

will pay_.” It suggests that the one great rule of composition,—and if I

were a professor of rhetoric I should insist on this,—is, to _speak the

truth_. This first, this second, this third; pebbles in your mouth or

not. This demands earnestness and manhood chiefly.

We seem to have forgotten that the expression, a _liberal_ education,

originally meant among the Romans one worthy of _free_ men; while the

learning of trades and professions by which to get your livelihood

merely was considered worthy of _slaves_ only. But taking a hint from

the word, I would go a step further, and say, that it is not the man of

wealth and leisure simply, though devoted to art, or science, or

literature, who, in a true sense, is _liberally_ educated, but only the

earnest and free man. In a slaveholding country like this, there can be

no such thing as a _liberal_ education tolerated by the State; and those

scholars of Austria and France who, however learned they may be, are

contented under their tyrannies, have received only a _servile_

education.

Nothing could his enemies do, but it redounded to his infinite

advantage,—that is, to the advantage of his cause. They did not hang him

at once, but reserved him to preach to them. And then there was another

great blunder. They did not hang his four followers with him; that scene

was still postponed; and so his victory was prolonged and completed. No

theatrical manager could have arranged things so wisely to give effect

to his behavior and words. And who, think you, _was_ the manager? _Who_

placed the slave-woman and her child, whom he stooped to kiss for a

symbol, between his prison and the gallows?

We soon saw, as he saw, that he was not to be pardoned or rescued by

men. That would have been to disarm him, to restore to him a material

weapon, a Sharpe’s rifle, when he had taken up the sword of the

spirit,—the sword with which he has really won his greatest and most

memorable victories. Now he has not laid aside the sword of the spirit,

for he is pure spirit himself, and his sword is pure spirit also.

“He nothing common did or mean

Upon that memorable scene,

Nor called the gods with vulgar spite,

To vindicate his helpless right;

But bowed his comely head

Down as upon a bed.”

What a transit was that of his horizontal body alone, but just cut down

from the gallows-tree! We read, that at such a time it passed through

Philadelphia, and by Saturday night had reached New York. Thus, like a

meteor it shot through the Union from the Southern regions toward the

North! No such freight had the cars borne since they carried him

Southward alive.

On the day of his translation, I heard, to be sure, that he was _hung_,

but I did not know what that meant; I felt no sorrow on that account;

but not for a day or two did I even _hear_ that he was _dead_, and not

after any number of days shall I believe it. Of all the men who were

said to be my contemporaries, it seemed to me that John Brown was the

only one who _had not died_. I never hear of a man named Brown now,—and

I hear of them pretty often,—I never hear of any particularly brave and

earnest man, but my first thought is of John Brown, and what relation he

may be to him. I meet him at every turn. He is more alive than ever he

was. He has earned immortality. He is not confined to North Elba nor to

Kansas. He is no longer working in secret. He works in public, and in

the clearest light that shines on this land.

THE END.

Cambridge: Stereotyped and Printed by Welch, Bigelow, & Co.

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

● Transcriber’s Notes:

○ Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected.

○ Typographical errors were silently corrected.

○ Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only

when a predominant form was found in this book.

○ Text that:

was in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_); had extra

character spacing by “plus” signs (+stretched+).