its true station, are
problems whose solution seems to be charged upon associ-
ation ; for the dissociate systems have in vain sought reme-
dies for this unfavorable portion of human condition. It is
impossible to introduce into separate families even one half
of the economies, which the present state of science fur-
nishes to man. In that particular, it is probable that even
the feudal system is superior to the civic: for its combina-
tions permit many domestic arrangements of an economic
character, which are impracticable in small households. In
order to economize labor, and dignify the laborer, it is ab-
solutely necessary that men should cease to work in the
present isolate competitive mode, and adopt that of co-
operative union or association. It is as false and as ruinous
to call any man 'master' in secular business, as it is in theo-
logical opinions. Those persons, therefore, who congregate
for the purpose, as it is called, of bettering their outward
relations, on principles so high and universal as we have
endeavored to describe, are not engaged in a petty design,
bounded by their own selfish or temporary improvement.
Every one who is here found giving up the usual chances
of individual aggrandizement, may not be thus influenced ;
but whether it be so or not, the outward demonstration will
probably be equally certain.
In education, Brook Farm appears to present greater
mental freedom than most other institutions. The tuition


1844.)
353
Brook Farm.
being more heart-rendered, is in its effects more heart-stir-
ring. The younger pupils as well as the more advanced
students are held, mostly, if not wholly, by the power of
love. In this particular, Brook Farm is a much improved
model for the oft-praised schools of New England. It is
time that the imitative and book-learned systems of the
latter should be superseded or liberalized by some plan,
better calculated to excite originality of thought, and the
native energies of the mind. The deeper, kindly sympa-
thies of the heart, too, should not be forgotten ; but the
germination of these must be despaired of under a rigid
hireling system. Hence, Brook Farm, with its spontaneous
teachers, presents the unusual and cheering condition of a
really “ free school.”
By watchful and diligent economy, there can be no doubt
that a Community would attain greater pecuniary success,
than is within the hope of honest individuals working sep-
arately. But Brook Farm is not a Community, and in the
variety of motives with which persons associate there, a
double diligence, and a watchfulness perhaps 100 costly,
will be needful to preserve financial prosperity. While,
however, this security is an essential element in success,
riches would, on the other hand, be as fatal as poverty, to
the true progress of such an institution. Even in the case
of those foundations which have assumed a religious char-
acter, all history proves the fatality of wealth. The just
and happy mean between riches and poverty is, indeed,
more likely to be attained when, as in this instance, all
thought of acquiring great wealth in a brief time, is neces-
sarily abandoned, as a condition of membership. On the
other hand, the presence of many persons, who congregate
merely for the attainment of some individual end, must
weigh heavily and unfairly upon those whose hearts are
really expanded to universal results. As a whole, even the
initiative powers of Brook Farm have, as is found almost
every where, the design of a life much too objective, too
much derived from objects in the exterior world. The
subjective life, that in which the soul finds the living source
and the true communion within itself, is not sufficiently
prevalent to impart to the establishment the permanent and
sedate character it should enjoy. Undeniably, many de-
voted individuals are there; several who have as generously
VOL. IV. —NO. III.


354
(Jan.
Brook Farm.
as wisely relinquished what are considered great social and
pecuniary advantages; and by throwing their skill and
energies into a course of the most ordinary labors, at once
prove their disinterestedness, and lay the foundation of
industrial nobility.
An assemblage of persons, not brought together by the
principles of community, will necessarily be subject to
many of the inconveniencies of ordinary life, as well as to
burdens peculiar to such a condition. Now Brook Farm
is at present such an institution. It is not a community:
it is not truly an association : it is merely an aggregation
of persons, and lacks that oneness of spirit, which is proba-
bly needful to make it of deep and lasting value to man.
kind. It seems, even after three years' continuance, uncer.
tain, whether it is to be resolved more into an educational,
or an industrial institution, or into one combined of both.
Placed so near a large city, and in a populous neighborhood,
the original liability for land, &c., was so large, as still 10
leave a considerable burden of debt. This state of things
seems fairly to entitle the establishment to re-draw from
the old world in fees for education, or in the sale of
produce, sufficient to pay the annual interest of such liabil-
ities. Hence the necessity for a more intimate intercourse
with the trading world, and a deeper involvement in money
affairs than would have attended a more retired effort of
the like kind. To enter into the corrupting modes of the
world, with the view of diminishing or destroying them,
is a delusive hope. It will, notwithstanding, be a labor
of no little worth, to induce improvements in the two
grand departments of industry and education. We say
improvement, as distinct from progress ; for with any
association short of community, we do not see how it is
possible for an institution to stand so high above the pres-
ent world, as to conduct its affairs on principles entirely
different from those which now influence men in general."
There are other considerations also suggested by a
glance at Brook Farm, which are worthy the attention of
the many minds now attracted by the deeply interesting
subject of human association. We are gratified by observ-
ing several external improvements during the past year;
such as a larger and a more convenient dining room, a
labor-saving cooking apparatus, a purer diet, a more orderly


1844.)
355
Brook Farm.
and quiet attendance at the refections, superior arrange-
ments for industry, and generally an increased seriousness
in respect to the value of the example, which those who are
there assembled may constitute to their fellow beings.
Of about seventy persons now assembled there, about
thirty are children sent thither for education ; some adult
persons also place themselves there chiefly for mental assis-
tance; and in the society there are only four married
couples. With such materials it is almost certain that the
sensitive and vital points of communication cannot well be
tested. A joint-stock company, working with some of its
own members and with others as agents, cannot bring to
issue the great question, whether the existence of the ma-
rital family is compatible with that of the universal family,
which the term “Community" signifies. This is now the
grand problem. By mothers it has ever been felt to be so.
The maternal instinct, as bitherto educated, has declared
itself so strongly in favor of the separate fire-side, that as-
sociation, which appears so beautiful to the young and
unattached soul, has yet accomplished little progress in the
affections of that important section of the human race
the mothers. With fathers, the feeling in favor of the
separate family is certainly less strong ; but there is an
undefinable tie, a sort of magnetic rapport, an invisible,
inseverable, umbilical chord between the mother and child,
which in most cases circumscribes her desires and ambition
to her own immediate family. All the accepted adages
and wise saws of society, all the precepts of morality,
all the sanctions of theology, have for ages been employed
to confirm this feeling. This is the chief corner stone of
present society ; and to this maternal instinct have, till very
lately, our most heartfelt appeals been made for the progress
of the human race, by means of a deeper and more vital ed-
ucation. Pestalozzi and his most enlightened disciples are
distinguished by this sentiment. And are we all at once
lo abandon, to deny, to destroy this supposed stronghold of
virtue? Is it questioned whether the family arrangement of
mankind is to be preserved ? Is it discovered that the
sanctuary, till now deemed the holiest on earth, is to be
invaded by intermeddling skepticism, and its altars sacrile-
giously destroyed by the rude hands of innovating pro-
gress? Here “ social science”! must be brought to issue.


356
(Jan.
Brook Farm.
The question of association and of marriage are one. If, as
we have been popularly led to believe, the individual or
separate family is in the true order of Providence, then the
associative life is a false effort. If the associative life is
true, then is the separate family a false arrangement. By
the maternal feeling, it appears to be decided that the co-
existence of both is incompatible, is impossible. So also
say some religious sects. Social science ventures to assert
their harmony. This is the grand problem now remaining
to be solved, for at least, the enlightening, if not for the
vital elevation of humanity. That the affections can be
divided or bent with equal ardor on two objects, so opposed
as universal and individual love, may at least be rationally
doubted. History has not yet exhibited such phenomena
in an associate body, and scarcely, perhaps in any indi-
vidual. The monasteries and convents, which have existed
in all ages, have been maintained solely by the annihilation
of that peculiar affection on which the separate family
is based. The Shaker families, in which the two sexes are
not entirely dissociated, can yet only maintain their union
by forbidding and preventing the growth of personal affec-
tion other than that of a spiritual character. And this in
fact is not personal in the sense of individual, but ever a
manifestation of universal affection. Spite of the specula-
tions of hopeful bachelors and æsthetic spinsters, there is
somewhat in the marriage bond which is found to counter-
act the universal nature of the affections, to a degree tend-
ing at least to make the considerate pause, before they
assert that, by any social arrangements whatever, the two
can be blended into one harmony. The general condition
of married persons at this time is some evidence of the
existence of such a doubt in their minds. Were they as
convinced as the unmarried of the beauty and truth of
associate life, the demonstration would be now presented.
But might it not be enforced that the two family ideas
really neutralize each other? Is it not quite certain that
the human heart cannot be set in two places; that man
cannot worship at two altars? It is only the determination
to do what parents consider the best for themselves and
their families, which renders the o'er populous world such
a wilderness of selfhood as it is. Destroy this feeling, they
say, and you prohibit every motive to exertion. Much


1844.]
357
Tantalus.
truth is there in this affirmation. For to them, no other
motive remains, nor indeed to any one else, save that of the
universal good, which does not permit the building up of
supposed self-good, and therefore, forecloses all possibility
of an individual family.
These observations, of course, equally apply to all the
associative attempts, now attracting so much public atten-
tion ; and perhaps most especially to such as have more of
Fourier's designs than are observable at Brook Farm. The
slight allusion in all the writers of the “Phalansterian”
class, to the subject of marriage, is rather remarkable.
They are acute and eloquent in deploring Woman's op-
pressed and degraded position in past and present times,
but are almost silent as to the future. In the mean while,
it is gratifying to observe the successes which in some
departments attend every effort, and that Brook Farm is
likely to become comparatively eminent in the highly im-
portant and praiseworthy attempts, to render labor of the
hands more dignified and noble, and mental education
more free and loveful.
C. L,iii
!
TANTALUS.
The astronomers said, Give us matter and a little mo-
tion, and we will construct the universe. It is not enough
that we should have matter, we must also have a single
impulse, one shove to launch the mass, and generate the
harmony of the centrifugal and centripetal forces. Once
heave the ball from the hand, and we can show how all
this mighty order grew. - A very unreasonable postulate,
thought some of their students, and a plain begging of the
question. Could you not prevail to know the genesis of
projection as well as the continuation of it? - Nature, mean-
time, had not waited for the discussion, but, right or wrong,
bestowed the impulse, and the balls rolled. It was no
great affair, a mere push, but the astronomers were right in


358
(Jan.
Tantalus.
making much of it, for there is no end to the consequences
of the act. That famous aboriginal push propagates itself
through all the balls of the system, and through every
atom of every ball; through all the races of creatures, and
through the history and performances of every individual.
Exaggeration is in the course of things. Nature sends no
creature, no man, into the world, without adding a small ex-
cess of his proper quality. Given the planet, it is still neces-
sary to add the impulse ; so to every creature nature added
a little violence of direction in its proper path, a shove to put
it on its way; in every instance a slight generosity, a drop too
much. Without electricity the air would rot, and without this
violence of direction which men and women have, without
a spice of bigot and fanatic, no excitement, no efficiency.
We aim above the mark to hit the mark. Every act bath
some falsehood of exaggeration in it. And when now and
then comes along some sad, sharp-eyed man, who sees how
paltry a game is played and refuses to play, but blabs the
secret; how then ? is the bird flown ? O no, the wary
Nature sends a new troop of fairer forms, of lordlier youths,
with a little more excess of direction to hold them fast to
their several aim; makes them a little wrong-headed in
that direction in which they are rightest, and on goes the
game again with new whirl for a generation or two more.
See the child, the fool of his senses, with his thousand
pretty pranks, commanded by every sight and sound, with-
out any power to compare and rank his sensations, aban-
doned to every bauble, to a whistle, a painted chip, a lead
dragoon, a gilt gingerbread horse ; individualizing every
thing, generalizing nothing, who thus delighted with every
thing new, lies down at night overpowered by the fatigue,
which this day of continual pretty madness has incurred.
But Nature has answered her purpose with the curly, dim-
pled lunatic. She has tasked every faculty and has se-
cured the symmetrical growth of the bodily frame by all
these attitudes and exertions; an end of the first import-
ance, which could not be trusted to any care less perfect
than her own. This glitter, this opaline lustre plays round
the top of every toy to his eye, to ensure his fidelity, and
he is deceived to his good.
We are made alive and kept alive by the same arts.
Let the stoics say what they please, we do not eat for the


1844.)
359
Tantalus.
good of living, but because the meat is savory, and the
appetite is keen. Nature does not content herself with
casting from the flower or the tree a single seed, but she
fills the air and earth with a prodigality of seeds, that, if
thousands perish, thousands may plant themselves, that
hundreds may come up, that tens may live to maturity, that
at least one may replace the parent. All things betray the
same calculated profusion. The excess of fear with
which the animal frame is hedged round, shrinking from
cold, starting at sight of a snake, at every sudden noise
or falling stone, protects us through a multitude of ground-
less alarins from some one real danger at last. The lover
seeks in marriage his private felicity and perfection, with
no prospective end ; and nature hides in his happiness
her own end, namely, progeny, or the perpetuity of the
race.
But the craft with which the world is made runs also into
the mind and character of men. No man is quite sane,
but each has a vein of folly in his composition, a slight
determination of blood to the head, to make sure of hold-
ing him hard to some one point which nature had taken to
heart.
Great causes are never tried on their merits; but the
great cause is reduced to particulars, to suit the size of the
partisans, and the contention is ever hottest on minor
matters. Not less remarkable is that over-faith of each
man in the importance of what he has to do or say. The
poet, the prophet has a higher value for what he utters,
than any hearer, and therefore it gets spoken. The strong,
self-complacent Luther declares, with an emphasis not to
be mistaken, that “God himself cannot do without wise
men.” Jacob Behmen and George Fox betray their ego-
tism in the pertinacity of their controversial tracts, and
James Naylor once suffered himself to be worshipped as
the Christ. Each prophet comes presently to identify bim-
self with his thought, and to esteem his hat and shoes
sacred. However this may discredit such persons with the
judicious, it helps them with the people, and gives pun-
gency, heat, and publicity to their words. A similar ex-
perience is not infrequent in private life. Each young and
ardent person writes a diary, into which, when the hours
of prayer and penitence arrive, he inscribes his soul. The


360
[Jan.
Tantalus.
pages thus written are to him burning and fragrant; he
reads them on his knees by midnight and by the morning
star; he wets them with his tears. They are sacred; too
good for the world, and hardly yet to be shown to the
dearest friend. This is the man-child that is born to the
soul, and her life still circulates in the babe. The living
cord has not yet been cut. By and by, when some
time has elapsed, he begins to wish to admit his friend or
friends to this hallowed experience, and with hesitation, yet
with firmness, exposes the pages to his eye. Will they not
burn his eyes? The friend coldly turns them over, and
returns from the writing to conversation with easy transi-
tion, which strikes the other party with astonishment and
vexation. He cannot suspect the writing itself. Days and
nights of fervid life, of communion with angels of darkness
and of light, bear witness in his memory to that tear-stained
book. He' suspects the intelligence or the heart of his
friend. Is there then no friend? He cannot yet credit
that one may have impressive experience, and yet may not
know how to put his private fact into literature, or into
harmony with the great community of minds; and perhaps
the discovery, that wisdom has other tongues and ministers
than we, that the truth, which burns like living coals in our
heart, burns in a thousand breasts, and though we should
hold our peace, that would not the less be spoken, might
check too suddenly the flames of our zeal. A man can
only speak so long as he does not feel his speech to be
partial and inadequate. It is partial, but he does not see
it to be so whilst he makes it. As soon as he is released
from the instinctive, the particular, and sees its partiality,
he shuts his mouth in disgust. For no man can write any
thing, who does not think that what he writes is for the
time the history of the world; or do any thing well, who
does not esteem his work to be of greatest importance. My
work may be of none, but I must not think it of none, or
I shall not do it with impunity.
In like manner, there is throughout nature something
mocking, something that leads us on and on, but arrives no-
where, keeps no faith with us; all promise outruns the
performance. We live in a system of approximations, not
of fulfilment. Every end is prospective of some other end,
which is also temporary; a round and final success nowhere.


1844.)
361
Tantalus.
We are encamped in nature, not domesticated. Hunger
and thirst lead us on to eat and to drink, but bread and
wine, mix and cook them how you will, leave us hungry
and thirsty after the stomach is full. It is the same with
all our arts and performances. Our music, our poetry, our
language itself, are not satisfactions but suggestions.
The pursuit of wealth, of which the results are so magi-
cal in the contest with nature, and in reducing the face of
the planet to a garden, is like the headlong game of the
children in its reaction on the pursuers. What is the end
sought? Plainly to secure the ends of good sense and
beauty from the intrusion of deformity or vulgarity of any
kind. But men use a very operose method. What an
apparatus of means to secure a litile conversation! This
great palace of brick and stone, these servants, this kitch-
en, these stables, horses, and equipage; this bankstock
and file of morgages; trade to all the world; country house
and cottage by the waterside; all for a little conversation,
high, clear, and spiritual! Could it not be had as well by
beggars on the highway ? No, all these things came from
the successive efforts of these beggars to remove one and
another interference. Wealth was applied first to remove
friction from the wheels of life; to give clearer opportunity.
Conversation, character, were the avowed ends; wealth
was good as it silenced the creaking door, cured the smoky
chimney, brought friends together in a warm and quiet
room, and kept the children and the dinner-table in a
different apartment. Thought, virtue, beauty, were the
ends, but it was known that men of thought and virtue
sometimes had the headache, or wet feet, or could lose
good time whilst the room was getting warm in winter
days. Unluckily in the exertions necessary to remove these
inconveniences, the main attention had been diverted to
this object; the old aims had been lost sight of, and to
remove friction had come to be the end. That is the
ridicule of rich men, and Boston, London, Vienna, and
now the governments generally of the world are cities
and governments of the rich, and the masses are not
men, but poor men, that is, men who would be rich ;
this is the ridicule of the class, that they arrive with pains
and sweat, and fury, nowhere ; when all is done, it is for
nothing. They are men who have interrupted the whole
VOL. IV. — NO. III.
46


362
[Jan.
Tantalus.
conversation of a company to make their speech, and now
have forgotten what they went to say. The appearance
strikes the eye, everywhere, of an aimless society, an aim-
less nation, an aimless world. Were the ends of nature so
great and cogent as to exact this immense sacrifice of
men ?
Quite analogous to these deceits in life, there is, as
might be expected, a similar effect on the eye from the
face of external nature. There is in woods and waters a
certain enticement and flattery, together with a failure to
yield a present satisfaction. This disappointment is felt in
every landscape. I have seen the softness and beauty of
the summer clouds floating feathery overhead, enjoying, as
it seemed, their height and privilege of motion, whilst yet
they appeared not so much the drapery of this place and
hour, as fore-looking to some pavilions and gardens of
festivity beyond. Who is not sensible of this jealousy?
Often you shall find yourself not near enough to your
object. The pine tree, the river, the bank of flowers, be-
fore you, does not seem to be nature. Nature is still else-
where. This or this is but outskirt and far-off reflection
and echo of the triumph that has passed by, and is now at
its glancing splendor and heyday, perchance in the neigh-
bouring fields, or, if you stood in the field, then in the
adjacent woods. The present object shall give you this
sense of stillness that follows a pageant which has just gone
by. It is the same among the men and women, as among
the silent trees; always a referred existence, an absence,
never a presence and satisfaction. Is it that beauty can
never be grasped ? in persons and in landscape is equally
inaccessible ? The accepted and betrothed lover has lost
the wildest charm of his maiden in her acceptance of him.
She was heaven whilst he pursued her as a star. She
cannot be heaven if she stoops to such an one as he. So is
it with these wondrous skies, and hills, and forests. What
splendid distance, what recesses of ineffable pomp and
loveliness in the sunset! But who can go where they are,
or lay his land, or plant his foot thereon ? Off they fall
from the round world for ever and ever; glory is not for
hands to handle.
What shall we say of this omnipresent appearance of
that first projectile impulse, this flattery and baulking of so


1844.)
363
Tantalus.
many good well-meaning creatures ? Must we not suppose
somewhere in the universe a slight treachery, a slight de-
rision ? Are we not engaged to a serious resentinent of
this use that is made of us? Are we tickled trout, and
fools of nature ? Unhappily, there is not the smallest pros-
pect of advantage from such considerations. Practically,
there is no great danger of their being pressed. One look
at the face of heaven and earth puts all petulance at rest,
and soothes us to wiser convictions. We see that Nature
converts itself into a vast promise, and will not be rashly
explained. Her secret is untold. Many and many an
dipus arrives; he has the whole mystery teeming in his
brain. Alas! the same sorcery has spoiled his skill; no
syllable can be shape on his lips. Her mighty orbit vaults
like the fresh rainbow into the deep, but no archangel's
wing was yet strong enough to follow it and report of the
return of the curve. But it also appears, and the expe-
rience might dispose us to serenity, that our actions are
seconded and disposed to greater conclusions than we
designed. We are escorted on every hand through life by
great spiritual potentates, and a beneficent purpose lies in
wait for us. It is not easy to deal with Nature by card
and calculation. We cannot bandy words with her; we
cannot deal with her as man with man. If we measure
our individual forces against hers, we may easily feel as if
we were the sport of an overwhelming destiny. But if,
instead of identifying ourselves with the work, we feel that
the soul of the Workman streams through us, that a para-
dise of love and power lies close beside us, where the
Eternal Architect broods on his thought and projects the
world from his bosom, we may find the peace of the morn-
ing dwelling first in our hearts, and the fathomless powers
of gravity and chemistry, and over them of life, pre-existing
within us in their highest form.


364
(Jan.
The Fatal Passion,
THE FATAL PASSION, - A DRAMATIC SKETCH.
BY WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING.
IIenry Gray. ChesteR. WILLIAM Gray, the father. MUR-
RAY, friend to Gray. Vincent. Mary. Adeline.
ACT I. — SCENE I.
A Wood. — Henry. (Alone.)
How like a part too deeply fixed in me,
A shadow where the substance lies behind,
Is this sweet wood. I cannot grasp my thought,
But see it swell around me in these trees,
These layers of glistening leaves, and swimming full
In the blue, modulated heaven o'er all.
I would embrace you kindred tenements,
Where dwells the soul by which I deeply live.
But ye are silent; they call you emblems,
The symbols of creation, whose memory
Has failed in its behest, and so ye stand
Merely dumb shadows of what might have been,
Or hints of what may be beyond these days.
(Enter Chester and observes Henry.)
Ches. (to himself.) I love these moods of youth, I love the
might
Of untamed nature battling with despair.
How firmly grasps the iron-handed earth
The youthful heart, and lugs it forth to war
With calm, unmoving woods, or silent lakes,
Making it dastard in the sun's light dance.
Brave on, ye unbarked saplings, soon your boughs
Shall wing the arrows of red manhood's life,
And then, as your low depths of ignorance
Unfold, how shall you wonder at your youth.
How flaunt the banners in the light of morn,
How torn and trailing when the day-god sets.
'T is a brave sight with all sails up, to see
The shining bark of youth dash through the foam,
And sickening to the most, to look upon


1844.)
365
A Dramatic Sketch.
Her planks all started, and her rigging split,
When she hugs closely to the beach in age.
But I console myself for my gray hairs,
By spinning such warm fancies in my brain,
That I become a little thing again,
And totter o'er the ground, as when I whipped my top.
(Approaches Henry.)
Your servant, sir, the day goes bravely down.
HEN. Through the red leaves, I see the morning's glow.
Ches. 'T is but the picture of some morning scene;
A fair conceit the sun has in his head,
And when he sets makes fatal flourishes.
HEN. I hear you jest with nature, that you mock,
And fling queer faces at her holy calm,
Write witty volumes that demoralize;
Pray Mr. Chester do you fear the devil?
Ches. As I do nightfall. I have some night-fears,
Some horrid speculations in my brain;
And when the mice play hangmen in the wall,
Or out the house the pretty frost-toes creep,
I think, pest o'nt, what dark and doleful sounds,
If it were safe I'd raise the curtain's hem.
And when I puff away the cheerful light,
The moonbeam makes a thief's dark-lantern flit;
My head is filled with horribund designs,
And on myself I pack damned Macbeth's part.
I love to nourish such complexed conceits ;
I have a vein of dreadful longing in me,
Was born to murder, and excel in arson,
And so I love the devil, though broad day
Has all the devilish aspects that I know.
See, comes the gentle Mary, know you her?
Hen. Not I, my solitude hath its own figures.
(Enter Mary.)
Ches. (to Mary.) God speed thee, lady, it was opportune
Your footsteps led you up this sheltered walk,
For here is Henry Gray, my friend at least,
And now is yours.
I willingly would know what Chester does,
And Mr. Gray, I trust, will but forgive me.
I rarely venture in these forest walks,
Where leads that prithee? (To Henry.)
Hen. 'T is by the lake, which gleaming like a sword,
One edge of this green path, a peacock lance,
Crosses in sport, and then descends away,
And vanishes among the outspread moors.


366
[Jan.
The Fatal Passion,
Ches. And Mr. Gray, sweet Mary, knows the path,
All paths that frolic in these devious woods,
For he's sworn friends with squirrels, steals their nuts,
Divides with other beasts their favorite meat,
Can show you hungry caves, whose blackening jaws
Breathe out a little night into the air,
Will stand you on the dizzy precipice,
Where all whirls round you like a whizzing wheel, .
In truth his skill is perfect, so farewell.
(Erit Chester.)
SCENE II.
Hen.
HENRY AND MARY.-(By the Lake.)
Mary. Those hills you say are lofty.
HEN.
Most lofty.
I have clomb them, and there stood gazing
On villages outspread, and larger towns
Gleaming like sand-birds on the distant beach.
I love the mountains, for a weight of care
Falls off his soul, who can o'erlook this earth.
Mary. And there you passed the night?
I have passed weeks
Upon their very tops, and thought no more
To fall upon the low, dark days of earth.
Above, the clouds seemed welcome faces to me,
And near the raging storms, came giant-like,
And played about my feet. Yet even there,
I feared for my own heart, lest I should grow
Too careless of myself. Yonder the town,-
You must excuse my absence, for the clock
Rounds the small air-balls into leaden weights.
(Erit Henry.)
Mary, (alone.) I breathe, and yet how hardly,-a moment,
What a thing am I,-a passing moment,
Lifting from the earth my weary heart so sick,
O’er-burdened with the grating jar of life, -
This youth,-how sleeps the lake, how blue it gleams.
(Chester again enters.)
Ah! Mary alone, -indeed, has Henry Gray
Shot like a rocket in the rayful air ?
A brilliant youth, at least his eyes are bright.


1844.)
367
A Dramatic Sketch.
SCENE III.
CHESTER AND Mary. — (Outskirts of Town.)
Mary. He is a student at the college.
Ches. Mark you, he is a student, and knows the trick.
He has a brother too, Vincent, a gay
Free, dashing animal, or so I hear,
But I hate characters at second-hand.
You know they are towns-people; 't is an old,
And comfortable family, I hear.
Pest on't, my brains won't hold much matter now,
I am too old for gossip.
Mary. Has he a sister ?
Ches. Who wants that good device? it is a part
Of every comfortable family.
Mary. My father's mansion, will you enter ?
Caes. No, Mary, not to-night. (Mary goes in.)
(Chester alone.) What comes of this,
When two youths come together, but woman
Rarely loves,-a play upon the word, So, So!
As I grow old, I lose all reasoning.
I hunt most nimble shadows, and have grown
A perfect knave for picking out old seams.
(Enter William Gray.)
Gray. Good evening Mr. Chester. I call it evening,
For I see you walk, and they say here your gait
Is nightly.
Ches. I have seen Henry now, and Mary came,
He had not known her,-strange!
Gray, Mary, the banker's daughter; a girl of promise.
Ches. They are old friends of mine, banker and all.
I've held him on my arm, and made him quake
At jingling coppers. He's richer now-a-days.
Gray. "Twould please me to make more of them.
Ches. I will contrive it. There are times in life,
When one must hold the cherry to his lips,
Who faints to pluck a fair maid by the ear.


368
[Jan.
The Fatal Passion,
ACT II. — Scene I.
Adeline AND Vincent. — (Mr. Gray's House.)
Vin. She is a lovely girl.
Ade. And rich as lovely.
Vin. I wish I knew her better.
Ade. One day is not enough, friend Vin., to know
The mind of woman; many days must go,
And many thoughts.
VIN You will assist me, Adeline.
ADE. So far as in me lies, I know not Mary.
Vin. But the sex is in your favor.
ADE. I know not that.
(Enter Henry.)
Vin. You made a good report on botany.
Hen. I'm glad you think so. 'Tis a fair study,
To spy into the pretty hearts of flowers,
To read their delicacies, so near to.
But Vincent, science at the best
Demands but little justice at my hands,
It has its masters, has its oracles,
I am content to gather by the wall,
Some little flowers that sport a casual life,
To hover on the wing; who comes ?--'Tis Chester.
(Exit Chester.)
Ches. Three frends in charming concert act their part.
But Henry, I have news for you,
SCENE II.
CHESTER AND Henry. — (Seated in Chester's House.)
Hen. What is the news, I pray?
Ches. Last night, as I went walking in the wood,
I practise often in these woodland walks,
And on some nights I almost pluck the stars
Like crystal plums from off the tops of trees, -
But, as I said, I walked far down the wood,
In that rheumatic kind of greasy gait
I have accumulated, and I went


1844.)
369
A Dramatic Sketch.
Dreaming and dreaming on, almost asleep,
If not quite half awake, until I reached
The lake's dim corner, where one ragged tree
Let in a gush of fuming light. The moon
Now being high, and at its full, I saw
Upon that little point of land a shape,
A fair round shape, like early womanhood,
Kneeling upon the ground wept by the dews;
And then I heard such dreadful roar of sobs,
Such pouring fountains of imagined tears
I saw, following those piteous prayers,
All under the great placid eye of night.
’T was for an old man's eye, for a young heart
Had spun it into sighs, and answered back.
And now the figure came and passed by me,
I had withdrawn among the ghostly shrubs,
'T was Mary, — poor Mary! I have seen her smile
So many years, and heard her merry lips
Say so much malice, that I am amazed
She should kneel weeping by the silent lake,
After old midnight night-caps all but me.
But you are young, what can you make of it?
HEN. What can one make of figures? I can see
The fair girl weeping by the moonlit lake.
Ches. Canst thou not see the woman's agony,
Canst thou not feel the thick sobs in thy throat,
That swell and gasp, till out your eyes roll tears
In miserable circles down your cheeks?
Hen. I see a woman weeping by the lake;
I see the fair, round moon look gently down,
And in the shady woods friend Chester's form,
Leaning upon his old, bent maple stick.
Ches. What jest ye? Dare you, Henry Gray, to mock
A woman's anguish, and her scalding tears,
Does Henry Gray say this to his friend Chester,
Dares he speak thus, and think that Chester's scorn
Will not scoff out such paltry mockeries?
Hen. Why how you rage; why Chester, what a flame
A few calm words have lighted in thy breast.
I mock thee not, I mock no woman's tears,
Within my breast there is no mockery.
Ches. True, true, it is an old man's whim, a note
Of music played upon a broken harp.
I fancied you could read this woman's tears,
Pest on't, I am insane; I will go lock me up.
[Erit Chester,
Hen. (alone.) Ye fates, that do possess this upper sphere,
VOL. IV.-- No. III.
47


370
Jan.
The Fatal Passion,
Where Henry's life hangs balanced in its might,
Breathe gently o'er this old, fond, doting man,
Who seems to cherish me among his thoughts,
As if I was the son of his old age,
The son of that fine thought so prodigal.
O God, put in his heart his thought, and make
Him heir to that repose thou metest me.
Ye sovereign powers that do control the world,
And inner life of man's most intricate heart,
Be with the noble Chester ; may his age
Yield brighter blossoms than his early years,
For he was torn by passion, was so worn,
So wearied in the strife of fickle hearts,
He shed his precious pearls before the swine.
And, God of love, to me render thyself,
So that I may more fairly, fully give,
To all who move within this ring of sky,
Whatever life I draw from thy great power.
Still let me see among the woods and streams,
The gentle measures of unfaltering trust,
And through the autumn rains, the peeping eyes
Of the spring's loveliest fowers, and may no guile
Embosom one faint thought in its cold arms.
So would I live, so die, content in all.
SCENE III.
Mary's Room. Midnight.
Mary, (alone.) I cannot sleep, my brain is all on fire,
I cannot weep, my tears have formed in ice,
They lie within these hollow orbs congealed,
And flame and ice are quiet, side by side.
[Goes to the windore.
Yes! there the stars stand gently shining down,
The trees wave softly in the midnight air;
How still it is, how sweetly smells the air.
O stars, would I could blot you out, and fix
Where ye are fixed, my aching eyes ;
Ye burn for ever, and are calm as night.
I would I were a tree, a stone, a worm ;
I would I were some thing that might be crushed;
A pebble by the sea under the waves,
A mote of dust within the streaming sun,


1844.]
371
A Dramatic Sketch.
Or that some dull remorse would fasten firm
Within this rim of bone, this mind's warder.
Come, come to me ye hags of secret woe,
That hide in the hearts of the adulterous false,
Has hell not one pang left for me to feel ?
I rave; 't is useless, 't is pretended rage;
I am as calm as this vast hollow sphere,
In which I sit, as in a woman's form.
I am no woman, they are merry things,
That smile, and laugh, and dream away despair.
What am I ? 'Tis a month, a month has gone,
Since I stood by the lake with Henry Gray,
A month! a little month, thrice ten short days,
And I have lived and looked. Who goes ? 't is Chester,
I must, - he shall come in.
[She speaks from the window. Chester enters.
Ches. You keep late hours, my gentle Mary.
MARY. Do not speak so. There is no Mary here.
Hush! (Holds up her finger.) I cannot bear your voice;
't is agony
To me to hear a voice, my own is dumb.
Say, - thou art an old man, thou hast lived long,
I mark it in thy tottering gait, thy hair,
Thy red, bleared eyes, thy miserable form,
Say, in thy youthful days, - thou art a man,
I know it, but still men are God's creatures, -
Say, tell me, old man Chester, did thine eyes
Ever forget to weep, all closed and dry?
Say, quick, here, here, where the heart beats, didst feel
A weight, as if thy cords of life would snap,
As if the volume of the blood had met,
As if all life in fell conspiracy
Had met to press thy fainting spirit out? -
Say, say, speak quickly; hush ! hush! no, not yet,
Thou canst not, thou art Chester's ghost, he's dead,
I saw him, 't was a month ago, in his grave,
Farewell, sweet ghost, farewell, let's bid adieu.
(Chester goes out, weeping.
'Tis well that I am visited by spirits.
If 't were not so, I should believe me mad,
But all the mad are poor deluded things,
While I am sound in mind. 'T is one o'clock,
I must undress, for I keep early hours.


372
.
The Fatal Passion,
([.
JanJanSCENE IV.
The Wood. — HENRY AND Murray.
Hen. I cannot think you mean it ; 't is some dream
of your excited fancy. You are easily
Excited. You saw a nodding aspen,
For what should Mary's figure here?
Mur. It was her figure, I am persuaded.
They tell strange tales, they say she has gone mad,
That something's crazed her brain.
Hen. Is that the story? I have been mad myself.
Sometimes I feel that madness were a good,
To be elated in a wondrous trance,
And pass existence in a buoyant dream;
It were a serious learning. I do see
The figure that you speak of, 't is Mary.
Mur. I'll leave you then together. (Enter Mary.)
Hen. (To Mary.) You have the way alone; I was your guide
Some weeks ago, to the blue, glimmering lake.
I trust these scenes greet happily your eyes.
Mary. They are most sweet to me; let us go back
And trace that path again. I think 't was here
We turned, where this green sylvan church
Of pine hems in a meadow and some hills.
Hen. Among these pines they find the crow's rough nest,
A lofty cradle for the dusky brood.
Mary. This is the point I think we stood upon.
I would I knew what mountains rise beyond,
Hast ever gone there?
Hen. Ah! ye still, pointing spires of native rock,
That, in the amphitheatre of God,
Most proudly mark your duty to the sky,
Lift, as of old, ye did my heart above.
Excuse me, maiden, for my hurried thought.
'T is an old learning of the hills; the bell !
Ah! might the porter sometimes sleep the hour.
[Erit Henry.
The Sun is setting.
Mary. 'T is all revealed, I am no more deceived,
That voice, that form, the memory of that scene!
I love thee, love thee, Henry; I am mad,
My brain is all on fire, my heart a flame,
You mountains rest upon my weary mind;
The lake lies beating in my broken heart.
S.


1844.]
373
A Dramatic Sketch.
That bell that summoned him to the dark cell,
Where now in innocence he tells his beads,
Shall summon me beyond this weary world.
I long to be released; I will not stay,
There is no hope, no vow, no prayer, no God,
All, all have fled me, for I love, love one,
Who cannot love me, and my heart has broke. .
Ye mountains, where my Henry breathed at peace,
Thou lake, on whose calm depths he calmly looked,
And setting sun, and winds, and skies, and woods,
Protect my weary body from the tomb;
As I have lived to look on you with him,
O let my thoughts still haunt you as of old,
Nor let me taste of heaven, while on the earth,
My Henry's form holds its accustomed place.
[Stabs herself.
INTERIOR OR HIDDEN LIFE.*
Professor UPHAM, who for about seventeen years has
sedulously occupied the chair of moral philosophy at Bow-
doin College, in this volume, presents an additional proof
of the spontaneous love which entitles him to that office,
as well as of his sincere regard for the well being of all
mankind. The basis of his work is the position that the
human soul, every human being, may be holy. Strange
proof of occasional default that men should ever think
otherwise !
As might naturally be expected, however, from the
author's occupation, his work manifests more precision in
style, than most productions on similar subjects in former
* Principles of the Interior or Hidden Life, designed particularly for
the consideration of those who are seeking assurance of faith and perfect
love. By THOMAS C. UPHAM ; Boston : D. S. King; 1843. 12mo. pp.
464.


374
(Jan.
Interior or Hidden Life.
times, which the professor has evidently read with a feeling
even deeper than that of an admiring taste. There is,
nevertheless, a gravity and a serene humble tone spread
over the whole book, which justifies us in placing it on the
same shelf with the works of Madame Guion, Fenelon, and
others whom the author ardently loves. Those sentiments,
principles, and experiences, which a gay and fretful world
is glad to swamp in the deluge of frivolous occupations, the
learned professor has endeavored to revive and embody
forth in language so simple and plain, that none can fence
their selfish idleness behind the usual epithet of “ mystic.”
Scarcely a chapter in the two and forty, into which the
work is divided, but might be quoted as proof of the
simplest method in which such sentiments can be uttered.
We cannot say he has the familiar, household eloquence of
William Law, nor has he perhaps drunk from the like
depths of the drainless well of spiritual being, but he is
undoubtedly always sincere to the revelation within him,
and perhaps better calculated than such earlier authors to
address his cotemporaries. As a specimen of the style,
and as a key to the whole work, which we have not space
now to analyse fully, we submit the following extract from
the first chapter, entitled “ Some Marks or Traits of the
Hidden Life."
“ There is a modification or form of religious experience
which may conveniently, and probably with a considerable
degree of propriety, be denominated the Interior or Hidden
Life. When a person first becomes distinctly conscious of
his sinfulness, and in connection with this experience,
exercises faith in Christ as a Saviour from sin, there is no
doubt, however ſeeble these early exercises may be, that
he has truly entered upon a new life. But this new life,
although it is in its element different from that of the world,
is only in its beginning. It embraces undoubtedly the true
principle of a restored and renovated existence, which in
due time will expand into heights and depths of knowledge
and of feeling ; but it is now only in a state of incipi-
ency, maintaining and oftentimes but feebly maintaining a
war with the anterior or natural life, and being nothing
more at present than the early rays and dawnings of the
brighter day that is coming.
“It is not so with what may conveniently be denominated


1844.)
375
Interior or Hidden Life.
the Hidden Life ; a form of expression which we employ
to indicate a degree of Christian experience, greatly in
advance of that, which so often lingers darkly and doubt.
fully at the threshold of the Christian's career. As the
Hidden Life, as we now employ the expression, indicates
a greatly advanced state of the religious feeling, resulting
in a sacred and intimate union with the the Infinite Mind,
we may perhaps regard the Psalmist, who had a large share
of this interior experience, as making an indistinct allusion
to it, when he says, “Thou art my hiding place, and my
shield.' And again. He that dwelleth in the SECRET
PLACE of the Most High, shall abide under the shadow of
the Amighty. Perhaps the Apostle Paul makes some
allusion to this more advanced and matured condition of
the religious life, when in the Episue to the Galatians, he
says, 'I am crucified with Christ; nevertheless I live ; YET
NOT I, but Christ LIVETH IN ME. And again, addressing
the Colossians, . Set your affections on things above, not on
things on earth; for ye are dead, and YOUR LIFE IS HID
WITH CHRIST in God.? And does not the Saviour himself
sometimes recognise the existence of an Interior or Hidden
Life, unknown to the world, and unknown, to a considera-
ble extent, even to many that are denominated Christians,
but who are yet in the beginning of their Christian career ?
• He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith
unto the Churches. To him that overcometh will I give
to eat of the HIDDEN MANNA, and I will give him a white
stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no
man knoweth save he that RECEIVEth it.'"- p. 15.
In this cautious and unassuming way does the author
endeavor to introduce the reader to an understanding of
that, which cannot indeed be truly understood without
experience, but which he devotedly applies his scholastic
faculties and facilities to awaken some conception of in the
public mind. To the well experienced soul it must appear
strange indeed that the question need be put, “ Does not
the Saviour himself sometimes recognise the Interior or
Hidden Life ?” We would ask, “Does he not always
recognise it, appeal to it, endeavor to quicken it?” Was
it not the peculiar and high revelation he opened to man,
that the kingdom of Heaven is within him? Scattered
over the heathen world might, more or less obscurely, be


376
[Jan.
Interior of Hidden Life.
found atfirmations of most Christian doctrines; but this fact
had never before been declared with such emphasis, clear-
ness, and certitude as by Jesus and his intimate disciples.
It is the especial fact which makes Christianity the trans-
cendant religion of this world. From this ground alone
could Christ justly denounce priestcraft in the vehement
terms familiar to us all, and establish a religion utterly un-
sectarian or formal, but dwelling only in heart and life.
On the subject of the two degrees of religious experi-
ence, which Professor Upham in the above extract endeav-
ors to elucidate, Christ appears to us to have been so
strikingly explicit, that it is surprising the mere biblical
student should overlook it. He says " You must be born
again ; of the water, and of the Spirit.” In this case
one term is not to be interpreted into the other. The
water-birth and the Spirit-birth are clearly two processes in
the buman soul, which Swedenborg illustrates by the terms
“ Spiritual” and “Celestial,” and other writers of deep
religious experience bave under some terms or other en-
deavored to make them sensible to their fellow pilgrims;
a labor however on which little success has yet attended.
Books sell and circulate in the world in the ratio of the
natures and taste of the people at the time. It is not just
at present so easy to find readers on the subject of the
Inner Life as of the Outer Life. Frivolous novels are rather
more in demand than relations froin the ever new. Much
that is beautiful, much that is valuable, nay, that very re-
ality which is most needful to human happiness, is for the
greater part lost to mankind by the overlooking of this
second inward birth; by the supposition that the first, or
the birth into intelligence, is all that need succeed to the
natural birth in order to human redemplion. Truly does
our author observe the life, which we are considering
may properly be called a Hidden Life, because its moving
principles, its interior and powerful springs of action, are
not known to the world."
• The natural man can appreciate the natural man. The
man of the world can appreciate the man of the world.
And it must be admitted, that he can appreciate, to a con-
siderable extent, numbers of persons, who profess to be
Christians, and who are probably to be regarded as such in
the ordinary sense of the term, because the natural life


1844.]
377
Interior or Hidden Life.
still remains in them in part. There is such a mixture of
worldly and religious motives in the ordinary forms of the
religious state, such an impregnation of what is gracious
with what is natural, that the men of the world can un-
doubtedly form an approximated, if not a positive estimate
of the principles, which regulate the conduct of its pos-
sessors. But of the springs of movement in the purified or
Hidden Life, except by dark and uncertain conjecture, they
know comparatively nothing."-p. 16.
6 Again, the Hidden Life has a claim to the descriptive
epithet, which we have proposed to apply to it, because, in
its results upon individual minds, it is directly the reverse
of the life of the world. The natural life seeks notoriety.
Desirous of human applause, it aims to clothe itself in pur-
ple and fine linen. It covets a position in the market-place
and at the corners of the streets. It loves to be called Rab-
bi. But the life of God in the soul, occupied with a divine
companionship, avoids all unnecessary familiarities with
men. It pursues a lowly and retired course.” “It is
willing to be little, to be unhonored, and to be cast out
from among men. It has no eye for worldly pomp; no
ear for worldly applause. It is formed on the model of the
Saviour, who was a man unknown.” “It has no essence,
but its own spiritual nature, and no true locality but the
soul, which it sanctifies.”—p. 18.
We must be permitted to use warmer language than the
usual phrase, that “this book is a valuable addition to the
literature of our country." Professor Upham has a nobler
and a sincerer design than that of adding merely another
volume to our abundant stores, or of gaining proselytes to
some miserable sectarianism, or of building up a personal
fame. He pursues his subject, without needless literary
display, through its theological and personal windings and
accessories, until he discourses on the state of union with
God,' in language as plain and as suitable to the present
state of the public mind, as could characterize the humblest
disciples of goodness.
“ The state of union with God, when it is the subject of
distinct consciousness, constitutes, without being necessarily
characterized by revelations or raptures, the soul's spiritual
festival, a season of special interior blessedness, a foretaste
of Heaven. The mind unaffected by wo.Idly vicissitudes,
VOL. IV. - NO. II.
48


378
[Jan.
Interior or Hidden Life.
and the strifes and oppositions of men, reposes deeply in a
state of happy submission and quietude, in accordance with
the expression of the epistle to the Hebrews, that those
who believe "ENTER INTO Rest.” So true it is, in the
language of Kempis, that “he who comprehendeth all
things in His will, and beholdeth all things in His light,
hath his heart fixed, and abideth in the peace of God.”
“ How can there be otherwise than the peace of God, pure,
beautiful, sublime, when consecration is without reserve,
and faith is without limit; and especially when self-will,
the great evil of our fallen nature, is eradicated. What
bigher idea can we have of the most advanced Christian
experience, than that of entire union with the divine will,
by a subjection of the human will ? When the will of
man, ceasing from its divergencies and its disorderly vibra-
tions, becomes fixed to one point, henceforward immovable,
always harmonizing, moment by moment, with God's cen-
tral and absorbing purposes, then we may certainly say,
that the soul, in the language which is sometimes applied
to it, and in a modified sense of the terms, has become not
only perfected in faith and love, but " united and one with
God," and " transformed into the divine nature.”—“ He,
that is joined to the Lord, is one spirit.” “ And from that
moment, in its higher nature, and so far as it is not linked
to earth by sympathies, which its God has implanted, and
which were smitten and bled even in the case of our Sav-
iour, the soul knows sorrow. no more ; the pain of its inward
anguish is changed into rejoicing; it has passed into the
mount of stillness, the Tabor of inward transfiguration, the
Temple of unchanging tranquillity.”—p. 429.
Such an unusual, we might almost say, as far as the
American public is concerned, such an unprecedented ap-
peal, we trust will not be made in vain. Pious narratives,
providential adventures, and personal experiences have
from time to time found a ready auditory, in this republic;
and a reception not less cordial ought to be awarded to the
expression of like principles and sentiments uttered in
universal terms.


1844.)
379
Pindar.
PINDAR.
Pindar is an empty name to all but Greek scholars. We have no
reputation in literature comparable to his, which is so ill supported in
English translation. The most diligent and believing student will not
find one glance of the Theban eagle in West and his colleagues, who
have attempted to clothe the bird with English plumage. Perhaps he is
the most untranslateable of poets, and though he was capable of a grand
national music, yet did not write sentences, which alone are conveyed
without loss into another tongue. Some of our correspondents, who
found aid and comfort in Mr. Thoreau's literal prose translations of
Anacreon and of Æschylus, bave requested him to give versions of the
Olympic and Neinæan Odes; and we extract from his manuscripts a series
of such passages as contain somewhat detachable and presentable in an
English dress.
SECOND OLYMPIC ODE. — 109.
Elysium.
Equally by night always,
And by day, having the sun, the good
Lead a life without labor, not disturbing the earth
With violent hands, nor the sea water,
For a scanty living; but honored
By the gods, who take pleasure in fidelity to oaths,
They spend a tearless existence;
While the others suffer unsightly pain.
But as many as endured threefold
Probation, keeping the mind from all
Injustice, go the way of Zeus to Kronos' tower,
Where the ocean breezes blow around
The island of the Blessed ; and flowers of gold shine,
Some on the land from dazzling trees,
And the water nourishes others;
With garlands of these they crown their hands and hair ;
According to the just decrees of Rhadamanthus;
Whom Father Kronos, the husband of Rhea
Having the highest throne of all, has ready by himself as
his assistant judge.
Peleus and Kadmus are regarded among these ;
And his mother brought Achilles, when she had
Persuaded the heart of Zeus with prayers;
Who overthrew Hector, Troy's
Unconquered, unshaken column, and gave Cycnus
To death, and Morning's Æthiop son.


380
(Jan.
Pindar.
OLYMPIC V. - 34.
Always around virtues labor and expense strive toward a
work
Covered with danger ; but those succeeding seem to be
wise even to the citizens.
OLYMPIC VI.
14.
Dangerless virtues,
Neither among men, nor in hollow ships,
Are honorable ; but many remember if a fair deed is done.
OLYMPIC VII. -100.
Origin of Rhodes.
Ancient sayings of men relate,
That when Zeus and the Immortals divided earth,
Rhodes was not yet apparent in the deep sea;
But in salt depths the island was hid.
And Helius * being absent no one claimed for him his lot;
So they left him without any region for his share,
The pure god. And Zeus was about to make a second
drawing of lots
For him warned. But he did not permit him ;
For he said that within the white sea he had seen a certain
land springing up from the bottom,
Capable of feeding many men, and suitable for flocks.
And straightway He commanded golden-filletted Lachesis
To stretch forth her hands, and not contradict
The great oath of the gods, but with the son of Kronos
Assent, that to the bright air being sent by his nod,
It should hereafter be his prize. And his words were fully
performed,
Meeting with truth. The island sprang from the watery
Sea ; and the genial Father of penetrating beams,
Ruler of fire-breathing horses, has it.
OLYMPIC VIII. -95.
A man doing fit things
Forgets Hades.
* The Sun.


1844.)
881
Pindar.
OLYMPIC X. --- 59.
Hercules names the Hill of Kronos.
He named the Hill of Kronos, for before nameless,
While nomaus ruled, it was moistened with much snow,
And at this first rite the Fates stood by,
And Time, who alone proves
Unchanging truth.
OLYMPIC X. - 85.
Olympia at Evening.
With the javelin Phrastor struck the mark;
And Eniceus cast the stone afar,
Whirling his hand, above them all,
And with applause it rushed
Through a great tumult;
And the lovely evening light
Of the fair-faced moon shone on the scene.
OLYMPIC 'X. -109.
Fame.
When, having done fair things, O Agesidamus,
Without the reward of song, a man may come
To Hades' rest, vainly aspiring
He obtains with toil some short delight.
But the sweet-voiced Jyre,
And the sweet flute, bestow some favor;
For Zeus' Pierian daughters
Have wide fame.
THE FOURTEENTH OLYMPIC ODE.
To Asopichus, of Orchomenos, on his Victory in the Stadic
Course.
O ye, who inhabit for your lot the seat of the Cephisian
Streams, yielding fair steeds, renowned Graces,
Ruling bright Orchomenos,
Protectors of the ancient race of Minyæ,
Hear, when I pray.


382
(Jan.
Pindar.
For with you are all pleasant
And sweet things to mortals ;
If wise, if fair, if noble,
Any man. For neither do the gods,
Without the august Graces,
Rule the dance,
Nor feasts; but stewards
Of all works in heaven,
Having placed their seats
By golden-bowed Pythian Apollo,
They reverence the eternal power
Of the Olympian Father ;
August Aglaia, and song-loving
Euphrosyne, children of the mightiest god,
Hear now, and Thalia loving-song,
Beholding this band, in favorable fortune
Lightly dancing; for in Lydian
Manner meditating,
I come celebrating Asopichus,
Since Minya by thy means is victor at the Olympic games.
Now to Persephone's *
Black-walled house go Echo,
Bearing to his father the famous news ;
That seeing Cleodamus thou mayest say,
That in renowned Pisa's vale
His son crowned his young hair
With plumes of illustrious contests.
first pythIAN ode. —8.
To the Lyre.
Thou extinguishest even the spear-like bolt
Of everlasting fire. And the eagle sleeps on the sceptre of
Zeus,
Drooping his swift wings on either side,
The king of birds.
- 25.
Whatever things Zeus has not loved
Are terrified, hearing
The voice of the Pierians,
On earth and the immeasurable sea.
PYTH. II. — 159.
A plain-spoken man brings advantage to every government,
* Cleodamus, the father of the hero, was dead.


1844.)
383
Pindar.
To a monarchy, and when the
Impetuous crowd, and when the wise rule a city.
As a whole, the third Pythian Ode, to Hiero, on his
victory in the single-horse race, is one of the most memor-
able. We extract first the account of
Æsculapius.
As many therefore as came suffering
From spontaneous ulcers, or wounded
In their limbs with glittering steel,
Or with the far-cast stone,
Or by the summer's heat o'ercome in body,
Or by winter, relieving he saved from
Various ills; some cherishing
With soothing strains,
Others having drunk refreshing draughts, or applying
Remedies to the limbs, others by cutting off he made erect.
But even wisdom is bound by gain,
And gold appearing in the hand persuaded even him with
its bright reward,
To bring a man from death
Already overtaken. But the Kronian, smiting
With both hands, quickly took away
The breath from his breasts;
And the rushing thunderbolt hurled him to death.
It is necessary for mortal minds
To seek what is reasonable from the divinities,
Knowing what is before the feet, of what destiny we are.
Do not, my soul, aspire to the life
Of the Immortals, but exhaust the practicable means.
In the conclusion of the ode the poet reminds the victor,
Hiero, that adversity alternates with prosperity in the life
of man, as in the instance of
Peleus and Cadmus.
The Immortals distribute to men
With one good two
Evils. The foolish therefore
Are not able to bear these with grace,
But the wise, turning the fair outside.
But thee the lot of good fortune follows,
For surely great Destiny


384
[Jan.
Pindar.
Looks down upon a king ruling the people,
If on any man. But a secure life
Was not to Peleus, son of Æacus,
Nor to godlike Kadmus,
Who yet are said to have had
The greatest happiness
Of mortals, and who heard
The song of the golden-filletted Muses,
On the mountain, and in seven-gated Thebes,
When the one married fair-eyed Harmonia,
And the other Thetis, the illustrious daughter of wise-
counselling Nereus.
And the gods feasted with both;
And they saw the royal children of Kronos
On golden seats, and received
Marriage gifts; and having exchanged
Former toils for the favor of Zeus,
They made erect the heart.
But in course of time
His three daughters robbed the one
Of some of his serenity by acute
Sufferings; when Father Zeus, forsooth, came
To the lovely couch of white-armed Thyone.
And the other's child, whom only the immortal
Thetis bore in Phthia, losing
His life in war by arrows,
Being consumed by fire excited
The lamentation of the Danaans.
But if any mortal has in his
Mind the way of truth,
It is necessary to make the best
Of what befalls from the blessed.
For various are the blasts
Of high-flying winds.
The happiness of men stays not a long time,
Though fast it follows rushing on.
Humble in humble estate, lofty in lofty,
I will be; and the attending dæmon
I will always reverence in my mind,
Serving according to my means.
But if Heaven extend to me kind wealth,
I have hope to find lofty fame hereafter.
Nestor and Lycian Sarpedon -
They are the fame of men —
From resounding words which skilful artists
Sung, we know.


1844.)
385
Pindar.
For virtue through renowned
Song is lasting. 9
But for few is it easy to obtain.
PYTH. IV. — 59.
Origin of Thera,
Whence, in after times, Libyan Cyrene was settled by
Battus. Triton, in the form of Eurypylus, presents a clod
to Euphemus, one of the Argonauts, as they are about to
return home.
He knew of our haste,
And immediately snatching a clod
With his right hand, strove to give it
As a chance stranger's gift.
Nor did the hero disregard him, but leaping upon the shore,
Stretching hand to hand,
Received the mystic clod.
But I hear it sinking from the deck,
Go with the sea brine
At evening, accompanying the watery sea.
Often indeed I urged the careless
Menials to guard it, but their minds forgot.
And now in this island the imperishable seed of spacious
Libya
Is spilled befcre its hour.
PYTH. V. -87,
Apollo.
He bestowed the lyre,
And he gives the muse to whom he wishes,
Bringing peaceful serenity to the breast.
PYTH. VIII. - 136.
comenzamos con las
(Excās örap ür9punoio)
VOL. IV. —NO. III.
Man.
The phantom of a shadow are men.
49
autors un tas


396
[Jan.
Pindar.
PYTH, ix. 31.
Hypseus' Daughter Cyrene.
He reared the white-armed child Cyrene,
Who loved neither the alternating motion of the loom,
Nor the superintendence of feasts,
With the pleasures of companions ;
But with javelins of steel,
And the sword, contending,
To slay wild beasts;
Affording surely much
And tranquil peace to her father's herds;
Spending little sleep
Upon her eye-lids,
As her sweet bed-fellow, creeping on at dawn.
PYTH. X. — 33.
The Height of Glory.
Fortunate and celebrated
By the wise is that man,
Who conquering by his hands, or virtue
Of his feet, takes the highest prizes
Through daring and strength,
And living still sees his youthful son
Deservedly obtaining Pythian crowns.
The brazen heaven is not yet accessible to him.
But whatever glory we
Of mortal race may reach,
He goes beyond, even to the boundaries
Of navigation. But neither in ships, nor going on foot,
Couldst thou find the wonderful way to the contests of the
Hyperboreans.
THIRD NEMEAN ODE. — 32.
To Aristoclides, Victor at the Nemean Games.
If, being beautiful,
And doing things like to his form,
The child of Aristophanes
Went to the height of manliness; no further
Is it easy to go over the untravelled sea,
Leyond the pillars of Hercules.


1844.)
387
Pindar.
NEM.III. - 69.
The Youth of Achilles.
One with native virtues
Greatly prevails; but he who
Possesses acquired talents, an obscure man,
Aspiring to various things, never with fearless
Foot advances, but tries
A myriad virtues with inefficient mind.
Yellow-haired Achilles, meanwhile, remaining in the house
of Philyra,
Being a boy played
Great deeds; often brandishing
Iron-pointed javelins in his hands,
Swift as the winds, in fight he wrought death to savage
lions;
And he slew boars, and brought their bodies
Palpitating to Kronian Centaurus,
As soon as six years old. And all the while
Artemis and bold Athene admired him,
Slaying stags without dogs or treacherous nets;
For he conquered them on foot.
NEM. IV. — 66.
Whatever virtues sovereign destiny has given me,
I well know that time creeping on
Will fulfil what was fated.
NEM. V. -- 1.
The kindred of Pytheas, a victor in the Nemean games,
had wished to procure an ode from Pindar for less than
three drachmæ, asserting that they could purchase a statue
for that sum. In the following lines he nobly reproves
their meanness, and asserts the value of his labors, which,
unlike those of the statuary, will bear the fame of the hero
to the ends of the earth.
No image-maker am I, who being still make statues
Standing on the same base. But on every
Merchant-ship, and in every boat, sweet song,
Go from Ægina to announce that Lampo's son,
Mighty Pytheas,
Has conquered the pancratian crown at the Nemean games.


388
(Jan.
Pindar.
NEM. VI.-1.
The Divine in Man.
One the race of men and of gods;
And from one mother
We all breathe.
But quite different power
Divides us, so that the one is nothing,
But the brazen heaven remains always
A secure abode. Yet in some respect we are related,
Either in mighty mind or form, to the Immortals;
Although not knowing
To what resting place
By day or night, Fate has written that we shall run.
NEM. VIII. — 44.
The Treatment of Ajar.
In secret votes the Danaans aided Ulysses ;
And Ajax, deprived of golden arms, struggled with death,
Surely, wounds of another kind they wrought
In the warm flesh of their foes, waging war
With the man-defending spear.
NEM. VIII. — 68.
The Value of Friends.
Virtue increases, being sustained by wise men and just,
As when a tree shoots up with gentle dews into the liquid
air.
There are various uses of friendly men;
But chiefest in labors; and even pleasure
Requires to place some pledge before the eyes.
NEM. IX. — 41.
Death of Amphiaraus.
Once they led to seven-gated Thebes an army of men, not
according
To the lucky fight of birds. Nor did the Kronian,


1844.)
389
Pindar.
Brandishing his lightning, impel to march
From home insane, but to abstain from the way.
But to apparent destruction
The host made haste to go, with brazen arms
And horse equipments, and on the banks
Of Ismenus, defending sweet return,
Their white-flowered bodies fattened fire.
For seven pyres devoured young-limbed
Men. But to Amphiaraus
Zeus rent the deep-bosomed earth
With his miglity thunder-bolt,
And buried him with his horses,
Ere being struck in the back
By the spear of Periclymenus, his warlike
Spirit was disgraced.
For in dæmonic fears
Flee even the sons of gods.
MEM. X. — 153.
Castor and Pollux.
Pollux, son of Zeus, shared his immortality with his
brother Castor, son of Tyndarus, and while one was in
heaven, the other remained in the infernal regions, and
they alternately lived and died every day, or, as some say,
every six months. While Castor lies mortally wounded by
Idas, Pollux prays to Zeus, either to restore his brother to
life, or permit him to die with him, to which the god
answers,
Nevertheless, I give thee
Thy choice of these; if indeed fleeing
Death and odious age,
You wish to dwell on Olympus,
With Athene and black-speared Mars;
Thou hast this lot.
But if thou thinkest to fight
For thy brother, and share
All things with him,
Half the time thou mayest breathe, being beneath the earth,
And half in the golden halls of heaven.
The god thus having spoken, he did not
Entertain a double wish in his mind.


390
[Jan.
Pindar.
And he released first the eye, and then the voice,
of brazen-mitred Castor.
FIRST ISTHMIAN ODE. — 65.
Toil.
One reward of labors is sweet to one man, one to another,
To the shepherd, and the plougher, and the bird-catcher,
And whom the sea nourishes.
But every one is tasked to ward off
Grievous famine from the stomach.
ISTH.
ISTH. II.- 9.
The Venality of the Muse. .
Then the Muse was not
Fond of gain, nor a laboring woman;
Nor were the sweet-sounding
Soothing strains
Of 'Terpsichore, sold,
With silvered front.
But now she directs to observe the saying
Of the Argive, coming very near the truth,
Who cried, “ Money, money, man,"
Being bereft of property and friends.
ISTI. VI. — 62.
Hercules' Prayer concerning Ajar, son of Telamon.
If ever, O father Zeus, thou hast heard
My supplication with willing mind,
Now I beseech thee with prophetic
Prayer, grant a bold son from Eribea
To this man my fated guest;
Rugged in body
As the hide of this wild beast
Which now surrounds me, which, first of all
My contests, I slew once in Nemea, and let his mind agree.
To him thus having spoken, Heaven sent
A great eagle, king of birds,
And sweet joy thrilled him inwardly.


1844.)
391
Preaching of Buddha.
THE PREACHING OF BUDDHA.
The following fragments are extracts from one of the religious books of
the Buddhists of Nepal, entitled the
"WHITE LOTUS OF THE GOOD LAW.”
THE original work, which is written in Sanscrit, makes part of the
numerous collection of Buddhist books, discovered by M. Hodgson, the
English resident at the Court of Katmandou, and sent by him to the
Asiatic Society of Paris M. Burnouf examined, some years since, this
collection, which includes a great part of the canonical books of the
Buddhists, and of which translations are found in all the nations which
are Buddhists, (the people of Tbibet, China, and the Moguls.) The
book, from which the following extracts are taken, is one of the most
venerated, by all the nations which worsbip Buddha, and shows very
clearly the method followed by the Sage who bears this name. The
work is in prose and verse. The versified part is only the reproduction
in a metrical rather than a poetical form of the part written in prose.
We prefix an extract from the article of M. Eugene Burnouf, on the ori.
gin of Buddhism.
“The privileged caste of the Brahmins reserved to itself the exclusive
monopoly of science and of religion ; their morals were relaxed; igno-
rance, cupidity, and the crimes which it induces, had already deeply
changed ihe ancient society described in the Laws of Menu. In ihe
midst of these disorders, (about six centuries before Christ.) in the north
of Bengal, a young Prince born into the military caste, renvunred the
throne, became a religious, and took the name of Buddha. His doctrine,
which was more moral than metaphysical, at least in its principle, reposed
on an opinion admitted as a fact, and upon a hope presented as a cer.
tainty. This opinion is, that the visible world is in a perpetual change ;
that death proceeds to life, and life to death; that man, like all the living
beings who surround him, revolves in the elernally moving circle of
transmigration ; that lie passes successively through all the forms of life,
from the most elementary up to the most perfect; that the place, which
he occupies in the vast scale of living beings, depends on the merit of the
actions which he performs in this world, and that thus the virtuous man
ought, after this life, to be born again with a divine body, and the guilty
wiib a body accursed ; that the rewards of heaven and the pains of bell,
like all which this world contains, have only a limited duration ; that
time exhausts the merit of virtuous actions, and effaces the evil of bad
ones; and that the fatal law of change brings back to the earth both the
god and the devil, to put both again on trial, and cause them to run a new
course of transmigration. The hope, which the Buddha came to bring to
men, was the possibility of escaping from the law of transmigration by
entering that which he calls enfranchisement; that is to say, according
to one of the oldest schools, the annihilation of the thinking principle as
well as of the material principle. That annihilation was not entire unul
death ; but he who was destined to attain to it, possessed during his life
an unlimited science, which gave him the pure view of the world as it is,
that is, the knowledge of the physical and intellectual laws, and the
practice of the six transcendant perfections, of alms, of morality, of
science, of energy, of patience, and of charity. The authority, on which
the votary rested his teaching, was wholly personal; it was formed of two


392
[Jan.
Preaching of Buddha.
elements, one real, the other ideal. The one was regularity and sanctity
of conduct, of which chastity and patience formed the principal traits.
The second was the pretension thai he had to be Buddha, that is, illumi.
nated, and as such, to possess a supernatural power and science. With
his power he resisted the attacks of vice; with his science he represented
to himself, under a clear and complete form, the past and the future.
Hence lie could recount all which he had done in his former existences,
and he affirmed thus, that an incalculable number of beings had already
attained, like himiself, by the practice of the same virtues, to the dignity
of Buddha. He offered himself, in short, to men as their Saviour, and he
promised them that his death should not destroy his doctrine, but that
ibis doctrine should endure afier him for many ages, and that when its
salutary action should have ceased, there would appear to the world a
new Buddha, whom he would announce by his own name ; and the
legends say that before descending on earth, he had been consecrated in
Heaven in the quality of the future Buddha.
The philosophic opinion, by which he justified his mission, was shared
by all classes, Brahmins, warriors, farmers, merchants, all believed
equally in the fatality of transmigration, in the retribution of rewards and
pains, in the necessity of escaping in a decisive manner the perpetually
changing condition of a merely relative existence. lle believed in the
truths admitted by the Bralios. His disciples lived like them, and like
them imposed stern penances, bending under that ancient sentence of re-
probation fulminated against the body by oriental asceticisin. It dues
not appear that Buddha laid any claim himself to miraculous power. In
fart, in one of his discourses, occur these remarkable words. A king
urged him to confound his adversaries by the exhibition of that superhu.
man force, which is made to reduce incredulity to silence: “O king!"
replied the Buddha, “I do not teach the law to my disciples by saying
to them, Go work miracles before the Brithmins and ibe masters of
houses whom you meet, but I teach them in this wise, Live, O holy one,
by concealing your good works, and by exposing your sins." This pro.
found humility, this entire renunciation is the characteristic wait of
prinsitive Buddhism, and was one of the most powerful instruments of its
success with the people.”
The Tathagata* is equal and not unequal towards all be-
ings, wlien it is the question to convert them: “He is, 0
Kaçyapat as the rays of the sun and moon, which shine
alike upon the virtuous and the wicked, the high and the
low; on those who have a good odor, and those who have a
bad; on all these the rays fall equally and not unequally at
one and the same time. So, O Kaçyapa, the rays of intelli-
gence, endowed with the knowledge of omnipotence, make
the Tathậgatas venerable. Complete instruction in the good
law is equally necessary for all beings, for those who have
* Tathagata means, he who has come like Anterior Buddha, and is sy.
nonymous with Buddha.
+ Kaçyapa wus of the Brahminical caste, one of the first disciples of
Buddha.


1844.]
393
Preaching of Buddha.
entered into the five roads of existence, for those, who ac-
cording to their inclination have taken the great vehicle, or
the vehicle of Pratyek:1-Buddha,* or that of the auditors.
And there is neither diminution or augmentation of abso-
lute wisdom in such or such a Tathagata. On the con-
trary, all equally exist, and are equally born to unite
science and virtue. There are not, O Kaçyapa three
vehicles ; there are only beings who act differently from
each other; it is on account of that we discriminate three
vehicles.'
This said, the respectable Kâçyapa spoke thus to Bha-
gavat :“If there are not, O Bhagavat! three different
vehicles, why employ in the present world the distinct
denominations of Auditors, Pratyēkabuddhas and Boubi-
saitvas ? "I This said, Bhagavat spoke thus to the respect-
able Kaçyapa : “It is, O Kaçyapa, as when a poiter makes
different pots of the same clay. Some become vases to
contain molasses, others are for clarified butter, others for
milk, others for curds, others inferior and iinpure vases.
The variety does not belong to the clay, it is only the dif-
ference of the substance that we put in them, whence
comes the diversity of the vases. So there is really only
one vehicle, which is the vehicle of Buddha; there is no
second, no third vehicle." This said, the respectable Ka-
çyapa spoke thus to Bhagaval : “ If beings, arising from
this union of three worlds, have different inclinations, is
there for them a single annihilation, or two, or three ? "
Bhagavat said, “ Annibilation, O Kaçyapa, results froin the
comprehension of the equality of all laws; there is only
one, and not two or three. Therefore, O Kaçyapa, I will
propose to thee a parable; for penetrating men know
through parables the sense of what is said.”
* Pratyeka-Buddhas is a kind of selfish Buddha, who possesses science
without endeavoring to spread it, for the sake of saving others. The
great vehicle, is a figurative expression, designating the state of Buddha,
which is the first of the three means that the Buddhist doctrine furnishes
to man, whereby to escape the conditions of actual existence.
t Bliagavat means he who is perfect in virtue and happiness, and is the
most honorary title applied to Buddha.
# The Bodhisattva is a potential Buddha, a Buddha not yet completely
developed, but sure of being so, when he shall have finished his last mor.
Lal existence.
VOL. IV. NO. III.
50


394
(Jan
Preaching of Buddha.
" It is as if, O Kaçyapa, a man born blind should say,
there are no forms, of which some have beautiful and
some ugly colors; no spectators of these different forms;
there is no sun, nor moon, nor constellations, nor stars;
and no spectators who see stars.' And when other men
reply to the man born blind, there are diversities of color
and spectators of these diverse colors; there is a sun and
a moon, and constellations and stars, and spectators who
see the stars, the man born blind believes them not, and
wishes to have no relations with them. Then there comes
a physician who knows all maladies ; he looks on this man
born blind, and this reflection comes into his mind: it is for
the guilty conduct of this man in an anterior life, that he is
born blind. All the maladies which appear in this world,
whatever they are, are in four classes ; those produced by
wind, those produced by bile, those produced by phlegm,
and those which come by the morbid state of the three
principles united. This physician reflected inuch upon the
means of curing this malady, and this reflection came into
his mind: the substances which are in use here, are not
capable of destroying this evil; but there exist in Hima-
vat, king of mountains, four medicinal plants, and what
are they? The first is named that which possesses all
savors and all colors; the second, that which delivers from
all maladies; the third, that which neutralizes all poisons;
the fourth, that which procures well-being in whatsoever
situation it may be. These are the four medicinal plants.
Then the physician, feeling touched with compassion for
the man born blind, thought on the means of going to
Himavat, king of mountains, and having gone thither, he
mounted to the summit, he descended into the valley,
he traversed the mountain in his search, and having sought
he discovered these four medicinal plants, and having dis-
covered them, he gave them to the blind man to take, one
after having inasticated it with the teeth, another after have
ing pounded it, this after having cooked it with other sub-
stances, that after mingling it with other raw substances,
another by introducing it into a given part of the body with
a needle, another after having consumed it in the fire, the
last, after having employed it, mingled with other substan-
ces as food or as drink.
Then the man born blind, in consequence of having em-


1844.]
395
Preaching of Buddha.
ployed these means, recovered his sight, and having recov-
ered it, he looked above, below, far and near; he saw the
rays of the sun, and moon, the constellations, the stars, and
all forms; and thus he spoke: “ Certainly I was a fool in
that I never would believe those who saw and reported to
me these things. Now I see every thing, I am delivered
from my blindness ; I have recovered sight, and there is no
one in the world who is in any thing above me.”
But at this moment the Sages endowed with the five
kinds of supernatural knowledge present themselves; these
Sages who have divine sight, divine hearing, knowledge of
the thoughts of others, the memory of their anterior exis-
tences, and of a supernatural power, speak thus to this
man: “ Thou hast only recovered sight, O man, and still
thou knowest nothing. Whence comes then this pride?
Thou hast not wisdoin and thou are not instructed.” Then
they speak to him thus: “When thou art seated in the in-
teriors of thy house, O man, thou seest not, thou knowest
not other forms which are without; thou distinguishest not
in beings whether their thoughts are benevolent or hostile
to thee; thou perceivest not, thou understandest not at the
distance of five yôdjanas the sound of the conch, of the
tambour, and of the human voice; thou canst not transport
thyself even to the distance of a krocă, without making
use of thy feel ; thou hast been engendered and developed
in the body of thy mother, and thou doest not even remem-
ber that. How then art thou learned, and how knowest
thou everything, and how canst thou say, I see every-
thing? Know, Oman, that that which is clearness is
obscurity ; know also that that which is obscurity is clear-
ness."
Then this man speaks thus to the Sages: What means
must I employ, or what good work must I do to acquire
an equal wisdom? I can by your favor obtain these qual-
ities. Then these Sages say thus to the man: If thou
desirest wisdom, contemplate the law, sealed in the desert,
or in the forest, or in the caverns of the mountains, and
free thyself from the corruption of evil. Then, endowed
with purified qualities, thou shalt obtain supernatural knowl-
edge. Then this man, following this counsel, entering into
the religious life, living in the desert, his thought fixed
upon a single object, was freed from that of the world, and


396
[Jan.
Preaching of Buddha,
acquired these five kinds of supernatural knowledge ; and
having acquired them, he reflected thus; The conduct
which I pursued before, put me in possession of no law,
and of no quality. Now, on the contrary, I go wherever
my thought goes ; before I had only little wisdom, little
judgment, I was blind.
Behold, O Kâçyapa! the parable that I would propose
to thee to make thee comprehend the sense of my dis-
course. See now what is in it. The man blind from his
birth, O Kâçyapa ! designates those beings who are shut
up in the revolution of the world, into which is entrance
by five roads; they are those who know not the excellent
law, and who accumulate upon themselves the obscurity
and the thick darkness of the corruption of evil. They are
blinded by ignorance, and in this state of blindness they
collect the conceptions, under the name and the form
which are the effect of the conceptions, until at last there
takes place the production of what is a great mass of
miseries.* Thus are blind beings shut up by ignorance in
the revolution of the world.
But the Tathagata, who is placed beyond the union of
the three worlds, feeling compassion for them, moved with
pily, as is a father for his only beloved son, having de-
scended into the union of the three worlds, contemplates
beings revolving in the circle of transmigration, and beings
who know not the true means of escaping from the world.
Then Bhagavat looked on them with the eyes of wisdom,
and having seen them, he knew them. “These beings,"
said he, “after having accomplished, in the first place, the
principle of virtue, have feeble hatreds and vivid allach-
ments, or feeble attachments and vivid hatreds and errors.
Some have litile intelligence; others are wise; these have
come to inaturity and are pure; those follow false doctrines.
Bhagavat, by employing the means he has at his disposal,
teaches these beings three vehicles. Then the Bôdhisatt-
vas, like the sages endowed with the five kinds of super-
natural knowledge, and who have perfectly clear sight, the
Bodhisattvas, I say, having conceived the thought of the
------
* The French translator from the Sanscrit, says,-in an explanation of
this obsure passage,-See “ L'Histoire du Buddhisme indien," par M.
Burnouf.


1844.)
397
Preaching of Buddha.
state law, are raised. In this cosician; and a mano
state of Buddha, having acquired a miraculous patience in
the law, are raised to the supreine state of Buddha, per-
fectly developed. In this comparison, the Tathagata must
be regarded as a great physician ; and all beings must be
regarded as blinded by error, like the man born blind.
Affection, hatred, error, and the sixty-two false doctrines
are wind, bile, phlegm. The four medicinal plants are
these four truths; namely, the state of void, the absence of
a cause, the absence of an object, and the entrance into
annihilation. And as, according to the different substances
that we employ, we cure different maladies, so, according
as beings represent the state of void, the absence of a
cause, the absence of an object, and the entrance into ex-
emption, they arrest the action of ignorance; from the
annihilation of ignorance comes that of the conceptions,
until at last comes the annihilation of that which is only a
great mass of evils. Then the thought of man is neither
in virtue nor in sin.
The man who makes use of the vehicle of the auditors
or the Pratyekabuddhas must be regarded as the blind man
who recovers sight. He breaks the chain of the niseries
of transmigration ; disembarrassed from the chains of these
miseries, he is delivered from the union of the three
worlds which are entered by five ways. This is why he
who makes use of the vehicle of the auditors knows what
follows, and pronounces these words, — there are no more
laws henceforth to be known by a Buddha perfectly de-
veloped ; I have attained annihilation ! But Bhagavat
shows to him the law. How, said he, shall not he who
has obtained all the laws attaiii annihilation ? Then Bha-
gavat introduces him into the state of Buddha. Having
conceived the thought of this state, the auditor is no longer
in the revolution of the world, and he has not yet attained
annihilation. Forming to himself an exact idea of the
reunion of the three worlds, he sees the world void in the
ten points of space, like a magical apparition, an illusion,
like a dream, a mirage, an echo. He sees all laws, those
of the cessation of birth, as well as those which are con-
trary to annihilation ; those of deliverance, as well as those
contrary to exemption ; those which do not belong to
darkness and obscurity, as well as those which are contrary
to clearness. He who thus sees into profound laws, he


398
[Jan.
Preaching of Buddha.
sees, like the blind man, the differing thoughts and dis.
positions of all the beings who make up the reunion of the
three worlds.
I who am the king of law, I who am born in the world,
and who govern existence, I explain the law to creatures,
alter having recognized their inclinations. Great hernes,
whose intelligence is firm, preserve for a long time my
word ; they guard also my secret, and do not reveal it to
creatures. Indeed, from the moment that the ignorant
hear this science so difficult to comprehend, immediately
conceiving doubts in their madness, they will fall from it,
and fall into error. I proportion my language to the sub-
ject and the strength of each; and I correct a doctrine by a
contrary explication. It is, O Kâç yapa, as if a cloud,
raising itself above the universe, covered it entirely, hiding
all the earth. Full of water, surrounded with a garland
of lightning, this great cloud, which resounds with the
noise of thunder, spreads joy over all creatures. Arresting
the rays of the sun, refreshing the sphere of the world,
descending so near the earth as to be touched with the
hand, it pours out water on every side. Spreading in an
uniform manner an immense mass of water, and resplen-
dent with the lightnings which escape from its sides, it
makes the earth rejoice. And the inedicinal plants which
have burst from the surface of this earth, the herbs, the
bushes, the kings of the forest, liule and great trees; the
different seeds, and every thing which makes verdure ; all
the vegetables which are found in the mountains, in the
caverns, and in the groves; the herbs, the bushes, the
trees, this cloud fills them with joy, it spreads joy upon
the dry earth, and it moistens the medicinal plants; and
this hoinogeneous water of the cloud, the herbs and the
bushes pump up, every one according to its force and its
object. And the different kinds of trees, the greal as well
as the sinall, and the middle-sized trees, all drink this
water, each one according to its age and its strength; they
drink it and grow, each one according to its need. Ab-
sorbing the water of the cloud by their trunks, their twigs,
their bark, their branches, their boughs, their leaves, the
great medicinal plauts put forth flowers and fruits. Each
one according to its strength, according to its destination,
and conformably to the nature of the germ whence it


1844.]
399
Preaching of Buddha.
springs, produces a distinct fruit, and nevertheless there is
one homogeneous water like that which fell from the cloud.
So, O Kâçyapa, the Buddha comes into the world, like a
cloud which covers the universe, and hardly is the chief of
the world born, than he speaks and teaches the true doc-
trine to creatures.
And thus, says the great sage, honored in the world, in
union with gods. I am Tathagata, the conqueror, the best
of men; I have appeared in the world like a cloud. I will
overflow with joy all beings whose limbs are dry, and wlio
are allached to the triple condition of existence. I will
establish in happiness those who are consumed with pain,
and give to thein pleasures and annihilation. - Listen to
me, oh ye troops of gods and men! Approach and look
upon me. I am Tathagata the blessed, the being without
a superior, who is born here in the world to save it. And
I preach to thousands of millions of living beings the pure
and very beautiful law; its nature is one and homogene-
ous ; it is deliverance and annihilation. With one and
the same voice I explain the law, taking incessanıly for my
subject the state of Buddha, for this law is uniform ; in-
equality has no place in it, no more than affection or hatred.
You may be converted; there is never in me any preler-
ence or aversion for any, whosoever he may be. It is the
same law that I explain to all beings, the same for one as
for another.
Exclusively occupied with this work, I explain the law;
whether I rest, or remain standing, whether I lie upon iny
bed or am sea ted upon my seat, I never experience fatigue.
I fill the whole universe with joy, like a cloud which pours
everywhere a homogeneous water, always equally well dis-
posed towards respectable men, as towards the lowest,
towards virtuous men as towards the wicked ; towards
abandoned men as towards those who have conducted
most regularly ; towards those who follow heterodox doc-
trines and false opinions, as towards those whose doctrines
are sound and perfect.
Finally, I explain to little as well as to great minds, and
to those whose organs have a supernatural power; inacces-
sible to fatigue, I spread everywhere, in a suitable manner,
the rain of the law.
After having heard my voice, according to the measure


400
(Jan.
Preaching of Buddha.
of their strength, beings are established in different situa-
tions, among the gods, among men, in beautiful bodies,
among the Cakras, the Brahmas, and the Tchakravartins.
Listen, I am going to explain to you what the humble
and sınall plants are, which are found in the world ; what
the plants of iniddle size are ; and what the trees of a great
height. Those inen who live with a knowledge of the
law exempt from imperfections, who have obtained annibila-
tion, who have the six kinds of supernatural knowledge, and
the three sciences, these men are nained the small plants.
The men who live in the caverns of the mountains, and
who aspire to the state of Pratyekâbuddha, men whose
minds are half purified, are the plants of middle size.
Those who solicit the rank of heroes, saying, I will be a
Buddha, I will be the chief of gods and men, and who
cultivate energy and contemplation. these are the most
elevated plants. And the sons of Buddha, who quietly,
and full of reserve, cultivate charity, and conceive no doubt
concerning the rank of heroes among men, these are named
trees. Those who turn the wheel and look not backward,
the strong men who possess the power of supernatural
faculties, and who deliver millions of living beings, these
are named great trecs.
It is, however, one and the same law which is preached
by the conqueror, even as it is one homogeneous water
which is poured out by the cloud, those men who possess,
as I have just said, the different faculties, are as the differ-
ent plants which burst from the surface of the earth.
Thou mayst know by this example and this explanation
the means of which Tathagata makes use ; thou knowest
how he preaches a single law, whose different develop-
ments resemble drops of rain. As to me, I will pour out
the rain of the law, and the whole world shall be filled with
satisfaction, and men shall meditate, each one according to
his strength upon this homogeneous law which I explain.
So that while the rain falls, the herbs and the bushes, as
well as the plants of middle size, the trees of all sizes, shall
shine in the ten points of space.
This instruction, which exists always for the happiness
of the world, gives joy by different laws to the whole uni-
verse ; the whole world is overflowed with joy as plants are
covered with flowers. The plants of middle size, which


1844.)
401
Eros.
grow upon the earth, and the venerable sages, who are firm
in the destruction of faults, and running over immense
forests, show the well-taught law to the Bodhisattvas. The
numerous Bodhisattvas, endowed with memory and forti-
tude, who having an exact idea of the three worlds, seek-
ing the supreme state of Buddha, eminently grow like the
trees. Those who possess supernatural faculties, and the
four contemplations, who having heard of void, experience
joy therein, and who emit from their bodies millions of
rays, are called great trees.
This teaching of the law, O Kâçyapa, is like the water
which the cloud pours out over all, and by whose action
the great plants produce in abundance mortal flowers. I
explain the law which is the cause of itself; I tried, in its
time, the state of Buddha, which belongs to the great sage;
behold my skilfulness in the use of means; it is that of all
the guides of the world.
What I have said is the supreme truth ; may my audi-
tors arrive at complete annihilation ; may they follow the
excellent way which conducts to the state of Buddha; may
all the auditors, who hear me, become Buddhas.
EROS.
The sense of the world is short,
Long and various the report, -
To love and be beloved; —
Men and gods have not outlearned it,
And how oft so e'er they've turned it,
Tis not to be improved.
VOL. IV. -
NO. III,
61


402
(Jan.
Ethnical Scriptures.
ETHNICAL SCRIPTURES.
HERMES TRIS MEGISTUS.
[We subjoin a few extracts from the old English translation (by Doctor
Everard, London, 1650,) of the Divine Pymander of Hermes Trismegistus.
The books ascribed to Hermes are thought to have been written, or at least
interpolated, by the new Platonists in the third or fourth century of our era.
Dr. Cudworth (Intellectual System, Vol. II. p. 142, Lond. 1820,) thinks them
to be for the most part genuine remains of the ancient Egyptian theology,
and to have been translated by Apuleius. The book deserves, on account of
the purity and depth of its religious philosophy, an honorable place among
ethical writings.]
Good is voluntary or of its own accord; Evil is invol.
untary or against its will.
The Gods choose good things as good things.
Nothing in heaven is servanted ; pothing upon earth is
free. Nothing is unknown in heaven, nothing is known
upon earth. The things npon earth communicate not
with those in heaven. Things on earth do not advantage
those in heaven; but all things in heaven do profit and
advantage the things upon earth.
Providence is Divine Order.
What is God and the Father and the Good, but the
Being of all things that yet are not, and the existence
itself of those things that are ?
The sight of good is not like the beams of the sun,
which being of a fiery shining brightness maketh the
eye, blind by his excessive light; rather the contrary, for
it enlighteneth and so much increaseth the power of the
eye, as any man is able to receive the influence of this
intelligible clearness. For it is more swift and sharp to
pierce, and harmless withal, and full of immortality, and
they that are capable, and can draw any store of this specta-
cle and sight, do many times fall asleep from the body
into this most fair and beauteous vision; which things
Celius and Saturn our Progenitors attained unto.
For the knowledge of it is a divine silence, and the
rest of all the senses. For neither can he that under-
stands that, understand anything else ; nor he that sees
that, see anything else, nor hear any other thing, nor
nuove the body. For, shining steadfastly on and round
about the whole mind, it enlighteneth all the soul, and
loosing it from the bodily senses aud motions, it draweth
it from the body, and changeth it wholly into the essence


1844.)
Ethnical Scriptures.
403
of God. For it is possible for the soul, O Son, to be
deified while yet it lodgeth in the body of man, if it con-
templates the beauty of the Good.
He who can be truly called man is a divine living thing,
and is not to be compared to any brute man that lives upon
earth, but to them that are above in heaven, that are called
Gods. Rather, if we shall be bold to speak the truth, he that
is a man indeed, is above them, or at least they are equal
in power, one to the other. For none of the things in
heaven will come down upon earth, and leave the limits
of heaven, but a man ascends up into heaven, and mea-
sures it. And he knoweth what things are on high, and
what below, and learneth all other things exactly. And
that which is the greatest of all, he leaveth not the
earth, and yet is above : so great is the greatness of
his nature. Wherefore we must be bold to say, that an
earthly man is a mortal God, and that the heavenly God
is an immortal man.
ASCRIPTION.
Who can bless thee, or give thanks for thee or to thee?
When shall I praise thee, O Father; for it is neither
possible to comprehend thy hour, nor thy time?
Wherefore shall I praise thee, – as being something of
myself, or having anything of mine own, or rather as
being another's ?
For thou art what I am, thou art what I do, thou art
what I say.
Thou art all things, and there is nothing which thou
art not.
Thou art thou, all that is made, and all that is not
made.
The mind that understandeth;
The Father that maketh;
The Good that worketh ;
The Good that doth all things. Of matter the most
subtile and slender part is air; of the air, the soul; of the
soul, the mind ; of the mind, God.
By me the truth sings praise to the truth, the good
praiseth the good.
O All! receive a reasonable sacrifice from all things.
Thou art God, thy man cryeth these things unto thee,


404
(Jan.
Ethnical Scriptures.
by the fire, by the air, by the earth, by the water, by
the spirit, by thy Creatures.
FROM THE GULISTAN OF SAADI.
Take heed that the orphan weep not ; for the Throne
of the Almighty is shaken to and fro, when the orphan
sets a-crying.
The Dervish in his prayer is saying, O God ! have com-
passion on the wicked, for thou hast given all things to
the good in making them good.
Any foe whom you treat courteously will become a
friend, excepting lust; which, the more civilly you use
it, will grow the more perverse.
Ardishir Babagan asked an Arabian physician, what
quantity of food ought to be eaten daily. He replied,
Thirteen ounces. The king said, What strength can a
man derive from so small a quantity? The physician
replied, so much can support you, but in whatever you
exceed that, you must support it.
If conserve of roses be frequently eaten, it will cause a
surfeit, whereas a crust of bread eaten after a long inter-
val will relish like conserve of roses.
Saadi was troubled when his feet were bare, and he
had not wherewithal to buy shoes ; but “ soon after meet-
ing a man without feet, I was thankful for the bounty of
Providence to me, and submitted cheerfully to the want
of shoes.”
Saadi found in a mosque at Damascus an old Persian
of an hundred and fifty years, who was dying, and was
saying to himself, “I said, I will enjoy myself for a few
moments; alas ! that my soul took the path of departure;
alas! at the variegated table of life I partook a few
mouthfuls, and the fates cried, Enough!”
I heard of a Dervish who was consuming in the flame
of want, tacking patch after patch upon his ragged gar-
ment, and solacing his mind with verses of poetry. Some-
body observed to him, Why do you sit quiet, while a
certain gentleman of this city has girt up his loins in the
service of the religious independents, and seated himself
by the door of their hearts? He would esteem himself
obliged by an opportunity of relieving your distress. He
said, Be silent, for I swear by Allah, it were equal to the
tornients of hell to enter into Paradise through the in-
terest of a neighbor.


1844.)
406
The Times.
405
THE TIMES.
A FRAGMENT.
Give me truths,
For I am weary of the surfaces,
And die of inanition. If I knew
Only the herbs and simples of the wood,
Rue, cinquefoil, gill, vervain, and agrimony,
Blue-vetch, and trillium, hawkweed, sassafras,
Milk weeds, and murky brakes, quaint pipes, and sundew,
And rare and virtuous roots, which in these woods
Draw untold juices from the common earth,
Untold, unknown, and I could surely spell
Their fragrance, and their chemistry apply
By sweet affinities to human flesh,
Driving the foe and stablishing the friend,
O that were much, and I could be a part
Of the round day, related to the sun
And planted world, and full executor
Of their imperfect functions.
But these young scholars who invade our hills,
Bold as the engineer who fells the wood,
And travelling often in the cut he makes,
Love not the flower they pluck, and know it not,
And all their botany is Latin names.
The old men studied magic in the flowers,
And human fortunes in astronomy,
And an omnipotence in chemistry,
Preferring things to names, for these were men,
Were unitarians of the united world,
And wheresoever their clear eye-beams fell,
They caught the footsteps of the Same. Our eyes
Are armed, but we are strangers to the stars,
And strangers to the mystic beast and bird,
And strangers to the plant and to the mine;
The injured elements say, Not in us;


406
(Jan.
The Times.
And night and day, ocean and continent,
Fire, plant, and mineral, say, Not in us,
And haughtily return us stare for stare.
For we invade them impiously for gain,
We devastate them unreligiously,
And coldly ask their pottage, not their love.
Therefore they shove us from them, yield to us
Only what to our griping toil is due ;
But the sweet affluence of love and song,
The rich results of the divine consents
Of man and earth, of world beloved and lover,
The nectar and ambrosia are withheld;
And in the midst of spoils and slaves, we thieves
And pirates of the universe, shut out
Daily to a more thin and outward rind,
Turn pale and starve. Therefore, to our sick eyes,
The stunted trees look sick, the summer short,
Clouds shade the sun, which will not tan our hay,
And nothing thrives to reach its natural term,
And life, shorn of its venerable length,
Even at its greatest space, is a defeat,
And dies in anger that it was a dupe;
And in its highest noon and wantonness,
Is early frugal, like a beggar's child;
With most unhandsome calculation taught,
Even in the hot pursuit of the best aims
And prizes of ambition, checks its hand,
Like Alpine cataracts, frozen as they leaped,
Chilled with a miserly comparison
Of the toy's purchase with the length of life.


1844.)
407
Critical Notices.
CRITICAL NOTICES.
Letters from New York. By L. M. CHILD.
We should have expressed our thanks for this volume in the
last number of the Dial, had the few days, which intervened be-
tween its reception and the first of October, permitted leisure
even to read it. Now the press and the public have both been
beforehand with us in awarding the due meed of praise and
favor. We will not, however, refrain, though late, from ex-
pressing a pleasure in its merits. It is, really, a contribution to
American literature, recording in a generous spirit, and with
lively truth, the pulsations in one great centre of the national
existence. It is equally valuable to us and to those on the
other side of the world. There is a fine humanity in the
sketches of character, among which we would mention with
especial pleasure, those of Julia, and Macdonald Clarke. The
writer never loses sight of the hopes and needs of all men,
while she faithfully winnows grain for herself from the chaff of
every day, and grows in love and trust, in proportion with her
growth in knowledge.
The Present. Nos. 1-6. Edited by W. H. CHANNING.
MR. CHANNING's Present is a valiant and vivacious journal,
and has no superior in the purity and elevation of its tone, and
in the courage of its criticism. It has not yet expressed itself
with much distinctness as to the methods by which socialism is
to heal the old wounds of the public and private heart; but it
breathes the air of heaven, and we wish it a million readers.
President Hopkins's Address before the Society of Alumni of
Williams College, August, 1843.
We have read with great pleasure this earnest and manly dis-
course, which has more heart in it than any literary oration we
remember. No person will begin the address, without reading
it through, and none will read it, without conceiving an affection-
ate interest in Williams College.


408
(Jan.
Critical Notices
Deutsche Schnellpost.
This paper, published in the German language twice a
week in New York, we have read for several months with
great advantage, and can warmly recommend it to our readers.
It contains, besides its lively feuilletons, a good correspondence
from Paris, and, mainly, very well selected paragraphs from all
the German newspapers, communicating important news not
found in any other American paper, from the interior of the
continent of Europe. It is edited with great judgment by
Eichthal and Bernhard ; and E. P. Peabody, 13 West street, is
their agent in Boston.


THE DI A L.
VOL. IV.
APRIL, 1844.
No. IV.
IMMANUEL KANT.
It is a common remark, that the most characteristic fea-
ture of modern thought is its subjectiveness. In the natural
reaction which followed the dogmatism and formalism, the
ultra objectiveness of the preceding period, the confidence
of the mind in all authorities and all affirmatives, was se-
verely shaken; and a contest ensued between Skepticism,
on the one hand, and the abiding instinct of Existence in
the human mind, on the other, which turned the attention
of all philosophers to the foundation and principles of our
knowledge.
Modern speculation, therefore, has returned to the fun-
damental problem of human science; and asks, first of all,
“Can we know anything?” To this question, the com-
mon man readily answers in the affirmative ; and if asked
how he knows it is so, refers to the actual knowledge which
we have of the outward world. He has a head on his
shoulders; the sun is shining; or the like, — to which
he expects your ready assent.
In this affirmation, as in those systems of metaphysics
which, like the Common Sense philosophy, &c., consist of
careful statements of the convictions of the vulgar* con-
sciousness, — we see the original prejudice of the human
mind, that something exists : the unshapen and unsyl-
labled Fact (including all other facts) of the Conscious-
ness, — sometimes lost sight of for a moment, but never
permanently shaken off. The universality of this preju-
dice assures us that it encloses a vital truth, and demands
* I use the word vulgar in its strict sense, as signifying the natural as
opposed to the philosophical consciousness.
VOL. IV. NO. IV.
52


410
(April,
Immanuel Kant.
explanation at the hands of the philosopher. Reduced
to its strict terms, the assertion of the vulgar consciousness
amounts to nothing more than this. “I am aware of
phenomena.” In this sense we see the correctness (from
this point of view) of Locke's principle, that we derive all
our ideas from sensation and reflection. For he is evidently
speaking only of our perceptions of phenomena, of which
we can be aware only in consequence of two actions, — in
one of which we are passive, and recipient of impres-
sions — Sensation :- in the other, active and creative,
Reflection, the grasping of the object by the mind.
Neither the blind man nor the insane behold the blue sky;
the former because he cannot see the latter because he
cannot comprehend it.
But we cannot rest long contented with the popular solu-
tion of the problem ; - but admitting all it asserts, we ask
farther :- Whether this, after all, touches the point in
question ? Whether our being aware of phenomena, proves
that we have any actual objective Knowledge. Plainly it
does not necessarily ; for a phenomenon is not any fact itself,
but the appearance of a fact under certain relations; and
these relations being accidental and varying, the same fact
may very well appear in different and even antagonist phe-
nomena, - as the same degree of caloric may appear warm
to one man, and cold to another. Here we may easily see
the origin of Berkleyism ; for, starting with the tacit as-
sumption that we can know nothing but phenomena, and
soon finding out the superficial and accidental nature of phe-
nomena in themselves, we naturally transfer this character
to our knowledge. The same idea is typified in the Hindoo
doctrine of Maya, the delusive Goddess of Phenomena.
And even if we were willing to receive phenomena as
facts, still this would not bring us much farther; for they
would still be mere detached existences, unrelated except
by accidental position, and consequently we could not rea-
son from one to the other, nor even classify them, without
at the same time acknowledging the accidental nature of
our classification. This is the skepticism of Hume, - the
natural consequence of Locke's philosophy.
The general dismay and resistance with which Hume's
doctrine was received by his contemporaries, is attributable
to its peculiar excellence as an expression of the thought


1844.)
411
Immanuel Kant.
of his age. So keen was the unconscious feeling of the
correctness of the results at which he had arrived from the
general data, and so violent the resistance against these re-
sults of the inmost nature of man, that a convulsion was
produced which opened new depths in the human con-
sciousness. In Hume the national mind of Great Britain
may be said to have uttered itself for once, though it si-
lenced its own rational voice forthwith by tumults of inane
babble. But the question which Hume had put, in a man-
ner so direct and manly, had to be answered somewhere;
and it was answered in the “Critical Philosophy."
" It was the hint given by David Hume," says Kant,*
“ which many years ago waked me from my dogmatic
slumbers, and gave quite another direction to my researches
in the field of speculative philosophy." Hume had clearly
shown, that in the instance of the idea of Cause and Effect,
the phenomenon which we call the Cause does not of itself
involve the conception of the subsequent phenomenon
which we call the Effect, and he concluded from this that
their connection is empirical and imaginary ; which, from
Locke's point of view, is evidently the case. Herein is
contained the rudiment of the idea developed by Kant,
which we are about to examine, namely, — that of anything
essentially foreign to our mind, an absolute object, we could
have no objective knowledge. A feeling of the imperious
necessity with which the two conceptions of Cause and
Effect are seen in every case to be united, led Kant to
perceive that their union must depend upon some law of our
mind. For their necessary connection could not be de-
duced from experience, which gives only probability, -never
the universal and invariable feeling of necessity, which is the
evidence of certain knowledge ; and beyond experience
we have no source of knowledge except the mind itself.
This led him to make a critical review of the conscious-
ness, a priori, - or, as he calls it, a Critique of the Pure
Reason.
In this review he postulates nothing more than the uni-
versally admitted proposition above mentioned, — the com-
mon perception of phenomena, which he calls Experience;
and seeks, according to the principle above hinted at, to
* Prolegomena zu jed. kunft. Metaphys. Vorr. p. 13.


412
[April,
Immanuel Kant.
discover, amid the ever varying shadow-dance of phenom-
ena, something constant and necessary : — for this evi-
dently must be the character of all the elements of true
knowledge.
But phenomena, as we have already seen, do not claim
to be things, themselves — but only appearances; that is,
impressions on our minds. Hence we cannot pretend to
say whether phenomena have any existence at all, out of
our perception, or not, without leaving the ground to which
we are restricted by our postulate. Leaving untouched,
therefore, the question as to the objective existence of out-
ward things, Kant finds that every phenomenon is presented
to the mind as occupying a portion of time or space. All
our perceptions of material objects have extension, either
as duration or as size.*
The universality and necessity of these attributes show
that they depend upon certain laws; laws, however, not of
the object, since in phenomena we have no object, but only
subjective impressions:— laws therefore of the subject of
the mind in its relation to phenomena ; — or, as Kant styles
it, the Understanding.
Having thus discovered the two original and necessary forms
under which the mind perceives material objects, Kant en-
deavored to complete a Natural History of the Understand-
ing, by drawing up a table of its other laws or forms, which
he calls the Categories, and reduces to several classes.
But herein he does not confine himself to the legitimate
province of the philosopher, the elucidation of obscure
facts of consciousness, but casts about among empirical
perceptions, and endeavors to classify them, a posteriori ;
thus introducing an empirical element into his Critique.
His table of categories is consequently both incomplete
and redundant.
* It must be kept in mind, that the necessity of the laws of Time and
Space does not depend upon invariable experience (which can never
give certainty, but only strong probability), but upon our distinct con-
sciousness that, independent of these laws, phenomena (with which alone
is our present concern) could not exist. Thus, supposing that all bodies
appeared to us of a red color, all our experience might bear witness that
this was the constant attribute of extended surfaces; but though this
might induce us to surmise some necessity in the case, still there would
be no essential difficulty in separating the notion of red from our con-
ception of body. But a body which does not occupy a portion of space,
is to us a nonentity.


1844.]
413
Immanuel Kant.
From this survey of the Understanding, it is evident that
our experience of material objects is subject in Form to
certain laws. The subject-matter of phenomena is of
course empirical, being out of the reach of the Understand-
ing, and must be supplied by Experience. Of material
objects, therefore, we can know a priori only the laws of
possible experience.
Thus far our attention has been occupied exclusively
with the examination of the mind in its relations to phe-
nomena. Of course our only concern has been with the
subjective forms of phenomena (as being all that we can
know with certainty about them), neglecting the question
as to whether we can know anything in its objectivity, or
essential existence. Our inquiry has been into the How,
not into the What, of our knowledge of material objects.
The latter question, however, is vastly the more interest-
ing, since it is this in fact to which the original, instinctive
belief in Existence, points. This, therefore, is the all-
important inquiry.
In seeking to go behind Phenomena, we quit the sphere
of the Understanding, and come into the region of the
Pure Reason, which has to do only with Fact and Essence,
neglecting entirely Phenomena and Accident. The affir-
mations of the Pure Reason, Kant calls the Transcendental
Ideas, since they transcend the Understanding and its per-
ceptions; and he divides them into three classes, according
as they affirm the existence: 1. Of the I, or Soul, — Psy-
chological; 2. Of the Not-I, or Nature, -- Cosmological;
3. Of the Supreme Being, — Theological. This division
however is empirical, and all the Transcendental Ideas may
be reduced to one, — the affirmation that something is.
Kant proceeds to examine the results arrived at by the Pure
Reason, and finds that in every instance in which we at-
tempt to derive objective knowledge from them, a contra-
diction is produced between them and the laws of the
Understanding. This he calls the Antinomianism of the
Pure Reason. Now all objects, according to him, can be
perceived only according to the laws of the Understanding;
therefore the results of the Pure Reason, as far as they
claim objective or theoretical application, must be errone-
ous. Their only value, accordingly, is subjective (practical).
Here it seems, at first sight, as if Kant had fallen into


414
(April,
Immanuel Kant.
the error of confounding the perceptions of the Pure Rea-
son with those of the Understanding; or of confining our
knowledge to mere sensuous knowledge. And it appears
as if he might have pursued, in spiritual phenomena, a
course parallel to that adopted in the examination of sen-
suous perceptions. Indeed, Kant's instinctive Realism over-
powers his system in many particulars. As, for instance,
in his allowing to the Pure Reason a regulative use, even
in matters of theory; and in fact in his whole Practical
Philosophy, which leaves the practical authority of the
Pure Reason entirely unexplained.
But the errors of a man like Kant do not lie so near the
surface. An examination of the nature of the Reason, will
show us what he was (unconsciously) aiming at in his sepa-
ration of Theoretical and Practical Philosophy.
If we consider the Reason (as Kant considered it, and
as the most still consider it,) as a faculty of perception of
outward facts — an organon for acquiring knowledge of the
Not-I, - it is evident that we can know (as in the case of
the Understanding) only its subjective Forms, and we cannot
depend on its results, since it can give us no certainty.
For having, in this case, no control over its object, the sub-
ject-matter of its perceptions will of course be entirely
accidental, as far as the Reason is concerned, and we
shall again find ourselves cheated of the reality of our
Knowledge, and presented with the empty shells instead.
In this event it is of little consequence whether these
merely subjective Forms be those of the Understanding or
not, they must at all events be analogous to all intents
and purposes.
Kant perceived, however, that the Transcendental Ideas,
contrary to the perceptions of the Understanding, claim to
include both Form and subject-matter ; which subject-mat-
ter he could not place out of the Reason, since this would be
virtually destroying it, but placing it in the Reason, he
thought the destruction of its objectivity the necessary
consequence. The contest between this result of his iron
logic and the dictates of his realistic instinct, produced a
puzzle which he thought (not unnaturally) insurmountable.
His adherence to his system of course deprives his Prac-
tical Philosophy of its fundamental principle, and rendered
it necessary for him in all cases to postulate precisely that


1844.)
415
Life in the Woods.
which it is the duty of Philosophy to explain, — thus in his
Ethics, Law, &c.
His main principle, however, which he so courageously
and philosophically upholds throughout — that we can know
nothing out of ourselves, - contains the leading idea of
Modern Philosophy; and to him belongs the praise of hav-
ing been the first to bring it into distinct consciousness.
LIFE IN THE WOODS.
6 Here shall he see
No enemy
But winter and rougb weather."
SHAKSPEARE.
That must be a very pleasant life indeed, wherein no
enemy shall appear who cannot be easily subdued by a
strong arm and an axe. Yet it seems to have been an
enemy no more potent which drove men from free life
in the woods, to the shackles of a closer congregation.
It is the fashion to speak of the woodland life, as savage,
barbarous, and brutal; and of the housed life, either in
feudal castle or trading city, as refined, polished, and ele-
vated. It might not be altogether wasted time to inquire
whether this conclusion stands upon a true foundation or
not. So many errors pass current as truths, that one may
be not illiberally induced to investigate such a question,
though it be one that the stricter student will deem of
minor morality. Of such small questions, much that
is of mighty import is not unfequently constructed.
That cosmogony which affirms for man the highest
origin, represents him in his pristine creation as contra-
vening his Creator's will, and in the very first generation,
the very first vital act, as quarrelling with, and murdering
his brother. If this be literally true of the external man,
as it is now undoubtedly a true signature of operations in
the human soul, the first wigwam was probably erected
more as a defence from the assaults of man against his


416
[April,
Life in the Woods.
of human of power in some forced on man
brother, than from the assaults of uncongenial weather.
When peace reigns in every human bosom, the free man
may wander for food and for repose to whatever latitude
the season shall render propitious to his feelings and his
wants. The thought of erecting a house grew not out
of human necessity so much as out of human rapacity.
The love of power in some assailant, rather than the love
of art in some pacific being, forced on man the utility of
a house for his protection, while in a state of repose. It
at least defended him from too sudden a surprise, if it did
not wholly protect him. The inclemency of a stronger
brother, more than the inclemency of the weather, gener-
ated the thought of a stockade.
Passing over this consideration, let us contemplate the
sylvan man in his native state, let us compare him with the
civilian, and see to which the superiority must be awarded,
both as respects nature and conditions. Behold, what it is
difficult for us to imagine, an individual wholly free from
the diseases consequent upon luxury and debauchery, and
subject only to the little incidental ills of the exhilarating
chase. Conceive of one to whom hereditary or chronic
disease is unknown, to whom catarrh, and cough, and
palsying apprehension of a cold never are disturbances.
He walks erect, with elastic, almost bounding, step, expan-
ded and uncovered chest, and limbs untrammelled by the
ligatures of fashion. Health, strength, and agility, com-
bined with an unchecked reliance on their continuance,
are a living fund of joy, wonderfully contrasting with the
disease, weakness, and imbecility of modern refinement.
Every sense in the primitive forester's frame is integrally
preserved. He holds an immediate intercourse with
nature herself, or at least by his unerring senses and the
undeviating objects in nature, he is enabled intuitively to
read off the living volume as it lies open and unpolluted
before him. By mere sight and smell, he is at once in-
ducted into a knowledge of the essential properties of
plants, and can without experience, foretel their operations
on the human system, as unerringly as the native sheep
can select its suitable food, or the untamed wood-dove,
can without schooling, essay a winged journey.
If after long labor and close study, the civic student
knows something concerning nature from his books and


1844.)
417
Life in the Woods.
pictures, the sylvan student knows much of her and her
laws before the record of book or graver was constructed.
He is as a mother who knows of maternity, and a mother's
feelings in a living and soul-participating manner, antece-
dent to all external observation, while the college student
is comparable to the obstetric physician, who compiles a
book from external observation only, and writes of feelings
he never felt, and of experiences he never did or can ex-
perience.
The sylvan is present at the very fountain head, living
in and with the works, productions, and operations which
will, by and by, be recorded; the civilian is acquainted
only with the record. The one is witness to the vital
spring and birth of nature's offspring; the other's studies
are comparable only to a poring over the parish register.
It is the boast of modern experimental philosophy, that
it has abandoned or overturned the Aristotelian method of
study by words, adopting that of studying things. But it
pursues its objects by means of crucibles, retorts, and bal-
ances, as deceptive, vague, and unsatisfactory as the stu-
dies they have superseded; for these, after all, stood as
near the moral source as modern science. Whereas the
pure, unsophisticated human body, is a retort, a test, far
surpassing all the instruments which the highest science
can boast. By the sylvan man all nature is affectionately
felt; by the civilized it is only intellectually scanned.
The warmth of life is characteristic of one; the coldness
of death the distinguishing mark of the other. Chymical
science, the great boast and wonder worker of our enlight-
ened age, cannot even discern those delicate differences
and lineaments in nature, which optics can reveal, and it
can do nothing in any department of nature, until the
object is reduced to its mineral state. In the grand and
noble field of life it is powerless. Vegetables and animals,
as such, in their living beauty are fruitlessly presented to
the chymist's skill. He has weights and measures, but
cannot compute living motion any more than he can fathom
moral emotion. He has testing apparatus, but no taste.
But our natural chymist only sees and knows such objects
in life and motion. With his unassisted eye, he perceives
varieties which the chymist never learns, and by an unviti-
ated palate, he detects in the living volume of nature the
VOL. IV. — No. iv,
53


418
[April,
Life in the Woods.
occult essential qualities of plants, which the last analy-
sis in the laboratory rarely or never can reveal. The
forms, odors, statures of plants, as they simply stand before
him, are types in the boundless volume of which the sci-
entific student seems ever destined to peruse merely the
title page. The eye, the nose, the palate, the touch, and
every sense is an inlet direct from the book of nature,
a first impression, which to the civilized student rarely
comes otherwise than at second hand. He must refer to
his printed authority, and his human classification, his en-
cyclopedia, his constructed circle of circumferential science;
while our nature-student has in himself the authority,
knows truly the real author, and feels himself to be at
the centre of science, of which the circumference lies
about him. “The unity of the Sciences,” the last pleas-
ing thought of labored skill, the key-stone with which
studious industry has at length crowned its self-wondrous
arch, is no novelty to the free soul. He never felt know-
ledge otherwise than as a unity; nature or natural objects
never were thus dissectively presented to him. He sees
objects analytically without doubt, as well as synthetically;
but always perhaps under both aspects at once, always in
their individual existence as well as united to an antece-
dent unity, the parent of them all.
For all the purposes of life, for all the utilities of his
life, the science of the forest man is complete. All the
wants which in such a life are generated, in the immediate
world about him, find their supplies. The pressure of
hunger, the needful clothing, even the ornaments which
he desires, with their tasteful forms, and superadded tints,
he obtains without difficulty or danger to himself or fellow
man. Not so is it with the wants and wishes generated in
civic life. These know no bounds, but expand with every
gratification; their victims at once boasting over their
expansion, and groaning over their denial. No sea or land
is unexplored to create new wants, or to supply excited
and extraneous appetites, and carrying with him to the
innocent and pure, disease and vice of the cruellest kind,
civilized man boasts the extension of his domain, the mul-
tiplication of his likeness.
A darker age presumes upon its false illumination, to
call antecedent ages dark. A busy, wandering, restless


1844.)
419
Life in the Woods.
civilization ventures from the point of its own worthless
activity, to pronounce the contented child of nature savage
and barbarous. Literally, perhaps, these epithets are
justly applied. If savage means a dweller in the wood,
and barbarian one who does not denude his chin of hair;
if the terms be taken to mean no more than these, there
would be clearly no greater injustice or condemnation in
them, than in calling one a civilian who dwells in a city.
But the design in using these words is to affirm that the
heights of mind, elevation of thought, purity in sentiment
are denied to man in one condition of life, and granted in
the other.
That those who are most ready to use these allusions
aspersively ever think about the matter, or are capable of
thinking very profoundly, may, until they feel more be-
nignly, very charitably be doubted. But there is sufficient
evidence on record to prove that the sublimest conceptions
have not been withheld from the mind of the North American
native, any more than from the highly taught sons of civil-
ization. A narrative not unworthy of Swedenborg, or
even of Plato, is reported in David Brainerd's Diary, kept
while he was a missionary among the natives of New
Jersey, about one hundred years ago. Of its correctness
there is very little room to doubt; since the recorder
mourns over it in every aspect, and that the seer could
have acquired it from any other person, there is no ground
whatever to suspect. It is given in these words: —
“What increases the aversion of the Indians to Christianity,
is the influence their powwows have upon them. These are
supposed to have a power of foretelling future events, of recov-
ering the sick, and of charming persons to death. And their
Spirit, in its various operations, seems to be a Satanical imita-
tion of the spirit of prophecy, that the church in early ages was
favored with.
“I have labored to gain some acquaintance with this affair,
and have for that end consulted the man mentioned in my
journal, of the 9th of May, who since his conversion to Chris-
tianity has endeavored to give me the best intelligence he could
of this matter. But it seems to be such a mystery of iniquity,
that I cannot well understand it, and so far as I can learn, he
himself has not any clear notions of the thing, now his spirit
of divination is gone from him. However, the manner in
which he says he obtained this spirit, was, he was admitted into


420
[April,
Life in the Woods.
the presence of a great man who informed him that he loved,
pitied, and desired to do him good. It was not in this world
that he saw the great man, but in a world above at a vast dis-
tance from this. The great man, he says, was clothed with
the day; yea, with the brightest day he ever saw, a day of
many years, yea of everlasting continuance! This whole
world, he says, was drawn upon him, so that in him the earth
and all things in it might be seen. I asked him if rocks, moun.
tains, and seas were drawn upon, or appeared in him. He
replied, that every thing that was beautiful and lovely in the
earth was upon him, and might be seen by looking on him,
as well as if one was on the earth to take a view of them
there. By the side of the great man, he said, stood his shadow
or spirit. This shadow, he says, was as lovely as the man him-
self, and filled all places, and was most agreeable as well as
wonderful to him.
“Here, he says, he tarried some time, and was unspeakably
entertained and delighted with a view of the great man, of his
shadow or spirit, and of all things in him. And what is most
of all astonishing, he imagined all this to have passed before
he was born. He never had been, he says, in this world at
that time. And what confirms him in the belief of this, is,
that the great man told him he must come down to earth, be born
of such a woman, meet with such and such things, and in
particular, that he should once in his life be guilty of murder.
At this he was displeased, and told the great man he would
never murder. But the great man replied, 'I have said it, and
it shall be so.' Which has accordingly happened. At this
time, he says, the great man asked him what he would choose
in life. He replied, first to be a hunter, and afterwards to be a
powwow or diviner. Whereupon the great man told him he
should have what he desired, and that his shadow should go
along with him down to earth, and be with him forever. There
were, he says, all this time no words spoken between them.
The conference was not carried on by any human language,
but they had a kind of mental intelligence of each other's
thoughts. After this, he says, he saw the great man no more;
but supposes he came down to earth to be born, but the spirit
or shadow of the great man still attended him, and ever after
continued to appear to him in dreams, and other ways, until he
felt the power of God's word upon his heart, since which it has
entirely left him.
“There were some times when this spirit came upon him in a
special manner, and he was full of what he saw in the great
man; and then, he says, he was all light, and not only light
himself, but it was light all around him, so that he could see


1844.]
421
Life in the Woods.
through men, and know the thoughts of their hearts. These
depths of Satan I leave to others to fathom, and do not know
what ideas to affix to such terms, nor can guess what concep-
tions of things these creatures have at the times when they call
themselves all light.” — p. 204.
So similar are some of these sentiments, and so like are
some of these words to those of Swedenborg and Words-
worth, that in the obscurity of time they might be attributed
to these sources. But as our record is dated three fourths
of a century before one, and many years before the other
authority, such hypothesis is manifestiy untenable; but the
converse is rather to be maintained.
In a previous passage the zealous Brainerd remarks.
“I find that in antient times, before the coming of the white
people, some supposed there were four invisible powers, who
presided over the four corners of the earth. Others imagined
the Sun to be the only deity, and that all things were made by
him. Others at the same time having a confused notion of a
certain body or fountain of deity, somewhat like the anima
mundi ; so frequently mentioned by the more learned antient
heathens, diffusing itself to various animals, and even to inani-
mate things, making them the immediate authors of good to
certain persons.”
When we find so unwilling a witness bearing satisfactory
testimony to the spontaneous generation of the most
profound and subtile thoughts, which have ever entered
the human soul, filling, in so vivid a manner, that of the
unschooled savage, how can we deny the presence of that
mental liſe and quickness, which as polished and civilized
beings we delight to boast. To these red men, and to all
the white who came into connexion with them, the names
and works and thoughts of Behmen the profound, or of
Plato the elegant, were alike unknown. To these wilds
their renown had not then travelled, and even now they
are unpopular and obscure authors. Had it indeed been
otherwise, and could it be proved that such sentiments
were the results of outward lessons, it would prove no less
satisfactorily to what subtlety of thought the native mind
could ascend; even beyond that of the missionary teacher
having St. John's mystic gospel in his hand. For I must
not suppose that those whom I now address, like Brainerd,
“cannot even guess what conceptions these creatures have


422
Life in the Woods.
(April,
at the time they call themselves all light," seeing that we
know there “is a true light, which lighteth every man who
cometh into the world.”
No wonder need be then excited in our minds, when we
occasionally hear of the young spirit, to whom the cost-
liest education has been afforded, and before whom the
whole world invitingly lies as a beautiful unexplored gar-
den, every path free to his foot, turning, after a little ex-
perience, his course from the city towards the woods. The
experiment of a true wilderness life by a white person must,
however, be very rare. He is not born for it; he is not
natured for it. He lacks the essential qualities as well as
the physical substance for such a life, and the notion of
entering on it must be considered merely an interesting
dream. Some amalgamation may, however, be possible;
and to unite the advantages of the two modes has doubt-
less been the aim of many. Even now we hear of some
individuals, on whom the world might hopefully rely to be-
come eminent even amongst the worthy, betaking them-
selves from the busy haunts of men to a more select and
secluded life.
But will they succeed in wrestling against their increased
natural needs, and their remaining civic wants, diminished
as these may be ? On trial, as on due consideration, it
will be found that this is not a very promising course. By
the time the hut is built, the rudest furniture constructed,
the wood chopped, the fire burning, the bread grown and
prepared, the whole time will be exhausted, and no inter-
val remain for comfortably clothing the body, for expansion
in art, or for recreation by the book or pen. This but
faintly promises to be the mode, by which the simple and
pure in heart shall escape the pressures and burdens, which
prevent the full and happy development of the soul.
Of those who have sought a recluse life on a religious
basis, it has been remarked that solitude is a state suitable
only to the best or the worst. The average cast of hu-
manity cannot be much benefitted by it. It is not a con-
dition in which human beings can be brought into the
world, and it is rarely a condition in which they should
attempt to remain in it. The austerities pertaining to
silence and solitude may improve the very bad ; they may
leave uninjured the very good ; but such as are in the


1844.]
423
Life in the Woods.
process of improvement, an association of some kind seems
more suitable, as it is evidently more natural. It is natural,
not only in the sense of harmony with the humane affec-
tions, which out of social intimacy must painfully wither,
but also it is natural to the interior or spirit life. The
highest virtue can be promoted by friendship and fellow-
ship. If even God himself may have a favorite disciple
upon whose bosom he can recline; the spiritually minded
surely cannot commit a very great error in adopting the
aid of co-support, when they are so fortunate as to find it,
or still more fortunate to be able to bestow it.
No mistake could be more evident than that of assuming
that the child of nature lives an isolate life. On the con-
trary, he moves in a circle much more social than modern
cities can boast. The tribe is a better type of the univer-
sal family than the city, where the inhabitants of the same
street are frequently unknown to each other after dwelling
many years side by side. Again, so little of the love-destroy-
ing notion of property enters into this free man's scheme,
that the universal idea is not erased. He is not an isolated
but a dispersive being. He lives not alone ; he merely
occupies a large space. He does not estimate his strength,
his value, or his happiness by the density of the population,
but rather by its rarity. In the spare civic statistics of
forty persons to the square mile, he is oppressed by the
crowd. He requires abundant supplies of vital air, and
the atmosphere is corrupted for him long before the white
man's neighborhood arrives at a comfortable point. The
pure oxygen which the Creator provides is suitable to the
red man, while the white is only happy in steam, or some
other self-generated atmosphere. By union of numbers,
by condensation into a phalanx, the white man conquers
the red, whom singly he could never subdue. By a new
and superior phalanx, constructed altogether on a different
basis, it is probably destined that the present civilized in-
stitutions shall be superseded, and the new and superior
nature in man receive a new and superior development.
This is in fact the point to which all our endeavors
must converge. Poetic wanderings will not more rectify
us than trading conversations. And on calm considera-
tion, unswayed by those paradoxes which ingenious men
have from time to time constructed concerning the beauti-


424
Life in the Woods.
(April,
ful liberty of the sylvan life, and to which imaginations we
have on this occasion perhaps too strongly tended, have we
not to confess that one is as distant from true life as the
other? They both lie on the same circumference. They
are but segments of one circle, struck by the compasses of
human selfishness at too great a distance from the true
centre. There does not appear to have been any true
inward progress by the change from the woods to the
town ; if indeed men ever were so changed, and it be not
the fact that these two lives belong to two distinct races,
each severally fitted by organization for its respective mode
of liſe; which seems the truer hypothesis.
Conceding civilization to be some improvement in social
arrangements, while we assert that it secures no vital pro-
gress to the soul, we have to conclude that it is our busi-
ness and our duty to look in some other, some new
direction. It is evidently not by a new circumferential
disposition of humanity, that it will be brought into new
vital relations. The outward conditions may be more or
less favorable to the placing of each individual soul in
a position to receive the higher influences, and to live the
higher life; but such conditions are scarcely within the
scope of any scientific predictions. They seem to be in
all cases as immediately within the hands of the highest
source of good, as the good itself of which the human soul
is by such conditions brought to be the recipient. Or, if
there be any conditioning required, it is not to be sought
in persons, events, or things without and about man, so
much as in himself. The critical event in the career of
any human soul, which shall open it to the highest con-
sciousness, and subject it to the highest, and tenderest,
and loveliest graces can never be foretold. The uninitiate
spectator can scarcely believe the importance of the occa-
sion when it is affirmed. Actions of the most ordinary
kind, but performed by some particular person ; events of
apparently the lightest character, yet administered by provi-
dence through some delicate human relationship, often
suffice to produce that sacred effect, which results from the
feeling that every door of human sympathy is closed against
us. It is in this sad hour; it is in such sacred mood of
mind ; that the holy flame descends upon the altar of the
human bosom ; after which the outward conditions of life


1844.]
425
The Emigrants.
in very deed become a matter of light importance.
Thenceforward riches or poverty, cities or woods, associa-
tion or isolation or dispersion, nay even health and sick-
ness dwindle into films and shadows, scarcely noticeable
by the regenerate soul.
To view all things as male and female is a favorite habit
of many acute minds; and to such it may appear, that the
forest and civilized lives are the male and female, from
whose marriage an offspring shall result more conducive to
human bliss. But it is difficult to conceive how corrupt
parents shall have pure progeny, until their own corruption
be annulled. They are rather to be estimated both as
males. And, as in the olden history, the tiller of the
ground is again destined to destroy the keeper of sheep,
the hunter of deer.
C. L.
THE EMIGRANTS.
FROM THE GERMAN OF FREILIGRATH. BY CHARLES T. BROOKS.
I CANNOT take my eyes away
From you, ye busy, bustling band !
Your little all to see you lay
Each in the waiting seaman's hand.
Ye men that from your necks let down
Your heavy baskets to the earth,
Of bread from German corn baked brown
By German wives on German hearth.
And you, with braided tresses neat,
Black-Forest maidens, lithe and brown,
How careful, on the stoop's green seat,
You set your pails and pitchers down.
Ah, oft have home's cool shaded tanks
These pails and pitchers filled for you ;
On far Missouri's silent banks
Shall these the scenes of home renew :
VOL. IV. —NO. iv.
54


426
(April,
The Emigrants.
The stone-rimmed fount in village-street,
Where oft ye stooped to chat and draw,
The hearth and each familiar seat,
The pictured tiles your childhood saw.
Soon, in the distant, wooded West,
Shall loghouse-walls therewith be graced ;
Soon many a tired, tawny guest
Shall sweet refreshment from them taste.
From them shall drink the Cherokee,
Worn from the hot and dusty chase;
Nor more from German vintage ye
Shall bear them home in leaf-crowned grace.
Oh, say, why seek ye other lands?
The Neckar's vale hath wine and corn;
Full of dark firs the Schwarzwald stands;
In Spessart rings the Alpherd's horn.
Ah! in strange forests ye shall yearn
For the green mountains of your home!
To Deutschland's yellow wheatfields turn,
In spirit o'er her vinehills roam !
How will the forms of days grown pale
In golden dreams float softly by,
Like some wild legendary tale
Before fond memory's moistened eye.
The boatman calls; - Go hence in peace !
God bless you, man and wife and sire !
Bless all your fields with rich increase,
And crown each faithful heart's desire !


1844.)
427
Youth of the Poet and the Painter.
THE YOUTH OF THE POET AND THE PAINTER.
[Continued from p. 284 of last Number.]
LETTER XIV.
REBECCA ASHFORD TO EDWARD ASHFORD.
My Dear Son,
Now you have left college, let us think no more about
it. I doubt not that you did right, if the place was so
very disagreeable to you. I never, as you know, have
meant to force you; and if you had not left so suddenly,
without consulting me on the subject, it is very likely I
should not have felt so much about it. It was the uncer-
tainty connected with your movements that troubled me,
and led me to write you, I dare say, letters that my sober
moments might not sanction. However, let us say nothing
more about college. I hope you will pursue your studies,
especially the modern languages, — these are indispensable,
as your father used to say, to a merchant or professional
man. If you now return, and Fanny says every time a
stage drives by, “ There comes Neddy," you can easily
carry out your studies by the aid of good masters here,
even if you entered a store at once, as I trust you will.
Though I had once supposed you might be a lawyer, I
should still not object to your becoming a merchant, and
in some conversation I had with Mr. Penny the other day,
he said, he thought he could find you a place immediately.
I should not expect, that if you entered the counting-room
on your return, you would find it beneficial to devote your
whole time to mercantile occupations, but only a part of
each day; the remainder you could devote to exercise, on
foot, or in the saddle. I have just purchased a saddle-
horse, who has a very easy gait, and, as you remember,
there are many fine drives about Doughnut. Your old
room has been refitted, the coal-grate taken out, and a
large, convenient wood fire-place made of it. I have put
in a red carpet, and made a red sofa-spread; and put in
some curtains of the same color; I think it will have a
pleasant effect in winter. We have had a new book-case


428
[April,
Youth of the Poet and the Painter.
made, and put in the place of the old one, with drawers
for papers and curiosities, underneath the shelves. Your
books preserve their old order. I feel confident we shall
pass a pleasant winter. It is getting late now and cold,
and it will be necessary for you to provide yourself with
some thicker stockings perhaps; I send with this, a bun-
dle also containing the rest of your flannel waiscoats. You
must pay particular attention to guarding your throat when
you are abroad, as you may bring on another attack of
the bronchitis, which troubled you so much two winters
ago. The season, so far, has been healthy with us, and
your sister is in good condition. I shall be glad to know
when you are coming, and always delighted to get a line
from you, when you feel like writing. Fanny sends her
best love.
Your affectionate mother,
REBECCA ASHFORD.
LETTER XV.
FRANCIS PENNY TO EDWARD ASHFORD.
Doughnut.
MY DEAR SIR,
In a conversation I had the pleasure to have with Mrs.
Ashford, some days since, she mentioned accidentally, I
think, the fact that you had left college, and were about to
pursue some branch of occupation unconnected with the
liberal professions. I therefore took the liberty of men-
tioning to Mrs. Ashford, that if your inclination tended to
entering upon the duties of a merchant, I should be much
gratified to exert myself personally in your behalf. I have
made several inquiries, and discovered a situation in the
Messrs. Swippins' Wholesale Grocery Concern. This, it
occurs to me, would generally be considered an eligible
situation.
It is within my power to speak the more confidently
upon this subject, because I formerly carried on a business
of this description myself. At first, a person who had not
been used to business confinement, would perhaps find his
time a little too much taken up with the affairs of the


1844.)
429
Youth of the Poet and the Painter.
Concern, but I think, from a little statement which I will
make, of what would be required the first two years, you
will not deem it too severe a privation, when it is consid-
ered how great gain will result from these two years. It is
my opinion, that the benefits would more than outweigh
the sacrifice, even if it was heavier.
You would, during the first year, be required to sweep
the store before breakfast, make the fires, and at noon, secure
an early meal, by which means you would be present while
the clerks and partners were at their dinners, and in the
evening remain till a little after dark, and close the store.
During the morning, you would either be engaged in the
clerk's room copying letters, or employed in the store-room,
or at some vessel checking the cargo; yet this latter duty
would subject you to no confinement, as, on the contrary,
it is universally performed in the open air. Copying letters
might frequently occupy you for six hours during the day,
but as it would be the means of education, this brief time
would pass agreeably.
Emanuel Swippins, Esq., the head of the firm, is the
father of the Misses Swippins, friends I think of your
family, and to my knowledge very affable, cheerful young
people. By forming an acquaintance with Mr. Swippins,
you would secure an introduction to the best mercantile
houses in Doughnut. Mr. Swippins's principal partner is
George Potlid, Esq., and the two other partners, Messrs
Muffins and Tweezy; they are all of them cultivated,
agreeable, fine-spirited persons, in whose society you would
find great knowledge of business, and those true refine-
ments which adorn and polish human existence. I have
written without Mrs. Ashford's knowledge, for which
pardon me.
Your most obliged servant,
FRANCIS PENNY.
LETTER XVI.
JAMES HOPE TO EDWARD ASHFORD.
Triflecut.
I have been glad to receive some verses from you, in
your late letters. Continue sending them, for I discover a


430
[April,
Youth of the Poet and the Painter.
new melody, and a completer finish in each new poem,
and the last I receive seems always the best. I notice
what you have said of Mathews Gray, in one of your
letters, but I think you would like him more than you
suspect, on a personal acquaintance. He has the power
of attaching others, through the medium of his intellect, no
less than his heart, and I believe he has never made a
friendship by which his friend has not been benefited. I
notice you have the general impression of his character;
like others, you have set him down for a critic. But he
only criticizes, to assist himself and others in getting a
better knowledge of the person, — never, for the mere pur-
pose of delivering an opinion. Gray takes more interest
in all those he hears of, or meets with, than any one I know,
and has a real pleasure in living in another, which his
faculty enables him fully to sustain. No one can pass a
few days in his society, without becoming impressed with
the extent and variety of his learning, and the depth of his
inquiries; he is with this, exempt from pedantry either in
book-studies, or affection; he never presses himself into
the service of another, but with childlike enthusiasm opens
his heart and mind, when the sympathy is demanded.
I have at length concluded that I will go abroad, and
pass a year or two, not that I have exhausted the wells of
thought in my own country, but because I am in a condi-
tion to go, and must take the time as I find it. My health
has not been as good as usual this autumn, and I am ad-
vised to spend the next winter on the continent of Europe.
I shall regret leaving you, yet must trust to the imperfect
medium of letters, to keep our knowledge of one another
fresh, and will do my part in sending you whatever I find
of any importance, as far as I can speak of it with any
satisfaction to myself. In the mean time, if it would be
agreeable to you, I will desire Gray to send a word occa-
sionally from his retreat.
Foreign travel has become so much a matter of course
with our American youth, that it seems now no more than
spending a month at the Falls, or a winter at the South.
I regard it however of more importance to the artist, than
the general man of letters, if we learn whatever our own
collections can teach, before we cross the ocean. There
is a certain period, to which we each of us reach, when we


1844.)
431
Youth of the Poet and the Painter.
have satisfied our desires on one side, and ask for a new
life, to give our thoughts a new direction, and I seem to
have arrived there. I am now in need of better pictures,
than I can see about me here, and after so much of this
new country, I long to fly and compare it with the antique.
I aim to raise my present standard of beauty by higher
models, and to scrutinize myself in the mirrors of better
artists. I feel that if my taste merits some regard for its
delicacy, it aspires to scale the lofty summits of purer art;
I am fearful of degenerating into a half-formed amateur, if
I do not seek after the absolutely best productions which
remain. My opportunities may have been as good as I
could secure in America, but I know that Florence or Rome
contains ten times more than I can find here, if I spent a
lifetime in the search. How can I learn anything of
Michael, Raphael, Titian, Claude, or any of the masters, in
this country!
And yet I fear to go. Perhaps when I look upon the
really sublime works, I shall turn away in despair, and
resolve never again to aspire to be an artist. I have seen
with wonder our second-rate artists flocking to Italy, and
after copying a few pictures, return, still carrying out their
petty imitations; I had thought they would have been
shamed into silence, by communing with what was so far
above them. I know their excuse, that they had a certain
department in which they could labor, and could content
themselves, if they did a little well, if they only limited
themselves, and bound their endeavors within the circle of
least diameter.
I feel it will be a crisis in my life, when I sit before those
magnificent works, which have held the worship of the
world captive for centuries; I shall enter the gallery with
trembling limbs. Yet I long for the trial. It is what I
have looked forward to so many years, that, of late, I think
it has worn so much on my spirits as to impair my health.
It might have been a happiness, if I could have rushed for-
ward as the mass of painters, and, upon finishing some tiny
bijou, considered myself the best of artists ; yet, if a happi-
ness, it is a low pleasure, and I feel it would be more noble to
sacrifice every lesser work, and not to call myself anything
before fully proving my powers. What a canker in the
breast it is to aspire so continually, yet accomplish nothing;


432
(April,
Youth of the Poet and the Painter.
and how many must have died of the unfulfilled desire to
create. Yet, we are ready to accept the pangs of disap-
pointment, sooner than the vacancy of those who never
wish to become masters. I can conceive of no position so
admirable, as that of the truly successful painter. His
glory comes in his lifetime, and follows upon the produc-
tion of his works. The first painter of an age stands
among his fellows a monument so lofty, that the crown
never darkens, but an eternal sun brightens the figure.
I shall not hurry from city to city, but pass half a year
at Rome, and as much time at Florence. With me, travel-
ling abroad never shines under the light of a pleasure
excursion. There are minor reasons, why I am desirous to
go; the change, the society, the civilization, will have their
relative importance. It is in the main a stern trial of my
right to be an artist, a period of study and starvation. I
feel I must go alone, and work out the problem by myself;
I must face the beauty alone, and seek no aid to enable me
to gain a footing. It is my intention to copy, for some
time, from the best pictures, and after I am thoroughly im-
bued with the best thoughts of others, try my own hand.
I know this subjects me to the danger of becoming an im-
itator. I may adopt too much of the style which pleases
me best, and when I paint my own picture, not recognise
the copyist. It is necessary I should be strong enough to
scrutinize my productions with the critic's eye, and how-
ever much others may differ from me, I can only satisfy
myself, as a critic of my own works. I have vibrated so
many years between being an artist, and no artist, that I
must cast the die myself. Perhaps I have not taken the
wisest path ; it is that only which can satisfy me.
Ever yours,
HOPE.
LETTER XVII.
MATHEWS GRAY TO JAMES HOPE.
Eaton.
I have written of late on the character and pursuits of
Edward. Your announcement that you are resolved to do


1844.)
433
Youth of the Poet and the Painter.
what you have long meditated, and to spend a year in
Europe, leads me to you. I hear the decision, on some ac-
counts, with regret, and especially as it is your purpose to
tread alone the fertile fields of transatlantic civilization.
You resemble Edward more than you think; and your
solitary pilgrimage will not differ, essentially, from his retreat
to Lovedale. It is what I might expect, from the differ-
ence in your characters, that you should seek the broad
land of art, while he lies beneath the oaks of the forest.
While I think Edward has chosen the right spot to make
the foundation of his education for a poet, it is my duty to
say that I would not have you leave America just yet.
You feel as keenly sensitive to disappointment, as a painter,
as he does as a poet ; but he retreats to nature alone, leav-
ing the verses of his brother rhymesters, while you will
enter the hotbed of art, and not only warm, but, perchance,
scorch yourself in the sun. As a painter, you are liable to
more difficulties, in succeeding, than he contends with;
and there is this difference in your positions, that Ed-
ward contends with himself, more than with others, while
you owe your defeats to an unappeasable ambition, not to
excel others, it is true, but to stand as high. Your charac-
ter, as a man, is more formed than his, while your devel-
opment as an artist remains much less certain. The total
beauty of a picture strikes us with far greater force than
the aggregate of a poem, and it occurs to me you are more
alive to your deficiencies in your art than he is in his.
Added to this, you will excuse me if I say I believe you
have too exacting a view of what you are bound to effect
as an artist, at present, and are unwilling to take the ben-
efits you should of right claim as student. You demand
an absolute perfection now, not indeed in whole works,
but in tendencies whereby you may elect for yourself to be
an artist. Neither will you allow us to give our opinion of
your merit, but accept only your own; and yet, in the case
of another, you are ready to admit that he cannot really
judge how good are his works.
I no more doubt that you were born a painter, than that
Edward was a poet; it grieves me to find how you ad-
here to your old notions, of going abroad and making a
trial, to decide for life, in the choice of your pursuit.
The pursuit was chosen for you by nature, before your
VOL. IV. —NO. IV.
55


434
(April,
Youth of the Poet and the Painter.
like every othem in the true he justly qu
birth, like every other man's. I would have you believe
my statement, for I am in the true position to see that
your power, as an artist, cannot be justly questioned.
Therefore resolve, having nearly completed the preliminary
studies for the world in general, and which no one regrets
mastering, to devote yourself exclusively to your own
affairs. Take your palette and canvass, and station your-
self among the fields and groves, and draw the spirit di-
rect from the springs of life. This is what Claude did,
what Salvator did, what every artist will do, if circumstan-
ces allow. Yours do allow it. You are mortgaged to no
other pursuit, your worldly means are ample, your health,
I doubt not, improvable, the moment you settle this ques-
tion with yourself. Fancy yourself a merchant, sitting at
your desk dealing in bills of exchange, and ciphering up
learned accounts from an elegant red lined check-book ;
fancy yourself circling in the old round of gain and opin-
ion, with dry and dusty money-venders ; you, who have
given ten years of life, each moment a diamond, to pre-
pare for the artist's studio; think how tedious, after the
first novelty had wore off; think of those long years of
repetition, in the same round; feel, what the retrospect of
ten years spent in such an arena would produce, what
anguish, what horror, what spasms of remorse ; a life
without creation, an existence without action. Then, I
say, take your palette and pencil, and retreat to the woods,
and there paint ten years for yourself, forgetting there
ever lived another painter. With what joy you would
trace a flexile landscape on your glowing canvass ; how
would your eyes live in the rich greens of the foliage, the
golden dyes of the clouds, and the soft, hazy tints of the
aerial distance; some shepherd driving home his flock in
this peaceful sunset, would be the poetical figure of your
repose. Neither would the heavy, beating storm coming
wild and ominous across the blue floor of the sea, smile
upon you the less; between the points of the two islands
yonder, the waves would leap along the horizon's line, a
herd of wild animals, while these stately rocks in your
foreground, with one pine keenly verdant hanging over
them, stand like simple wisdom; between your distance
and your feet, the shadows would shift and play, as every
wind sent a cloud over, and the surface of the sea spring


1844.)
435
Youth of the Poet and the Painter.
into life under the magnetic burden, and a shower of dia-
monds flit and glisten like fire-fies on the mirror. What
a new day every morning handed you, to enbalm it in
magic colors, and the cottage hearth would scatter its ruby
finish on the undried sketches, and make you taste the
sweets of your glazing to-morrow. After ten such years,
you would enter Italy, and not doff your hat to Claude or
Poussin.
M. G.
LETTER XVIII.
EDWARD ASHFORD TO JAMES HOPE.
Lovedale.
It will grieve me not to see you before you leave for
Europe ; and yet I fear, I could be of little service to you,
if you remained in America. I feel my barrenness of
thought and feeling more sensibly every day. I am con-
vinced more than ever, these are my trial years, when I
must go forth alone into the wilderness, and see if I have
any strength. Yet I am sure of some things, and have
nearly swept some corners of my heart, and trimmed the
lamps in my cave. At last, they have consented 10 leave
me in peace; I am to be no more troubled by my Uncle
Richard, and even my mother has said, she will never
more mention college. I will send you some further
leaves of my journal, as a parting gift.
E.
Come to me, cold wind of the late autumn, and rest
thy vexed spirit in my breast; I am cold as thou, yet love
the sun, and the deep warmth of rosy summer. I am not
like thee, for I cannot wander over mountain, and moor,
nor rattle the cottage-blinds, nor sing merrily in the locks
of the dry grass ; I am still and motionless. O give me
thy hurrying pinions, and we will sweep like the grey gulls
over the blue sea, and rock the little vessels, as they ride
at anchor near the coves of the shore, as we fly from
country to country. Then perhaps we shall come to some
· little island, where the roses bloom, and the sward is soft,


436
(April,
Youth of the Poet and the Painter.
and the clouds golden, and there we will sink into a sleep
so quiet, that life can never more awake us.
MORNING
Merrily on, merrily on,
Singing a song io the golden light,
We wander the arms of the air upon,
And mock the dull earth in our hurrying flight;
Over the hill where rises the moon,
Over the brook as it lispeth a tune,
Over the cottage with ivy around,
Where the flowers spring soft from the warm deep ground;
Under the shower of the sunny day,
Under the twilight's banners grey,
Through star and through cloud,
Through rain and through snow,
Through desert and crowd,
Through gladness and woe,
We pass with the dance of the lightning's beam,
We vanish like figures in memory's dream;
To-day perhaps was the last warm day of autumn, and
the sky was clear as a note of music. I lay upon a spot
of emerald grass, under the polished screen of oak-leaves,
which the frost has left to glisten over the dark mirror of
the stream. A sunny golden-rod moved stately in the
whisper of a little wind, and the violet aster, starry and
complete, softly swung in the southern breath. In this
little cottage, built by the trees and flowers, I summoned a
creature with dark hair and gentle smiles, willing to abide
through all the long years of time. All through the spring
and summer we should need no fire, except the sun, and
in autumn and winter, we could shelter ourselves in a wig.
wam. Those long winter evenings, I felt I should write
many poems, and sing them to the maiden. The snows
around could not chill' the hospitable flame that burnt
within, for it would be lit on the altar of affection. No
fear, no fatigue should enter this little dwelling, which
these sweet thoughts built, on the edge of the river. The
maiden with her pencil, would write the music of my verse.
into graceful figures. Life would pass so sweet and tran-
quil, never intruded upon by a passion or a care, and all


1844.)
437
Youth of the Poet and the Painter.
we coveted should be time, and even then be satisfied to
leave this pleasant fireside, when the soft voice of death
called us away together.
autely clou counten moonlite taste of ches mepose in nose aboved
I have seen many such pictures, yet how impossible to
believe I shall realize one of them. They are truly pic-
tures. If I were only a painter, and could give them color
and form, how happy a child I should be. Those maiden's
deep eyes; if I could only paint them, her clear forehead
and sweet trembling mouth. I see her sitting in my skiff,
gazing vacantly into the sky, wrapped in a shawl filled
with bright colors, her long hair streaming like moss about
her temples and cheeks, how much repose in her calm
face, and as I look at her, she catches my eye fixed on her
trance, and smiles like the taste of sweet wine. That wan-
dering, dreamy, moonlit smile, that chases the shadow
from her countenance, like the afternoon sunlight of a
partly clouded day, how much better, than full broad
laughter. She sits now on a little point yonder, where the
wind blows, and still the fringes of the bright drapery circle
about her brows, though she looks to me chill and shiver-
ing. The flowers and the grass wave above, as she bends
and rests her head upon the rock, while far across the river
crosses the sunlight. Yet in the cool breeze she again looks
up, and her crescent mouth curls in a strange sunny mirth,
which makes the place warm. For this maiden of my
dreams renders the landscape warm, whether the day is
cold or not; she has such deep joy in her heart. Some-
times we wander over the sandbank, and sit on a fair hill,
where birches and oaks wave their branches, and a little
brook runs tinkling in silver murmurs at our feet, and
echoes the softly sighing wind. There we read the
poems of the masters of song, or hear the bees sing their
late busy songs. The light is bright and free and cheer-
ing, and all the sight swims in an elastic sea of pleasure.
We wend our way back to our cottage at nightfall; it is
to sit by the hearth, and hear the legends written by for-
getfulness on the brain of an old witch who lives near, and
has come down to warm her skinny hands at the fire, - a
harmless witch in a white cap and a faded gown. I see
the long lashes of the maiden's eyes, and there is a little


438 Youth of the Poet and the Painter. (April,
child, who has come to sit by the fire for a few moments,
the grandchild of the old witch. The fragrant fern curls
in the flame, and sends its thick smoke high into the air.
Doubtless the people will think there are gipsies in the
wood.
To-day there comes one of those dull rains, which makes
me press my hands upon my heart, and say I am a-weary.
I dart swiftly through the forest, but my limbs are cold;
the air is chill, laden with mist, through which I can see
nothing distinct, and I fall over the old decayed branches
lying around, and the prickly chesnut burrs stain my hands
with blood. Everything seems dreamlike, but it is the
dream of despair, not of hope. I feel when I go back,
I shall wish to write some verses, try them, and fail. Why
shall I try, why shall I fail ? Is it not like my life
always, always a trial and a failure. And to be disap-
pointed in such radiant forms, when they have ever worn
the same character with myself outwardly, and to find
them indeed only flesh and blood. It is reason I should
wander alone for many years. I look into the windows of
the little cottages, where people stand around bright fires,
even more earnestly to-day, than I did on that other shiv.
ering day; for when the rain patters fast and glitters in
long drops on my hair, when my hands and feet ache with
cold, and I seem to have lived centuries in a sudden hour,
ah! I long to sit by you, cheerful fire, and smile with you
who smile there. I cannot come yet, perhaps I shall some-
time. I have too many of these grey waves rolling over
the bed of my existence, and dashing their blinding spray
over the tall bare rocks which hem it in. I wish the wind
would cease blowing for an hour, and leave me to the
silence of utter repose, even if I have no fire on the hearth;
I wish the waters of this deep lake could be drawn up by
the sun, and then fall back in tears, or dry forever, and let
me see the shells and weeds at the bottom, for more than
mother of pearl may be there. Life is like a room, sur-
rounded with mirrors, in each of which I am reflected
back, alas! always in my own figure ; many persons ob-
scure their images by throwing dust around, but I think it
is better we should be reflected in fair proportions. I


1844.)
439
Youth of the Poet and the Painter.
walked far to-day in the forest, solitary in heart, and heard
the yellow leaves sing death-songs, and sink heavy with
the weeping day on the moist ground. How many years
swept through me in that walk; and I found a poor dove
bleeding, with broken wing, where I should have thought
no sportsman would have ventured, until I remembered
that no glen is sacred from the tread of the murderer.
I took the wounded sailor of the air home, and warmed it,
and its wound was healed. The broken wing, as I thought,
was not so badly hurt; it could fly. It looked up at me
inquiringly, after I fed it, and then flew through the win-
dow that I had opened. I saw to-day the sun hid far
behind the mist. Why should he struggle so pale, when he
shines so like a king on other days; yet it is frolic to him,
for he has no care to take, but has his course set. Nature
says sometimes to me, I will set your course, if you will let
me. O! I am too proud and careless of my course, I reply,
and of everything's course ; I must first respect and feel for
others, then I can safely tread my own way. Yet I gener-
ally feel as if others had little to expect from me, they are
all so much happier than I am. I seem as happy to them,
perhaps, as they to me; I am a hollow trunk, with some
ivy trailing over it, but full of worms, yet I look green and
fresh. They tell me they are happy. They smile as I do,
but I look in my sister's eyes, and see such a still, deep
grief lying there, so sweet and mild, yet the crystal which
the years of concealed sorrow has formed. Because
it is so sweet and mild, they call her a happy woman ; the
world seems always to mistake this dress they wear, for
themselves. I suppose the ruder people take a coarse
kind of enjoyment in existence, which would be so far less
preferable to me, than the wild pangs of Hell! The con-
tented seem like cows and oxen, chewing grass, though
they believe it is fine abrosia ; they drain the muddy water
of the morass, and call it nectar.
tell me the full of worhollow trunappy to the are
The frost last night pinched the vines, and the maples
have thrown their scarlet cloaks about them. They sparkle
in such joyful colors, because they are to sleep long weeks,
and wake in a new dress. The dust had formed its webs
on them, and the insects pierced their thin folds. Now,
they can be tossed off, as the snake sheds its skin. I wish


440
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Youth of the Poet and the Painter.
I could have my autumn come now, with them ; I should
be content to sleep as many thousand centuries as they do
seconds, and wake in a fresh robe. I must stand still to
see them change, but remain as I am. Our season is so
long, so many years. We live it all in a moment, and the
rest is dreary expectation. I hardly know whether to
quit my sweet Lovedale, and pass my winter in the city, to
be teased by the dull people, or not. I am nearly resolved
to go, for I feel anxious to be with mother, if I can do
anything besides weary her. There are some books to read,
and some pictures to see. I can do some work, like the
earth, under the snows of winter, when she prepares for
the spring ; at least I think I can, although I may fall into
one of those terrible anguishes, as I did last year, when
my head burnt as if it was on fire, and my eyes refused to
read, and every sound in the street hammered upon my
ear as it would burst it in. I sometimes fear, in the fury
of that bitter wind, I may lose all knowledge of myself
suddenly, and never again recall the earth, or be led to end
the struggle by some glittering point.
LETTER XIX.
JAMES HOPE TO EDWARD ASHFORD.
I address you, dear friend, on the eve of my departure,
to thank you for the many beautiful additions you have
made to my life, within the last few months, and to regret
my absorption in other thoughts, which has scarcely allowed
me to turn to you. But my heart, like the star of the
north, never changes its place, and I trust may guide your
every sorrow there. I have never offered you consolation;
that stuff was made for other moulded men. I have
offered you only myself, with what I have of life or expe-
rience. I feel our unlikeness, and had we not been forced
apart, but have dwelt together, I think we should have
been more aid to each other. But do not regard this early
separation as any place where two roads part; our path
runs in the same direction, even if we travel by different
conveyances. I am glad to be gone, for myself, but lament
for you; I know not how I shall bear the long absence, but


1844.)
441
Youth of the Poet and the Painter.
I trust you will write me often all you know and do. I
rejoice to hear you will spend the winter at home. In
meeting Gray, which I contemplate as certain, you will,
I trust, find satisfaction. So noble, so deep, so hearty a
man cannot fail to be set in your life as a rare jewel,
which, if you do not wear, you can gaze upon with abun-
dant delight.
I leave my books and pictures at your disposal. I can-
not say much for my present collection of pictures. In my
large portfolio you will find the sketches I made in our
journey, that you mention in one of your letters, and my
later drawings.
Ever your friend,
HOPE.
LETTER XX.
EDWARD ASHFORD TO JAMES HOPE.
The City.
I have now been a month in the city. Your absence is
a loss which I find difficult to bear. I walk alone through
the crowded streets, while life flits around me, colder than
the winter's snows. The men that pass, they are the shad-
ows only of my memory. It seems as if last autumn I had
strayed for a time in heaven, for that sweet river was an
Elysium, compared with this noisy monotony. What clay-
cold figures, tragic always, but never sunny, formed in
leaden moulds, the counterpart of each other. I dream no
dreams here, but sit in patience, longing for spring's green
robe to wrap around me. Will it come, will the gay
foliage burst on the bare branches of my existence, with
flowers at my feet, starring the emerald floor. I seek
something picturesque, when the winds drive the eddying
snow about the roofs of the houses, but all is too hard, and
my imagination sinks under the definite outlines. So do
the persons I meet in society impress me, -statues, with-
out one soft and graceful line to delight. Yet I think I
shall find presently, among these polished persons, some
vision of my inward heart, to render its lonely throbs into
VOL. IV. — NO. IV.
56


442
(April,
Youth of the Poet and the Painter.
reality. I pray to them to come and let me judge them;
they approach, — the one is not here.
My letters I fear, from the city, will be less to you than
those I sent from Lovedale ; yet they contained the least
part of what I would have said. Is it not so always with
letters, and do they not mock you, as they do me? My
journal I keep, but almost fear to send any part, it is so
trilling and shallow. Yet I know how deeply you value
the city, and the life here, and will like to know what I do
under these heaps of snow. I look forward eagerly for the
letters you will send, laden with sweets from every region
of art, and sometimes wish, for my own sake, though not
for yours, I were wandering with you. I am too dull and
cold to wander over the world with any companion.
EDWARD ASHFORD.
LETTER XXI.
JAMES HOPE TO EDWARD ASHFORD.
Florence.
The common places of travel I shall leave to the guide-
books, and write of what is nearest my own heart, my
progress as a painter. I saw good pictures in London, and
more at the Louvre in Paris, but still hastened on, for my
goal lay afar in the field of sunny Italy. I have been in
Florence a week, yet seen the labors of centuries, and
Italy is to me the bright land of art I fancied. But I
have not taken the brush in my hand; I enter the galleries,
silent, afraid to express my admiration, how much more to
copy. I am too weak to imitate such master pieces; they
confound me by their excellence, as if they who produced
them were the inhabitants of another world, spirits from
above, descended to elevate us who toil on these low
plains. I wish Gray would send a strong, manly epistle,
and wake me out of this trance, into which I expected to
fall; I would, you felt like writing, but I know, dear
friend, how sorely liſe weighs upon you at home. I think,
each time the post comes, to open a letter from the other
side of the water, which may push me into action; the


1844.)
443
Youth of the Poet and the Painter.
packet arrives, it contains some excellent letters from my
mother about body and clothes, a few plain words of
common sense from my father as to expenses on the road,
and a page of nonsense from that arch coquette, my sister,
who every season breaks a new score of hearts. How
much letters become, when we really are separated from
those who write them; they each contain a fate.
Your only letter I received at Paris; it was so short and
hurried, that I still think I must have missed part, or the
packet with which it came, may have been opened, and
the sheet containing extracts from your journal, perhaps a
poem, abstracted. It merely informed me you were in the
city, but gave no notion of what you do, what people you
see, or how you pass your time in the cold breezes. I
pray that I inay not lose sight of your motions, and that
my next packet will contain an abundance of good news.
Write fully if you have discovered anything in literature or
art this winter, for I am in great need of discoveries; I
want the spectacle of another's courage to set me forward
on my journey.
My present experiences shed a brighter light on the past
than I had expected, and what seemed to me of little value,
when it was acted, by my new knowledge has become
inestimable. I find that all the masters had their practical
days of failure, when performance seemed impossibility, and
life was hung with dark clouds. I gaze on the first, stiff
sketches of painters, whose fame has since stretched the
length of continents; art, too, saluted them in the same
unconcerned manner that it does me to-day. I cling to
their failures, and feel cheered ; I admire their steady pro-
gress, and hope for myself; I almost laugh at what I
deemed defeat, yet have not thus far dared to take the
next step. Very true is it, that they failed in the begin-
ning, but, when they were fairly on the road, they strode
forward with the magnificent steps of conquerors, in the
proud assurance of victory. They were willing to pine
and cower for a day, while the long years were reserved
for noble achievements; they sat patient through their
school-days, and then rushed like Arabian coursers over the
wide, bleak sands of existence, strewing grace over the
flowerless road, as unconscious as the ever radiant Aurora.
The banner no more trailed in the low dust of rivalry and


444
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Youth of the Poet and the Painter.
disappointment, but each true master shook his glittering
spear aloft, or planted it in its lofty might, over the bodies
of a host of slain.
The lives of the great masters used to interest us great-
ly many years ago, and I cannot add anything of interest
to your present acquaintance with them; the facts can be
had everywhere. I observe in all their histories the same
struggle with themselves, and with their circumstances.
Genius has never exempted any of his sons from the com-
mon trials of humanity, and has generally added some
heavier sorrow to counterbalance the possession of the
creative power. We read their struggles, as if they came
of right to them; we are not willing to condole with them,
for have they not that which renders life illustrious ? They
carve the monuments which outlast the fame of them for
whom they were erected.
If these great works illustrate my past life, how much
more do they serve as prophets of my future. They almost
say, leave off, presumptuous stranger, for how can you pre-
tend to a seat among princes. At the same time, they lead
me on, when they declare they were the productions of
men like myself, fallible and prone to ill success. These
things have been accomplished by the energies of my race,
and shall I, a son of the same Jove, not dare to mount as
high, and scale the clouds with them. I shall dare, shall I
not? I shall succeed, must I not?
O Italy, thou land of light and love, glowing in the
sun's warm rays, will thy blue skies hang over me, like a
funeral pall, or shall thy sweet winds joyfully sing my
triumph! Descend upon me, beautiful spirit that hauntest
these green pines, and windest through the golden ches-
nuts, descend and tip my pencil with thy sacred fire.
Burn in the veins of a wanderer from a northern land,
abounding in frost and snow, and melt the ice which
years of disappointed hope have centred in him. And
ye, masters, whose glory has become the splendid inheri-
tance of an else poverty-stricken land, be merciful to a
pilgrim to your rosy shrines.
Send me too your prayer, my Edward.
Farewell.
HOPE.


1844.]
445
Youth of the Poet and the Painter,
LETTER XXII.
EDWARD ASHFORD TO JAMES HOPE.
Crayton.
My DEAR HOPE,
I breathe more free; I have left the city, and am in the
mountains. The other part of my life I spent on the plain,
except our walks in the summer vacations. I am among
the mountains, and feel almost as I once thought I should.
I needed new forms; I looked upward, there were those
vast clouds glowing in the red of morning, or the sapphire of
sunset, but they fled, fled away, and I could not detain
them. But the mountains remain. I see the sun linger,
then fade calmly behind them; they fold the valleys in
shadow, they veil the placid bosom of the deep lakes; I
seek my room satisfied, for the morning will present them
to my view, new, and yet old, and permanent. Is it not
fine, this permanence, a strong reality, not in indefinable dis-
tance, but at our side. They enfold the landscape, a band
of guardian friends, firm, self-sufficing, stern, yet affection-
ate. I have put a verse or two about them in my note
book.
Stand, thus forever stand, severest heights,
With the green veils clothing your simple forms,
How are ye permanent alone, while we,
Who soar above you, like the clouds flit by,
And have no firm horizon, no fixed stars.
Me penetrate with your unvexed repose,
For I would build, as ye do, not on sand,
But from the central heat, whence all things spring.
I come among you as a traveller,
And am received within your sheltering arms,
Nor do ye vanish as the morning misis,
But stand and soar sublime in majesty.
I drink from the clear springs that in you rise,
Upon your tops I see the landscape grow,
Shall I be lofty, and breathe the upper air.
My lines will be cold on warm Italia’s plains. I find
some pleasant persons, for the people borrow the color of
the hills. They are robust and sweet-hearted, and I think
sometimes here could I pass my life.
Ever thine,
EDWARD.


.446
[April,
Youth of the Poet and the Painter.
LETTER XXIII.
JAMES HOPE TO EDWARD ASHFORD.
Yes! I am in Italy. From every roof that shines in
the sunbeams, from every shepherd's figure that rises in
the distance, I feel, I rejoice, I am in an old, a mellow,
an artistic land. It is a land that has been subdued,
peopled, illustrated, by the genius of man. Its language
flows in copious majesty. I see free and graceful ges-
tures, dark and passionate eyes. I am in a land where
man has learned to live, for here he has learned to love.
Never before did I know what it is for a country to have
a Past. And you, my dear Ashford, why were you born,
with your rich and flexible heart, in a cold, unformed na-
tion, where the first rudiments of art and letters painfully
taught, only set off the stern figures in stronger relief.
Come to me, by this bay of Naples, O come to Rome,
and see the sunset, where the luxury of man's creative
genius has built monuments for the warm light to illus-
trate.
I think that all painting, all art, must be put aside, for
antiquity is the land of wonder, and all things modern
diminish into distance. Do not think I have become the
prey of irresolute moods, for I pursue with firm purpose
a certain study, and, as a beginner, dare not name the art
in which I am taking lessons. For why should I name
it so early? I will rather speak of the monuments of
genius, than of my uncertain beginning. But I cannot
detach and criticise by the piece ; all this is done in
every guide-book and new volume of travels. I will
rather speak of art, of life, of myself, of what I see, of
where I go. And you, - will imagine the rest.
Ever yours,
HOPE.
LETTER XXIV.
EDWARD ASHFORD TO JAMES HOPE.
I cannot come; I am fastened to the mountains. It is
life for me here ; it would be death to go. The burning


1844.)
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Youth of the Poet and the Painter.
hope of years finds here a spirit to fan it into stronger
flame. She is beautiful, yes, it is a woman. As I
gaze, I ask, does not such beauty stand to mock all other
facts, for how wan, how shrivelled, are the people at her
side. A woman, why, Hope, when I think of it, I
had nearly sold myself to the evil one, by suspecting ex-
istence was such a meagre affair, that could afford me
nothing to admire. An ocean of life seeins hemmed in
within the little band that girds her luxuriant waist. So
free, spirited, so wild, and so harmonious, a creature
who never had a care, a heavy thought, a weary hour,
who was born to expand like a rosebud, to feel only the
sunbeams, to clasp only the purest breeze. Where she
stands, the place rises into luxury; at the old gate of her
home, she glows like a rosy statue. It is natural to her
to be innocent, to be happy. I have forgotten that I was
alive, as I used to be. I look as I walk through the
woods, and she meets me; in the clouds I see her soft
smile; her deep, suffused eye penetrates the evening
grey ; and my last thought, is the joy that one so beauti-
ful, so innocent, can live. I shall not weary you with
writing how black and glossy is her hair, how smooth her
cheek, how ample her queen-like stature. If I admire
her for any thing, it is for being good, something I hated
in others. This is because goodness is the element of
her being, not factitious, and worn as a covering.
O, my dear Hope, I am so happy in this provision
which life has made to ease me of the dull burden, not
of care, but of self-interest, that I feared was fastened on
my shoulder. Before, it seemed so dreamlike and uncer-
tain. It was this shadow of self, which lowered on my
endeavors.
EDWARD.
LETTER XXV.
FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME.
Crayton.
I am glad I have a friend ; I rejoice that I can pour the
sparkling waters of delight freely forth for another to
taste. Do not expect from me the philosophy of love,


448
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Youth of the Poet and the Painter.
and rest content in knowing that my heart is no longer a
void. This will give you satisfaction, for I know the
happiness of your friend is more to you than your own.
I ask, when I meet this lovely person, if