CHAPTER I.

HOW TO OBSERVE.

-----

MORALS AND MANNERS.

BY

HARRIET MARTINEAU.

"Hélas! où donc chercher, où trouver le bonheur?

----Nulle part tout entier, partout avec mesure."

VOLTAIRE.

"Opening my journal-book, and dipping my pen in my ink-horn, I

determined, as far as I could, to justify myself and my

countrymen in wandering over the face of the earth."

ROGERS.

LONDON:

CHARLES KNIGHT AND CO. 22, LUDGATE STREET.

1838.

LONDON:

PRINTED BY SAMUEL BENTLEY,

Dorset Street, Fleet Street.

ADVERTISEMENT.

"The best mode of exciting the love of observation is by teaching 'How

to Observe.' With this end it was originally intended to produce, in one

or two volumes, a series of hints for travellers and students, calling

their attention to the points necessary for inquiry or observation in

the different branches of Geology, Natural History, Agriculture, the

Fine Arts, General Statistics, and Social Manners. On consideration,

however, it was determined somewhat to extend the plan, and to separate

the great divisions of the field of observation, so that those whose

tastes led them to one particular branch of inquiry might not be

encumbered with other parts in which they do not feel an equal

interest."

The preceding passage is contained in the notice accompanying the first

work in this series--Geology, by Mr. De la Bèche, published in 1835.

Thus, the second work in the series is in continuation of the plan above

announced.

CONTENTS.

PART I. REQUISITES FOR OBSERVATION. Page

INTRODUCTION 1

CHAP. I. Philosophical Requisites.

Section I. 11

Section II. 14

Section III. 21

Section IV. 27

CHAP. II. Moral Requisites 40

CHAP. III. Mechanical Requisites 51

PART II. WHAT TO OBSERVE 61

CHAP. I. Religion 68

Churches 80

Clergy 84

Superstitions 90

Suicide 94

CHAP. II. General Moral Notions 101

Epitaphs 108

Love of Kindred and Birth-place 111

Talk of Aged and Children 113

Character of prevalent Pride 114

Character of popular Idols 118

Epochs of Society 122

Treatment of the Guilty 124

Testimony of Criminals 129

Popular Songs 132

Literature and Philosophy 137

CHAP. III. Domestic State 144

Soil and Aspect of the Country 153

Markets 154

Agricultural Class 155

Manufacturing Class 157

Commercial Class 158

Health 161

Marriage and Woman 167

Children 181

CHAP. IV. Idea of Liberty 183

Police 184

Legislation 188

Classes in Society 190

Servants 192

Imitation of the Metropolis 196

Newspapers 197

Schools 198

Objects and Form of Persecution 203

CHAP. V. Progress 206

Conditions of Progress 209

Charity 213

Arts and Inventions 216

Multiplicity of Objects 218

CHAP. VI. Discourse 221

PART III. MECHANICAL METHODS 231

HOW TO OBSERVE.

MORALS AND MANNERS.

PART I.

REQUISITES FOR OBSERVATION.

INTRODUCTION.

"Inest sua gratia parvis."

"Les petites choses n'ont de valeur que de la part de ceux qui

peuvent s'élever aux grandes."--DE JOUY.

There is no department of inquiry in which it is not full as easy to

miss truth as to find it, even when the materials from which truth is to

be drawn are actually present to our senses. A child does not catch a

gold fish in water at the first trial, however good his eyes may be, and

however clear the water; knowledge and method are necessary to enable

him to take what is actually before his eyes and under his hand. So it

is with all who fish in a strange element for the truth which is living

and moving there: the powers of observation must be trained, and habits

of method in arranging the materials presented to the eye must be

acquired before the student possesses the requisites for understanding

what he contemplates.

The observer of Men and Manners stands as much in need of intellectual

preparation as any other student. This is not, indeed, generally

supposed, and a multitude of travellers act as if it were not true. Of

the large number of tourists who annually sail from our ports, there is

probably not one who would dream of pretending to make observations on

any subject of physical inquiry, of which he did not understand even the

principles. If, on his return from the Mediterranean, the unprepared

traveller was questioned about the geology of Corsica, or the public

buildings of Palermo, he would reply, "Oh, I can tell you nothing about

that--I never studied geology; I know nothing about architecture." But

few, or none, make the same avowal about the morals and manners of a

nation. Every man seems to imagine that he can understand men at a

glance; he supposes that it is enough to be among them to know what they

are doing; he thinks that eyes, ears, and memory are enough for morals,

though they would not qualify him for botanical or statistical

observation; he pronounces confidently upon the merits and social

condition of the nations among whom he has travelled; no misgiving ever

prompts him to say, "I can give you little general information about the

people I have been seeing; I have not studied the principles of morals;

I am no judge of national manners."

There would be nothing to be ashamed of in such an avowal. No wise man

blushes at being ignorant of any science which it has not suited his

purposes to study, or which it has not been in his power to attain. No

linguist wrings his hands when astronomical discoveries are talked of in

his presence; no political economist covers his face when shown a shell

or a plant which he cannot class; still less should the artist, the

natural philosopher, the commercial traveller, or the classical scholar,

be ashamed to own himself unacquainted with the science which, of all

the sciences which have yet opened upon men, is, perhaps, the least

cultivated, the least definite, the least ascertained in itself, and the

most difficult in its application.

In this last characteristic of the science of Morals lies the excuse of

as many travellers as may decline pronouncing on the social condition of

any people. Even if the generality of travellers were as enlightened as

they are at present ignorant about the principles of Morals, the

difficulty of putting those principles to interpretative uses would

deter the wise from making the hasty decisions, and uttering the large

judgments, in which travellers have hitherto been wont to indulge. In

proportion as men become sensible how infinite are the diversities in

man, how incalculable the varieties and influences of circumstances,

rashness of pretension and decision will abate, and the great work of

classifying the moral manifestations of society will be confided to the

philosophers, who bear the same relation to the science of society as

Herschel does to astronomy, and Beaufort to hydrography.

Of all the tourists who utter their decisions upon foreigners, how many

have begun their researches at home? Which of them would venture upon

giving an account of the morals and manners of London, though he may

have lived in it all his life? Would any one of them escape errors as

gross as those of the Frenchman who published it as a general fact that

people in London always have, at dinner parties, soup on each side, and

fish at four corners? Which of us would undertake to classify the morals

and manners of any hamlet in England, after spending the summer in it?

What sensible man seriously generalizes upon the manners of a street,

even though it be Houndsditch or Cranbourn-Alley? Who pretends to

explain all the proceedings of his next-door neighbour? Who is able to

account for all that is said and done by the dweller in the same

house,--by parent, child, brother, or domestic? If such judgments were

attempted, would they not be as various as those who make them? And

would they not, after all, if closely looked into, reveal more of the

mind of the observer than of the observed?

If it be thus with us at home, amidst all the general resemblances, the

prevalent influences which furnish an interpretation to a large number

of facts, what hope of a trustworthy judgment remains for the foreign

tourist, however good may be his method of travelling, and however long

his absence from home? He looks at all the people along his line of

road, and converses with a few individuals from among them. If he

diverges, from time to time, from the high road,--if he winds about

among villages, and crosses mountains, to dip into the hamlets of the

valleys,--he still pursues only a line, and does not command the

expanse; he is furnished, at best, with no more than a sample of the

people; and whether they be indeed a sample, must remain a conjecture

which he has no means of verifying. He converses, more or less, with,

perhaps, one man in ten thousand of those he sees; and of the few with

whom he converses, no two are alike in powers and in training, or

perfectly agree in their views on any one of the great subjects which

the traveller professes to observe; the information afforded by one is

contradicted by another; the fact of one day is proved error by the

next; the wearied mind soon finds itself overwhelmed by the multitude of

unconnected or contradictory particulars, and lies passive to be run

over by the crowd. The tourist is no more likely to learn, in this way,

the social state of a nation, than his valet would be qualified to speak

of the meteorology of the country from the number of times the umbrellas

were wanted in the course of two months. His children might as well

undertake to exhibit the geological formation of the country from the

pebbles they picked up in a day's ride.

I remember some striking words addressed to me, before I set out on my

travels, by a wise man, since dead. "You are going to spend two years in

the United States," said he. "Now just tell me,--do you expect to

understand the Americans by the time you come back? You do not: that is

well. I lived five-and-twenty years in Scotland, and I fancied I

understood the Scotch; then I came to England, and supposed I should

soon understand the English. I have now lived five-and-twenty years

here, and I begin to think I understand neither the Scotch nor the

English."

What is to be done? Let us first settle what is not to be done.

The traveller must deny himself all indulgence of peremptory decision,

not only in public on his return, but in his journal, and in his most

superficial thoughts. The experienced and conscientious traveller would

word the condition differently. Finding peremptory decision more trying

to his conscience than agreeable to his laziness, he would call it not

indulgence, but anxiety; he enjoys the employment of collecting

materials, but would shrink from the responsibility of judging a

community.

The traveller must not generalize on the spot, however true may be his

apprehension--however firm his grasp, of one or more facts. A raw

English traveller in China was entertained by a host who was

intoxicated, and a hostess who was red-haired; he immediately made a

note of the fact that all the men in China were drunkards, and all the

women red-haired. A raw Chinese traveller in England was landed by a

Thames waterman who had a wooden leg. The stranger saw that the wooden

leg was used to stand in the water with, while the other was high and

dry. The apparent economy of the fact struck the Chinese; he saw in it

strong evidence of design, and wrote home that in England one-legged men

are kept for watermen, to the saving of all injury to health, shoe, and

stocking, from standing in the river. These anecdotes exhibit but a

slight exaggeration of the generalizing tendencies of many modern

travellers. They are not so much worse than some recent tourists' tales,

as they are better than the old narratives of "men whose heads do grow

beneath their shoulders."

Natural philosophers do not dream of generalizing with any such speed as

that used by the observers of men; yet they might do it with more

safety, at the risk of an incalculably smaller mischief. The geologist

and the chemist make a large collection of particular appearances,

before they commit themselves to propound a principle drawn from them,

though their subject matter is far less diversified than the human

subject, and nothing of so much importance as human emotions,--love and

dislike, reverence and contempt, depends upon their judgment. If a

student in natural philosophy is in too great haste to classify and

interpret, he misleads, for a while, his fellow-students (not a very

large class); he vitiates the observations of a few successors; his

error is discovered and exposed; he is mortified, and his too docile

followers are ridiculed, and there is an end; but if a traveller gives

any quality which he may have observed in a few individuals as a

characteristic of a nation, the evil is not speedily or easily

remediable. Abject thinkers, passive readers, adopt his words; parents

repeat them to their children; and townspeople spread the judgment into

the villages and hamlets--the strongholds of prejudice; future

travellers see according to the prepossessions given them, and add their

testimony to the error, till it becomes the work of a century to reverse

a hasty generalization. It was a great mistake of a geologist to assign

a wrong level to the Caspian Sea; and it is vexatious that much time and

energy should have been devoted to account for an appearance which,

after all, does not exist. It is provoking to geologists that they

should have wasted a great deal of ingenuity in finding reasons for

these waters being at a different level from what it is now found that

they have; but the evil is over; the "pish!" and the "pshaw!" are said;

the explanatory and apologetical notes are duly inserted in new

editions of geological works, and nothing more can come of the mistake.

But it is difficult to foresee when the British public will believe that

the Americans are a mirthful nation, or even that the French are not

almost all cooks or dancing-masters. A century hence, probably, the

Americans will continue to believe that all the English make a regular

study of the art of conversation; and the lower orders of French will be

still telling their children that half the people in England hang or

drown themselves every November. As long as travellers generalize on

morals and manners as hastily as they do, it will probably be impossible

to establish a general conviction that no civilized nation is

ascertainably better or worse than any other on this side barbarism, the

whole field of morals being taken into the view. As long as travellers

continue to neglect the safe means of generalization which are within

the reach of all, and build theories upon the manifestations of

individual minds, there is little hope of inspiring men with that spirit

of impartiality, mutual deference, and love, which are the best

enlighteners of the eyes and rectifiers of the understanding.

Above all things, the traveller must not despair of good results from

his observations. Because he cannot establish true conclusions by

imperfect means, he is not to desist from doing anything at all. Because

he cannot safely generalize in one way, it does not follow that there is

no other way. There are methods of safe generalization of which I shall

speak by-and-by. But, if there were not such within his reach, if his

only materials were the discourse, the opinions, the feelings, the way

of life, the looks, dress, and manners of individuals, he might still

afford important contributions to science by his observations on as wide

a variety of these as he can bring within his mental grasp. The

experience of a large number of observers would in time yield materials

from which a cautious philosopher might draw conclusions. It is a safe

rule, in morals as in physics, that no fact is without its use. Every

observer and recorder is fulfilling a function; and no one observer or

recorder ought to feel discouragement, as long as he desires to be

useful rather than shining; to be the servant rather than the lord of

science, and a friend to the home-stayers rather than their dictator.

One of the wisest men living writes to me, "No books are so little to be

trusted as travels. All travellers do and must generalize too rapidly.

Most, if not all, take a fact for a principle, or the exception for the

rule, more or less; and the quickest minds, which love to reason and

explain more than to observe with patience, go most astray. My faith in

travels received a mortal wound when I travelled. I read, as I went

along, the books of those who had preceded me, and found that we did not

see with the same eyes. Even descriptions of nature proved false. The

traveller had viewed the prospect at a different season, or in a

different light, and substituted the transient for the fixed. Still I

think travels useful. Different accounts give means of approximation to

truth; and by-and-by what is fixed and essential in a people will be

brought out."

It ought to be an animating thought to a traveller that, even if it be

not in his power to settle any one point respecting the morals and

manners of an empire, he can infallibly aid in supplying means of

approximation to truth, and of bringing out "what is fixed and essential

in a people." This should be sufficient to stimulate his exertions and

satisfy his ambition.

CHAPTER I.

PHILOSOPHICAL REQUISITES.

"Only I believe that this is not a bow for every man to shoot in

that counts himself a teacher, but will require sinews almost

equal to those which Homer gave Ulysses; yet I am withal

persuaded that it may prove much more easy in the essay than it

now seems at a distance."--MILTON.

There are two parties to the work of observation on Morals and

Manners--the observer and the observed. This is an important fact which

the traveller seldom dwells upon as he ought; yet a moment's

consideration shows that the mind of the observer--the instrument by

which the work is done, is as essential as the material to be wrought.

If the instrument be in bad order, it will furnish a bad product, be the

material what it may. In this chapter I shall point out what requisites

the traveller ought to make sure that he is possessed of before he

undertakes to offer observations on the Morals and Manners of a people.

SECTION I.

He must have made up his mind as to what it is that he wants to know. In

physical science, great results may be obtained by hap-hazard

experiments; but this is not the case in Morals. A chemist can hardly

fail of learning something by putting any substances together, under new

circumstances, and seeing what will arise out of the combination; and

some striking discoveries happened in this way, in the infancy of the

science; though no one doubts that more knowledge may be gained by the

chemist who has an aim in his mind, and who conducts his experiment on

some principle. In Morals, the latter method is the only one which

promises any useful results. In the workings of the social system, all

the agents are known in the gross--all are determined. It is not their

nature, but the proportions in which they are combined, which have to be

ascertained.

What does the traveller want to know? He is aware that, wherever he

goes, he will find men, women, and children; strong men and weak men;

just men and selfish men. He knows that he will everywhere find a

necessity for food, clothing, and shelter; and everywhere some mode of

general agreement how to live together. He knows that he will everywhere

find birth, marriage, and death; and therefore domestic affections. What

results from all these elements of social life does he mean to look for?

For want of settling this question, one traveller sees nothing truly,

because the state of things is not consistent with his speculations as

to how human beings ought to live together; another views the whole with

prejudice, because it is not like what he has been accustomed to see at

home; yet each of these would shrink from the recognition of his folly,

if it were fully placed before him. The first would be ashamed of having

tried any existing community by an arbitrary standard of his own--an act

much like going forth into the wilderness to see kings' houses full of

men in soft raiment; and the other would perceive that different

nations may go on judging one another by themselves till doomsday,

without in any way improving the chance of self-advancement and mutual

understanding. Going out with the disadvantage of a habit of mind

uncounteracted by an intellectual aim, will never do. The traveller may

as well stay at home, for anything he will gain in the way of social

knowledge.

The two considerations just mentioned must be subordinated to the grand

one,--the only general one,--of the relative amount of human happiness.

Every element of social life derives its importance from this great

consideration. The external conveniences of men, their internal emotions

and affections, their social arrangements, graduate in importance

precisely in proportion as they affect the general happiness of the

section of the race among whom they exist. Here then is the wise

traveller's aim,--to be kept in view to the exclusion of prejudice, both

philosophical and national. He must not allow himself to be perplexed or

disgusted by seeing the great ends of human association pursued by means

which he could never have devised, and to the practice of which he could

not reconcile himself. He is not to conclude unfavourably about the diet

of the multitude because he sees them swallowing blubber, or scooping

out water-melons, instead of regaling themselves with beef and beer. He

is not to suppose their social meetings a failure because they eat with

their fingers instead of with silver forks, or touch foreheads instead

of making a bow. He is not to conclude against domestic morals, on

account of a diversity of methods of entering upon marriage. He might

as well judge of the minute transactions of manners all over the world

by what he sees in his native village. There, to leave the door open or

to shut it bears no relation to morals, and but little to manners;

whereas, to shut the door is as cruel an act in a Hindoo hut as to leave

it open in a Greenland cabin. In short, he is to prepare himself to

bring whatever he may observe to the test of some high and broad

principle, and not to that of a low comparative practice. To test one

people by another, is to argue within a very small segment of a circle;

and the observer can only pass backwards and forwards at an equal

distance from the point of truth. To test the morals and manners of a

nation by a reference to the essentials of human happiness, is to strike

at once to the centre, and to see things as they are.

SECTION II.

Being provided with a conviction of what it is that he wants to know,

the traveller must be furthermore furnished with the means of gaining

the knowledge he wants. When he was a child, he was probably taught that

eyes, ears, and understanding are all-sufficient to gain for him as much

knowledge as he will have time to acquire; but his self-education has

been a poor one, if he has not become convinced that something more is

needful--the enlightenment and discipline of the understanding, as well

as its immediate use. It is not enough for a traveller to have an active

understanding, equal to an accurate perception of individual facts in

themselves; he must also be in possession of principles which may serve

as a rallying point for his observations, and without which he cannot

determine their bearings, or be secure of putting a right interpretation

upon them. A traveller may do better without eyes, or without ears, than

without such principles, as there is evidence to prove. Holman, the

blind traveller, gains a wonderful amount of information, though he is

shut out from the evidence yielded by the human countenance, by way-side

groups, by the aspect of cities, and the varying phenomena of country

regions. In his motto, he indicates something of his method.

"Sightless to see, and judge thro' judgment's eyes,

To make four senses do the work of five,

To arm the mind for hopeful enterprise,

Are lights to him who doth in darkness live."

In order to "judge through judgment's eyes," those eyes must be made

strong and clear; and a traveller may gain more without the bodily organ

than with an untrained understanding. The case of the Deaf Traveller[A]

leads us to say the same about the other great avenue of knowledge. His

writings prove, to all who are acquainted with them, that, though to a

great degree deprived of that inestimable commentary upon perceived

facts--human discourse--the Deaf Traveller is able to furnish us with

more knowledge of foreign people than Fine-Ear himself could have done

without the accompaniments of analytical power and concentrative

thought. All senses, and intellectual powers, and good habits, may be

considered essential to a perfect observation of morals and manners; but

almost any one might be better spared than a provision of principles

which may serve as a rallying point and a test of facts. The blind and

the deaf travellers must suffer under a deprivation or deficiency of

certain classes of facts. The condition of the unphilosophical traveller

is much worse. It is a chance whether he puts a right interpretation on

any of the facts he perceives.

Many may object that I am making much too serious a matter of the

department of the business of travelling under present notice. They do

not pretend to be moral philosophers;--they do not desire to be

oracles;--they attempt nothing more than to give a simple report of what

has come under their notice. But what work on earth is more serious than

this of giving an account of the most grave and important things which

are transacted on this globe? Every true report is a great good; every

untrue report is a great mischief. Therefore, let there be none given

but by persons in some good degree qualified. Such travellers as will

not take pains to provide themselves with the requisite thought and

study should abstain from reporting at all.

It is a mistake, however, to suppose that the study shown to be

requisite is vast and deep. Some knowledge of the principles of Morals

and the rule of Manners is required, as in the case of other sciences to

be brought into use on a similar occasion; but the principles are few

and simple, and the rule easy of application.

The universal summary notions of Morals may serve a common traveller in

his judgments as to whether he would like to live in any foreign

country, and as to whether the people there are as agreeable to him as

his own nation. For such an one it may be sufficient to bear about the

general notions that lying, thieving, idleness, and licentiousness are

bad; and that truth, honesty, industry, and sobriety are good; and for

common purposes, such an one may be trusted to pronounce what is

industry and what idleness; what is licentiousness and what sobriety.

But vague notions, home prepossessions, even on these great points of

morals, are not sufficient, in the eyes of an enlightened traveller, to

warrant decisions on the moral state of nations who are reared under a

wide diversity of circumstances. The true liberality which alone is

worthy to contemplate all the nations of the earth, does not draw a

broad line through the midst of human conduct, declaring all that falls

on the one side vice, and all on the other virtue; such a liberality

knows that actions and habits do not always carry their moral impress

visibly to all eyes, and that the character of very many must be

determined by a cautious application of a few deep principles. Is the

Shaker of New England a good judge of the morals and manners of the Arab

of the Desert? What sort of a verdict would the shrewdest gipsy pass

upon the monk of La Trappe? What would the Scotch peasant think of the

magical practices of Egypt? or the Russian soldier of a meeting of

electors in the United States? The ideas of right and wrong in the minds

of these people are not of the enlarged kind which would enable them to

judge persons in situations the most opposite to their own. The true

philosopher, the worthy observer, first contemplates in imagination the

area of humanity, and then ascertains what principles of morals are

applicable to them all, and judges by these.

The enlightened traveller, if he explore only one country, carries in

his mind the image of all; for, only in its relation to the whole of the

race can any one people be judged. Almost without exaggeration, he may

be said to see what the rhapsodist in Volney saw.

"There, from above the atmosphere, looking down upon the earth I had

quitted, I beheld a scene entirely new. Under my feet, floating in empty

space, a globe similar to that of the moon, but less luminous, presented

to me one of its faces.... 'What!' exclaimed I, 'is that the earth which

is inhabited by human beings?'"[B]

The differences are, that, instead of "one of its faces," the moralist

would see the whole of the earth in one contemplation; and that, instead

of a nebulous expanse here, and a brown or grey speck there,--continents,

seas, or volcanoes,--he would look into the homes and social assemblies

of all lands. In the extreme North, there is the snow-hut of the

Esquimaux, shining with the fire within, like an alabaster lamp left

burning in a wide waste; within, the beardless father is mending his

weapons made of fishbones, while the dwarfed mother swathes her infant in

skins, and feeds it with oil and fat. In the extreme East, there is the

Chinese family in their garden, treading its paved walks, or seated under

the shade of its artificial rocks; the master displaying the claws of his

left hand as he smokes his pipe, and his wife tottering on her deformed

feet as she follows her child,--exulting over it if it be a boy; grave

and full of sighs if heaven have sent her none but girls. In the extreme

South, there is the Colonist of the Cape, lazily basking before his door,

while he sends his labourer abroad with his bullock-waggon, devolves the

business of the farm upon the women, and scares from his door any poor

Hottentot who may have wandered hither over the plain. In the extreme

West, there is the gathering together on the shores of the Pacific of the

hunters laden with furs. The men are trading, or cleaning their arms, or

sleeping; the squaws are cooking, or dyeing with vegetable juices the

quills of the porcupine or the hair of the moose-deer. In the intervals

between these extremities, there is a world of morals and manners, as

diverse as the surface of the lands on which they are exhibited. Here is

the Russian nobleman on his estate, the lord of the fate of his serfs,

but hard pressed by the enmity of rival nobles, and silenced by the

despotism of his prince; his wife leads a languid life among her spinning

maidens; and his young sons talk of the wars in which they shall serve

their emperor in time to come. There is the Frankfort trader, dwelling

among equals, fixing his pride upon having wronged no man, or upon having

a son distinguished at the university, or a daughter skilled in domestic

accomplishments; while his wife emulates her neighbours in supporting the

comfort and respectability of the household. Here is the French peasant

returning from the field in total ignorance of what has taken place in

the capital of late; and there is the English artizan discussing with his

brother-workman the politics of the town, or carrying home to his wife

some fresh hopes of the interference of parliament about labour and

wages. Here is a conclave of Cardinals, consulting upon the interests of

the Holy See; there a company of Brahmins setting an offering of rice

before their idol. In one direction, there is a handful of citizens

building a new town in the midst of a forest; in another, there is a

troop of horsemen hovering on the horizon, while a caravan is traversing

the Desert. Under the twinkling shadows of a German vineyard, national

songs are sung; from the steep places of the Swiss mountains the Alp-horn

resounds; in the coffee-house at Cairo, listeners hang upon the voice of

the romance reciter; the churches of Italy echo with solemn hymns; and

the soft tones of the child are heard, in the New England parlour, as the

young scholar reads the Bible to parent or aged grandfather.

All these, and more, will a traveller of the most enlightened order

revolve before his mind's eye as he notes the groups which are presented

to his senses. Of such travellers there are but too few; and vague and

general, or merely traditional, notions of right and wrong must serve

the purpose of the greater number. The chief evil of moral notions being

vague or traditional is, that they are irreconcileable with liberality

of judgment; and the great benefit of an ascertainment of the primary

principles of morals is, that such an investigation dissolves prejudice,

and casts a full light upon many things which cease to be fearful and

painful when they are no longer obscure. We all know how different a

Sunday in Paris appears to a sectarian, to whom the word of his priest

is law; and to a philosopher, in whom religion is indigenous, who

understands the narrowness of sects, and sees how much smaller even

Christendom itself is than Humanity. We all know how offensive the

prayers of Mahomedans at the corners of streets, and the pomp of

catholic processions, are to those who know no other way than entering

into their closet, and shutting the door when they pray; but how felt

the deep thinker who wrote the Religio Medici? He was an orderly member

of a Protestant church, yet he uncovered his head at the sight of a

crucifix; he could not laugh at pilgrims walking with peas in their

shoes, or despise a begging friar; he could "not hear an Ave Maria bell

without an elevation;" and it is probable that even the Teraphim of the

Arabs would not have been wholly absurd, or the car of Juggernaut itself

altogether odious in his eyes. Such is the contrast between the sectary

and the philosopher.

SECTION III.

As an instance of the advantage which a philosophical traveller has over

an unprepared one, look at the difference which will enter into a man's

judgment of nations, according as he carries about with him the vague

popular notion of a Moral Sense, or has investigated the laws under

which feelings of right and wrong grow up in all men. It is worth while

to dwell a little on this important point.

Most persons who take no great pains to think for themselves, have a

notion that every human being has feelings, or a conscience, born with

him, by which he knows, if he will only attend to it, exactly what is

right and wrong; and that, as right and wrong are fixed and immutable,

all ought to agree as to what is sin and virtue in every case. Now,

mankind are, and always have been, so far from agreeing as to right and

wrong, that it is necessary to account in some manner for the wide

differences in various ages, and among various nations. A great

diversity of doctrines has been put forth for the purpose of lessening

the difficulty; but they all leave certain portions of the race under

the condemnation or compassion of the rest for their error, blindness,

or sin. Moreover, no doctrines yet invented have accounted for some

total revolutions in the ideas of right and wrong, which have occurred

in the course of ages. A person who takes for granted that there is an

universal Moral Sense among men, as unchanging as he who bestowed it,

cannot reasonably explain how it was that those men were once esteemed

the most virtuous who killed the most enemies in battle, while now it is

considered far more noble to save life than to destroy it. They cannot

but wonder how it was that it was once thought a great shame to live in

misery, and an honour to commit suicide; while now the wisest and best

men think exactly the reverse. And, with regard to the present age, it

must puzzle men who suppose that all ought to think alike on moral

subjects, that there are parts of the world where mothers believe it a

duty to drown their children, and that eastern potentates openly deride

the king of England for having only one wife instead of one hundred.

There is no avoiding illiberality, under this belief,--as the

philosopher understands illiberality. There is no avoiding the

conclusion that the people who practice infanticide and polygamy are

desperately wicked; and that minor differences of conduct are, abroad as

at home, so many sins.

The observer who sets out with a more philosophical belief, not only

escapes the affliction of seeing sin wherever he sees difference, and

avoids the suffering of contempt and alienation from his species, but,

by being prepared for what he witnesses, and aware of the causes, is

free from the agitation of being shocked and alarmed, preserves his

calmness, his hope, his sympathy; and is thus far better fitted to

perceive, understand, and report upon the morals and manners of the

people he visits. His more philosophical belief, derived from all fair

evidence and just reflexion, is, that every man's feelings of right and

wrong, instead of being born with him, grow up in him from the

influences to which he is subjected. We see that in other cases,--with

regard to science, to art, and to the appearances of nature,--feelings

grow out of knowledge and experience; and there is every evidence that

it is so with regard to morals. The feelings begin very early; and this

is the reason why they are supposed to be born with men; but they are

few and imperfect in childhood, and, in the case of those who are

strongly exercised in morals, they go on enlarging and strengthening and

refining through life. See the effect upon the traveller's observations

of his holding this belief about conscience! Knowing that some

influences act upon the minds of all people in all countries, he looks

everywhere for certain feelings of right and wrong which are as sure to

be in all men's minds as if they were born with them. For instance, to

torment another without any reason, real or imaginary, is considered

wrong all over the world. In the same manner, to make others happy is

universally considered right. At the same time, the traveller is

prepared to find an infinite variety of differences in smaller matters,

and is relieved from the necessity of pronouncing each to be a vice in

one party or another. His own moral education having been a more

elevated and advanced one than that of some of the people he

contemplates, he cannot but feel sorrow and disgust at various things

that he witnesses; but it is ignorance and barbarism that he mourns, and

not vice. When he sees the Arab or American Indian offer daughter or

wife to the stranger, as a part of the hospitality which is, in the

host's mind, the first of duties, the observer regards the fact as he

regards the mode of education in old Sparta, where physical hardihood

and moral slavery constituted a man most honourable. If he sees an

American student spend the whole of his small fortune, on leaving

college, in travelling in Europe, he will not blame him as he would

blame a young Englishman for doing the same thing. The Englishman would

be a spendthrift; the American is wise: and the reason is, that their

circumstances, prospects, and therefore their views of duty, are

different. The American, being sure of obtaining an independent

maintenance, may make the enlargement of his mind, and the cultivation

of his tastes by travel, his first object; while the conscientious

Englishman must fulfil the hard conditions of independence before he can

travel. Capital is to him one of the chief requisites of honest

independence; while to the American it is in the outset no requisite at

all. To go without clothing was, till lately, perfectly innocent in the

South Sea Islands; but now that civilization has been fairly established

by the missionaries, it has become a sin. To let an enemy escape with

his life is a disgrace in some countries of the world; while in others

it is held more honourable to forgive than to punish him. Instances of

such varieties and oppositions of conscience might be multiplied till

they filled a volume, to the perplexity and grief of the

unphilosophical, and the serene instruction of the philosophical

observer.

The general influences under which universal ideas and feelings of right

and wrong are formed, are dispensed by the Providence under which all

are educated. That man should be happy is so evidently the intention of

his Creator, the contrivances to that end are so multitudinous and so

striking, that the perception of the aim may be called universal.

Whatever tends to make men happy, becomes a fulfilment of the will of

God. Whatever tends to make them miserable, becomes opposition to his

will. There are, and must be, a host of obstacles to the express

recognition of, and practical obedience to, these great principles; but

they may be discovered as the root of religion and morals in all

countries. There are impediments from ignorance, and consequent error,

selfishness, and passion: the most infantile men mistake the means of

human happiness, and the wisest have but a dim and fluctuating

perception of them: but yet all men entertain one common conviction,

that what makes people happy is good and right, and that what makes them

miserable is evil and wrong. This conviction is at the bottom of

practices which seem the most inconsistent with it. When the Ashantee

offers a human sacrifice, it is in order to secure blessings from his

gods. When the Hindoo exposes his sick parent in the Ganges, he thinks

he is putting him out of pain by a charmed death. When Sand stabbed

Kotzebue, he believed he was punishing and getting rid of an enemy and

an obstacle to the welfare of his nation. When the Georgian planter

buys and sells slaves, he goes on the supposition that he is preserving

the order and due subordination of society. All these notions are shown

by philosophy to be narrow, superficial, and mistaken. They have been

outgrown by many, and are doubtless destined to be outgrown by all; but,

acted upon by the ignorant and deluded, they are very different from the

wickedness which is perpetrated against better knowledge. But these

things would be wickedness, perpetrated against better knowledge, if the

supposition of a universal, infallible Moral Sense were true. The

traveller who should consistently adhere to the notion of a Moral Sense,

must pronounce the Ashantee worshipper as guilty as Greenacre: the

Hindoo son a parricide, not only in fact, but in the most revolting

sense of the term: Sand, a Thurtell: and the Georgian planter such a

monster of tyranny as a Sussex farmer would be if he set up a

whipping-post for his labourers, and sold their little ones to gipsies.

Such judgments would be cruelly illiberal. The traveller who is

furnished with the more accurate philosophy of Conscience would arrive

at conclusions, not only more correct, but far less painful; and,

without any laxity of principle, far more charitable.

So much for one instance of the advantage to the traveller of being

provided with definite principles, to be used as a rallying point and

test of his observations, instead of mere vague moral notions and

general prepossessions, which can serve only as a false medium, by which

much that he sees must necessarily be perverted or obscured.

SECTION IV.

The traveller having satisfied himself that there are some universal

feelings about right and wrong, and that in consequence some parts of

human conduct are guided by general rules, must next give his attention

to modes of conduct, which seem to him good or bad, prevalent in a

nation, or district, or society of smaller limits. His first general

principle is, that the law of nature is the only one by which mankind at

large can be judged. His second must be, that every prevalent virtue or

vice is the result of the particular circumstances amidst which the

society exists.

The circumstances in which a prevalent virtue or vice originates, may or

may not be traceable by a traveller. If traceable, he should spare no

pains to make himself acquainted with the whole case. If obscure, he

must beware of imputing disgraces to individuals, as if those

individuals were living under the influences which have made himself

what he is. He will not blame a deficiency of moral independence in a

citizen of Philadelphia so severely as in a citizen of London; seeing,

as he must do, that the want of moral independence is a prevalent fault

in the United States, and that there must be some reason for it. Again,

he will not look to the Polish peasant for the political intelligence,

activity, and principle which delight him in the log-house of the

American farmer. He sees that Polish peasants are generally supine, and

American farmers usually interested about politics; and that there must

be reasons for the difference.

In a majority of cases such reasons are, to a great extent,

ascertainable. In Spain, for instance, there is a large class of

wretched and irretrievable beggars; and their idleness, dirt, and lying

trouble the very soul of the traveller. What is the reason of the

prevalence of this degraded class and of its vices? A Court Lady[C]

wrote, in ancient days, piteous complaints of the poverty of the

sovereign, the nobility, the army, and the destitute ladies who waited

upon the queen. The sovereign could not give his attendants their

dinners; the nobility melted down their plate and sold their jewels; the

soldiers were famishing in garrison, so that the young deserted, and the

aged and invalids wasted away, actually starved to death. The lady

mentions with surprise, that a particularly large amount of gold and

silver had arrived from the foreign possessions of Spain that year, and

tries to account for the universal misery by saying that a great

proportion of these riches was appropriated by merchants who supplied

the Spaniards with the necessaries of life from abroad; and she speaks

of this as an evil. She is an example of an unphilosophical

observer,--one who could not be trusted to report--much less to account

for--the morals and manners of the people before her eyes. What says a

philosophical observer?[D] "Spain and Portugal, the countries which

possess the mines, are, after Poland, perhaps the two most beggarly

countries in Europe."--"Their trade to their colonies is carried on in

their own ships, and is much greater" (than their foreign commerce,) "on

account of the great riches and extent of those colonies. But it has

never introduced any considerable manufactures for distant sale into

either of those countries, and the greater part of both remains

uncultivated."--"The proportion of gold and silver to the annual produce

of the land and labour of Spain is said to be very considerable, and

that you frequently find there a profusion of plate in houses where

there is nothing else which would in other countries be thought suitable

or correspondent to this sort of magnificence. The cheapness of gold and

silver, or, what is the same thing, the dearness of all commodities,

which is the necessary effect of this redundance of the precious metals,

discourages both the agriculture and manufactures of Spain and Portugal,

and enables foreign nations to supply them with many sorts of rude, and

with almost all sorts of manufactured produce, for a smaller quantity of

gold and silver than what they themselves can either raise or make them

for at home."--When it is considered that in Spain gold and silver are

called wealth, and that there is little other; that manufactures and

commerce scarcely exist; that agriculture is discouraged, and that

therefore there is a lack of occupation for the lower classes, it may be

fairly concluded that the idle upper orders will be found lazy, proud,

and poor; the idle lower classes in a state of beggary; and that the

most virtuous and happy part of the population will be those who are

engaged in tilling the soil, and in the occupations which are absolutely

necessary in towns. One may see with the mind's eye the groups of

intriguing grandees, who have no business on their estates to occupy

their time and thoughts; or the crowd of hungry beggars, thronging round

the door of a convent, to receive the daily alms; or the hospitable and

courteous peasants, of whom a traveller[E] says, "There is a civility to

strangers, and an easy style of behaviour familiar to this class of

Spanish society, which is very remote from the churlish and awkward

manners of the English and German peasantry. Their sobriety and

endurance of fatigue are very remarkable; and there is a constant

cheerfulness in their demeanour which strongly prepossesses a stranger

in their favour."--"I should be glad if I could, with justice, give as

favourable a picture of the higher orders of society in this country;

but, perhaps, when we consider their wretched education, and their early

habits of indolence and dissipation, we ought not to wonder at the state

of contempt and degradation to which they are reduced. I am not speaking

the language of prejudice, but the result of the observations I have

made, in which every accurate observer among our countrymen has

concurred with me, in saying that the figures and countenances of the

higher orders are as much inferior to those of the peasants, as their

moral qualities are in the view I have given of them."--All this might

be foreseen to be unavoidable in a country where the means of living are

passively derived from abroad, and where the honour and rewards of

successful industry are confined to a class of the community. The mines

should bear the blame of the prevalent faults of the saucy beggars and

beggarly grandees of Spain.

To any one who has at all considered at home the bearings of a social

system which is grounded upon physical force, or those of the opposite

arrangements which rely upon moral power, it can be no mystery abroad

that there should be prevalent moral characteristics among the subjects

of such systems; and the vices which exist under them will be, however

mourned, leniently judged. Take the Feudal System as an instance, first,

and then its opposite. A little thought makes it clear what virtues and

vices will be almost certain to subsist under the influences of each.

The baron lives in his castle, on a rock or some other eminence, whence

he can overlook his domains, or where his ancestor reared his abode for

purposes of safety. During this stage of society there is little

domestic refinement and comfort. The furniture is coarse; the library is

not tempting; and the luxurious ease of cities is out of the question.

The pleasures of the owner lie abroad. There he devotes himself to rough

sports, and enjoys his darling luxury,--the exercise of power. Within

the dwelling the wife and her attendants spend their lives in

handiworks, in playing with the children and keeping them in order, in

endless conversation on the few events which come under their notice,

and in obedience to and companionship with the priest. While the master

is hunting, or gathering together his retainers for the feast, the women

are spinning or sewing, gossiping, confessing, or doing penance; while

the priest studies in his apartment, shares in the mirth, or soothes the

troubles of the household, and rules the mind of the noble by securing

the confidence of his wife. Out of doors, there are the retainers, by

whatever name they may be called. Their poor dwellings are crowded round

the castle of the lord; their patches of arable land lie nearest, and

the pastures beyond; that, at least, the supply of human food may be

secured from any enemy. These portions of land are held on a tenure of

service; and, as the retainers have no property in them, and no interest

in their improvement, and are, moreover, liable to be called away from

their tillage at any moment, to perform military or other service, the

soil yields sorry harvests, and the lean cattle are not very ornamental

to the pastures. The wives of the peasantry are often left, at an hour's

warning, in the unprotected charge of their half-clothed and untaught

children, as well as of the cattle and the field.--The festivals of the

people are on holy days, and on the return of the chief from war, or

from a pre-eminent chase.

Now, what must be the morals of such a district as this? and, it may be

added, of the whole country of which it forms a part? for, if there be

one feudal settlement of the kind, there must be more; and the society

is in fact made up of a certain number of complete sets of persons,--of

establishments like this.--There is no need to go back some centuries

for an original to the picture: it exists in more than one country in

Europe now.

This kind of society is composed of two classes only; those who have

something, and those who have nothing. The chief has property, some

knowledge, and great power. With individual differences, the chiefs may

be expected to be imperious, from their liberty and indulgence of will;

brave, from their exposure to toil and danger; contemptuous of men, from

their own supremacy; superstitious, from the influence of the priest in

the household; lavish, from the permanency of their property; vain of

rank and personal distinction, from the absence of pursuits unconnected

with self; and hospitable, partly from the same cause, and partly from

their own hospitality being the only means of gratifying their social

dispositions.

The clergy will be politic, subservient, studious, or indolent,

kind-hearted, effeminate, with a strong tendency to spiritual pride, and

love of spiritual dominion. It will be surprising, too, if they are not

driven into infidelity by the credulity of their pupils.

The women will be ignorant and superstitious, for want of varied

instruction; brave, from the frequent presence or promise of danger;

efficient, from the small division of labour which is practicable in the

superintendence of such a family; given to gossip and uncertainty of

temper, from the sameness of their lives; devoted to their husbands and

children, from the absence of all other important objects; and vain of

such accomplishments as they have, from an ignorance of what remains to

be achieved.

The retainers must be ignorant,--physically strong and imposing,

perhaps, but infants in mind, and slaves in morals. Their worship is

idolatry--of their chief. The virtues permitted to them are fidelity,

industry, domestic attachment, and sobriety. It is difficult to see what

others are possible. Their faults are all comprehended in the word

barbarism.

These characteristics may be extended to the divisions of the nation

corresponding to those of the household: for the sovereign is only a

higher feudal chief: his nobles are a more exalted sort of serfs; and

those who are masters at home become slaves at court. Under this system,

who would be so hardy as to treat brutality in a serf, cunning in a

priest, prejudice in a lady, and imperiousness in a lord, as any thing

but the results--inevitable as mournful--of the state of society?

Feudalism is founded upon physical force, and therefore bears a relation

to the past alone. Right begins in might, and all the social relations

of men have originated in physical superiority. The most prevalent ideas

of the feudal period arise out of the past; what has been longest

honoured is held most honourable; and the understanding of men,

unexercised by learning, and undisciplined by society and political

action, falls back upon precedent, and reposes there. The tastes, and

even the passions, of the feudal period bear a relation to antiquity.

Ambition, prospective as it is in its very nature, has, in this case, a

strong retrospective character. The glory that the descendant derives

from his fathers, he burns to transmit. The past is everything: the

future, except in as far as it may resemble the past, is nothing.

Such, with modifications, have been the prevalent ideas, tastes, and

passions of the civilized world, till lately. The opposite state of

society, which has begun to be realized, occasions prevalent ideas, and

therefore prevalent virtues and vices, of an opposite character.

As commerce enlarges, as other professions besides the clerical arise,

as trades become profitable, as cities swell in importance, as

communication improves, raising villages into towns, and hamlets into

villages, and the affairs of central communities become spread through

the circumference, the lower classes rise, the chiefs lose much of their

importance, the value of men for their intrinsic qualifications is

discovered, and such men take the lead in managing the affairs of

associated citizens. Instead of all being done by orders issued from a

central power,--commands carrying forth an imperious will, and bringing

back undoubting obedience,--social affairs begin to be managed by the

heads and hands of the parties immediately interested. Self-government

in municipal affairs takes place; and, having taken place in any one set

of circumstances, it appears likely to be employed within a wider and a

wider range, till all the government of the community is of that

character. The United States are the most remarkable examples now before

the world of the reverse of the feudal system,--its principles, its

methods, its virtues and vices. In as far as the Americans revert, in

ideas and tastes, to the past, this may be attributed to the transition

being not yet perfected,--to the generation which organized the republic

having been educated amidst the remains of feudalism. There are still

Americans who boast of ancestors high in the order of birth rather than

of merit; who in talking of rank have ideas of birth in their minds, and

whose tastes lie in the past. But such will be the case while the

literature of the world breathes the spirit of former ages, and softens

the transition to an opposite social state. A new literature, new modes

of thought, are daily arising, which point more and more towards the

future. We have already records of the immediate state of the minds and

fortunes of men and of communities, and not a few speculations which

stretch far forward into the future. Every year is the admission more

extensively entered into that moral power is nobler than physical force;

there is more earnestness in the conferences of nations, and less

proneness to war. The highest creations of literature itself, however

long ago produced, are now discovered to bear as close a relation to the

future as the past. They are for all time, through all its changes.

While pillars of light in the dim regions of antiquity, they pass over

in the dawn, and are still before us, casting their shadows to our feet

as guides into the dazzling future. Pre-eminent among them is the Book

which never had any retrospective character in it. It never sanctioned

physical force, pride of ancestry, of valour, of influence, or any other

pride. It never sanctioned arbitrary division of ranks. It never lauded

the virtues of feudalism in their disconnection with other virtues; it

never spared the faults of feudalism, on the ground of their being the

necessary product of feudal circumstances; neither does it now laud and

tolerate the virtues and vices developed by democracy. This guide has

never yet taken up its rest. It is in advance of all existing

democracies, as it ever was of all despotisms. The fact is, that, while

all manifestations of eminent intellectual and moral force have an

imperishable quality, this supreme book has not only an immortal

freshness, but bears no relation to time:--to it "one day is as a

thousand years, and a thousand years as one day."

What are the prevalent virtues and faults which are to be looked for in

the future,--or in those countries which represent somewhat of the

future, as others afford a weakened image of the past? What allowance is

the traveller in America to make? Almost precisely the reverse of what

he would make in Russia.

In-door luxury has succeeded to out-door sports: the mechanical arts

flourish from the elevation of the lower classes, and prowess is gone

out of fashion. The consequence of this is that the traveller sees

ostentation of personal luxury instead of retinue. In the course of

transition to the time when merit will constitute the highest claim to

rank, wealth succeeds to birth: but even already, the claims of wealth

give way before those of intellect. The popular author has more

observance than the millionaire in the United States. This is

honourable, and yields promise of a still better graduation of ranks.

Where moral force is recognized as the moving power of society, it seems

to follow that the condition of Woman must be elevated; that new

pursuits will be opened to her, and a wider and stronger discipline be

afforded to her powers. It is not so in America; but this is owing to

the interference of other circumstances with the full operation of

democratic principles. The absence of an aristocratic or a sovereign

will impels men to find some other will on which to repose their

individual weakness, and with which to employ their human veneration.

The will of the majority becomes their refuge and unwritten law. The few

free-minded resist this will, when it is in opposition to their own, and

the slavish many submit. This is accordingly found to be the most

conspicuous fault of the Americans. Their cautious subservience to

public opinion,--their deficiency of moral independence,--is the crying

sin of their society. Again, the social equality by which the whole of

life is laid open to all in a democratic republic, in which every man

who has power in him may attain all to which that power is a requisite,

cannot but enhance the importance of each in the eyes of all; and the

consequence is a mutual respect and deference, and also a mutual

helpfulness, which are in themselves virtues of a high order, and

preparatives for others. In these the Americans are exercised and

accomplished to a degree never generally attained in any other country.

This class of virtues constitutes their distinguishing honour, their

crowning grace in the company of nations.--Activity and ingenuity are a

matter of course where every man's lot is in his own hands.

Unostentatious hospitality and charity might, in some democracies, be

likely to languish; but the Americans have the wealth of a young

country, and the warmth of a young national existence, as stimulus and

warrant for pecuniary liberality of every kind.--Popular vanity, and the

subservience of political representatives, are the chief dangers which

remain to be alluded to; and there will probably be no republic for ages

where these will not be found in the form of prevalent vices.--If, under

a feudal system, there is a wholesome exercise of reverence in the

worship of ancestry, there is, under the opposite system, a no less

salutary and perpetual impulse to generosity in the care for posterity.

The one has been, doubtless, a benignant influence, tempering the

ruggedness and violence of despotism; the other will prove an elevating

force, lifting men above the personal selfishness and mutual

subservience which are the besetting perils of equals who unite to

govern by their common will.

Whatever may be his philosophy of individual character, the reflective

observer cannot travel, with his mind awake, without admitting that

there can be no question but that national character is formed, or

largely influenced, by the gigantic circumstances which, being the

product of no individual mind, are directly attributable to the great

Moral Governor of the human race. Every successive act of research or

travel will impress him more and more deeply with this truth, which, for

the sake of his own peace and liberality, it would be well that he

should carry about with him from the outset. He will not visit

individuals with any bitterness of censure for participating in

prevalent faults. He will regard social virtues and graces as shedding

honour on all whom they overshadow, from the loftiest to the lowliest;

while he is not disposed to indulge contempt, or anything but a mild

compassion, for any social depravity or deformity which, being the clear

result of circumstances, and itself a circumstance, may be considered as

surely destined to be remedied, as the wisdom of associated, like that

of individual man, grows with his growth, and strengthens with his

strength.

CHAPTER II.

MORAL REQUISITES.

"I respect knowledge; but I do not despise ignorance. They think

only as their fathers thought, worship as they worshipped. They

do no more."--ROGERS.

"He was alive

To all that was enjoyed where'er he went,

And all that was endured." WORDSWORTH.

The traveller, being furnished with the philosophical requisites for the

observation of morals and manners,

1stly. With a certainty of what it is that he wants to know,--

2ndly. With principles which may serve as a rallying point and test of

his observations,--

3rdly. With, for instance, a philosophical and definite, instead of a

popular and vague, notion about the origin of human feelings of right

and wrong,--

4thly. And with a settled conviction that prevalent virtues and vices

are the result of gigantic general influences,--is yet not fitted for

his object if certain moral requisites be wanting in him.

An observer, to be perfectly accurate, should be himself perfect. Every

prejudice, every moral perversion, dims or distorts whatever the eye

looks upon. But as we do not wait to be perfect before we travel, we

must content ourselves with discovering, in order to avoidance, what

would make our task hopeless, and how we may put ourselves in a state to

learn at least something truly. We cannot suddenly make ourselves a

great deal better than we have been, for such an object as observing

Morals and Manners; but, by clearly ascertaining what it is that the

most commonly, or the most grossly, vitiates foreign observation, we may

put a check upon our spirit of prejudice, and carry with us restoratives

of temper and spirits which may be of essential service to us in our

task.

The observer must have sympathy; and his sympathy must be untrammelled

and unreserved. If a traveller be a geological inquirer, he may have a

heart as hard as the rocks he shivers, and yet succeed in his immediate

objects: if he be a student of the fine arts, he may be as silent as a

picture, and yet gain his ends: if he be a statistical investigator, he

may be as abstract as a column of figures, and yet learn what he wants

to know: but an observer of morals and manners will be liable to

deception at every turn, if he does not find his way to hearts and

minds. Nothing was ever more true than that "as face answers to face in

water, so is the heart of man." To the traveller there are two meanings

in this wise saying, both worthy of his best attention. It means that

the action of the heart will meet a corresponding action, and that the

nature of the heart will meet a corresponding nature. Openness and

warmth of heart will be greeted with openness and warmth:--this is one

truth. Hearts, generous or selfish, pure or gross, gay or sad, will

understand, and therefore be likely to report of, only their like:--this

is another truth.

There is the same human heart everywhere,--the universal growth of mind

and life,--ready to open to the sunshine of sympathy, flourishing in the

enclosures of cities, and blossoming wherever dropped in the wilderness;

but folding up when touched by chill, and drooping in gloom. As well

might the Erl-king go and play the florist in the groves and plains of

the tropics, as an unsympathizing man render an account of society. It

will all turn to stubble and sapless rigidity before his eyes.

There is the same human heart everywhere; and, if the traveller has a

good one himself, he will presently find this out, whatever may have

been his fears at home of checks to his sympathy from difference of

education, objects in life, &c. There is no place where people do not

suffer and enjoy; where love is not the high festival of life; where

birth and death are not occasions of emotion; where parents are not

proud of their boy-children; where thoughtful minds do not speculate

upon the two eternities; where, in short, there is not broad ground on

which any two human beings may meet and clasp hands, if they have but

unsophisticated hearts. If a man have not sympathy, there is no point of

the universe--none so wide even as the Mahomedan bridge over the

bottomless pit--where he can meet with his fellow. Such an one is indeed

floundering in the bottomless pit, with only the shadows of men ever

flitting about him.

I have mentioned elsewhere, what will well bear repetition,--that an

American merchant, who had made several voyages to China, dropped a

remark by his own fire-side on the narrowness which causes us to

conclude, avowedly or silently, that, however well men may use the

light they have, they cannot be more than nominally our brethren, unless

they have our religion, our philosophy, and our methods of attaining

both. He said he often recurred, with delight, to the conversations he

had enjoyed with his Chinese friends on some of the highest speculative,

and some of the deepest and widest practical subjects, which his

fellow-citizens of New England were apt to think could be the business

only of Protestant Christians. This American merchant's observations on

oriental morals and manners had an incalculable weight after he had said

this; for it was known that he had seen into hearts, as well as met

faces, and discovered what people's minds were busy about, as their

hands were pursuing the universal employment of earning their

subsistence.

Unless a traveller interprets by his sympathies what he sees, he cannot

but misunderstand the greater part of that which comes under his

observation. He will not be admitted with freedom into the retirements

of domestic life; the instructive commentary on all the facts of

life,--discourse,--will be of a slight and superficial character. People

will talk to him of the things they care least about, instead of seeking

his sympathy about the affairs which are deepest in their hearts. He

will be amused with public spectacles, and informed of historical and

chronological facts; but he will not be invited to weddings and

christenings; he will hear no love-tales; domestic sorrows will be kept

as secrets from him; the old folks will not pour out their stories to

him, nor the children bring him their prattle. Such a traveller will be

no more fitted to report on morals and manners than he would be to give

an account of the silver mines of Siberia by walking over the surface,

and seeing the entrance and the product.

"Human conduct," says a philosopher, "is guided by rules." Without these

rules, men could not live together, and they are also necessary to the

repose of individual minds. Robinson Crusoe could not have endured his

life for a month without rules to live by. A life without purpose is

uncomfortable enough; but a life without rules would be a wretchedness

which, happily, man is not constituted to bear. The rules by which men

live are chiefly drawn from the universal convictions about right and

wrong which I have mentioned as being formed everywhere, under strong

general influences. When sentiment is connected with these rules, they

become religion; and this religion is the animating spirit of all that

is said and done. If the stranger cannot sympathize in the sentiment, he

cannot understand the religion; and without understanding the religion,

he cannot appreciate the spirit of words and acts. A stranger who has

never felt any strong political interest, and cannot sympathize with

American sentiment about the majesty of social equality, and the beauty

of mutual government, can never understand the political religion of the

United States; and the sayings of the citizens by their own fire-sides,

the perorations of orators in town-halls, the installations of public

servants, and the process of election, will all be empty sound and

grimace to him. He will be tempted to laugh,--to call the world about

him mad,--like one who, without hearing the music, sees a room-full of

people begin to dance. The case is the same with certain Americans who

have no antiquarian sympathies, and who think our sovereigns mad for

riding to St. Stephen's in the royal state-coach, with eight horses

covered with trappings, and a tribe of grotesque footmen. I have found

it an effort of condescension to inform such observers that we should

not think of inventing such a coach and appurtenances at the present

day, any more than we should the dress of the Christ-Hospital boys. If

an unsympathizing stranger is so perplexed by a mere matter of external

arrangement,--a royal procession, or a popular election,--what can he be

expected to make of that which is far more important, more intricate,

more mysterious,--neighbourly and domestic life? If he knows and feels

nothing of the religion of these, he could learn but little about them,

even if the roofs of all the houses of a city were made transparent to

him, and he could watch all that is done in every parlour, kitchen, and

nursery in a circuit of five miles.

What strange scenes and transactions must such an one think that there

are in the world! What would he have thought of the spectacle one day

seen in Hayti, when Toussaint L'Ouverture ranged his negro forces before

him, called out thirteen men from the ranks by name, and ordered them to

repair to a certain spot to be immediately shot? What would he have

thought of these thirteen men for crossing their arms upon their

breasts, bowing their heads submissively, and yielding instant

obedience? He might have pronounced Toussaint a ferocious despot, and

the thirteen so many craven fools: while the facts wear a very different

aspect to one who knows the minds of the men. It was necessary to the

good-will of a society but lately organized out of chaos, to make no

distinction between negro and other insurgents; and these thirteen men

were ringleaders in a revolt, Toussaint's nephew being one of them.

This accounts for the general's share in the transaction. As for the

negroes, the General was also the Deliverer,--an object of worship to

people of his colour. Obedience to him was a rule, exalted by every

sentiment of gratitude, awe, admiration, pride, and love, into a

religion; and a Haytian of that day would no more have thought of

resisting a command of Toussaint, than of disputing a thunder-stroke or

an earthquake.--What would an unsympathizing observer make of the

Paschal supper, as celebrated in the houses of Hebrews throughout the

world,--of the care not to break a bone of the lamb,--of the company all

standing, the men girded and shod as for a journey, and the youngest

child of the household invariably asking what this is all for? What

would the observer call it but mummery, if he had no feeling for the

awful traditional and religious emotion involved in the symbol?--What

would such an one think of the terrified flight of two Spanish nobles

from the wrath of their sovereign, incurred by their having saved his

beloved queen from being killed by a fall from her horse? What a puzzle

is here,--even when all the facts of the case are known;--that the king

was looking from a balcony to see his queen mount her Andalusian horse:

that the horse reared, plunged, and bolted, throwing the queen, whose

foot was entangled in the stirrup: that she was surrounded with

gentlemen who stood aloof, because by the law of Spain it was death to

any but her little pages to touch the person, and especially the foot of

the queen, and her pages were too young to rescue her; that these two

gentlemen devoted themselves to save her; and having caught the horse,

and extricated the royal foot, fled for their lives from the legal

wrath of the king! Whence such a law? From the rule that the queen of

Spain has no legs. Whence such a rule? From the meaning that the queen

of Spain is a being too lofty to touch the earth. Here we come at last

to the sentiment of loyal admiration and veneration which sanctifies the

law and the rule, and interprets the incident. To a heartless stranger

the whole appears a mere solemn absurdity, fit only to be set aside, as

it was apparently by pardon from the king being obtained by the instant

intercession of the queen. But in the eyes of every Spaniard the

transaction was, in all its parts, as far from absurdity as the danger

of the two nobles was real and pressing.--Again, what can a heartless

observer understand by the practice, almost universal in the world, of

celebrating the naming of children? The Christian parent employs a form

by which the infant is admitted as a lamb of Christ's flock: the Chinese

father calls his kindred together to witness the conferring first of the

surname, and then of "the milk-name,"--some endearing diminutive, to

cease with infancy: the Moslem consults an astrologer before giving a

name to his child: and the savage selects a name-sake for his infant

from among the beasts or birds, with whose characteristic quality he

would fain endow his offspring. What a general rule is here, exalted by

a universal sentiment into an act of religion! The ceremonial observed

in each case is widely different in its aspect to one who sees in it

merely a cumbrous way of transacting a matter of convenience, and to

another who perceives in it the initiation of a new member into the

family of mankind, and a looking forward to,--an attempt to make

provision for, the future destiny of an unconscious and helpless being.

Thus it will be through the whole range of the traveller's observation.

If he be full of sympathy, every thing he sees will be instructive, and

the most important matters will be the most clearly revealed. If he be

unsympathizing, the most important things will be hidden from him, and

symbols (in which every society abounds) will be only absurd or trivial

forms. The stranger will be wise to conclude, when he sees anything

seriously done which appears to him insignificant or ludicrous, that

there is more in it than he perceives, from some deficiency of knowledge

or feeling of his own.

The other way in which heart is found to answer to heart is too obvious

to require to be long dwelt upon. Men not only see according to the

light they shed from their own breasts,--whether it be the sunshine of

generosity or the hell-flames of bad passions,--but they attract to

themselves spirits like their own. The very same persons appear very

differently to a traveller who calls into exercise all their best

qualities, and to one who has an affinity with their worst: but it is a

yet more important consideration that actually different elements of

society will range themselves round the observer according to the

scepticism or faith of his temper, the purity or depravity of his

tastes, and the elevation or insignificance of his objects. The

Americans, somewhat nettled with the injustice of English travellers'

reports of their country, have jokingly proposed to take lodgings in

Wapping for some thorough-bred American vixen, of low tastes and coarse

manners, and employ her to write an account of English morals and

manners from what she might see in a year's abode in the choice locality

selected for her. This would be no great exaggeration of the process of

observation of foreigners which is perpetually going on.

What should gamesters know of the philanthropists of the society they

pass through? or the profligate, of the real state of domestic life?

What can the moral sceptic report of religious or philosophical

confessorship in any nation? or the sordid trader, of the higher kinds

of intellectual cultivation? or the dandy, of the extent and

administration of charity? It may be said that neither can the

philanthropic traveller--the missionary--see otherwise than partially

for want of "knowledge of the world;" that persons of sober habits can

learn nothing that is going on in the moral depths of society; and the

good are actually scoffed at for their absence from many scenes of human

life, and their supposed ignorance of many things in human nature. But

it is certain that the best part of every man's mind is far more a

specimen of himself than the worst; and that the characteristics of a

society, in like manner, are to be traced in the wisest and most genial

of its pervading ideas and common transactions, instead of those

disgraceful ones which are common to all. Swindlers, drunkards, people

of low tastes and bad passions, are found in every country, and nowhere

characterise a nation; while the reverence of man in America, the

pursuit of speculative truth in Germany, philanthropic enterprise in

France, love of freedom in Switzerland, popular education in China,

domestic purity in Norway,--each of these great moral beauties is a star

on the forehead of a nation. Goodness and simplicity are indissolubly

united. The bad are the most sophisticated, all the world over; and the

good the least. It may be taken as a rule that the best qualities of a

people, as of an individual, are the most characteristic--(what is

really _best_ being tested, not by prejudice, but principle). He has the

best chance of ascertaining these best qualities who has them in

himself; and he who has them not may as well pretend to give a picture

of a metropolitan city by showing a map of its drainage, as report of a

nation after an intercourse with its knaves and its profligates. To

stand on the highest pinnacle is the best way of obtaining an accurate

general view, in contemplating a society as well as a city.

CHAPTER III.

MECHANICAL REQUISITES.

"He travels and expatiates, as the bee

From flower to flower, so he from land to land:

The manners, customs, policy, of all

Pay contribution to the stores he gleans."--_The Task._

"Thy speaking of my tongue, and I thine, most truly falsely, must

needs be granted to be much at one."--_King Henry V._

No philosophical or moral fitness will qualify a traveller to observe a

people if he does not select a mode of travelling which will enable him

to see and converse with a great number and variety of persons. An

ambassador has no chance of learning much of the people he visits

anywhere but in a new country like America. While he is _en route_, he

is too stately in appearance to allow of any familiarity on the part of

the people by the road-side. His carriages might almost as well roll

through a city of the dead, for anything he will learn from intercourse

with the living. The case is not much better when a family or a party of

friends travel together on the Continent, committing the business of the

expedition to servants, and shrinking from intercourse, on all social

occasions, with English shyness or pride.

The behaviour of the English on the Continent has become a matter of

very serious consequence to the best informed and best mannered of their

countrymen, as it has long been to the natives into whose society they

may happen to fall. I have heard gentlemen say that they lose half their

pleasure in going abroad, from the coldness and shyness with which the

English are treated; a coldness and shyness which they think fully

warranted by the conduct of their predecessors in travel. I have heard

ladies say that they find great difficulty in becoming acquainted with

their neighbours at the tables-d'hôte; and that, when they have

succeeded, an apology for the reluctance to converse has been offered,

in the form of explanation that English travellers generally "appear to

dislike being spoken to" so much as to render it a matter of civility to

leave them alone. The travelling arrangements of the English seem

designed to cut them off from companionship with the people they go to

see; and they preclude the possibility of studying morals and manners in

a way which is perfectly ludicrous to persons of a more social

temperament and habits.

A good deal may be learned on board steam-boats, and in such vehicles as

the American stages; and when accommodations of the kind become common,

it will be difficult for the sulkiest Englishman to avoid admitting some

ideas into his mind from the conversation and actions of the groups

around him. When steam-boats ply familiarly on the Indus, and we have

the rail-road to Calcutta which people are joking about, and another

across the Pampas,--when we make trips to New Zealand, and think little

of a run down the west coast of Africa,--places where we shall go for

fashion's sake, and cannot go boxed up in a carriage of Long Acre

origin,--our countrymen will, perforce, exchange conversation with the

persons they meet, and may chance to get rid of the unsociability for

which they are notorious, and by which they cast a veil over hearts and

faces, and a shadow over their own path, wherever they go.

Meantime, the wisest and happiest traveller is the pedestrian. If

gentlemen and ladies want to see pictures, let them post to Florence,

and be satisfied with learning what they can from the windows by the

way. But if they want to see either scenery or people, let all who have

strength and courage go on foot. I prefer this even to horseback. A

horse is an anxiety and a trouble. Something is sure to ail it; and one

is more anxious about its accommodation than about one's own. The

pedestrian traveller is wholly free from care. There is no such freeman

on earth as he is for the time. His amount of toil is usually within his

own choice,--in any civilized region. He can go on and stop when he

likes: if a fit of indolence overtakes him, he can linger for a day or a

week in any spot that pleases him. He is not whirled past a beautiful

view almost before he has seen it. He is not tantalized by the idea that

from this or that point he could see something still finer, if he could

but reach it. He can reach almost every point his wishes wander to. The

pleasure is indescribable of saying to one's self, "I will go

there,"--"I will rest yonder,"--and forthwith accomplishing it. He can

sit on a rock in the midst of a rushing stream as often in a day as he

likes. He can hunt a waterfall by its sound; a sound which the

carriage-wheels prevent other travellers from hearing. He can follow out

any tempting glade in any wood. There is no cushion of moss at the foot

of an old tree that he may not sit down on if he pleases. He can read

for an hour without fear of passing by something unnoticed while his

eyes are fixed upon his book. His food is welcome, be its quality what

it may, while he eats it under the alders in some recess of a brook. He

is secure of his sleep, be his chamber ever so sordid; and when his

waking eyes rest upon his knapsack, his heart leaps with pleasure as he

remembers where he is, and what a day is before him. Even the weather

seems to be of less consequence to the pedestrian than to other

travellers. A pedestrian journey presupposes abundance of time, so that

the traveller can rest in villages on rainy days, and in the shade of a

wood during the hours when the sun is too powerful. And if he prefers

not waiting for the rain, it is not the evil to him that it would be in

cities and in the pursuit of business. The only evil of rain that I know

of, to healthy persons in exercise, is that it spoils the clothes; and

the clothes of a pedestrian traveller are not usually of a spoilable

quality. Rain does not deform the face of things everywhere as it does

in a city. It adds a new aspect of beauty occasionally to a wood, to

mountains, to lake and ocean scenery. I remember a hale, cheerful

pedestrian tourist whom we met frequently among the White Mountains of

New Hampshire, and whom we remarked as being always the briskest of the

company at the hotel table in the evening, and the merriest at

breakfast. He had the best of it one day, when we passed him in

Franconia Defile, after a heavy rain had set in. We were packed in a

waggon which seemed likely to fill with water before we got to our

destination; and miserable enough we looked, drenched and cold. The

traveller was marching on over the rocky road, his book safe in its

oil-skin cover, and his clothes-bag similarly protected; his face

bright and glowing with exercise, and his summer jacket of linen

feeling, as he told us, all the pleasanter for being wet through. As he

passed each recess of the defile, he looked up perpetually to see the

rain come smoking out of the fissures of the rocks; and when he reached

the opening by which he was to descend to the plain, he stood still, to

watch the bar of dewy yellow light which lay along the western sky where

the sun had just set. He looked just as happy on other days. Sometimes

we passed him lying along on a hill side; sometimes talking with a

family at the door of a log-house; sometimes reading as he walked under

the shade of the forest. I, for one, often longed to dismiss our waggon

or barouche, and to follow his example.

One peculiar advantage of pedestrian travelling is the pleasure of a

gradual approach to celebrated or beautiful places. Every turn of the

road gains in interest; every object that meets the eye seems to have

some initiative meaning; and when the object itself at last appears,

nothing can surpass the delight of flinging one's self on the ground to

rest upon the first impression, and to interpose a delicious pause

before the final attainment. It is not the same thing to desire your

driver to stop when you come to the point of view. The first time that I

felt this was on a pedestrian tour in Scotland, when I was at length to

see mountains. The imagination of myself and my companion had fixed

strongly on Dunkeld, as being a scene of great beauty, and our first

resting-place among the mountains. The sensation had been growing all

the morning. Men, houses, and trees had seemed to be growing

diminutive,--an irresistible impression to the novice in mountain

scenery: the road began to follow the windings of the Tay, a sign that

the plain was contracting into a pass. Beside a cistern, on a green bank

of this pass, we had dined; a tract of heath next lay before us, and we

traversed it so freshly and merrily as to be quite unaware that we were

getting towards the end of our seventeen miles, though still conscious

that the spirit of the mountains was upon us. We were deeply engaged in

talk, when a winding of the road brought us in full view of the lovely

scene which is known to all who have approached Dunkeld by the Perth

road. We could scarcely believe that this was _it_, so soon. We turned

to our map and guide-book, and found that we were standing on the site

of Birnam wood; that Dunsinane hill was in sight, and that it was indeed

the old cathedral tower of Dunkeld that rose so grandly among the

beeches behind the bridge. We took such a long and fond gaze as I never

enjoyed from a carriage window. If it was thus with an object of no more

importance or difficulty of attainment than Dunkeld, what must it be to

catch the first view of the mysterious temples that

"Stand between the mountains and the sea;

Awful memorials, but of whom we know not!"

or to survey from a height, at sunrise, the brook Kedron and the valley

of Jehoshaphat!

What is most to our present purpose, however, is the consideration of

the facilities afforded by pedestrian travelling for obtaining a

knowledge of the people. We all remember Goldsmith's travels with his

flute, his sympathies, his cordiality of heart and manner, and his

reliance on the hospitality of the country people. Such an one as he is

not bound to take up with such specimens as he may meet with by the side

of the high road; he can penetrate into the recesses of the country, and

drop into the hamlet among the hills, and the homesteads down the lanes,

and now and then spend a day with the shepherd in his fold on the downs;

he can stop where there is a festival, and solve many a perplexity by

carrying over the conversation of one day into the intercourse of the

next, with a fresh set of people; he can obtain access to almost every

class of persons, and learn their own views of their own affairs. His

opportunities are inestimable.

If it were a question which could learn most of Morals and Manners by

travel,--the gentleman accomplished in philosophy and learning,

proceeding in his carriage, with a courier,--or a simple pedestrian

tourist, furnished only with the language, and with an open heart and

frank manners,--I should have no doubt that the pedestrian would return

more familiar with his subject than the other. If the wealthy scholar

and philosopher could make himself a citizen of the world for the time,

and go forth on foot, careless of luxury, patient of fatigue, and

fearless of solitude, he would be not only of the highest order of

tourists, but a benefactor to the highest kind of science; and he would

become familiarized with what few are acquainted with,--the best

pleasures, transient and permanent, of travel. Those who cannot pursue

this method will achieve most by laying aside state, conversing with the

people they fall in with, and diverging from the high road as much as

possible.

Nothing need be said on a matter so obvious as the necessity of

understanding the language of the people visited. Some familiarity with

it must be attained before anything else can be done. It seems to be

unquestioned, however, that a good deal of the unsociability of the

English abroad is owing not so much to contempt of their neighbours, as

to the natural pride which makes them shrink from attempting what they

cannot do well. I am confident that we say much less than we feel about

the awkwardness and constraint of our first self-committals to a foreign

language. It is impossible but that every one must feel the weight of

the penalty of making himself ridiculous at every step, and of

presenting a kind of false appearance of himself to every one with whom

he converses. A German gentleman in America, who has exactly that right

degree of self-respect which enabled him to set strenuously about

learning English, of which he did not understand a word, and who

mastered it so completely as to lecture in faultless English at the end

of two years, astonished a party of friends one day, persuaded as they

were that they perfectly knew him, and that the smooth and deliberate

flow of his beautiful language was a consequence of the calmness of his

temper, and the philosophical character of his mind. A German woman with

children came begging to the house while the party were at their

dessert. The professor caught her tones when the door of the dining-room

was open; he rushed into the hall, presently returned for a dish or two,

and emptied the gingerbread, and other material of the dessert, into her

lap. The company went out to see, and found the professor transformed;

he was talking with a rapidity and vehemence which they had never

supposed him capable of; and one of the party told me how sorry she

felt, and has felt ever since, to think of the state of involuntary

disguise in which he is living among those who would know him best.

Difference of language is undeniably a cause of great suffering and

difficulty, magnificent and incalculable as are its uses. It is no

exception to the general rule that every great good involves some evil.

Happily, however, the difficulty may be presently so far surmounted as

not to interfere with the object of observing Morals and Manners.

Impossible as it may be to attain to an adequate expression of one's

self in a foreign tongue, it is easy to most persons to learn to

understand it perfectly when spoken by others. During this process, a

common and almost unavoidable mistake is to suppose a too solemn and

weighty meaning in what is expressed in an unfamiliar language. This

arises partly from our having become first acquainted with the language

in books; and partly from the meaning having been attained with effort,

and seeming, by natural association, worth the pains. The first French

dialogues which a child learns, seem more emphatic in their meanings

than the same material would in English; and the student of German finds

a grandeur in lines of Schiller, and in clauses of Herder's and

Krummacher's Parables, which he looks for in vain when he is practised

in the language. It is well to bear this in mind on a first entrance

into a foreign society, or the traveller may chance to detect himself

treasuring up nonsense, and making much of mere trivialities, because

they reached him clothed in the mystery of a strange language. He will

be like lame Jervas, when he first came up from the mine in which he was

born, caressing the weeds he had gathered by the road side, and refusing

till the last moment to throw away such wonderful and beautiful things.

The raw traveller not only sees something mysterious, picturesque, or

classical in every object that meets his eye after passing the frontier,

from the children's toys to palaces and general festivals, but is apt to

discern wisdom and solemnity in everything that is said to him, from the

greeting of the landlord to the speculations of the politician. If not

guarded against, this natural tendency will more or less vitiate the

observer's first impressions, and introduce something of the ludicrous

into his record of them.

From the consideration of the requisites for observation in the

traveller himself, we now proceed to indicate what he is to observe, in

order to inform himself of foreign Morals and Manners.

PART II.

WHAT TO OBSERVE.

"Nous nous en tiendrons aux moeurs, aux habitudes extérieures

dont se forme, pour les differentes classes de la société, une

sorte de physionomie morale, où se retracent les moeurs

privées." DE JOUY.

It is a perpetual wonder to an inexperienced person that the students of

particular classes of facts can learn so much as they do from a single

branch of inquiry. Tell an uninformed man of the daily results of the

study of Fossil Remains, and he will ask how the student can possibly

know what was done in the world ages before man was created. It will

astonish a thoughtless man to hear the statements about the condition of

the English nation which are warranted by the single study of the

administration of the Poor Laws, since their origin. Some physiognomists

fix their attention on a single feature of the human face, and can

pretty accurately interpret the general character of the mind from it:

and I believe every portrait painter trusts mainly to one feature for

the fidelity of his likenesses, and bestows more study and care on that

one than on any other.

A good many features compose the physiognomy of a nation; and scarcely

any traveller is qualified to study them all. The same man is rarely

enlightened enough to make investigation at once into the religion of a

people, into its general moral notions, its domestic and economical

state, its political condition, and the facts of its progress;--all

which are necessary to a full understanding of its morals and manners.

Few have even attempted an inquiry of this extent. The worst of it is

that few dream of undertaking the study of any one feature of society at

all. We should by this time have been rich in the knowledge of nations

if each intelligent traveller had endeavoured to report of any one

department of moral inquiry, however narrow; but, instead of this, the

observations offered to us are almost purely desultory. The traveller

hears and notes what this and that and the other person says. If three

or four agree in their statements on any point, he remains unaware of a

doubt, and the matter is settled. If they differ, he is perplexed, does

not know whom to believe, and decides, probably, in accordance with

prepossessions of his own. The case is almost equally bad, either way.

He will hear only one side of every question if he sees only one class

of persons,--like the English in America, for instance, who go commonly

with letters of introduction from merchants at home to merchants in the

maritime cities, and hear nothing but federal politics, and see nothing

but aristocratic manners. They come home with notions which they suppose

to be indisputable about the great Bank question, the state of parties,

and the relations of the General and State governments; and with words

in their mouths of whose objectionable character they are

unaware,--about the common people, mob government, the encroachment of

the poor upon the rich, and so on. Such partial intercourse is fatal to

the observations of a traveller; but it is less perplexing and painful

at the time than the better process of going from one set of people to

another, and hearing what all have to say. No traveller in the United

States can learn much of the country without conversing equally with

farmers and merchants, with artizans and statesmen, with villagers and

planters; but, while discharging this duty, he will be so bewildered

with the contrariety of statements and convictions, that he will often

shut his note-book in a state of scepticism as to whether there be any

truth at all shining steadily behind all this tempest of opinions. Thus

it is with the stranger who traverses the streets of Warsaw, and is

trusted with the groans of some of the outraged mourners who linger in

its dwellings; and then goes to St. Petersburg, and is presented with

evidences of the enlightenment of the Czar, of his humanity, his

paternal affection for his subjects, and his general superiority to his

age. At Warsaw the traveller called him a miscreant; at Petersburg he is

required to pronounce him a philanthropist. Such must be the uncertainty

of judgment when it is based upon the testimony of individuals. To

arrive at the facts of the condition of a people through the discourse

of individuals, is a hopeless enterprise. The plain truth is--it is

beginning at the wrong end.

The grand secret of wise inquiry into Morals and Manners is to begin

with the study of THINGS, using the DISCOURSE OF PERSONS as a commentary

upon them.

Though the facts sought by travellers relate to Persons, they may most

readily be learned from Things. The eloquence of Institutions and

Records, in which the action of the nation is embodied and perpetuated,

is more comprehensive and more faithful than that of any variety of

individual voices. The voice of a whole people goes up in the silent

workings of an institution; the condition of the masses is reflected

from the surface of a record. The Institutions of a nation,--political,

religious, or social,--put evidence into the observer's hands as to its

capabilities and wants which the study of individuals could not yield in

the course of a lifetime. The Records of any society, be they what they

may, whether architectural remains, epitaphs, civic registers, national

music, or any other of the thousand manifestations of the common mind

which may be found among every people, afford more information on Morals

in a day than converse with individuals in a year. Thus also must

Manners be judged of, since there never was a society yet, not even a

nunnery or a Moravian settlement, which did not include a variety of

manners. General indications must be looked for, instead of

generalizations being framed from the manners of individuals. In cities,

do social meetings abound? and what are their purposes and character?

Are they most religious, political, or festive? If religious, have they

more the character of Passion Week at Rome, or of a camp-meeting in

Ohio? If political, do the people meet on wide plains to worship the Sun

of the Celestial Empire, as in China; or in town-halls, to remonstrate

with their representatives, as in England; or in secret places, to

spring mines under the thrones of their rulers, as in Spain? If

festive, are they most like an Italian carnival, where everybody laughs;

or an Egyptian holiday, when all eyes are solemnly fixed on the whirling

Dervishes? Are women there? In what proportions, and under what law of

liberty? What are the public amusements? There is an intelligible

difference between the opera at Milan, and the theatre at Paris, and a

bull-fight at Madrid, and a fair at Leipzig, and a review at St.

Petersburg.--In country towns, how is the imitation of the metropolis

carried on? Do the provincials emulate most in show, in science, or in

the fine arts?--In the villages, what are the popular amusements? Do the

people meet to drink or to read, to discuss, or play games, or dance?

What are the public houses like? Do the people eat fruit and tell

stories? or drink ale and talk politics or call for tea and saunter

about? or coffee and play dominoes? or lemonade and laugh at Punch? Do

they crowd within four walls, or gather under the elm, or spread

themselves abroad over the cricket-field or the yellow sands?--There is

as wide a difference among the humbler classes of various countries as

among their superiors in rank. A Scotch burial is wholly unlike the

ceremonies of the funeral pile among the Cingalese; and an interment in

the Greek church little resembles either. A conclave of White Boys in

Mayo, assembled in a mud hovel on a heath, to pledge one another to

their dreadful oath, is widely different from a similar conclave of

Swiss insurgents, met in a pine wood on a steep, on the same kind of

errand: and both are as little like as may be to the heroes of the last

revolution in Paris, or to the companies of Covenanters that were wont

to meet, under a similar pressure of circumstances, in the defiles of

the Scottish mountains.--In the manners of all classes, from the highest

to the lowest, are forms of manners enforced in action, or dismissed in

words? Is there barbarous freedom in the lower, while there is formality

in the higher ranks, as in newly settled countries? or have all grown up

together to that period of refined civilization when ease has superseded

alike the freedom of the Australian peasantry, and the etiquette of the

court of Ava?--What are the manners of professional men of the society,

from the eminent lawyer or physician of the metropolis down to the

village barber? The manners of the great body of the professional men

must indicate much of the requisitions of the society they serve.--So,

also, must every circumstance connected with the service of society: its

character, whether slavish or free, abject or prosperous, comprehensive

or narrow in its uses, must testify to the desires and habits, and

therefore to the manners of a community, better than the conversation or

deportment of any individual in the society can do. A traveller who

bears all this in mind can hardly go wrong. Every thing that he looks

upon will instruct him, from an aqueduct to a punch-bowl, from a

penitentiary to an aviary, from the apparatus of a university to the

furniture of an alehouse or a nursery. When it was found that the chiefs

of the Red men could not be impressed with any notion of the

civilization of the Whites by all that many white men could say, they

were brought into the cities of the Whites. The exhibition of a ship was

enough for some. The warriors of the prairies were too proud to utter

their astonishment,--too noble to hint, even to one another, their fear;

but the perspiration stood on their brows as they dumbly gazed, and no

word of war passed their lips from that hour. Another, who could listen

with calmness to the tales of boastful traders in the wilderness, was

moved from his apathy by seeing a workman in a glasshouse put a handle

upon a pitcher. He was transported out of his silence and reserve: he

seized and grasped the hand of the workman, crying out that it was now

plain that he had had intercourse with the Great Spirit. By the evidence

of things these Indians had learned more of the manners of the Whites

than had ever been taught them by speech.--Which of us would not learn

more of the manners of the Pompeians by a morning's walk among the

relics of their abodes and public halls than by many a nightly

conference with certain of their ghosts?

The usual scholastic division of Morals is into personal, domestic, and

social or political morals. The three kinds are, however, so apt to run

into one another,--so practically inseparable,--that the traveller will

find the distinction less useful to him than some others which he can

either originate or adopt.

It appears to me that the Morals and Manners of a nation may be included

in the following departments of inquiry--the Religion of the people;

their prevalent Moral Notions; their Domestic State; their Idea of

Liberty; and their Progress, actual or in prospect.

CHAPTER I.

RELIGION.

"Dieu nous a dit, Peuples, je vous attends."

DE BERANGER.

Of religion, in its widest sense, (the sense in which the traveller must

recognize it,) there are three kinds; not in all cases minutely

distinguishable, but bearing different general impress; viz. the

Licentious, the Ascetic, and the Moderate. These kinds are not divided

from each other by the boundaries of sects. We cannot say that pagan

religions come under one head, and Mahomedanism under another, and

Christianity under a third. The difference lies not in creeds, but in

spirit. Many pagans have been as moderate as any Christians; many

Christians as licentious as any pagans; many Mahomedans as licentious,

and many as ascetic, as any pagans or Christians. The truer distinction

seems to be that the licentious religions of the world worship

unspiritualized nature,--material objects and their movements, and the

primitive passions of man: that the ascetic despises nature, and

worships its artificial restraints: and that the moderate worships

spiritualized nature,--God in his works, both in the material universe

and in the disciplined human mind, with its regulated affections.

The Licentious religion is always a ritual one. Its gods are natural

phenomena and human passions personified; and, when once the power of

doing good or harm is attributed to them, the idea of propitiation

enters, and a ritual worship begins. Earthquakes, inundations, the

chase, love, revenge,--all these agents of evil and good are to be

propitiated, and sacrifices and prayers are to be offered to them; in

these rites alone religious acts are supposed to be performed. This,

however modified, is a low state of religious sentiment. It may show

itself among the Hindoos dipping in the Ganges, or among Christians who

accept absolution in its grossest sense. In either case its tendency is

to render the worshipper satisfied with a low moral state, and to

perpetuate his taste for selfish indulgence.

The Ascetic religions are ritual also. The Pharisees of old need but be

cited to show why; and there is a set of people in the Society Islands

now who seem to be spiritually descended from the ascetic priests of

Judaism. The inhabitants of the Society Islands are excluded from many

innocent privileges and natural pleasures by the Tabu; and the Pharisees

in just the same manner laid burdens upon men's shoulders too heavy to

be borne, ordaining irksome ceremonies to be proofs of holiness, and

extravagant self-denial to be required by devotion. Spiritual licence

has always kept pace with this extravagance of self-denial. Spiritual

vices,--pride, vanity, and hypocrisy,--are as fatal to high morals under

this state of religious sentiment as sensual indulgence under the other:

and it does not matter much to the moral welfare of the people sunk in

it, whether they exist under a profession of Christianity, or of

Mahomedanism, or of paganism. The morals of those people are low who

engage themselves to serve God by a slothful life in monastic celibacy,

no less than those of the Fakîrs, who let their nails grow through the

backs of their hands, or those of the wretched mothers in the islands of

the Pacific, who strangle their infants, and cast them at the feet of

their grinning idol.

The Moderate is the least of a ritual religion of the three, and drops

such rites as it has in proportion to its advance towards purity.

Religion in its purity is not a pursuit, but a temper; and its

expression is not by sacrifices, by prayers in the corners of the

streets, by fasts or public exhibitions. The highest manifestations of

this order of religion are found in Christian countries; though in

others there are individuals, and even orders of men, who understand

that the orderly enjoyment of all blessings that Providence has

bestowed, and the regulated workings of all human affections, are the

truest homage to the Maker of all. As there are Christians whose

reliance is upon their ritual worship, and who enter upon a monastic

life, so there are Mahomedans and pagans whose high religious aim is

self-perfection, sought through the free but disciplined exercise of

their whole nature.

The dependence of morals upon the character of the religion is clear. It

is clear that among a people whose gods are supposed to be licentious,

whose priests are licentious, and where worship is associated with the

indulgence of the passions, political and domestic morals must be very

low. What purity can be expected of a people whose women are demanded

in turn for the obscene service of the Buddhist temple; and what

humanity from the inhabitants of districts whose dwellings are

necessarily closed against the multitudes flocking to the festivals of

Juggernaut,--multitudes from amidst which thousands annually drop down

dead, so that their skeletons strew the road to the abominable

temple?--Where asceticism is the character of the religion, the natural

and irrepressible exercise of human affections becomes licentiousness,

so called; and, of consequence, it soon becomes licentiousness in fact,

according to the general rule that a bad name changes that to which it

is affixed into a bad quality.--Hannah and Philip grew up in a Moravian

settlement; and, Moravians as they were, they loved. The days came when

the destiny of each was decided by lot. It was scarcely possible that

they should draw a lot to marry each other; yet both secretly hoped to

the last. Philip drew a missionary lot, and Hannah another husband. They

were allowed to shake hands once before parting. "Good-bye, Hannah!"

"Good-bye, Philip!" was all that was said. If Hannah had gone off with

Philip, it would have been called a profligate act; and, if they were

sound Moravians, it would in fact have been so: whereas, in a community

of really high morals, the profligacy would have been seen to lie in

Hannah's marrying a man she did not love.

To proceed with the dependence of the morals on the character of the

religion,--it is clear that in proportion as any religion encourages

licentiousness, either positively or negatively,--encourages, that is to

say, the excess of the passions, might will have the victory over

right; the weak will succumb to the strong; and thus the condition of

the poorer classes depends on the character of the religion of their

country. In proportion as the religion tends to licentiousness, will the

poorer classes be liable to slavery. In proportion as the religion tends

to asceticism, will be the amount (other things being equal) of the

hardship and want which they must sustain. In proportion as the religion

approximates to the moderate, (the use without the abuse of means of

enjoyment,) will the poorer classes rise to a condition of freedom and

comfort.

The character of the religion serves, in like manner, as an index to

that of the government. A licentious religion cannot be adopted by a

people who are so moderate in their passions as to be able to govern

themselves. One would not look for a display of meats offered to idols

in the Capitol of the American Congress. An ascetic religion, too,

inflicts personal and mutual wrongs which could never be endured among a

people who agree to govern one another. There is no power which could

induce such to submit to privations and sufferings which can be

tolerable to none but devotees,--a small fraction of every society.

Absolutism is commonly the character of the government of any country

where either of these religions prevails;--a despotism more or less

tempered by a variety of influences. It is the observer's business to

bring the religion and the government into comparison, and to see how

the latter is modified by the coexistence of the former.

The friendly, no less than the domestic and political relations of

society, are dependent upon the prevailing religion. Under the

licentious, the manners will be made up of the conventional and the

gross. A Burmese minister was sitting on the poop of a steam-vessel when

a squall came on. "I suggested to his Excellency," says Mr. Crawford,

"the convenience of going below, which he long resisted, under the

apprehension of committing his dignity by placing himself in a situation

where persons might tread over his head; for this singular antipathy is

common both to the Burmese and Siamese. The prejudice is more especially

directed against the fair sex,--a pretty conclusive proof of the

estimation in which they are held. His Excellency seriously demanded to

know whether any woman had ever trod upon the poop; and, being assured

in the negative, he consented at length to enter the cabin." The house

fixed for the residence of an American missionary was not allowed to be

fitted up, as it stood on ground which was higher than the king's barge

as it lay in the river; and such a spectacle would not become the king's

dignity. The prime minister of this same king was one day, for absence

from his post at a fire, "spread out in the hot sun." He was extended on

his back in the public road for some hours in the most sultry part of

the day, with a heavy weight upon his chest,--the public executioners

being employed to administer the punishment. Nor is the king alone

authorized to perpetrate such barbarisms. A creditor is permitted to

seize the wife, children, and slaves of a debtor, and bind them at his

door to broil in the sun of Ava. Here we see in perfection the union of

the conventional and the gross in manners; and such manners cannot be

conceived to coexist with any religion of a higher character than

Buddhism.

Under ascetic forms, what grossness there is will be partially

concealed; but there will be no nearer an approach to simplicity than

under the licentious. The religion being made still to consist much in

observances, the society becomes formal in proportion as it believes

itself growing pure. We must again take an extreme case for an example.

The Shakers of America are as sophisticated a set of persons as can be

found; with their minds, and even their public discourses, full of the

one subject of their celibacy, and their intercourse with each other

graduated according to strict rules of etiquette. So extreme an

asceticism can never now spread in any nation to such an extent as to

bear a relation to its general government: but it is observable that

such societies of ascetics live under a despotism;--one of their own

appointment, if the general will has not furnished them with one.

Under the moderate aspect of religion is an approximation towards

simplicity of social manners alone to be found. There is as yet only a

remote anticipation of it in any country in the world; only a remote

anticipation of that ease of social manners which must exist there alone

where the enjoyments of life are freely used without abuse. It matters

not that the licentious and the ascetic parties each boast of having

attained this consummation,--the one under the name of ease, and the

other of simplicity. There is too much pain attendant upon grossness to

justify the boast of ease; and too much effort in asceticism to admit of

the grace of simplicity. It is the observer's business to mark, wherever

he goes, the degree in which the one is chastened and the other relaxed,

giving place to the higher form of the moderate, which, if society

learns from experience, as the individual does, must finally prevail.

When many individuals of a society attain that self-forgetfulness which

is promoted by a high and free religious sentiment, but which is

incompatible with either licentious or ascetic tendencies, the tone of

manners in that society will be much raised. When, free from the

grossness of self-indulgence, and from the constraint of self-denial,

every one spontaneously thinks more of his neighbour than of himself,

the world will witness, at last, the perfection of manners. It is clear

that the high morals of which such refined manners will be the

expression, must greatly depend on the exaltation of the religious

sentiment from which they emanate.

The traveller may possibly object the difficulty of classing societies

by their religious tendencies, and ask whether minds of every sort are

not to be found in all numerous assemblages of persons. This is true:

but yet there is a prevailing religious sentiment in all communities.

Religious, like other sentiment, is modified by the strong general

influences under which each society lives; and in it, as in other kinds,

there will be general resemblance, with particular differences under it.

It is well known that even sects, exclusive in their opinions and

straitened by forms, differ in different countries almost as much as if

there were no common bond. Not only is episcopacy not the same religion

among born East Indians as in England, but the Quakers of the United

States, though like the English in doctrine and in manners, are easily

distinguishable from them in religious sentiment: and even the Jews,

who might be expected to be the same all over the world, differ in

Russia, Persia, and Great Britain as much as if a spirit of division had

been sent among them. They not only appear here in furs, there in cotton

or silk, and elsewhere in broadcloth; but the hearts they bear beneath

the garments, the thoughts that stir under the cap, the turban, and the

hat, are modified in their action as the skies under which they move are

in aspect. They are strongly tinctured with the national sentiment of

Russia, Persia, and England; and if the fond dream of some of them (in

which, by the way, large numbers of their body have ceased to

sympathize,) could come true, and they should ever be brought together

within their ancient borders, they would find that their religion, so

unique in its fixedness, though one in word, is many in spirit.--Much

more easy is the assimilation between different forms of Christianity,

and between Christianity and an elevated natural religion: and the

search can never therefore be in vain for a pervading religious

sentiment among the various religious institutions of any and every

people.

It is, of course, more difficult to discover this religious sentiment

among a nation enlightened enough to be divided in theological matters,

than among a rude people who regulate their devotions by the bidding of

a single order of priests. The African traveller, passing up the Niger,

sees at a glance what all the worshippers on the banks feel, and must

feel, towards the deities to whom their temples are erected. A rude

shed, with a doll,--an image of deformity,--perched on a stand, and

supposed to be enjoying the fumes of the cooking going on before his

face;--a place of worship like this, in its character of the habitation

of a deity, and of a sensual deity, leaves no doubt as to what the

religious sentiment of a country must be where there is no dissent from

such a worship. In such a society there are absolutely none to feel that

their deep palm groves are a nobler temple than human hands can rear.

There are none who see that it is by a large divine benignity that all

the living creatures of that region are made happy in their rank

seclusion. There is no feeling of gratitude in the minds of those who

see the myriads of gay butterflies that flit in the glare of noon, and

the river-horse which bathes in the shady places of the mysterious great

stream. There a god is seen only in his temple, and there is nothing

known of any works of his. That he is great, is learned only through the

word of his priests, who say that yams are too common a food for him,

and that nothing less than hippopotamus' flesh must be cooked beneath

his shrine. That he is good is an idea which has not yet entered any

mind.--In other places, the religious sentiment is almost equally

unquestionable; as when every man in Cairo is seen in his turn to put on

the dress of pilgrimage, and direct his steps to Mount Arafat. Here the

sentiment is of a higher order, but equally evident and uniform.--A

further advance, with somewhat less uniformity of sentiment, is found

among the followers of the Greek church in a Russian province. The

peasants there make a great point of having time for their devotions;

and those who have the wherewithal to offer some showy present at a

shrine are complacent. They make the sign of the cross, and have therein

done their whole duty: and if some speculative worshipper of the Virgin

with Three Hands is not satisfied about the way in which his patroness

came by her third hand, he keeps his doubts to himself when he tells his

sins to his confessor.--A still further advance, with an increased

diversity, may be met with among the simple Vaudois, the general

characteristics of whose faith are alike, but who entertain it, some

more in the spirit of fear, others more in the spirit of love. The

prevailing sentiment among them is of the ascetic character, as the

stranger may perceive, who sees the peasantry marching in serene gravity

to their plain places of worship on the mountain pinnacle, or under the

shelter yielded by a clump of black pines amidst a waste of snow: but

here the clergy are more guides than dictators; and not a few may be

found who doubt their opinions, and find matter for thoughtless delight,

rather than religious awe, when they follow the echoes from steep to

steep, and watch for the gleams of the summer lightning playing among

the defiles.--The diversity grows more striking as civilization

advances; but it has not yet become perplexing in the most enlightened

nations in the world. In England, in France, in America, there is a

distinct religious sentiment: in England, where there is every variety

of dissent from the established faith; in America, where there is every

variety of opinion, and no establishment at all; and in France, now in

that state which most baffles observation,--a state of transition from

an exaggerated superstition to a religious faith which is being groped

for, but is not yet found. Even in this uncertain state, no one can

confound the religious sentiment of New England and of France; and an

observation of their places of worship will indicate their differences.

In New England, the populous towns have their churches in the midst,

spacious and conspicuous,--not exhibiting any of the signs of antique

origin which are impressed on those of Europe, and to be accounted for

only by the immediate religious tastes of the people. In new

settlements, the church rises side by side with the house of

entertainment, and is obviously considered one of the necessaries of

social life. The first thing to be learned about a fresh inhabitant is,

how he stands disposed towards the church, whatever may be its

denomination. In France, such of the old churches as are still used for

their ancient purpose, bespeak a ritual religion, and therefore a

religion light and gay in its spirit; all religions being so which cast

responsibility into outward observances, especially where the outward

observances are not of a very burdensome character. If nuns in their

cloister, and Jews in their synagogues, have been characterized by the

lightness of their religious spirit, well may the Catholics of an

enlightened country be so, discarding the grossest and most burdensome

of their rites, and retaining the ritual principle. The searchers after

a new faith in France must increase by millions before they can change

the character of the religious sentiment of the country; and perhaps

before that which is now gross can be elevated into what is genial, and

before a mixture of levity and fear can be changed into the cheerful

earnestness of a moderate or truly catholic religious conviction, the

ancient churches of France may be standing in ruins,--objects for the

research of the antiquary.

The rule of examining things before persons must be observed in

ascertaining the religious sentiment of any country. A stranger in

England might interrogate everybody he saw, and be little wiser at the

end of a year. He might meet a fanatic one day, an indifferent person

the next, and a calmly convinced one the third: he might go from a

Churchman to a Jew; from a Jew to a Quaker; from a Quaker to a Catholic;

and every day be farther from understanding the prevailing religious

sentiment of the country. A much shorter and surer method is, to examine

the Places of Worship, the condition of the Clergy, the Popular

Superstitions, the observance of Holy Days, and some other particulars

of the kind.

* * * * *

First, for the Churches. There is that about all places of worship which

may tell nearly as plain a tale as the carved idols, with messes of rice

before them, in Hindoo temples; or as the human bones hung round the hut

of an African god. The proportion and resemblance of modern places of

worship to those which were built in dark times of superstition; the

suitability or incongruity of all that is of late introduction into

their furniture and worship with what had its origin in those dim

ages;--such circumstances as these cannot but indicate whether the

common religious sentiment is as nearly as possible the same as in

centuries past, or whether it is approximating, slowly or rapidly,

towards the ascetic or the moderate.

There is evidence in the very forms of churches. The early Christian

churches were in the basilica form,--bearing a resemblance to the Roman

courts of justice. This is supposed to have arisen from the churches

being, in fact, the courts of spiritual justice, where penance was

awarded by the priest to the guilty, and absolution granted to the

penitent. From imitation, the Christian churches of all Europe for

centuries bore this form; and even some built since the Reformation

preserve it. But they have something of their own which serves as a

record of their own times. The history of the Crusades does not present

a more vivid picture of feudal society than shines out from the nooks of

our own cathedrals. The spirit of monachism is as distinguishable as if

the cowled ghosts of the victims were actually seen flitting along the

aisles. What say the chantries ranged along the sides? There perpetual

prayers were to be kept up for the prosperity of a wealthy family and

its retainers in life, and for their welfare after death. What says the

chapter-house? There the powerful members of the church hierarchy were

wont to assemble, to use and confirm their rule. What say the cloisters?

Under their shelter did the monks go to and fro in life; and in the plot

of ground enclosed by these sombre passages were they laid in death.

What says the Ladye chapel? What say the niches with their stone basins?

They tell of the intercessory character of the sentiment, and of the

ritual character of the worship of the times when they were set up. The

handful of worshippers here collected from among the tens of thousands

of a cathedral town also testify to the fact that such establishments

could not be originated now, and are no longer in harmony with the

spirit of the multitude.--The contrast of the most modern sacred

buildings tells as plain a tale:--the red-brick meeting-house of the

Friends; the stone chapel of the less rigid dissenters, standing back

from the noise of the busy street; the aristocratic chapel nestling

amidst the shades of the nobleman's park; and the village church in the

meadow, with its neighbouring parsonage. These all tell of a diversity

of opinion; but also of something else. The more ancient buildings are

scantily attended; the more modern are thronged;--and indeed, if they

had not been wanted by numbers, they would not have been built. This

speaks the decline of a ritual religion, and the preference of one which

is more exclusively spiritual in its action.

In Scotland the kirks look exactly suitable to the population which

throngs towards them, with sober dress and gait, and countenances of

solemnity. These edifices stand in severe simplicity, whether on the

green shore of a lake, or in the narrow street of a town; and asceticism

is marked on every stone of the walls, and every article of their

decorations.

No one who has travelled in Ireland can forget the aspect of its places

of worship,--the lowly Catholic chapels, with their beggarly ornaments

of lace and crucifixes, placed in the midst of villages, the whole of

whose inhabitants crowd within those four walls; and a little way off,

in a field, or on an eminence by the road side, the Protestant church,

one end in ruins, and with ample harbourage for the owl, while the rest

is encompassed with nettles and thorns, and the mossy grave-stones are

half hidden by rank grass. In a country where the sun rises upon

contrasts like these, it is clear in what direction the religious

sentiment of the people is indulged.

What the stranger may thus learn in our own country, we may learn in

his, whatever it be. The large plain churches of Massachusetts, their

democratic benches (in the absence of aristocratic pews) silently filled

for long hours of a Sabbath, as still as a summer noon, by hundreds and

thousands who restore the tones of their pilgrim ancestors in their

hymn-singing, and seem to carry about their likeness in their faces,

cannot fail to instruct the observer.--Then there is the mosque at

Cairo, with its great tank or fountain of ablution in the midst; and its

broad pavement spread out for men of every degree to kneel on together;

its doors standing wide from sunrise to sunset, for the admission of all

but women and strangers; its outside galleries, from which the summons

to prayer is sounded;--these things testify to the ritual character of

the worship, and to the low type of the morals of a faith which despises

women and strangers, giving privileges to the strong from which the weak

are excluded.--Then there is the Buddhist temple, rearing its tapering

form in a recess of the hills, with its colossal stone figures guarding

the entrance, and others sanctifying the interior,--all eloquently

explaining that physical force is worshipped here: its images of saints

show that the intercessory superstition exists; and the drum and gong,

employed to awaken the attention of the gods, can leave little danger of

misapprehension to the observer. There are lanterns continually burning,

and consecrated water, sanctified to the cure of diseased eyes.--Such

places of worship tell a very plain tale; while there is not perhaps a

church on earth which does not convey one that is far from obscure.

The traveller must diligently visit the temples of nations; he must mark

their locality, whether placed among men's dwellings or apart from them;

their number, whether multiplied by diversity of theological opinion;

and their aspect, whether they are designed for the service of a ritual

or a spiritual religion. Thus he may, at the same time, ascertain the

character of the most prominent form of religion, and that of the

dissent from it; which must always illustrate each other.

* * * * *

Next to the Churches comes the consideration of the Clergy. The clergy

are usually the secondary potentates of a young country. In a young

country, physical force, and that which comes to represent it, is the

first great power; and knowledge is the next. The clergy are the first

learned men of every nation; and when the streams of knowledge are only

just issuing from the fountain, and the key is in the hands of the

clergy, they enjoy, rightly and unavoidably, a high degree of

consequence. Knowledge spreads abroad; and it is as impossible for man

to dam it up as for the fool to stop the Danube by filling the narrow

channel at its source with his great boots,--crying out the while, "How

the people will wonder when the Danube does not come!" As knowledge

becomes diffused, the consequence of the clergy declines. If that

consequence is to be preserved, it must be by their attaining the same

superiority in morals which they once held in intellect. Where the

clergy are now a cherished class, it is, in fact, on the supposition of

this moral superiority,--a claim for whose justification it would be

unreasonable to look, and for the forfeiture of which the clergy should

be less blamed than those who expect that, in virtue of a profession,

any class of men should be better than others. Moral excellence has no

regard to classes and professions; and religion, being not a pursuit but

a temper, cannot, in fact, be professionally cultivated with personal

advantage. It will be for the traveller to note whether this is more or

less understood where he travels; whether the clergy are viewed with

indifference as mere professional men; or whether they are reverenced

for their supposed holiness; or for their real superiority in learning;

or whether the case wears the lowest aspect of all--when the clergy are

merely the jugglers and puppet-masters of the multitude. A patient

consideration of this will lead to a pretty safe conclusion as to the

progress the people have made in knowledge, and the spiritual freedom

which it brings;--a freedom which is at once a virtue and a cause of

virtue.

The observer must note what the clergy themselves consider their

function to be;--whether to guide individual minds; or to cultivate

theological and other studies, in order to place their results at the

disposal of the minds with which they have to deal; or to express in

worship the feelings of those minds; or to influence the social

institutions by which the minds of the people are modified; or to do any

other of the many things which the priests of different countries, and

ages, and faiths, have in turn included in their function. He will note

whether they are most like the tyrannical Brahmins, who at one

stroke--by declaring the institution of Caste to be of divine

authority--obtained boundless control over a thousand generations,

subjecting all intellects and all hands to a routine which could be

easily superintended by the forty thousand of the favoured priestly

race; or whether they are like the Christian clergy of the dark ages, a

part of whose duty it was to learn the deepest secrets of the proudest

and lowliest,--thus obtaining the means of bringing to pass what events

they wished, both in public and private life;--or whether they are like

such students as have been known in the theological world,--men who have

not crossed the threshold of their libraries for eighteen years, and who

are satisfied with their lives, if they have been able to elevate

Biblical science, and to throw any new light on sacred history;--or

whether they are like the American clergy of the present day, whose

exertions are directed towards the art of preaching;--or whether they

are like the ministers of the Established Church in England, who are

politically represented, and large numbers of whom employ their

influence for political purposes. Each of these kinds of clergy must be

yielded by a particular state of society, and could not belong to any

other. The Hindoos must be in a low degree of civilization, and sunk in

a deadly superstition, or they would tolerate no Brahmins. The people of

four centuries ago must have depended solely upon their priests for

knowledge and direction, or they would not have submitted to their

inquisitorial practices. Germany must have advanced far in her

appreciation of philosophical and critical research in theology, or she

would not have such devoted students as she can boast of. The Americans

cannot have attained to any high practice of spiritual liberty, or they

could not follow preaching so zealously as they do. The English cannot

have fully understood, or taken to heart the principles of the

Reformation, which have so long been their theme of eulogy, or they

would not foster a political hierarchy within the bosom of their church.

As the studies of the clergy lie in the past, as the days of their

strongest influence are behind, and as the religious feelings of men

have hitherto reposed on the antique, and are but just beginning to

point towards the future, it is natural, it is unavoidable, that the

clergy should retard rather than aid the progress of society. A

disposition to assist in the improvement of institutions is what ought

not to be looked for from any priestly class; and, if looked for, it

will not be found. Such a mode of operation must appear to them

suicidal. But much may be learned by comparing the degree of clerical

resistance to progression with the proportion of favour in which the

clergy are held by the people. Where that resistance is greatest, and a

clerical life is one of peculiar worldly ease, the state of morals and

manners must be low. Where that resistance is least, where any social

improvement whatever is found to originate with the clergy, and where

they bear a just share of toil, the condition of morals and manners

cannot be very much depressed. Where there is an undue partition of

labour and its rewards among the clergy themselves,--where some do the

work and others reap the recompence,--the fair inference is that morals

and manners are in a state of transition. Such a position of affairs

cannot be a permanent one; and the observer may be assured that the

morals and manners of the people are about to be better than they have

been.--The characteristics of the clergy will indicate, or at least

direct attention to, the characteristics of dissent: and any extensive

form of dissent is no other than the most recent exposition of the

latest condition of morals among a large, active, and influential

portion of the people. A foreign traveller in Germany, in Luther's time,

could learn but little of the moral state of that empire, if he shut his

eyes to the philosophy and the deeds of the reformers. If he saw nothing

in the train of nuns winding down into the valleys from their now

unconsecrated convent on the steep; if the tidings of the marriage of

Catherine de Boria came to him like any other wedding news; if he did

not mark the subdued triumph in family faces when the Book--Luther's

Bible--was brought out for the daily lecture; if the decrees of Worms

seemed to him like the common orders of the church, and the levelling of

altars and unroofing of crypts was in his eyes but masons' work, he was

not qualified to observe the people of Germany, and had no more title to

report of them than if he had never left home. Thus it is now, in less

extreme cases. The traveller in Spain knows little of the Spaniards

unless he is aware of the theological studies, and the worship without

forms, which are carried on in private by those who are keeping alive

the fires of liberty in that priest and tyrant-ridden country. The

foreigner in England will carry away but a partial knowledge of the

religious sentiment of the people if he enters only the cathedrals of

cities and the steepled churches in the villages, passing by the square

meeting-houses in the manufacturing towns, and hearing nothing of the

conferences, the assemblies, and the missionary enterprises of the

dissenters. The same may be said of observation in every country

enlightened enough to have shaken off its subservience to an

unquestioned and irresponsible priesthood: that is, of every country

advanced enough to maintain dissent.

The expressions of established forms of prayer convey more information

as to the state of the clergy than of the people; since these

expressions are furnished by the clergy, and continue to be prompted by

them, while the people have no means of dismissing or changing the words

of their framed prayers for long after the words may have ceased to

represent the feeling. The traveller will receive such objectionable

expressions as he may hear, not as indications of the then present

sentiments of the crowd of worshippers, but rather as evidencing the

disinclination of the clergy to change. It would be hard, for instance,

to impute to Moslem worshippers in general the formation of such desires

as are uttered by the school-boys of Cairo at the close of their daily

attendance. "O God! destroy the infidels and polytheists, thine enemies,

the enemies of the religion! O God! make their children orphans, and

defile their abodes, and cause their feet to slip, and give them and

their families, and their households, and their women, and their

children, and their relations by marriage, and their brothers, and their

friends, and their possessions, and their race, and their wealth, and

their lands, as booty to the Moslems! O Lord of all creatures!"--It

would be unjust to impute a horror of "sudden death" to all who use the

words of prayer against it which are found in the Litany of the Church

of England. Sudden death deserved to be classed among the most deadly

evils when the Litany was framed,--in the days of the viaticum; but now

it would be unjust to a multitude of worshippers who use the Litany to

suppose that they are afraid to commit themselves to the hands of their

Father without a passport from a priest; and that they are not willing

to die in the way which pleases God,--some rather preferring, probably,

a mode which will save those who are nearest and dearest to them the

anguish of suspense, or of witnessing hopeless decline. In all antique

forms of devotion there must be expressions which are inconsistent with

the philosophy and the tastes of the time; and these are to be regarded

therefore as no indications of such philosophy and taste, but as an

evidence, more or less distinct, of the condition of the clergy in

enlightenment and temper.

* * * * *

The splendid topic of human Superstitions can be only just touched upon

here. In this boundless field, strewn with all the blossoms of all

philosophy, the human observer may wander for ever. He can never have

done culling the evidence that it presents, or enjoying the promise

which it yields. All that we can now do is just to suggest that as the

superstitions of all nations are the embodiment of their idealized

convictions, the state of religious sentiment may be learned from them

almost without danger of mistake.

No society is without its superstitions, any more than it is without its

convictions and its imaginations. Even under the moderate form of

religion, there is room for superstition; and the ascetic, which glories

in having put away the superstitions of the licentious forms, has

superstitions of its own.--The followers of an ascetic religion have

more or less belief in judgments,--in retributive evils, arbitrarily

inflicted. Among them may be gathered a harvest of tales of divine

interference,--from the bee stinging the tip of the swearer's tongue to

the sudden death of false witnesses. Among them do superstitions about

times and seasons flourish, even to the forgetfulness that the Sabbath

is made for man, and not man for the Sabbath. Some ascetics have faith

in the lot,--like the Moravians in ordering marriage, or Wesley in

opening his Bible to light upon texts. Others believe in warnings of

evil; and most dread the commission of ritual fully as much as of moral

sins. To play even a hymn tune on the piano on Sundays is an offence in

the Highlands of Scotland; and to miss prayers is a matter of penance in

a convent. The superstitions of the ascetic are scarcely fewer or more

moderate than those of the licentious form of religion; the chief

difference between the two lies in the spirit from which they emanate.

The superstitions of the ascetic arise from the spirit of fear; those of

the heathen arise perhaps equally from the spirit of love and the spirit

of fear.

It seems as if the portents which present themselves to ascetic

minds must necessarily be of evil, since the only good which their

imaginations admit is supposed to be secured by grace, and by acts of

service or self-denial. To the Fakîr, to the Shaker, to the nun, no

good remains over and above what has been long claimed, while

punishment may follow any breach of observance. On the other hand,

before one who makes himself gods of the movements of inanimate nature

and human passions, the two worlds of evil and good lie open, and he

is perpetually on the watch for messengers from both. The poor pagan

looks for tokens of his gods being pleased or angry; of their

intentions of giving him a good or a bad harvest; or of their sending

him a rich present or afflicting him with a bereavement. Whatever he

wants to know, he seeks for in portents;--whether he shall live

again,--whether his departed friends think of him,--whether his child

shall be fortunate or wretched,--whether his enemy or he shall

prevail. It is open to the traveller's observation whether these

superstitions are of a generous or selfish kind,--whether they elevate

the mind with hope, or depress it with fear,--whether they nourish the

faith of the spirit, or extort merely the service of the lip and hand.

The Swiss herdsmen believe that the three deliverers (the founders of

the Helvetic Confederacy) sleep calmly in a cave near the Lake of

Lucerne; and that, whenever their country is in her utmost need, they

will come forth in their antique garb, and assuredly save her. This is a

superstition full of veneration and hope.--When the Arabs see a falling

star, they believe it to be a dart thrown by God at a wanderer of the

race of the genii, and they exclaim, "May God transfix the enemy of the

faith!" Here we find in brief the spirit of their religion.--In Brazil,

a bird which sings plaintively at night is listened to with intent

emotion, from its being supposed to be sent with tidings from the dead

to the living. The choice of a bird with a mournful instead of a lively

note speaks volumes.--The three angels in white that come to give

presents to good children in Germany at Christmas, come in a good

spirit.--There is a superstition in China which has a world of

tenderness in it. A father collects a hundred copper coins from a

hundred families, and makes the metal into a lock which he hangs, as a

charm, round his child's neck, believing that he locks his child to life

by this connection with a hundred persons in full vigour.--But, as is

natural, death is the region of the Unseen to which the larger number of

portents relates. The belief of the return of the dead has been held

almost universally among the nations; and their unseen life is the grand

theme of speculation wherever there are men to speculate. The Norwegians

lay the warrior's horse, and armour, and weapons, beside him. The

Hindoos burn the widow. The Malabar Indians release caged birds on the

newly-made grave, to sanction the flight of the soul. The Buccaneers

(according to Penrose) concealed any large booty that fell into their

hands, till they should have leisure to remove it,--murdering and

burying near it any helpless wretch whom they might be able to capture,

in order that his spirit might watch over the treasure, and drive from

the spot all but the parties who had signed their names in a

round-robin, in claim of proprietorship. The professors of many faiths

resemble each other in practices of propitiation or atonement

laboriously executed on behalf of the departed. Some classes of mourners

act towards their dead friends in a spirit of awe; some in fear; but

very many in love. The trust in the immortality of the affections is the

most general feature in superstitions of this class; and it is a fact

eloquent to the mind of the observer.--An only child of two poor savages

died. The parents appeared inconsolable; and the father soon sank under

his grief. From the moment of his death, the mother was cheerful. On

being asked what had cheered her, she said she had mourned for her

child's loneliness in the world of spirits: now he had his father with

him, and she was happy for them both. What a divine spirit of

self-sacrifice is here! but there is scarcely a superstition sincerely

entertained which does not tell as plain a tale. Those which express

fear indicate moral abasement, greater or less. Those which express

trust and love indicate greater or less moral elevation and purity.

* * * * *

The practice of Suicide is worth the contemplation of a traveller, as

affording some clear indications as to religious sentiment. Suicide in

the largest sense is here intended,--the voluntary surrender of life

from any cause.

There has been a stage in the moral advancement of every nation when

suicide, in one form or another, has been considered a duty; and it is

impossible to foresee the time when it will cease to be so considered.

It was a necessary result from the idea of honour once prevalent in the

most civilized societies, when men and women destroyed themselves to

avoid disgrace. The defeated warrior, the baffled statesman, the injured

woman, destroyed themselves when the hope of honour was gone. In the

same age, as in every succeeding one, there have been suicides who have

devoted themselves for others, presenting a series of tales which may

almost redeem the disgraces which darken the annals of the race.--The

most illustrious of the Christian Fathers, immersed in the superstitions

about the transcendent excellence of the virtue of chastity which have

extinguished so many other virtues, and injured the morals of society to

this day, by sacrificing other principles to fanaticism on this,

permitted women to kill themselves to escape from violence which left

the mind in its purity, and the will in its rectitude.--Martyrdom for

the truth existed also before the venerating eyes of men,--the noblest

kind of suicide: it attracted glory to itself from the faithful heart of

the race; and, from its thus attracting glory, it became a means of

gaining glory, and sank from being martyrdom to be a mere fanatical

self-seeking. While the spirit of persecution was roaming abroad,

seeking whom it might devour, there were St. Theresas roaming abroad,

seeking to be devoured, from a spirit of cupidity after the crown of

martyrdom.--Soldiers, in all times and circumstances, pledge themselves

to the possible duty of suicide by the very act of becoming soldiers.

They engage to make the first charge, and to mount a breach if called

upon. And there have been found soldiers for every perilous service that

has been required, throughout all wars. There have been volunteers to

mount the breach, solitary men or small bands to hold narrow bridges and

passes, from the first incursion of tribe upon tribe in barbarous

conflict, up to the suicide of Van Speyk, whose monument is still fresh

from the chisel in the Nieuw Kerk of Amsterdam. Van Speyk commanded a

gun-boat which was stranded in a heavy gale, and boarded by the

Belgians,--the foe. Van Speyk had sworn never to surrender his boat, and

his suicide was a point of military honour. He seems to have considered

the matter thus; for he prayed for pardon of his crime of

self-destruction after laying his lighted cigar on the open barrel of

powder which blew up the boat. The remaining suicides (except, of

course, the insane,) are justified by none. Persons who shrink from

suffering so far as to withdraw from their duties, and to forsake those

to whom their exertions are due, are objects of contemptuous compassion

in the present day, when, moral having succeeded to physical force in

men's esteem, it is seen to be nobler to endure evils than to hide one's

spirit from them.

Every society has its suicides, and much may be learned from their

character and number, both as to the notions on morals which prevail,

and the religious sentiment which animates to or controls the act. It is

with the last that we now have to do.--The act of laying down life is

one thing among a people who have dim and mournful anticipations of a

future life, like the ancient Greeks; and quite another among those who,

like the first Christians, have a clear vision of bliss and triumph in

the world on which they rush. Suicide is one thing to a man who is

certain of entering immediately upon purgatory; and to another whose

first step is to be upon the necks of his enemies; and to a third who

believes that he is to lie conscious in his grave for some thousands of

years; and to a fourth who has no idea that he shall survive or revive

at all. When Curtius leaped into the gulf, he probably leaped into utter

darkness, other than physical; but when Guyon of Marseilles sunned

himself for the last time in the balcony of the house where he was shut

up with the plague-spotted body which he was to die in dissecting, he

had faith that he should step out of a waxing and waning sunlight into a

region which "had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in

it, the glory of God being the light of it." The sick Moslem who,

falling behind his troop, and fearing to lie unburied, scoops his grave

and lies down in it, wrapped in his grave-clothes, and covers himself

up, except the face, leaving it to the winds to heap sand upon it,

trembles the while at the thought of the two examining angels, who are

this night to prove and perhaps torture him. The English lady who took

laudanum on learning that she had a fatal disease, from fear of becoming

loathsome to a husband for whom she had lived, had before her the

prominent idea of reunion with him; so that life in one world presented

as much of hope as in the other of despair.--Nations share in

differences like these, according to the prevalent religious sentiment;

and from this species of act may the sentiment be more or less correctly

inferred.

Suicide is very common among a race of Africans who prefer it to

slavery. They believe in a life of tropical ease and freedom after

death, and rush into it so eagerly on being reduced to slavery, that

the planters of Cuba refuse them in the market, knowing that after a few

hours, or days, in spite of all precautions, nothing but their dead

bodies will remain in the hands of their masters. The French have, of

late years, abounded in suicides, while there are few or none in

Ireland. The most vain and the most sympathetic part of the French

multitude were found to be the classes which yielded the victims. If a

young lady and her lover shot one another with pistols tied with pink

ribbons, two or three suicides amidst blue and green ribbons were sure

to follow the announcement of the first in the newspaper, till a

sensible physician suggested that suicides should not be noticed in

newspapers, or should be treated with ridicule: the advice was acted

upon, and proved by the result to be sound. This profusion of

self-murders could not have taken place amidst a serious belief of an

immediate entrance upon purgatory, such as is held by the majority of

the Irish. Only in a state of vague speculation as to another life could

the future have operated as so slight a check upon the rash impulses of

the present. The Irish, an impetuous race, like the French, and with a

good share of vanity, of sympathy, and of sentiment, are probably

deterred from throwing away life by those religious convictions and

sentiments which the French once held in an equal degree, but from which

they are now passing over into another state.

A single act of suicide is often indicative, negatively or positively,

of a state of prevalent sentiment. A single instance of the Suttee

testifies to the power of Brahmins, and the condition of Hindoo

worshippers, in a way which cannot be mistaken. An American child of

six years old accidentally witnessed in India such a spectacle. On

returning home, she told her mother she had seen hell, and was whipped

for saying so,--not knowing why, for she spoke in all earnestness, and,

as it seems to us, with eloquent truth.--The somewhat recent

self-destruction of an estimable English officer, on the eve of a

court-martial, might fully instruct a stranger on the subject of

military honour in this country. This officer fell in the collision of

universal and professional principles. His justice and humanity had led

him to offer a kindly bearing towards an irresolute mob of rioters, in

the absence of authority to act otherwise than as he did, and of all

co-operation from the civil power; his military honour was placed in

jeopardy, and the innocent man preferred self-destruction to meeting the

risk; thus testifying that numbers here sustain an idea of honour which

is at variance with that which they expect to prevail elsewhere and

hereafter.--Every act of self-devotion for others, extending to death,

testifies to the existence of philanthropy, and to its being regarded as

an honour and a good. Every voluntary martyrdom tells a national tale as

plain as that written in blood and spirit by Arnold Von Winkelried, in

1386. When the Swiss met their oppressors at the battle of Sempach, it

appeared impossible for the Swiss to charge with effect, so thick was

the hedge of Austrian lances. Arnold Von Winkelried cried, "I will make

a lane for you! Dear companions, remember my family!" He clasped an

armful of the enemy's lances, and made a sheaf of them in his body. His

comrades entered the breach, and won the battle. They remembered his

family, and their descendants commemorate the sacrifice to this day;

thus bearing testimony to the act being a trait of the national spirit.

By observations such as these, may the religious sentiment of a people

be ascertained. While making them, or struggling with the difficulties

of opposing evidence, the observer has to bear in mind,--first, that the

religious sentiment does everywhere exist, however low its tone, and

however uncouth its expression; secondly, that personal morals must

greatly depend on the low or high character of the religious sentiment;

and, thirdly, that the philosophy and morals of government accord with

both,--despotism of some sort being the natural rule where licentious

and ascetic religions prevail; and democratic government being possible

only under a moderate form of religion, where the use without the abuse

of all blessings is the spirit of the religion of the majority.