Birth of Charles.--Coleridge.--Domestic Toils and Trials.--Their
Tragic Culmination.--Letters to and from Coleridge.
1775-1796.--Æt. 11-32.
On the 10th of February 1775 arrived a new member into the household
group in Crown Office Row--Charles, the child of his father's old age,
the "weakly but very pretty babe," who was to prove their strong
support. And now Mary was no longer a lonely girl. She was just old
enough to be trusted to nurse and tend the baby and she became a
mother to it. In after life she spoke of the comfort, the wholesome
curative influence upon her young troubled mind, which this devotion
to Charles in his infancy brought with it. And as he grew older rich
was her reward; for he repaid the debt with a love half filial, half
fraternal, than which no human tie was ever stronger or more sublimely
adequate to the strain of a terrible emergency. As his young mind
unfolded he found in her intelligence and love the same genial
fostering influences that had cherished his feeble frame into health
and strength. It was with his little hand in hers that he first trod
the Temple gardens, and spelled out the inscriptions on the sun-dials
and on the tombstones in the old burying-ground and wondered, finding
only lists of the virtues "where all the naughty people were buried?"
Like Mary, his disposition was so different from that of his gay,
pleasure-loving parents that they but ill understood "and gave
themselves little trouble about him," which also tended to draw
brother and sister closer together. There are no other records of
Mary's girlhood than such as may be gathered from the story of her
brother's early life; of how when he was five and she was fifteen she
came near to losing him from small-pox, Aunt Hetty grieving over him
"the only thing in the world she loved" as she was wont to say, with a
mother's tears. And how, three years later (in 1782), she had to give
up his daily companionship and see him, now grown a handsome boy with
"crisply curling black hair, clear brown complexion, aquiline,
slightly Jewish cast of features, winning smile, and glittering,
restless eyes," equipped as a Christ's Hospital boy and, with Aunt
Hetty, to
... peruse him round and round,
And hardly know him in his yellow coats,
Red leathern belt and gown of russet blue.
Coleridge was already a Blue Coat boy but older and too high above
Charles in the school for comradeship then. To Lamb, with home close
at hand, it was a happy time; but Coleridge, homeless and friendless
in the great city, had no mitigations of the rough Spartan discipline
which prevailed; and the weekly whole holidays when, turned adrift in
the streets from morn till night, he had nothing but a crust of bread
in his pockets and no resource but to beguile the pangs of hunger in
summer with hours of bathing in the New River and in winter with
furtive hanging round book-stalls wrought permanent harm to his
fine-strung organisation. Nor did the gentleness of his disposition,
or the brilliancy of his powers, save him from the birch-loving
brutalities of old Boyer, who was wont to add an extra stripe "because
he was so ugly."
In the Lamb household the domestic outlook grew dark as soon as Mary
was grown up, for her father's faculties and her mother's health
failed early; and when, in his fifteenth year, Charles left Christ's
Hospital it was already needful for him to take up the burthens of a
man on his young shoulders; and for Mary not only to make head against
sickness, helplessness, old age with its attendant exigencies but to
add to the now straitened means by taking in millinery work.
For eleven years, as she has told us, she maintained herself by the
needle; from the age of twenty-one to thirty-two, that is. It was not
in poor old Aunt Hetty's nature to be helpful either. "She was from
morning till night poring over good books and devotional exercises....
The only secular employment I remember to have seen her engaged in was
the splitting of French beans and dropping them into a basin of fair
water," says Elia. Happily, a clerkship in the South Sea House, where
his brother already was, enabled Charles to maintain his parents and a
better post in the India House was obtained two years afterwards. Nor
were there wanting snatches of pleasant holiday sometimes shared by
Mary. Of one, a visit to the sea, there is a beautiful reminiscence in
_The Old Margate Hoy_, written more than thirty years afterwards. "It
was our first sea-side experiment," he says, "and many circumstances
combined to make it the most agreeable holiday of my life. We had
neither of us seen the sea" (he was fifteen and Mary twenty-six), "and
we had never been from home so long together in company." The
disappointment they both felt at the first sight of the sea he explains
with one of his subtle and profound suggestions. "Is it not" ... says
he, "that we had expected to behold (absurdly I grant, but by the law
of imagination inevitably) not a definite object compassable by the
eye, but _all the sea at once, the commensurate antagonist of the
earth_? Whereas the eye can but take in a 'slip of salt water.'" The
whole passage is one of Elia's finest.
Then Coleridge too, who had remained two years longer at Christ's
Hospital than Lamb and after he went up to Cambridge in 1791 continued
to pay frequent visits to London, spent many a glorious evening, not
only those memorable ones with Charles in the parlour of the
"Salutation and Cat," but in his home; and was not slow to discover
Mary's fine qualities and to take her into his brotherly heart as a
little poem, written so early as 1794, to cheer his friend during a
serious illness of hers testifies:--
Cheerily, dear Charles!
Thou thy best friend shalt cherish many a year
Such warm presages feel I of high hope.
For not uninterested the dear maid
I've viewed--her soul affectionate yet wise,
Her polished wit as mild as lambent glories
That play around a sainted infant's head.
The year 1795 witnessed changes for all. The father, now wholly in his
dotage, was pensioned off by Mr. Salt and the family had to exchange
their old home in the Temple for straitened lodgings in Little Queen
Street, Holborn (the site of which and of the adjoining houses is now
occupied by Trinity Church). Coleridge, too, had left Cambridge and
was at Bristol, drawn thither by his newly formed friendship with
Southey, lecturing, writing, dreaming of his ideal Pantisocracy on the
banks of the Susquehannah and love-making. The love-making ended in
marriage the autumn of that same year. Meanwhile Lamb, too, was first
tasting the joys and sorrows of love. Alice W---- lingers but as a
shadow in the records of his life: the passion, however, was real
enough and took deep hold of him, conspiring with the cares and trials
of home life unrelieved now by the solace of Coleridge's society to
give a fatal stimulus to the germs of brain-disease, which were part
of the family heritage and for six weeks he was in a mad-house. "In
your absence," he tells his friend afterwards, "the tide of melancholy
rushed in, and did its worst mischief by overwhelming my reason." Who
can doubt the memory of this attack strengthened the bond of sympathy
between Mary and himself and gave him a fellow-feeling for her no
amount of affection alone could have realised? As in her case, too,
the disorder took the form of a great heightening and intensifying of
the imaginative faculty. "I look back on it, at times," wrote he after
his recovery, "with a gloomy kind of envy; for while it lasted I had
many many hours of pure happiness. Dream not, Coleridge, of having
tasted all the grandeur and wildness of fancy, till you have gone
mad.... The sonnet I send you has small merit as poetry, but you will
be curious to read it when I tell you it was written in my
prison-house in one of my lucid intervals:--
TO MY SISTER.
If from my lips some angry accents fell,
Peevish complaint, or harsh reproof unkind,
'Twas but the error of a sickly mind
And troubled thoughts, clouding the purer well,
And waters clear of Reason; and for me
Let this my verse the poor atonement be--
My verse, which thou to praise wert e'er inclined
Too highly, and with a partial eye to see
No blemish. Thou to me didst ever show
Kindest affection; and would oft-times lend
An ear to the desponding love-sick lay,
Weeping my sorrows with me, who repay
But ill the mighty debt of love I owe,
Mary, to thee, my sister and my friend.
No sooner was Charles restored to himself than the elder brother John
met with a serious accident; and though whilst in health he had
carried himself and his earnings to more comfortable quarters, he did
not now fail to return and be nursed with anxious solicitude by his
brother and sister. This was the last ounce. Mary, worn out with years
of nightly as well as daily attendance upon her mother who was now
wholly deprived of the use of her limbs, and harassed by a close
application to needle-work to help her in which she had been obliged to
take a young apprentice, was at last strained beyond the utmost pitch
of physical endurance, "worn down to a state of extreme nervous
misery." About the middle of September, she being then thirty-two
years old, her family observed some symptoms of insanity in her which
had so much increased by the 21st that her brother early in the
morning went to Dr. Pitcairn who unhappily was out. On the afternoon
of that day, seized with a sudden attack of frenzy, she snatched a
knife from the table and pursued the young apprentice round the room
when her mother interposing received a fatal stab and died instantly.
Mary was totally unconscious of what she had done, Aunt Hetty fainted
with terror, the father was too feeble in mind for any but a confused
and transient impression; it was Charles alone who confronted all the
anguish and horror of the scene. With the stern brevity of deep
emotion he wrote to Coleridge five days afterwards:--
"My poor dear, dearest sister, in a fit of insanity, has been the
death of her own mother. I was at hand only time enough to snatch the
knife out of her grasp. She is at present in a mad-house, from whence
I fear she must be moved to a hospital. God has preserved to me my
senses; I eat, and drink, and sleep, and have my judgment, I believe,
very sound. My poor father was slightly wounded, and I am left to take
care of him and my aunt. Mr. Norris of the Blue Coat School has been
very kind to us, and we have no other friend; but, thank God, I am
very calm and composed, and able to do the best that remains to do.
Write as religious a letter as possible, but no mention of what is
gone and done with. With me 'the former things are passed away,' and I
have something more to do than to feel. God Almighty have us all in
His keeping! Mention nothing of poetry. I have destroyed every vestige
of past vanities of that kind.... Your own judgment will convince you
not to take any notice of this yet to your dear wife. You look after
your family; I have my reason and strength left to take care of mine.
I charge you, don't think of coming to see me. Write. I will not see
you if you come. God Almighty love you and all of us!"
Coleridge responded to this appeal for sympathy and comfort by the
following,--the only letter of his to Lamb which has been preserved:--
"Your letter, my friend, struck me with a mighty horror. It rushed upon
me and stupified my feelings. You bid me write you a religious letter;
I am not a man who would attempt to insult the greatness of your
anguish by any other consolation. Heaven knows that in the easiest
fortunes there is much dissatisfaction and weariness of spirit; much
that calls for the exercise of patience and resignation; but in storms
like these that shake the dwelling and make the heart tremble, there is
no middle way between despair and the yielding up of the whole spirit
to the guidance of faith. And surely it is a matter of joy that your
faith in Jesus has been preserved; the Comforter that should relieve
you is not far from you. But as you are a Christian, in the name of
that Saviour who was filled with bitterness and made drunken with
wormwood, I conjure you to have recourse in frequent prayer to 'his God
and your God,' the God of mercies and Father of all comfort. Your poor
father is, I hope, almost senseless of the calamity; the unconscious
instrument of Divine Providence knows it not, and your mother is in
Heaven. It is sweet to be roused from a frightful dream by the song of
birds, and the gladsome rays of the morning. Ah, how infinitely more
sweet to be awakened from the blackness and amazement of a sudden
horror by the glories of God manifest, and the hallelujahs of angels.
"As to what regards yourself, I approve altogether of your abandoning
what you justly call vanities. I look upon you as a man called by
sorrow and anguish and a strange desolation of hopes into quietness,
and a soul set apart and made peculiar to God; we cannot arrive at any
portion of heavenly bliss without, in some measure, imitating Christ.
And they arrive at the largest inheritance who imitate the most
difficult parts of his character, and, bowed down and crushed under
foot, cry, in fulness of faith, 'Father, Thy will be done.'
"I wish above measure to have you for a little while here; no
visitants shall blow on the nakedness of your feelings; you shall be
quiet, that your spirit may be healed. I see no possible objection,
unless your father's helplessness prevent you, and unless you are
necessary to him. If this be not the case, I charge you write me that
you will come.
"I charge you, my dearest friend, not to dare to encourage gloom or
despair; you are a temporary sharer in human miseries, that you may be
an eternal partaker of the Divine nature. I charge you, if by any
means it be possible, come to me."
How the storm was weathered, with what mingled fortitude and sweetness
Lamb sustained the wrecked household and rescued his sister, when
reason returned, from the living death of perpetual confinement in a
mad-house must be read in the answer to Coleridge:--
"Your letter was an inestimable treasure to me. It will be a comfort
to you, I know, to know that our prospects are somewhat brighter. My
poor dear, dearest sister, the unhappy and unconscious instrument of
the Almighty's judgment on our house, is restored to her senses; to a
dreadful sense and recollection of what has passed, awful to her mind,
and impressive (as it must be to the end of life), but tempered with
religious resignation and the reasonings of a sound judgment, which in
this early stage knows how to distinguish between a deed committed in
a transient fit of frenzy and the terrible guilt of a mother's murder.
I have seen her. I found her this morning, calm and serene; far, very
far from an indecent forgetful serenity. She has a most affectionate
and tender concern for what has happened. Indeed, from the
beginning--frightful and hopeless as her disorder seemed--I had
confidence enough in her strength of mind and religious principle, to
look forward to a time when even she might recover tranquillity. God
be praised, Coleridge! wonderful as it is to tell, I have never once
been otherwise than collected and calm; even on the dreadful day, and
in the midst of the terrible scene, I preserved a tranquillity which
bystanders may have construed into indifference; a tranquillity not of
despair. Is it folly or sin in me to say that it was a religious
principle that most supported me? I allow much to other favourable
circumstances. I felt that I had something else to do than to regret.
On that first evening my aunt was lying insensible--to all appearance
like one dying; my father, with his poor forehead plaistered over from
a wound he had received from a daughter, dearly loved by him and who
loved him no less dearly; my mother a dead and murdered corpse in the
next room; yet was I wonderfully supported. I closed not my eyes in
sleep that night, but lay without terrors and without despair. I have
lost no sleep since. I had been long used not to rest in things of
sense; had endeavoured after a comprehension of mind unsatisfied with
the 'ignorant present time,' and this kept me up. I had the whole
weight of the family thrown on me; for my brother, little disposed (I
speak not without tenderness for him) at any time to take care of old
age and infirmities, had now, with his bad leg, an exemption from such
duties, and I was left alone. One little incident may serve to make
you understand my way of managing my mind. Within a day or two after
the fatal one, we dressed for dinner a tongue, which we had had salted
for some weeks in the house. As I sat down a feeling like remorse
struck me: this tongue poor Mary got for me, and can I partake of it
now when she is far away? A thought occurred and relieved me: if I
give in to this way of feeling, there is not a chair, a room, an
object in our rooms that will not awaken the keenest griefs. I must
rise above such weaknesses. I hope this was not want of true feeling.
I did not let this carry me, though, too far. On the very second day
(I date from the day of horrors) as is usual in such cases there were
a matter of twenty people, I do think, supping in our room; they
prevailed on me to eat _with them_ (for to eat I never refused). They
were all making merry in the room! Some had come from friendship, some
from busy curiosity and some from interest. I was going to partake
with them when my recollection came that my poor dead mother was lying
in the next room--the very next room; a mother who, through life,
wished nothing but her children's welfare. Indignation, the rage of
grief, something like remorse, rushed upon my mind. In an agony of
emotion I found my way mechanically to the adjoining room and fell on
my knees by the side of her coffin, asking forgiveness of Heaven and
sometimes of her for forgetting her so soon. Tranquillity returned and
it was the only violent emotion that mastered me. I think it did me
good.
"I mention these things because I hate concealment and love to give a
faithful journal of what passes within me. Our friends have been very
good. Sam Le Grice [an old schoolfellow well known to the readers of
Lamb], who was then in town, was with me the first three or four days
and was as a brother to me; gave up every hour of his time, to the
very hurting of his health and spirits, in constant attendance and
humouring my poor father, talked with him, read to him, played at
cribbage with him (for so short is the old man's recollection that he
was playing at cards as though nothing had happened while the
coroner's inquest was sitting over the way!). Samuel wept tenderly
when he went away, for his mother wrote him a very severe letter on
his loitering so long in town and he was forced to go. Mr. Norris of
Christ's Hospital has been as a father to me; Mrs. Norris as a mother;
though we had few claims on them. A gentleman, brother to my
godmother, from whom we never had right or reason to expect any such
assistance, sent my father twenty pounds; and to crown all these God's
blessings to our family at such a time, an old lady, a cousin of my
father and aunt, a gentlewoman of fortune, is to take my aunt and make
her comfortable for the short remainder of her days. My aunt is
recovered and as well as ever and highly pleased at the thought of
going, and has generously given up the interest of her little money
(which was formerly paid my father for her board) wholly and solely to
my sister's use. Reckoning this we have, Daddy and I, for our two
selves and an old maid-servant to look after him when I am out which
will be necessary, £170 (or £180 rather) a year, out of which we can
spare £50 or £60, at least, for Mary while she stays at Islington
where she must and shall stay during her father's life, for his and
her comfort. I know John will make speeches about it, but she shall
not go into an hospital. The good lady of the mad-house and her
daughter, an elegant, sweet-behaved young lady, love her and are taken
with her amazingly; and I know, from her own mouth, she loves them and
longs to be with them as much. Poor thing, they say she was but the
other morning saying she knew she must go to Bethlem for life; that
one of her brothers would have it so, but the other would wish it not,
but be obliged to go with the stream; that she had often, as she
passed Bethlem, thought it likely 'Here it may be my fate to end my
days,' conscious of a certain flightiness in her poor head often-times
and mindful of more than one severe illness of that nature before. A
legacy of £100 which my father will have at Christmas and this £20 I
mentioned before with what is in the house will much more than set us
clear. If my father, an old servant-maid and I can't live and live
comfortably on £130 or £120 a year, we ought to burn by slow fires,
and I almost would that Mary might not go into an hospital. Let me not
leave one unfavourable impression on your mind respecting my brother.
Since this has happened he has been very kind and brotherly; but I
fear for his mind: he has taken his ease in the world and is not fit
to struggle with difficulties, nor has he much accustomed himself to
throw himself into their way and I know his language is already,
'Charles you must take care of yourself, you must not abridge yourself
of a single pleasure you have been used to,' &c. &c, and in that style
of talking. But you, a necessarian, can respect a difference of mind
and love what is amiable in a character not perfect. He has been very
good but I fear for his mind. Thank God I can unconnect myself with
him and shall manage all my father's moneys in future myself if I take
charge of Daddy, which poor John has not even hinted a wish at any
future time even to share with me. The lady at this mad-house assures
me that I may dismiss immediately both doctor and apothecary,
retaining occasionally a composing draught or so for a while; and
there is a less expensive establishment in her house, where she will
only not have a room and nurse to herself for £50 or guineas a
year--the outside would be £60. You know by economy how much more even
I shall be able to spare for her comforts. She will, I fancy, if she
stays, make one of the family rather than of the patients; and the old
and young ladies I like exceedingly and she loves them dearly; and
they, as the saying is, take to her very extraordinarily if it is
extraordinary that people who see my sister should love her. Of all
the people I ever saw in the world, my poor sister was most and
thoroughly devoid of the least tincture of selfishness. I will enlarge
upon her qualities, poor dear, dearest soul, in a future letter for my
own comfort, for I understand her thoroughly; and, if I mistake not,
in the most trying situation that a human being can be found in, she
will be found (I speak not with sufficient humility, I fear), but
humanly and foolishly speaking, she will be found, I trust, uniformly
great and amiable...."
The depth and tenderness of Mary's but half requited love for her
mother and the long years of daily and nightly devotion to her which
had borne witness to it and been the immediate cause of the
catastrophe, took the sting out of her grief and gave her an
unfaltering sense of innocence. They even shed round her a peaceful
atmosphere which veiled from her mind's eye the dread scene in all its
naked horror, as it would seem from Lamb's next letter:--
"Mary continues serene and cheerful. I have not by me a little letter
she wrote to me; for though I see her almost every day yet we delight
to write to one another, for we can scarce see each other but in
company with some of the people of the house. I have not the letter by
me but will quote from memory what she wrote in it: 'I have no bad,
terrifying dreams. At midnight, when I happen to awake, the nurse
sleeping by the side of me, with the noise of the poor mad people
around me, I have no fear. The spirit of my mother seems to descend
and smile upon me and bid me live to enjoy the life and reason which
the Almighty has given me. I shall see her again in heaven; she will
then understand me better. My grandmother, too, will understand me
better, and will then say no more as she used to do, 'Polly, what are
those poor, crazy, moythered brains of yours thinking of always?'"
And again, in another of her little letters, not itself preserved, but
which Charles translated "almost literally," he tells us, into verse,
she said:--
Thou and I, dear friend,
With filial recognition sweet, shall know
One day the face of our dear mother in heaven;
And her remembered looks of love shall greet
With answering looks of love, her placid smiles
Meet with a smile as placid, and her hand
With drops of fondness wet, nor fear repulse.
And after speaking, in words already quoted, of how his mother "had
never understood Mary right," Lamb continues:--
"Every act of duty and of love she could pay, every kindness (and I
speak true when I say to the hurting of her health, and most probably
in great part to the derangement of her senses), through a long course
of infirmities and sickness, she could show her she ever did." "I
will, some day as I promised, enlarge to you upon my sister's
excellences; 'twill seem like exaggeration, but I will do it."
Although Mary's recovery had been rapid, to be permitted to return
home was, for the present, out of the question; so cheered by constant
intercourse with Charles she set herself, with characteristic
sweetness, to make the best of life in a private lunatic asylum. "I
have satisfaction," Charles tells his unfailing sympathiser Coleridge,
"in being able to bid you rejoice with me in my sister's continued
reason and composedness of mind. Let us both be thankful for it. I
continue to visit her very frequently and the people of the house are
vastly indulgent to her. She is likely to be as comfortably situated
in all respects as those who pay twice or thrice the sum. They love
her and she loves them and makes herself very useful to them.
Benevolence sets out on her journey with a good heart and puts a good
face on it, but is apt to limp and grow feeble unless she calls in the
aid of self-interest by way of crutch. In Mary's case, as far as
respects those she is with, 'tis well that these principles are so
likely to co-operate. I am rather at a loss sometimes for books for
her, our reading is somewhat confined and we have nearly exhausted our
London library. She has her hands too full of work to read much, but a
little she must read for reading was her daily bread."
So wore away the remaining months of this dark year. Perhaps they were
loneliest and saddest for Charles. There was no one now to share with
him the care of his old father; and second childhood draws unsparingly
on the debt of filial affection and gratitude. Cheerfully and
ungrudgingly did he pay it. His chief solace was the correspondence
with Coleridge; and, as his spirits recovered their tone, the mutual
discussion of the poems which the two friends were about to publish
conjointly with some of Charles Lloyd's, was resumed. The little
volume was to be issued by Cottle of Bristol, early in the coming
year, 1797; and Lamb was desirous to seize the occasion of giving his
sister an unlooked-for pleasure and of consecrating his verses by a
renouncement and a dedication.
"I have a dedication in my head," he writes, "for my few things, which
I want to know if you approve of and can insert. I mean to inscribe
them to my sister. It will be unexpected, and it will give her
pleasure; or do you think it will look whimsical at all? As I have not
spoken to her about it, I can easily reject the idea. But there is a
monotony in the affections which people living together, or, as we do
now, very frequently seeing each other, are apt to get into; a sort of
indifference in the expression of kindness for each other, which
demands that we should sometimes call to our aid the trickery of
surprise. The title page to stand thus:--
POEMS
BY
CHARLES LAMB, OF THE INDIA HOUSE.
Motto:--
This beauty, in the blossom of my youth,
When my first fire knew no adulterate incense,
Nor I no way to flatter but my fondness,
In the best language my true tongue could tell me,
And all the broken sighs my sick heart lend me,
I sued and served. Long did I love this lady.--MASSINGER.
The Dedication:--
THE FEW FOLLOWING POEMS,
CREATURES OF THE FANCY AND THE FEELING,
IN LIFE'S MORE VACANT HOURS,
PRODUCED, FOR THE MOST PART, BY
LOVE IN IDLENESS,
ARE,
WITH ALL A BROTHER'S FONDNESS,
INSCRIBED TO
MARY ANNE LAMB,
THE AUTHOR'S BEST FRIEND AND SISTER.
"This is the pomp and paraphernalia of parting, with which I take my
leave of a passion which has reigned so royally, so long, within me.
Thus, with its trappings of laureateship, I fling it off, pleased and
satisfied with myself that the weakness troubles me no longer. I am
wedded, Coleridge, to the fortunes of my sister and my poor old father.
Oh, my friend! I think, sometimes, could I recall the days that are
past, which among them should I choose? Not those merrier days, not the
pleasant days of hope, not those wanderings with a fair-haired maid
which I have so often and so feelingly regretted, but the days,
Coleridge, of a _mother's_ fondness for her _school-boy_. What would I
give to call her back to earth for _one_ day!--on my knees to ask her
pardon for all those little asperities of temper which, from time to
time, have given her gentle spirit pain!--and the day, my friend, I
trust will come. There will be 'time enough' for kind offices of love,
if Heaven's 'eternal year' be ours. Hereafter, her meek spirit shall
not reproach me. Oh! my friend, cultivate the filial feelings! and let
no man think himself released from the kind 'charities' of
relationship: these shall give him peace at the last; these are the
best foundation for every species of benevolence. I rejoice to hear by
certain channels, that you, my friend, are reconciled with all your
relations. 'Tis the most kindly and natural species of love, and we
have all the associated train of early feelings to secure its strength
and perpetuity."