, towards that
Divine philosophy of the Peasant-Prophet, by whose name the world
loves to call itself- a philosophy which lays the foundation of a spir-
itual theology and rears the superstructure of a spiritual religion -
uttered in one of the sublimest sentences that ever fell from the lips
of man, and there, from age to age, in the Bible that we all but wor-
ship, bringing the Finite Human into communion with the Infinite Di-
vine - God is a spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him
in spirit and in truth.'” — pp. 33, 34.
The distinction between the spirit and the letter, which is set
forth in the following extract cannot be insisted on too strongly.
“ The idea of Divine Inspiration, for instance - breathing of God
upon the soul — is miserably mechanised, straitened, and shut up in a
mechanical form. Instead of a vital moral impulse, touching the
springs of thought and affection, a divine spirit of truth leading into
truth - we have that poor, cold, artificial thing, intellectual infallibility.
Thus we say, 'The Bible is an inspired book -(which it is, to a de-
gree in which perhaps no other book is inspired, instinct with a life
and living power that can only come from the Fountain of life) — the
Bible is an inspired book, a kind of written word of God - therefore
prophets and apostles were infallible, could not make mistakes. To
say that a prediction has been falsified by history, that a train of rea-
soning is illogical, that a cosmogony is unphilosophical — is to deny
inspiration, to disbelieve the word of God. Bible-worship has, with
us, taken the place of the old Catholic image-worship. It really would
seem that the Bible, and the Bible only, is the religion of Protestants.
We worship the Book as devoutly as our fathers worshipped the
Virgin and the Saints. The faith and reverence which our best human


1840.)
271
Record of the Months.
sympathies and profoundest religious convictions cannot but give to
this wonderful collection of writings — to the divine spirit of beauty,
power, love, moral earnestness that breathes through it - is hardened
into a mere theological homage to the letter; even to the letter of a
particular text, of a particular translation; the text being known all
the while to be partly fraudulent, and the translation to be consider-
ably erroneous; yet both text and translation zealously maintained,
that people's faith may not be shaken. We worship the Bible. We
allow of no religious truth except biblically deduced opinions; no
religious education without Bible, whole and unmutilated, for reading
and spelling-book; no religious instruction for grown men and women
without a Bible-text for motto and preface; no religious worship even,
without a Bible-chapter interpolated at the right time and place be-
tween prayer and hymn. Morality, religion, theology, must all be
biblical. Religion is not in ourselves, but in the book; the sense of
which is to be got at by hard reading. Inspiration is a thing that was
once; that is now past and distant, external to us, and to be
brought near by 'evidences. Christianity is a congeries of opinions
to be proved; the materials of the proof lying in the Bible, or in books
proving the authenticity and inspiration of the Bible. The end of all
which is, that the Bible is not understood, is not appreciated, is pre-
cisely the least understood and appreciated book that men read." -
pp. 40 - 42.
Early days in the Society of Friends, exemplifying the Obe-
dience of Faith in some of its First Members. By Mary Ann
Kelty. London.
The Protestant Exiles of Zillerthal; their Persecutions and
Expatriation from the Tyrol, on separating from the Romish ,
Church and embracing the Reformed Faith. Translated from
the German of Dr. Rheinwald, of Berlin, by John B. Saunders.
Second Edition. London.
Des Ameliorations Materielles dans leurs Rapports avec la
Liberte, par C. Pecqueur. Paris. 12mo. pp. 363.
Cours d'Histoire de la Philosophie Morale au dix-huitième
Siècle, Professè a la Faculte des Lettres en 1819 et 1820, par
M. V. Cousin, Premiere Partie. — Ecole Sensualiste, publiee
par M. G. Vacherot. 8vo. pp. 354.
Euvres completes de Platon, traduites du Grec en Français,
accompagnées d'Argumens philosophiques, de Notes historiques
et philologiques. Par Victor Cousin. Tome XIII. Appendice.
This volume completes the great enterprise of M. Cousin, to
which he has devoted the labors of nearly twenty years. Every
student of modern literature can now find easy access to the
thoughts of the Athenian master, as they are here clothed in
the enticing and graceful style of one of the best French prose
writers. This admirable translation is not the least service,
which M. Cousin has rendered to the interests of philosophical
learning. The reception, which it has found among us, is a good
omen for those who believe that the highest truth is not the ex-


272
[Oct. 1840.
Record of the Months.
clusive privilege of the scholar. May it help to diffuse more
widely the pure love of beauty, the spirit of contemplation, and
the clear perception of moral good, which alone can save our
age!
Ueber Shakspeare's dramatische Kunst und sein Verhältniss
zu Calderon und Goethe. Von Dr. Hermann Ulrici. Halle.
In this work the author gives a succinct history of the En-
glish Drama up to the time of Shakspeare, thus putting the
reader in possession of the poet's point of sight; a picture of
the age in which he lived, when the pomp of the middle ages
acted strongly on the mind set free by the Protestant Reforma.
tion. Then follows an account of the poet's life, and the greater
part of the book is devoted to " a development of Shak-
speare's poetic vision of the world.” This book is spoken of in
the Halle Allgemeine Literatur Zeitung in terms of high com.
mendation. The author has the “ Philosophic depth,” which
we vainly look for in Schlegel's criticism of the great poet.
Geschichte des Urchristenthums durch A. Fr. Gfrörer, Pro-
fessor Bibliothekar in Stuttgart. I. Das Jahrhundert des Heils.
2 vols. 8vo. II. Die Heilige Sage. 2 vols. 8vo. III. Das Heil.
igthum und die Wahrheit. Stuttgart. 1838 – 1840.
Professor Gfrörer is the author of another work, “ Philo
und die Alexandrinische Theosophie,” which he regards as the
vestibule of his present edifice. In the early volumes, as we
understand, he attempts to derive Christianity from the Essenes,
but in the latter, obeying the public cry against Strauss, he at.
tempts to find its origin in Jesus. It appears to be a work of
great pretensions and little merit, if we may judge from two
able articles upon it, one in the Berlin Jahrbücher, and the
other in the Halle Allg. Literatur Zeitung.
Rabbinische Quellen und Parallelen zu neutestamentlichen
Stellen mit Benutzung der Schriften von Lightfoot, Wetstein
Meuschen, Schöttgen, Danz etc. Zusammengestellt von F.
Nork. Leipzig. Svo.
This is the last production of a writer formerly hostile to
Christianity. His real name is Korn; he has been a Jewish
Priest, but has lately come over to Christianity.
Der Somnambulismus von Prof. Friedr. Fischer. in Basel.
Vol. I. Das Schlafwandeln und die Vision. Vol. II. Der thie.
rische Magnetismus. Vol. III. Das Hellsehen und die Beses-
senheit. 8vo.
Historische Entwickelung der speculativen Philosophie von
Kant bis Hegel. Zu naherer Verständisgung des wissenschaft-
lichen Publicums mit der neuesten Schule dargestellt, von Hein.
rich Chalybäus. 2d edition. 8vo. Dresden. Moritz.


THE DIAL.
Vol. I.
JANUARY, 1841.
No. III.
MAN IN THE AGES.
The ages have presented man in a two-fold aspect, as
man, as not man. Human things, constitutions, politics,
laws, religions, all have gone, either on the fact, rather we
might say, have grown out of the intrinsic reality of man's
individual worth, or else, and contrary to this, on the tacit
assumption of man's individual worthlessness. With the
one, man, the living soul, the individual in his sole being,
is more than king, noble, hierarch, church, or state ; not he
theirs or for them, but they nothing save for him ; with
the other, state, church, hierarch, noble, king, each is more
than man; he theirs and for them, he little or nothing save
as a fraction of the general order, a part and instrument of
the whole. Lactantius has preserved to us a quaint illus-
tration, which he refers to an earlier antiquity than his own,
in which the course of each man is compared to the letter
Y, and as he comes forward into action, through the point
whence it divides itself into two branches, he passes either
in the direction of the one, or in that of the other, through
sin to death, or through holiness to life. The ages of our
race have presented a like divergency. They have parted
off in a direction congruous to man's true nature, or into
a direction incongruous and contrary to it, verging and
branching out, now toward hell, now toward heaven.
These divergencies, whence are they? Not out of time,
which rolls over man as a flood; not out of place, which
surrounds him everywhere ; not out of any outward power
VOL. I. — NO. III.
35


274
[Jan.
Man in the Ages.
pressing on him by laws of adamantine necessity; not out
of such things exterior to his being. They are of himself,
tendencies in his own nature to the high and the low, the
true and the false, the free and the servile, the divine and the
demoniac. The ages of man are not centuries of time or
chronological periods of fact — history. They are the gar-
ments spun and woven out of man's own nature to clothe
him with, which he wears till they are outworn, then drops
off for a new robe, likewise self-evolved. Their quality is
of course one with the nature out of which they grow.
The robes are as the filaments, these latter as the interior
life, out of which they are drawn.
The Fall of Man — that first great evolving of the
lower nature, wherein his essential worth is lost in admira-
tion and pursuit of something exterior — a mystery, which
all nations hold in uncertain tradition, and of which the
earliest records, even those of the Hebrew Scriptures, give
but a very general notice — is indeed his fall; his fall from
a spiritual preeminence over outward things into a vicious
servitude to nature and outward things. The highest
transcendentalism, reviled as it is, for soaring so far above
the reach of humanity into the midst of remote skyey
vapors, has never yet been able to soar up to the level of
man's true height and destiny. It is the pure etherial
region of spirit, spirit that quickens and reduces to one
all that exists, wherein man has his true life and abode.
There spirit is all ; phenomena of sense are but phantasms.
The man lives within, and the inward life communicates
itself to all without. God is first, dwelling in the soul,
making body and nature his temple and his vesture. The
soul converses first with God, through him with the world
and itself. His fall is from this high state. He sinks
from God under the world, from faith to sight, from spirit
to flesh, from freedom to servitude. The ancient Grecians
had an expressive mode of representing such servitude in
any of its instances, saying that the man is less than pleas-
ure, less than money, less than whatever it be which en-
thrals him. In his fall, we may likewise say, man becomes
less than nature, less than the world, less than the body.
Now, the very moment this depression of the true man-
hood begins, that moment begins the merging of soul, of
individual worth, in exterior worthless appendages. The


1841.)
275
Man in the Ages.
tree of knowledge of good and evil - call it what you will ;
the whole wonderful narrative symbolizes this one thing,
free spirit enslaved to sensual nature, soul lessened below
flesh. The permanent I subjects and enthrals itself to the
changeful mine : all which can be brought within the com-
pass of this same mine is sought rather than the being and
growth of the MySELF. Such Man's first debasement,
fountain of all his reputed worthlessness, in the succes-
sions of the ages.
In an Abel we have a type of the rise and return of the
soul to its true dignity. He is the man, the soul living in
faith; that is the highest to be said of any man. But he
stands almost solitary. Cain and his sons, morally his sons
I mean, predominate as examples of all who prefer man's
appendages to man, that is, sight to faith, nature to soul,
flesh to spirit. Plato proposes as a fundamental principle
of political institutions, that the soul shall be deemed of
highest worth, the body next, property third and least.
With reason, for soul alone is absolute being, the other two
but relative contingencies, body least remote, property
farthest off. Those men and those human things, which
have Cain for their prototype, reverse the Platonic maxim ;
with them body or property, we can hardly say which, is
first and second, soul third, and either least, or, as some
improvements of these later ages have taught us, nothing.
Now and then, as in an Enoch or a Noah, man develops
himself in his manhood above its appendages and acci-
dents, strong in the strength of an inward life. But Noah
is left alone. Universal corruption, unchecked, nay, cher-
ished, diffused, is in the severe phrase of Tacitus, the sa-
culum, the age, the morality of the times, into which oth-
ers thrust themselves to be festive, frolicksome beasts,
spending their mirth or rage upon the dreaming bigot, who
fancies there is such a life as spirit, and dares to preach the
obsolete doctrine of righteousness. The age ends, as we
might look for, in violence filling it. Other end it could
not have. Truth, Good, Rectitude; this is infinite, and
infinite to each and all. Thing, property, appendage, this
is finite, and can come but in crumbling fragments to each
and all. The more perfectly the inward self is developed
in forms of faith and love and uprightness, the better it is
for all; the infinite of right and good is as boundless and


276
(Jan.
Man in the Ages.
accessible as ever to each new man, like light which no
man may appropriate, but it may be whole in every one.
Nay, the revelation of this inexhaustible infinitude, open to
all, is in each succeeding instance a new communication of
blessedness; so that always,
“ By an office, though particular,
Virtue's whole common-weal obliged are;
For in a virtuous act all good men share."
The contrary with whatever is accidental and finite.
Property is not only appropriation but exclusion; in what
proportion it holds, in that repelling; what it keeps in it-
self, that keeping away from all others. In proportion as
the havings of an individual become great and extended,
himself meantime less than they, not their lord but their
servant, does he either diminish the havings or cross the
wishes of his neighbor, who seeks with the same desire
the same things as he. The more land, for example, he
has within a given space, the less is there of course for
another; and although the greater growth of his own can-
not lessen the growth of his neighbor's absolutely, yet it
does lessen it relatively, and he is so much the more rival
or superior to him in amount of riches. So in the arts.
He who does but embody in song or sculpture his own
idea of beauty, for the love of infinite beauty, loses noth-
ing, but enriches himself and others, though some other
bard utler melodies, some other sculptor produce forms,
beautiful as his own ; but he who cherishes these divine
arts, not as the effluences of his own soul, but for what
of praise or money they may bring, feels himself injured in
every rival, loses whatever another gains, and is high just
as others are relatively low. Thus it is in all things.
Whence emulations, whence extortions, whence oppres-
sions, whence striſes, whence violence. What is infinite
in man, man himself, is merged in exterior things, finite
and mutually repulsive ; which things, as feudal lords, draw
out the whole train of vassal thoughts to potent or cunning
warfare. So was it with man in his first age, dimly known
to us as antediluvian ; and the record of the flood bears in
it that everlasting testimony, which God has left, that one
soul, living in faith and truth, is of higher worth than na-
ture and the world.


1841.)
277
Man in the Ages.
This first age is substantially the type of every other.
Say but this at any given instant, . Longer is it now than
formerly, since man lived evolving the ages; more men
are now in the world, new habitations, trades, cities, new
names ;' and you have said the whole. As vapors these,
fair children of sun and water, ever-changing, always one,
now just steaming up out of river or fountain, now lying
thin over low ground, now resting heavy on hills, now gath-
ering into thick clouds, now black like night, now again
shining out in all hues, one in each, the same earthly ele-
ment, obeying the same skyey powers. The one human
nature, thus endlessly modifying itself, we recognise in the
two forms into which it perpetually goes out — Society,
Worship. Society, instead of being as political fiction-
makers would have us think, a cunning device, a thing of
compact, grounded on a self-interest ascertained by expe-
rience, is in fact the first natural growth of the human
instinct. Put two men together, or two thousand, or a
million, and they will not live one day separate persons;
they will flow like so many confluent streams into one
centre, and seek after that unceasing goal of human effort,
the realization of that unity pervading the whole, where-
of each individual is a type in himself. So for worship.
The apprehension of infinitude, the idea of eternity, the
sentiment of reverence, is rooted in the depth and heart of
man's soul. All toils of the flesh to root it out are vain.
But the pure spiritual principle corrupted, Society be-
comes forthwith the organization of despotism, Worship
the act of superstition. This process grows out of fixed
law. Through greater strength or cunning, one man will
seize and hold more than another ; each inlet to gain will
be self-multiplying ; possessions will be enlarged, trans-
mitted. By this accumulation of wealth and power, the
stronger man will come to appropriate what another has to
himself, ultimately to subdue his neighbors, and become
their lord, their chief, their king, their tyrant. Come to
worship. The idea which is left of God passes of course
into kindred and affinity with the spirit thus lessened be-
low the flesh, with the soul living an outward life. Divin-
ity, of which man's inward nature is the image, will be
mixed with these lower elements of humanity to which it
has no true correspondence. Such is fact of history. So-


278
[Jan.
.
Man in the Ages.
ciety soon after the flood appears in the aspect of vassal-
age to exterior power; worship in the aspect of perverted
reverence to gods, shaped according to the fleshliness of
man's lower nature. An arbitrary king represents the one.
ness of society; a bodily god, the oneness of the universe.
Absolute monarchy absorbs society, fragmentary polythe-
ism pollutes worship, hierarchal rights take the place of
individual faith and love. If we might refer to the three
forms of government, into which society shapes itself for
the expression of its unity, we may say that monarchy and
aristocracy come nearest to the representation of the ap-
pendage ; democracy nearest to the representation of the
man. Or if we look to the different systems of religion,
although perhaps all surpass institutions of polity, yet it is
only Christianity which stands forth as a faith and worship
of the soul within itself, for itself; which finds in individ-
ual man the beginning and end of huinanity; which takes
off crowns, gowns, robes of state, all outward appendages,
and sees nowhere on earth, king, noble, priest, master,
slave, but man and only man. Quite unlike man reflected
by the ages. In them we have Hebrew, Egyptian, Chal-
dean, Persian, Grecian, Roman, Gothic, Frank, Saxon,
English, and the like, not man. Egypt a mighty kingdom,
mother of ancient wisdom; Judæa, the seat of Solomon
and his successors in their glory ; Chaldea, that proud im-
perial power; Persia, the empire of the East, which had,
we might almost say, but one man; Greece renowned for
war, for song, for philosophy ; Rome, the emblem of com-
pacted strength; Gothic lands, pouring out torrents of
armed hosts; France, the beautiful; Germany, the strong
and heavy; England, island empress; of these and such-
like forms our historical ages are the apocalypse ; who has
condescended to remember that man is ? Who thinks, as
he reads Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Livy, Gib-
bon, Robertson, Hume, that the splendid things they point
us to are but fringes and furbelows, which hide and impede
the true man with their fickle flauntings ? that the poorest
man who tilled the banks of the Nile, or the vineyards of
Palestine, or helped build the wall of Nineveh or Babylon,
or walked unsung in the city of Minerva, or gazed on the
triumphs of the first Cæsar, or dwelt in British or Ameri-
can forests, or wore wooden shoes in his fair France, is a


1841.]
Man in the Ages.
279
sublimer form than Greece or Rome ever framed or fan-
cied?
Of the ages, so I have ventured to call them, of these
evolvings of man in time, we may say what has been said
of that single portion of them, political institutions, they
are not created, they grow; the leaves they are and flow-
erings of humanity. Observe, first, they are by conse-
quence, what man is; spiritual, when man is spiritual,
sensual usually, because man has been oftener sensual.
Observe, secondly, they react upon man, shaping him to
themselves. Thus the very leaves and flowers, which
grow out of the tree, have their effluences into the air
which hastens or retards vegetation, and even when they
die, pass into the soil which sustains the root and aid in a
new growth. Every thing indeed, which lives, besides its
own inward vitality and essence, is in its turn a source of
new outgoings, not only into the things which surround it,
but back also to its own root, in ministrations of good or
ill. As thus their deformity bespeaks an internal disorder
for its origin, so does that same deformity likewise repro-
duce itself, and aggravate the disorder whence it flows.
Thus do the ages distort and belie man.
Religiously, we have before regarded them as formations
of sensual worship ; politically, as formations of forceful
government. A law of works in opposition to faith and
love in the former ; a law of might in opposition to right
and kindred sympathy in the latter. The vicious element
of Popery, at the time of the Reformation, was not the
Papacy, nor the vicious element of Feudalism in the mid-
dle ages the Feudal Tenure; not the fact of a church
with an universal bishop, not the holding of all lands by
grant of the king. Deeper the evil was than either ; these,
symptoms, not radical disease. Popery, so far as it went
out into penances, masses, crusades, the whole aggregate of
its works and forms, what mean it and they ? — what the
notion which they symbolized ? Sanctity consisting in
outward observances. The very worst age of popery was
but one Christian form of this almost universal corruption.
Plato contended against it in Greece as actually as Wick-
liffe in England, or Luther in Germany. For aught I
know its first symbols were the fig-leaves sowed together in
Eden. Certainly it was in the unaccepted offering of Cain.


280
(Jan.
Man in the Ages.
It passed into the idolatries of the heathen, and the an-
cient poets are full of it in their delineations of incense
and oblations, efficacious with the gods. It was Pharisa-
ism in Christ's time among the Jews, Judaism in the Apos-
tles' time among the Christians. While in the East, un-
der Mohammedan form it appeared in war, or pilgrimage,
or oblation, in the West, under Christian form it appeared
in thousand forms of saintly merit. Reformers assailed it
under the name of Popery, denominating the general evil
by an occasional expression of that evil. In reality it
passes into every sect — every sect indeed, so far as a sect
is one of its shapes – Heathen or Jewish, Mohammedan or
Christian, Popish or Protestant, so soon as faith is only the
letter of a creed, and hope only the dream of reward, and
love only the shadow of dead work — Feudalism, so far
as it went out into proud kingship, and jealous baronies,
and vassal homage, and fealty, and degrading villanage,
and the whole aggregate of its social usurpations, what
mean it and they ? — What the notion which they sym-
bolize ? Soul which is man, bowed under strength, which
is brute. Under numberless names and forms the same
fact is, has been continually appearing. All ages bring it
out to visibility, each in its own peculiar way. Myriad
shapes are they to one forn, ever-varying disclosures of one
element. From the little village, where the selfish, cunning
man reduces his poorer neighbors to dependance and ser-
vility, to the extended empire or commonwealth, tyran-
nous at home, unjust and rapacious abroad, we see this
subjugation of the individual to the age of the inward
essential .man to an exterior evolved force. The Jew
stands by himself, strong in a fancied sanctity, and oppress-
es the Gentile. Which oppression the Gentile has met
with reasonless scorn and unrelenting persecution. The
Grecian has no other name for foreigners but barbarian,
and is their enemy. To be repaid in kind by the barba-
rian. Within itself, Athens, that fierce democracie, holds
its myriads of servants; Lacedeinon, that anomalous mili-
tary state, its wretched Helots; Rome, aggressor on the
rights of all others, boastful of her own freedom, rears
within the gates of the republic, that high wall between
Patrician and Plebeian, that higher wall between freeman
and bondman. Nay, the world over, the ages throughout,


1841.]
Man in the Ages.
281
beneath those deceptive words, king and subject, lord and
vassal, republic and citizen, you may be sure of detecting
everywhere this one vicious element, Soul bowed down
beneath Force. Yet again ; as all religious corruptions
may be reduced to one, spirit lost in form ; as all political
tyrannies to one, right absorbed in might; so likewise,
both these may be reduced to one, the absolute sup-
planted by the relative. To repeat a preceding phrase,
for our one element we have Soul prostrate to Force,
which Force, in worship, is misnamed God, in society,
Government. God, Government! with true man, sacred
names of the Divine ; with false ages, desecrated titles of
the Brutish.
But why dwell on the evil which the ages have disclosed ?
First, the topic demands it ; secondly, the evil is more
prominent than the good. For the present, however, I de-
sist from this view, passing to the antagonist principle, the
mysterious man at once weaving the ages out of himself,
and shaking off the bonds with which he is thereby
straitened and enveloped. Man is man, despite of all
the lies which would convince him he is not, despite of all
the strengths which would strive to unman him. There
is a spirit in man, an inspiration from the Almighty. Ty-
rants, Hierarchs, may wish it otherwise, may try to make
it otherwise. Vain wish! fruitless attempt! What is, is.
The eternal is eternal; the temporary must pass it by,
leaving it to stand evermore. There is now, there has
been always, power among men to subdue the ages, to de-
throne them, to make them mere outgoings and servitors
of man. It is needed only, that we assert our preroga-
tive, — that man do with hearty faith affirm, 'I am, in me
Being is. Ages, ye come and go; appear and disappear;
products, not life ; vapors from the surface of the soul, not
living fountain. Ye are of me, for me, not I of you, or
for you. Not with you my affinity, but with the Eternal.
I am ; I live ; spirit I have not, spirit am I. Every man,
would he be but true to himself, might in lowliness say this,
and so rise to supremacy above all exterior things. When-
ever one man, as a Luther, a Knox, a Milton, a Wesley,
does say this, then do Kingships and Lordships, Bishop-
ricks and Hierarchies, Popedoms and Heathenisms, then,
do Universities, and Parliaments, and Priestly Dignities,
VOL. 1. — NO. III. 36


282
[Jan.
Man in the Ages.
and all of man's workmanship and God's outward produc-
tion, pass into brief accidents, and the self-conscious I is
greater than they all. Shows these are, empty shows,
not full, lasting entities. Nay, 't is only because in such
pomps, more than in common things, Soul dreams of see-
ing its own infinite forms; only because disgusted with
familiar, every-day trivialities, the spirit hopes here to re-
gain its innate and diviner visions; that they reach and
touch the soul, the spirit, at all. Mystery covers them;
sacred words they continually speak, God, Truth, Law,
Right, and mocking man draw him to homage. Well for
him if he sees through the delusion, and goes back to
find the divine idea in himself, and in the mirror of na-
ture! Whence learns he to say, "Tell me not henceforth
of your Orators and Statesmen, your Priests and Scholars,
your great heroes of all sorts; the true man I find to be
more than any or all. Meaner things than these, houses,
lands, money, what are they to me? Winged things,
which light a moment on me, or pass me by, while I stand
fixed in eternity. I have seen the butterfly hanging on a
field-flower; shall ever the true Psyche hang for its life on
shows ? Let me rather control them all, make an age of
my own to wear for its hour, servant to none or nothing.'
Inseparable from this principle of antagonism to corrupt
ages is that essential element of spirit, Freedom. All
things in the universe come under one or other of these
two categories, freedom or servitude. Two grounds are
there of all changes, mind, force. Freedom, of mind;
Servitude, of Force. All which comes within the domain
of sense is subject to the latter, to the mechanism of ne-
cessity; all which is within the sphere of spirit we assign
to the former, the spontaneous liſe of freedom. The ages
are complex. So far as wrought out of man's mechanical
nature, they come under the laws of necessity; so far as
the working of his spiritual power, they are out of the
compass of those laws, free deeds, not fixed doom. This
divine element unfolds itself, in every high, noble impulse
of the internal being, and can never be wholly destroyed.
The two ideas, spirit, freedom, are inseparable, as shad-
owed forth in their type, the wind, breathing at will over
mountain or valley, land or water. Which inward Free-
dom is the archetype of all liberty. State, Church, family,


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Man in the Ages.
individual, is free just in proportion as this archetypal free-
dom dwells and develops itself from within, in opposition
to necessity constraining, or impelling it from without.
Now the ages, so far as developments of what may be
termed the force element in our nature, have always sought
to extinguish this inward power, at least to obscure the
consciousness of its presence. Incapacity of man for self-
government, ignorance and viciousness of the poor, ne-
cessity of property qualifications for a voice in protection
of personal rights and interests, sacredness of ancient
opinions and institutions, hereditary ranks, the whole array
indeed of doctrines and ordinances, designed to transfer
power from the man in whom it dwells, to the appendages
of men, in which it dwells but constructively and unnatu-
rally, have been resorted to for the purpose of suppressing
the flame of freedom, which burns up out of the in-
most depths of every soul toward its kindred element in
heaven. That flame burns on forever despite of all. As
of the divine nature itself some wise men have doubted
to say, that it has been, it will be, but only, it is; so may
we say concerning this celestial principle, It is; neither
coming nor departing, never past, never future, always
present, it is. Whence absolute and unqualified Slavery,
save as absolute, unmitigated sin is it, there cannot be. No
thanks to men, however. They have done their utmost
to unmake the perennial life. Fetters, chains, monopo-
lies, thefts, sales, statutes, all engines of tyranny, they have
found insufficient to annihilate freedom, for the good reason,
that they cannot annihilate the Soul whose first law of
being is freedom. Despite of lies which the ages have
told, of tyrannies which the ages have established, Free-
dom lives imperishable.
I have lived indeed to hear that blessed name taken in
vain, used in caricature, uttered with a sneer. It will
not be so always. It was not so once. It has been a
sacred word. Bards sang it. Prophets proclaimed it.
- Noble men died for it, and felt the price cheap. None
counted how much gold could be coined out of fetters.
Dimly seen, imperfectly understood, its dimmest shapes,
its shadowy visions, even rising amidst bloody clouds, have
been heralds of joy. Not brighter, more glad, to the
forlorn and weary traveller, the first rays which look out


284
[Jan.
Man in the Ages.
through the golden dawn, than to commonwealths and
men, the day-break of liberty; nor is light itself, or any
exterior thing of good cheer to man conscious of bond-
age. Order, conservation, tradition, prescription, political
constitutions, laws of nations, sanctions of the ages, these
are all nothing to the unwritten, unseen, invisible law of
true freedom in man's soul. Those are of men, this of
man; those, of the world ; this, of God. I may regret,
to be sure, that a dagger should have ever been hidden in
myrtle bough ; I may mourn that in the name of Liberty
the least wrong should ever be done; would that the bless-
ed form needed never but voice soft as the gentlest even-
ing wind! More deeply should I mourn, my tears more
hopeless, if I saw her assailed, nor hand nor voice lifted
in the defence. Nay, as in worst superstition I welcome
the divine idea of Religion ; as through dreams and filthy
tales of mythology, I see and bless the living God, nor
ever feel more sure, that God is, that Truth is, and that
man is made for God and Truth ; so in and through fran-
tic excesses of an incomplete and infantile Freedom, I see,
I feel, that Freedom is, and is sacred, and that it is every-
thing to the soul of man. Carry me to Paris in the frenzy
of its revolution ; carry me to St. Domingo, in the storm
of its insurrection ; carry me to Bunker Hill, amid its car-
nage ; carry me to Thermopylæ, while its three hundred
wait the sure death ; set me beside those whose names
may scarce be uttered without contempt or hate, a Wat
Tyler or a Nat Turner ; set me where and with whom
you will, be it but man struggling to be free, to be himself,
I recognise a divine presence, and wish not to withhold
homage. Pardon me; but in a slavish quietude of the
ages, I see nothing but despondency; freedom, be it wild
as it may, quickens my hope. The wildness is an acci-
dent which will pass soon; that slavish quietude is death.
There is grandeur in the earthquake or the volcano; in
the dank, dark, offensive vault, something else.
Soul, Freedom of soul, is thus evermore the antagonist
of those ages, which man's lower nature has evolved.
Revelations of what truth there is in the grounds and laws
of society, of Worship, here without ceasing, joined in
with this native life of man. God has spoken to man
throughout time, now this way, now that, not through


1841.)
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Man in the Ages.
lawgivers and prophets and apostles alone, but in more
secret communications of his spirit to whose soever spirit
of man is obedient. The aggregate and consummation of
these his revelations we call Christianity. Of which we
may say, whether regarded as a series of historical facts,
or as a disclosure of doctrine, or as a mode of worship, or,
in higher character, as the formation of Christ in us, it is
no other than the revelation from God of man's absolute
and inalienable worth. Beneath all words, unsaid in the
record, unuttered, because unspeakable, unutterable, lives
spirit for spirit to meet and interpret, deeper, mightier,
than letter or word. Not engraving in stone, not law
written in books, something more divine than this is there
in the fountains of Christianity ; Moses could give the let-
ter, bondage and death in it ; Jesus, the Lord, is the spirit,
and where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty —
there is eternal life. Where over the whole earth the
spirit has gone, as strong wind, as gentle air, it has re-
quickened the expiring breath, recalled life, restored man
to himself, that he might stand forth in assertion of his
worth, and in boundless love shake off his bonds, sever
himself from the age, live and be free.
Thus in all time we have the divine element — in man
- in the universe — against the ages evolved of man's
sensualism. Thence the great unceasing conflict between
that fundamental fact, of history, of ethics, of religion,
Man, and that sensual and proud selfishness, which would
substitute exterior appendages. Farther in illustrating this
topic, to my own mind of most solemn import, I cannot
now go, save that I may be permitted to translate into
rough words the songs which two unnamed bards once
sang to my fancy — perhaps to my heart: The first
said ; -
Woe is me! I am born in the decay of nature and of
man. Earth yielded once her fruit, spontaneous, free, as
sun yields light, as air its balm. Nor more did man, living
in the life and love of God, seek each to draw the whole
to himself, than he would now seek to draw sun, stars,
moon, air, sky, within his enclosure. As gods all lived, as
brothers all conversed, unenvious, of wide heart; then
slept as one in their mother's bosom. Blessed day, whose
sun is set !


286
[Jan.
Man in the Ages.
There is which no one can take for his own; a divine
destiny holds it afar from his clutch. Proudest King !
thine it is not to reach the sun, and part its tracts and its
rays among thy vassals. Nor thine to catch the broad,
blue sky, the boundless air, or ocean ; here are not thine
abodes, nor here thy lands to hold from any that breathes.
Even I may see the blessed light, and drink of the hidden
spring, and breathe God's free air ; thou canst not stay nor
let. This soul which lives of God, this spirit of divine
inspiration, and the higher utterances it gives out in lone-
liness to infinite night or sunny day beneath vast moun-
tain rocks or oaks by fountain side or margin of brook,
lord of men ! thou canst not destroy, thou canst not say,
See, this is mine.
They may worship fire and light no more in the East.
Priests pour out their libations no longer in Grecian, Ital-
ian fields or isles. Druids dwell not in Celtic or British
forests. God still is. My portion in him, my higher
priesthood, can never cease, one with my human being,
my fixed immortality. Into this sanctuary kings cannot
enter; priests of man's making cannot pollute it; no
power can take hold of it. There is freedom. Well that
the universe has a harmony from the Father, which men's
discord may not break. Else kings and lords and mightier
men of all names would destroy the whole ; and the sphe-
ral music go out in boundless dissonance.
There is which kings and barons by field and flood can
win. This hard soil of Britain, these viny plains of Italy,
forest and field of Germany, of France, stern coast of
New England, lands watered by vast American rivers, the
“coming ” has called his own, and parcelled out to kirk-
men or knights, and all proud vassals of the cunningest.
Sometimes they kneel in false lowliness before him, their
hands in his, and offer homage. Sometimes they come to
us in our weakness, and take of us homage and fealty,
and exact our service. And these poor villains, alas! they
toil, they bend, they weep, they go to other's bidding from
day to day, until death bids them rest in their first free-
dom.
Oh Nature ! is it thus thou leavest thine offspring or-
phans, fatherless, motherless, cunning and strong men
lording it over them? Father! whose glory shineth in


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Man in the Ages.
heaven, the earth thou givest to the sons of men. They
have it of thee, of thee what it yields to their toils.
They have it not, thy most free gift, for force and skill of
proud ones who win and hold it all. One saith, England
is mine ; Scotland mine, saith another; these or others,
Mine France, Italy, land of German tribes, worlds west of
the Atlantic. Who holds of it, holds of my sufferance,
for his money or his homage. And another saith, Essex is
mine; and others, Normandy, borders of the Rhine or the
Danube ; let no man touch them. And another, This
plantation is mine, and all it yields; and these men also
who work on it, they are mine. So the world over. And
in secret, where none eye seeth, nor ear heareth, nor any
regard, cometh a lone one and poureth tears into the still
stream: Ye rich, I envy you not; I complain not, I must
yet weep, that ye are tyrannous, that the poor are com-
fortless. Ye tell me loudly of your charities, your gifts.
Alms to the poor, forsooth! ye make them poor by your
extortions, then feed your pride with largesses, which be-
speak your wealth, their want. Give us back what God
hath given, his earth, ourselves; then we shall no longer
need your help. Priests, nobles, kings, men of wealth,
cease to rob; then we shall cease to toil unrequited, un-
honored.
Rich man, king, noble, priest, all men hear. Man in
sorrow, God heareth alone. Bards of bright days, who
sang in Ægean isles, by Scottish friths, or amid Druid
forests, would that I might take your harp, and sing as ye
once sang; then should this sorrow have voice. He who
has none to comfort should be heard through strains of
mine over sea and land, even to the heavy ear of court-
iers and kings, of parliaments and congresses. Alas ! in
lonely wood I can but sing to Truth and Love the wrongs
of men, nor any heed or hear but God.
I may take my harp to palace and castle, and sing of
mighty deeds, of Arthur and Alfred, of Dane and Scot-
tish chieftains, how Saxon and Briton warred, and Nor-
man reigned, how king and knight loved and wooed and
won the fairest of the land ; then do cunning men ap-
plaud ; and give me large gifts. Weep alone, ye poor ;
weep unpitied, ye who are only men; my strain is unbid-
den, unheard, if I but try to tell your rights and wants and
woes and loves.


288
[Jan.
Man in the Ages.
Not always so. Lift up your heads, ye poor ; your re-
demption shall come, your hour is at hand. Jesus was
poor; God's glad message is through him to your stricken
hearts. Priest and King, Bishop and Noble, Mighty and
Rich, are nothing to him. He knows nought but man,
whom he shall restore to himself. Blessing on thee, man !
Sacred, venerable, thy name! Thou shalt live, the divine
germ of thy nature shall yet expand and grow, and bear
celestial fruit, God's own Freedom and Truth and Love.
Deeper woe, surer hope, sang the second ; -
Nor freedom, nor truth, nor love, groweth of redemp-
tion from these outward bonds. Broken be those bonds !
God speed the rescue! But the holy fountain of life wells
out from within. Oh! when shall that fountain be open
and flow?
Through heaven, earth, ocean, moon, stars, one inward
spirit lives, breathes, nourishes all. Through soul of man
that spirit lives most vitally, breathes mightiest, as itself.
Finds spirit but spirit to welcome and interpret its myste-
rious presence, there is holiest communion. God is in us;
we in God; divinest life! fountain of freedom, of man-
hood, of a Godlike age !
Woe, woe, woe to the sons of men ! they have belied
their nature, belied God. Man a beast, so have they said ;
God mechanic power. In the universal spirit they behold
but might and skill. Infinite love, once in God, in all
spirit, whither is thy flight ? Men see thee not. Thy
light-life was in all, thy dove-wings hovered over all; where
dwellest thou now?
Where thou art, there God is, in God, freedom, truth,
blessedness. Where thou art not, in rich or poor, mighty
or feeble, lord or vassal, God is not, nor aught divine.
Deepest of laws, mightiest of powers ! eternal fountain,
whence true law, right power, hath flowed evermore! Men,
ancient, modern, dream of some outward laws and powers,
in nature, in their ages, and obey them. They have
obeyed the soulless voice, and gained soulless wealth. See!
These splendid palaces, these rich store-houses, these
hunting-grounds, these fruitful plantations, these horses
and coaches and gay dresses! All are of obedience to
law; but what law ? Sure, other than the deepest, the
everlasting. Nothing here of divinity: Law there is, in


1841.]
289
Afternoon.
which God dwelleth evermore; law of spirit, prolific of
spiritual fruit; divine, wherein God goeth forth to bless
the soul, and in soul the universe ; life of the Father,
Love.
Proud things cannot raise thee without it. Low things
cannot debase thee with it. Neither proud nor mean,
neither high nor low, where this law dwells. All are one
in God. Out of Him through all, one boundless blessed
harmony. The ages themselves of men, it swayeth at
will; woe to him who severs his age from its eternal one-
ness!
Law to winds, waves, heaving seas, of our time; in
all through all; first, midst, last of all. Whoso walketh
in it, is in freedom and joy. Whoso walketh out of it,
is in slavery and wretchedness. Man fell, when he ceased
to love ; his rise is in the birth of love. Man! thou art
wretched, for thou hast shut thy heart to God; open thy
soul unto Him, be thyself again, thou in God, God in thee;
then shalt thou be the life of new ages, central orb of
boundless radiance. Evolve of thy purer self, let grow
from thy reborn spirit, the epoch of a true manhood ; so
shalt thou be free, blessed within, without. So shalt thou
meet anew thine inmost life reflected in the calmness and
infinitude which surrounds thee. So shalt thou greet un-
ceasingly the divine light, going forth of thy soul to re-ap-
pear in all outward things, in this fair earth, in the serene
moon, in stars and sun, in air and sky. So shall thy free
soul dwell in the infinite of freedom; so thy being live and
unfold itself in the communion of purest spirit. So,
wherever man is, there shall the word of a highest inspira-
tion be fulfilled. We have known and believed the love
that God hath to us; God is love, and he that dwelleth in
love dwelleth in God, and God in him.
stone
AFTERNOON.
I LIE upon the earth and feed upon the sky,
Drink in the soft, deep blue, falling from on high.
Walnut boughs, all steeped in gold, quiver to and fro;
Winds, like spirits, murmur, as through the air they go,
My soul is filled with joy and holy faith and love,
For noble friends on earth and angels pure above.
VOL. I. — NO. III,
37


290
[Jan.
Questionings.
QUESTIONINGS.
Hath this world, without me wrought,
Other substance than my thought ?
Lives it by my sense alone,
Or by essence of its own?
Will its life, with mine begun,
Cease to be when that is done,
Or another consciousness
With the self-same forms impress ?
Doth yon fireball, poised in air,
Hang by my permission there?
Are the clouds that wander by,
But the offspring of mine eye,
Born with every glance I cast,
Perishing when that is past ?
And those thousand, thousand eyes,
Scattered through the twinkling skies,
Do they draw their life from mine,
Or, of their own beauty shine ?
Now I close my eyes, my ears,
And creation disappears;
Yet if I but speak the word,
All creation is restored.
Or — more wonderful - within,
New creations do begin;
Hues more bright and forms more rare,
Than reality doth wear,
Flash across my inward sense,
Born of the mind's omnipotence.
Soul! that all informest, say!
Shall these glories pass away?
Will those planets cease to blaze,
When these eyes no longer gaze?
And the life of things be o'er,
When these pulses beat no more?
Thought! that in me works and lives, -
Life to all things living gives, —
Art thou not thyself, perchance,
But the universe in trance ?
A reflection inly flung
By that world thou fanciedst sprung
From thyself; — thyself a dream; -
Of the world's thinking thou the theme.
Be it thus, or be thy birth
From a source above the earth -


1841.)
291
Endymion.
Be thou matter, be thou mind,
In thee alone myself I find,
And through thee alone, for me,
Hath this world reality.
Therefore, in thee will I live,
To thee all myself will give,
Losing still, that I may find,
This bounded self in boundless Mind.
ENDYMION.
Yes, it is the queenly Moon,
Gliding through her starred saloon,
Silvering all she looks upon;
I am her Endymion,
For by night she comes to me;
O, I love her wondrously!
She, into my window looks,
As I sit with lamp and books,
When the night-breeze stirs the leaves,
And the dew drops down the eaves;
O'er my shoulder peepeth she;
O, she loves me royally!
Then she tells me many a tale,
With her smile so sheeny pale,
Till my soul is overcast
With such dream-light of the past,
That I saddened needs must be,
And I love her mournfully.
Oft I gaze up in her eyes,
Raying light through winter skies;
Far away she saileth on;
I am no Endymion,
For she is too high for me,
And I love her hopelessly.
Now she comes to me again,
And we mingle joy and pain;
Now she walks no more afar,
Regal with train-bearing star,
But she bends and kisses me;
O we love now mutually!
branch


292
(Jan.
Hymn and Prayer.
HYMN AND PRAYER.
INFINITE Spirit! who art round us ever,
In whom we float, as motes in summer sky,
May neither life nor death the sweet bond sever,
Which joins us to our unseen Friend on high.
Unseen - yet not unfelt - if any thought
Has raised our mind from earth, or pure desire,
A generous act, or noble purpose brought,
It is thy breath, O Lord, which fans the fire.
To me, the meanest of thy creatures, kneeling,
Conscious of weakness, ignorance, sin, and shame,
Give such a force of holy thought and feeling,
That I may live to glorify thy name;
That I may conquer base desire and passion,
That I may rise o'er selfish thought and will,
O'ercome the world's allurement, threat, and fashion,
Walk humbly, softly, leaning on thee still.
I am unworthy. — Yet for their dear sake,
I ask, whose roots planted in me are found,
For precious vines are propped by rudest stake,
And heavenly roses fed in darkest ground.
Beneath my leaves, though early fallen and faded,
Young plants are warmed, they drink my branches' dew,
Let them not, Lord, by me be Upas-shaded,
Make me for their sake firm, and pure, and true,
For their sake too, the faithful, wise, and bold,
Whose generous love has been my pride and stay,
Those, who have found in me some trace of gold,
For their sake purify my lead and clay.
And let not all the pains and toil be wasted,
Spent on my youth by saints now gone to rest,
Nor that deep sorrow my Redeemer tasted,
When on his soul the guilt of man was prest.
Tender and sensitive he braved the storm,
That we might fly a well deserved fate,
Poured out his soul in supplication warm,
Looked with his eyes of love on eyes of hate.
x
Let all this goodness by my mind be seen,
Let all this mercy on my heart be sealed,
Lord, if thou wilt, thy power can make me clean,
O speak the word, — thy servant shall be healed.
looked
into
x With eyes of love
eyes of later.


1841.)
293
Klopstock and Meta.
META.
Meta, the wife of Klopstock, is probably known to many readers
through her beautiful letters to Richardson, the novelist, or Mrs. Jame-
son's popular work, “ The Loves of the Poets.” It is said that Klop-
stock wrote to her continually after her death.
The poet had retired from the social circle. Its mirth
was to his sickened soul a noisy discord, — its sentiment
a hollow mockery. With grief he felt that the recital of
a generous action, the vivid expression of a noble thought
could only graze the surface of his mind; the desolate
stillness of death lay brooding on its depths. The friendly
smiles, the affectionate attentions, which had seemed so
sweet in the days when Meta's presence was
“The boon prefigured in his earliest wish,
Crown of his cup, and garnish of his dish,”
could give the present but a ghastly similitude to that
blessed time. While his attention, disobedient to his
wishes, kept turning painfully inward, the voice of the
singer suddenly startled it back. A lovely maid with
moist clear eye, and pleading, earnest voice, was seated at
the harpsichord. She sang a sad and yet not hopeless
strain, like that of a lover who pines in absence, yet hopes
again to meet his loved one. The heart of the listener
rose to his lips and natural tears suffused his eyes. She
paused. Some youth of untouched heart, shallow as yet
in all things, asked for a lively song, the expression of an-
imal enjoyment, one of these mountain strains that call
upon us to climb the most steep and rugged ascents with
an untiring gayety. She hesitated and cast a sidelong
glance at the mourner. Heedlessly the request was urged.
She wafted over the keys an airy prelude, - a cold rush
of anguish came over the awakened heart, Klopstock rose
and hastily left the room.
He entered his chamber and threw himself upon the bed.
The moon was nearly at the full. A tree near the large
window obscured the radiance, and cast into the room a
flickering shadow, as its leaves kept swaying to and fro
with the breeze. Vainly Klopstock sought to soothe him-
self in that soft and varying light. Sadness is always
deepest at this hour of celestial calmness. The soul real-


294
(Jan.
Klopstock and Meta.
izes its wants and longs to be at harmony with itself far
more than when any outward ill is arousing or oppressing
it.
Weak, fond wretch that I am, cried he, - I the bard of
Messiah - To what purpose have I nurtured my soul on
the virtues of that sublime model for whom no renuncia-
tion was too hard. Four years an angel sojourned with
me. Her presence brightened me into purity and benevo-
lence like her own. Happy as the saints, who after their
long strife rest in the bosom of perfect love, I thought my-
self good because I sinned not against a God of so ap-
parent bounty, because my heart could spare some drops
of its overflowing oil and balm for the wounds of others.
Now what am I? My angel leaves me, but she leaves
with me the memory of our perfect communion as an earn-
est of what awaits us, if I prove faithful to my own words
of faith, to these religious strains which are even now
cheering on many an inexperienced youth. And I, - the
springs of life and love frozen, here I lie sunk in grief as
if a grave were the bourne to all my thoughts; the joy
of other men seems an insult, their grief a dead letter
compared with mine own. Meta, Meta, couldst thou
see me in mine hour of trial, thou wouldst disdain thy
chosen.
A strain of sweet but solemn music swelled on his ear,
- one of those majestic harmonies which, were there no
other proof of the soul's immortality, would create the in-
tellectual Paradise. It closed, and Meta stood before him.
A long veil of silvery whiteness fell over her, through
which might be seen the fixed but nobly serene expression
of the large blue eyes, and a holy, a seraphic dignity of
mien.
Klopstock knelt before her - his soul was awed to
earth. “Hast thou come, my adored," said he, “ from thy
home of bliss to tell me that thou canst no longer love thy
unworthy friend ?”
“O speak not thus,” replied the softest and most pen-
etrating of voices. “Can purified beings look with con-
tempt or anger on those suffering the ills from which they
are set free? O no, my love, my husband, - I come to
peak consolation to thy sinking spirit.”
“ When you left me to breathe my last sigh in the
II.


1841.]
295
Klopstock and Meta.
re I murmur of the survin that pans that
lot Taleh Sorrows used the heart withoughting
arms of a sister who, however dear, was nothing to my
heart in comparison with you, I closed my eyes, wishing
that the light of day might depart also. The thought of
what thou must suffer convulsed my heart with one last
pang. Once more I murmured the wish I had so often
expressed, that the sorrows of the survivor might have
fallen to my lot rather than to thine. In that pang my
soul extricated itself from the body, a sensation like that
from exquisite fragrance came over me, and with breezy
lightness I escaped into the pure serene. It was a mo-
ment of feeling wildly free and unobscured. I had not
yet passed the verge of comparison. I could not yet em-
brace the infinite ; and my joy was, like those of earth,
intoxicating. Words cannot paint, even to thy eager soul,
my friend, the winged swiftness, the glowing hopefulness
of my path through the fields of azure. I paused at length
in a region of keen, bluish light, such as beams from Ju-
piter to thy planet on a mild October evening.
“ Here an immediate conviction pervaded me that this
was home, was my appointed resting-place; a full tide of
hope and satisfaction, similar to what I felt on first acquaint-
ance with thy poem, flowed over this hour. Joyous confi-
dence in Goodness and Beauty forbade me to feel the
want even of thy companionship. The delicious clear-
ness of every feeling exalted my soul into an entire life.
Somne time elapsed thus. The whole of my earthly exis-
tence passed in review before me. My thought, my ac-
tions, were brought in full relief before the cleared eye of
my spirit. Beloved, thou wilt rejoice to know, that thy
Meta could then feel her worst faults sprung from igno-
rance. As I was striving to connect my present with my
past state, and, as it were, poising myself on the brink of
space and time, the breath of another presence came upon
me, and, gradually evolving from the bosom of light, rose
a figure, in grace, in sweetness, how excelling! Fixing her
eyes on mine with the full gaze of love, she said in flute-
like tones, Dost thou know me, my sister?'
"s Art thou not,' I replied, “the love of Petrarch? I
have seen the portraiture of thy mortal lineaments, and
now I recognise that perfect beauty, the full violet flower
which thy lover's genius was able to anticipate.'
“ Yes,' she said, I am Laura, on earth most happy, yet


296
[Jan.
Klopstock and Meta.
most sad, most rich and most poor. I come to greet her,
whom I recognise as the inheritress of all that was lovely
in my earthly being, more happy than I in her earthly es-
tate. I have sympathized, wife of Klopstock, in thy hap-
piness, thy lover was thy priest and thy poet, thy model
and oracle was thy bosom friend. All that one world
could give was thine, and I joyed to think on thy fulfilled
love, thy freedom of soul and unchecked faith. Follow
me now; we are to dwell in the same circle, and I am
appointed to show it to thee.
"She guided me towards the source of the light I have
described. We paused before a structure of dazzling
whiteness. This stood on a slope and overlooked a valley
of exceeding beauty. It was shaded by trees, which had
that peculiar calmness, that the shadows of trees have
below in the high noon of summer moonlight.
"Trees which are as still
As the shades of trees below,
When they sleep on the lonely hill
In the summer moonlight's glow.'
“ It was decorated by sculptures of which I may speak at
some future interview, for they in manifold ways of won-
derful subtlety express one thought, I had not then time to
examine them. Before rose a fountain, which seemed, one
silvery tree from off whose leaves that stream of light fell
ever, and, flowing down the valley, divided it into two
unequal parts. The larger and farther from us seemed as
I first looked on it, populous with shapes beauteous as that
of my guide. But when I looked more fixedly, I saw only
the valley carpeted with large blue and white flowers
which emitted a hyacinthine odor.
“Here Laura, turning round, asked — Is not this a
poetic home, Meta ??
"I paused a moment ere I replied, “It is, indeed, a place
of beauty ; — yet more like the Greek Elysium than the
home Klopstock and I were wont to picture for ourselves
beyond the gate of death.
«« Thou sayest well,' she replied, nor is this thy final
home. Thou wilt but wait here for a season the coming
of thy friend.'
6. What!' said I, alone ? Alone in Eden?'


1841.]
297
Klopstock and Meta.
" Has not Meta then collected aught on which she
might meditate ? Hast thou never read, “While I was
musing, the fire burned ? ?"
"Lady,” said I, “spare the reproach. The love of
Petrarch, whose soul grew up in golden fetters, whose
strongest emotions, whose most natural actions were
through a long life constantly repressed by the dictates of
duty and honor, she might here pass long years in that con-
templation, which was on earth her only solace. But I,
whose life has all been breathed out in love and ministry,
can I endure that existence to be reversed ? Can I live
without utterance of spirit, or would such be a stage of
that progressive happiness we are promised ?":
" True, little one," said she, with her first heavenly
smile, “nor shall it be thus with thee. Thou art appointed
to the same ministry which was committed to me while
waiting here for that friend whom below I was forbidden
to call my own."
“She touched me, and from my shoulders sprang a pair
of wings, white and azure, wide and glistening. • Meta,'
she resumed, 'Spirit of Love! Be this thine office.
Wheresoever a soul pines in absence from all companion-
ship, breathe in sweet thoughts of future sympathy to be
descrved by steadfast virtue and mental growth. Bind up
the wounds of hearts torn by bereavement, teach them
where healing is to be found. Revive in the betrayed and
forsaken that belief in virtue and nobleness, without
which life is an odious, disconnected dream. Fan every
flame of generous enthusiasm, and on the altars where it
is kindled strew the incense of wisdom.
66. In such a ministry, thou couldst never be alone, since
hope must dwell with thee. But I shall often come
hither to speak of the future glories of thy destiny. Yet
more; seest thou that marble tablet? Retire here when
thy pinions are wearied. Give up the soul to faith, fix
thy eyes on the tablet, and the deeds and thoughts which
fill the days of Klopstock shall be traced on it. Thus
shall ye not for an hour be divided. Hast thou, Meta,
aught else to ask?'
“ Messenger of peace and bliss," said I, “ dare I make
yet one other request ? O is it not presumptuous to ask
VOL. I. — NO. III.
38


298
[Jan.
The True in Dreams.
that Klopstock may be one of those to whom I minister,
and that he may know it is Meta who consoles him?"
“. Even this to a certain extent I have power to grant.
Most pure, most holy were your lives ; you taught one
another only good things, and peculiarly are ye rewarded.
Thou mayest Occasionally manifest thyself to Klopstock,
and answer bis prayers with words, so long,' she continued,
looking fixedly at me, as he shall continue true to himself
and thee.'
“O my beloved, why tell thee what were my emotions at
such a promise ? — Ah! I must now leave thee, for dawn is
bringing back the world's doings. Soon shall I visit thee
again. Farewell ; 'remember that thy every thought and
deed will be known to me, and be happy."
She vanished.
To M.2
1833.
THE TRUE IN DREAMS.
I HAVE dreamed, I have dreamed,
Under Beauty's star-lit sky,
With the love unquestioning
Of a Poet's eye;
I have roamed, I have roamed,
Under Beauty's morning smile,
Trees and fields and flowers and birds
With all the while;
Idle hours, idle hours
Lived I thus by night and day,
Yet such Truth did Beauty bring,
I could not say her nay.
I have pored, I have pored
Over books of high repute,
Filled with saws and arguments,
Sophists to refute;
I have digged, I have digged
In their Philistine soil,
Wide awake on winter nights,
Wasting all my oil,
Till I laughed, till I laughed
At the counterfeit uncouth,
Took me to iny dreams, and saw
Beauty one with Truth.
C.
branch


1841.]
299
The Magnolia of Lake Pontchartrain.
THE MAGNOLIA OF LAKE PONTCHARTRAIN.
The stars tell all their secrets to the flowers, and, if we
only knew how to look around us, we should not need to
look above. But man is a plant of slow growth, and great
heat is required to bring out his leaves. He must be prom-
ised a boundless futurity, to induce him to use aright the
present hour. In youth, fixing his eyes on those distant
worlds of light, he promises himself to attain them, and
there find the answer to all his wishes. His eye grows
keener as he gazes, a voice from the earth calls it down-
ward, and he finds all at his feet.
I was riding on the shore of Lake Pontchartrain, musing
on an old English expression, which I had only lately
learned to interpret. “He was fulfilled of all nobleness.”
Words so significant charm us like a spell long before we
know their meaning. This I had now learned to inter-
pret. Life had ripened from the green bud, and I had
seen the difference, wide as from earth to heaven, between
nobleness, and the fulfilment of nobleness.
A fragrance beyond anything I had ever known came
suddenly upon the air and interrupted my meditation. I
looked around me, but saw no flower from which it could
proceed. There is no word for it; exquisite and delicious
bave lost all meaning now. It was of a full and penetrat-
ing sweetness, too keen and delicate to be cloying. Una-
ble to trace it, I rode on, but the remembrance of it pur-
sued me. I had a feeling that I must forever regret my loss,
my want, if I did not return and find the poet of the lake,
which could utter such a voice. In earlier days I might
have disregarded such a feeling ; but now I have learned to
prize the monitions of my nature as they deserve, and
learn sometimes what is not for sale in the market-place.
So I turned back and rode to and fro at the risk of aban-
doning the object of my ride.
I found her at last, the Queen of the South, singing to
herself in her lonely bower. Such should a sovereign be,
most regal when alone ; for then there is no disturbance to
prevent the full consciousness of power. All occasions
limit, a kingdom is but an occasion, and no sun ever saw
itself adequately reflected on sea or land.


300
[Jan.
The Magnolia of Lake Pontchartrain.
Nothing at the south had affected me like the Magnolia.
Sickness and sorrow, which have separated me from my
kind, have requited my loss by making known to me the
loveliest dialect of the divine language. “Flowers,” it
has been truly said, “ are the only positive present made
us by nature.” Man has not been ungrateful, but conse-
crated the gift to adorn the darkest and brightest hours.
If it is ever perverted, it is to be used as a medicine, and
even this vexes me. But no matter for that. We have
pure intercourse with these purest creations; we love them
for their own sake, for their beauty's sake. As we grow
beautiful and pure, we understand them better. With me
knowledge of them is a circumstance, a habit of my life,
rather than a merit. I have lived with them, and with
them almost alone, till I have learned to interpret the
slightest signs by which they manifest their fair thoughts.
There is not a flower in my native region, which has not for
me a tale, to which every year is adding new incidents, yet
the growths of this new climate brought me new and sweet
emotions, and, above all others, was the Magnolia a rev-
elation. When I first beheld her, a stately tower of verd-
ure, each cup, an imperial vestal, full-displayed to the eye
of day, yet guarded from the too hasty touch even of the
wind by its graceful decorums of firm, glistening, broad,
green leaves, I stood astonished as might a lover of
music, who after hearing in all his youth only the harp or
the bugle, should be saluted on entering some vast cathe-
dral by the full peal of its organ.
After I had recovered from my first surprise, I became
acquainted with the flower, and found all its life in har.
mony. Its fragrance, less enchanting than that of the rose,
excited a pleasure more full of life, and which could lon-
ger be enjoyed without satiety. Its blossoms, if plucked
from their home, refused to retain their dazzling hue, but
drooped and grew sallow, like princesses captive in the
prison of a barbarous foe.
But there was something quite peculiar in the fragrance
of this tree; so much so, that I had not at first recog-
nised the Magnolia. Thinking it must be of a species I
had never yet seen, I alighted, and leaving my horse, drew
near to question it with eyes of reverent love.
“ Be not surprised,” replied those lips of untouched purity,


1841.]
301
The Magnolia of Lake Pontchartrain.
" stranger, who alone hast known to hear in my voice a tone
more deep and full than that of my beautiful sisters. Sit
down, and listen to my tale, nor fear, that I will over-
power thee by too much sweetness. I am indeed of the
race you love, but in it I stand alone. In my family I
have no sister of the heart, and though my root is the
same as that of the other virgins of our royal house, I bear
not the same blossom, nor can I unite my voice with theirs
in the forest choir. Therefore I dwell here alone, nor did I
ever expect to tell the secret of my loneliness. But to all
that ask there is an answer, and I speak to thee.
“Indeed, we have met before, as that secret ſeeling of
home, which makes delight so tender, must inform thee.
The spirit that I utter once inhabited the glory of the
most glorious climates. I dwelt once in the orange tree.”
“Ah?” said I! " then I did not mistake. It is the same
voice I heard in the saddest season of my youth, a time
described by the prophetic bard.
"Sconosciuto pur carmina avanti
Per quella via ch'è piu deserta e sola,
E rivolgendo in se quel che far deggia,
In gran tempesta di pensieri on deggia.'
“ I stood one evening on a high terrace in another land, the
land where the plant man has grown to greatest size.'
It was an evening, whose unrivalled splendor demanded
perfection in man, answering to that he found in nature,
a sky black-blue,' deep as eternity, stars of holiest hope,
a breeze promising rapture in every breath. To all I
might have answered, applying still farther the prophecy,
“Una ombra oscura al mondo toglie.
I varj aspetti e i color tinge in negro.'
“I could not long endure this discord between myself and
such beauty, I retired within my window, and lit the
lamp. Its rays fell on an orange tree, full clad in
its golden fruit and bridal blossoms. How did we talk
together then, fairest friend ; thou didst tell me all; and
yet thou knowest, that even then, had I asked any part of
thy dower, it would have been to bear the sweet fruit,
rather than the sweeter blossoms. My wish had been ex-
pressed by another.


302
(Jan.
The Magnolia of Lake Pontchartrain.
“O that I were an orange tree,
That busy plant !
Then should I ever laden be
And never want
Some fruit for him that dresseth me.'
" Thou didst seem to me the happiest of all spirits in wealth
of nature, in fulness of utterance. How is it that I find
thee now in another habitation ? "
“How is it, Man, that thou art now content that thy life
bears no golden fruit ? ”.
" It is,” I replied, “ that I have at last, through privation,
been initiated into the secret of peace. Blighted without,
unable to find myself in other forms of nature, I was
driven back upon the centre of my being, and there found
all being. For the wise, the obedient child from one point
can draw all lines, and in one germ read all the possible
disclosures of successive life.”
“Even so," replied the flower, and ever for that reason am
I trying to simplify my being. How happy I was in the
spirit's dower when first it was wed,' I told thee in that
earlier day. But after a while I grew weary of that ful-
ness of speech, I felt a shame at telling all I knew and
challenging all sympathies. I was never silent. I was never
alone. I had a voice for every season, for day and night.
On me the merchant counted, the bride looked to me for
her garland, the nobleman for the chief ornament of his
princely hall, and the poor man for his wealth. All sang
my praises, all extolled my beauty, all blessed my benefi-
cence. And, for a while, my heart swelled with pride and
pleasure. But as years passed, my mood changed. The
lonely moon rebuked me as she hid from the wishes of
man, nor would return till her due change was passed.
The inaccessible sun looked on me with the same ray as on
all others; my endless profusion could not bribe him to one
smile sacred to me alone. The mysterious wind passed
me by to tell its secret to the solemn pine. And the
nightingale sang to the rose, rather than me, though she
was often silent, and buried herself yearly in the dark
earth.
“I had no mine or thine, I belonged to all, I could never
rest, I was never at one. Painfully I felt this want, and
from every blossom sighed entreaties for some being to


1841.) The Magnolia of Lake Pontchartrain. 303
come and satisfy it. With every bud I implored an an-
swer, but each bud only produced — an orange.
“ At last this feeling grew more painful and thrilled my
very root. The earth trembled at the touch with a pulse
so sympathetic, that ever and anon it seemed, could I
but retire and hide in that silent bosom for one calm win-
ter, all would be told me, and tranquillity, deep as my
desire, be mine. But the law of my being was on me,
and man and nature seconded it. Ceaselessly they called
on me for my beautiful gifts; they decked themselves with
them, nor cared to know the saddened heart of the giver.
O how cruel they seemed at last, as they visited and de-
spoiled me, yet never sought to aid me, or even paused
to think that I might need their aid ; yet I would not hate
them. I saw it was my seeming riches that bereft me of
sympathy. I saw they could not know what was hid
beneath the perpetual veil of glowing life. I ceased to
expect aught from them, and turned my eyes to the dis-
tant stars. I thought, could I but hoard from the daily
expenditure of my juices, till I grew tall enough, I might
reach those distant spheres, which looked so silent and
consecrated, and there pause a while from these weary joys
of endless life, and in the lap of winter, find my spring.
“ But not so was my hope to be fulfilled. One starlight
night I was looking, hoping, when a sudden breeze came
up. It touched me, I thought, as if it were a cold white
beam from those stranger worlds. The cold gained upon
my heart, every blossom trembled, every leaf grew briuile,
and the fruit began to seem unconnected with the stem.
Soon I lost all feeling, and morning found the pride of
the garden black, stiff, and powerless.
“As the rays of the morning sun touched me, con-
sciousness returned, and I strove to speak, but in vain.
Sealed were my fountains and all my heart-beats still. I
felt that I had been that beauteous tree, but now only was
- what — I knew not; yet I was, and the voices of men
said, It is dead; cast it forth and plant another in the
costly vase. A mystic shudder of pale joy then separated
me wholly from my former abode.
A moment more and I was before the queen and guard-
ian of the flowers. Of this being I cannot speak to thee
in any language now possible betwixt us. For this is a


304
[Jan.
The Magnolia of Lake Pontchartrain.
being of another order from thee, an order whose pres-
ence thou mayst feel, nay, approach step by step, but
which cannot be known till thou art it, nor seen nor spoken
of till thou hast passed through it.
“Suffice it to say, that it is not such a being as men love
to paint, a fairy, — like them, only lesser and more exqui-
site than they, a goddess, larger and of statelier propor-
tion, an angel, — like still, only with an added power.
Man never creates, he only recombines the lines and
colors of his own existence; only a deific fancy could
evolve from the elements the form that took me home.
“ Secret, radiant, profound ever, and never to be known,
was she; many forms indicate and none declare her.
Like all such beings she was feminine. All the secret
powers are ·Mothers. There is but one paternal power.
She had heard my wish while I looked at the stars, and
in the silence of fate prepared its fulfilment. "Child of
my most communicative hour,' said she, 'the full pause
must not follow such a burst of melody. Obey the grada-
tions of nature, nor seek to retire at once into her utmost
purity of silence. The vehemence of thy desire at once
promises and forbids its gratification. Thou wert the key-
stone of the arch and bound together the circling year;
thou canst not at once become the base of the arch, the
centre of the circle. Take a step inward, forget a voice,
lose a power ; no longer a bounteous sovereign, become a
vestal priestess and bide thy time in the Magnolia.'
“Such is my history, friend of my earlier day. Others
of my family, that you have met, were formerly the
religious lily, the lonely dahlia, fearless decking the cold
autumn, and answering the shortest visits of the sun with
the brightest hues, the narcissus, so wrapt in self-con-
templation, that it could not abide the usual changes of a
life. Some of these have perfume, others not, according
to the habit of their earlier state, for as spirits change,
they still bear some trace, a faint reminder of their latest
step upwards or inwards. I still speak with somewhat of
my former exuberance, and over-ready tenderness to the
dwellers on this shore, but each star sees me purer, of
deeper thought, and more capable of retirement into my
own heart. Nor shall I again detain a wanderer, luring
him from afar, nor shall I again subject myself to be ques-


1841.)
305
Love and Insight. — Sunset
tioned by an alien spirit to tell the tale of my being in
words that divide it from itself. Farewell stranger, and
believe that nothing strange can meet me more. I have
atoned by confession ; further penance needs not, and I
feel the Infinite possess me more and more. Farewell, to
meet again in prayer, in destiny, in harmony, in elemental
power.
The Magnolia left me, I left not her, but must abide
forever in the thought to which the clue was found in the
margin of that lake of the South.
in..
LOVE AND INSIGHT.
The two were wandering mid the bursting spring;
They loved each other with a lofty love;
So holy was their love that now no thing
To them seemed strange. The golden light above
And all around was part of it, and flowed
From out their souls; so did the clouds which showed
A changing glory. Birds on rustling wing,
Flowers upon slender waving stems did spring
Forth from their feelings — tender, full of mirth,
Swift soaring, or more lowly loving earth.
Old Ocean ceased its vast complaint. Its voice
Of mystery grew articulate. Waves rejoice
Beholding souls far greater than the abyss
Wherein they swelled. Earth stood enriched
With wondrous beauty. Over each bare stone
Spread clinging moss. Nothing did stand alone
Or inourpful now. All wild, fierce sounds were hushed.
The wind that once on wilful whirlwinds rushed,
Now bore aloft sweet sounds of jubilee.
The glorious hour had come; Earth did see
Herself no longer orphaned, and with song
Of love and life joined the high harmony,
Which through the universe forever rolls along.
2.
SUNSET.
The sun's red glory vanishes amid complaining waves,
Bright beings always go thus, sink down into dark graves;
Not only death but life hath graves than death, 0, far more dreary ;
High hopes and feelings melt away and then come days most weary;
Angels from heaven on earth appear, but soon their light grows dim,
And all forlorn they mourn the past - must it be so with him!
VOL. I. - NO. III.
39


306
Jan.
Give us an Interpreter.
GIVE US AN INTERPRETER.
The winning waves with whispers low,
The wafting winds that gently blow,
Call me away to a land most fair,
“ Come, we will bear thee safely there."
So my silken sail I must unfurl,
And bound o'er the billows that proudly curl;
Sunny sea-birds sail round me on high,
Shooting like sun-beams o'er all the sky;
With the swelling waves does my bonny bark heave,
Like a sword-fish through them all I cleave;
“ Where shall I go? What shall I find ?”
Affectionate hearts, ever gentle and kind
Such have I here!
“Old age serene, and earnest youth,
Forgetting all else in its search for truth.”
Such have I here!
“ Men who build cities and armies lead,
Forward to venture in noble deed."
Such have I here!
“Beautiful forms, with eyes that are made
Of sunbeams in softest dew-drops arrayed."
Such have I here!
“Burst forth loud carols sweet and free.
Hark to the music that swells o'er the sea."
We have all that on this shore.
" Then what wouldst thou more ? "
A man who with power shall backward throw
The curtain that hangs o'er the infinite now,
That forth on the earth a glory may stream,
Startling all souls from their mournful dream.
By that piercing light men shall see with surprise,
From their souls sprang the earth, the stars, and the skies.
Birds shooting swiftly through air and light,
Pause oftentimes in their rapid flight.
Poised on the wing, a joyous song,
They wildly warble - then sweep along.
Songs of high triumph thus should we pour
Forth from our souls as upward we soar,
Through boundless Truth — forevermore.


1841.]
307
Ideals of Every-day Life.
307
IDEALS OF EVERY-DAY LIFE.
No. 1.
Is it yet so settled what life is ? Has experience long
since tried and made the most of it? Shall the son plod
on in the footsteps of the father ? Shall the first child's
blunders be fastened upon his children's children, and the
experiment of the ignorant first-comer be law to all them
that come after? Is there no room for improvement ?
May not life, in all its forms, be lifted up, and hackneyed
drudgery be inspired with an idea, an energy, a heartiness,
which shall make it drudgery no longer ? Must man for-
ever continue the slave of habit, doing things for no more
convincing reason than custom, and positively making life
a dull thing, lest he should be guilty of finding it in his
experience not quite so dull as represented (for it would
be a shame to differ from all the world in such a com-
forting conclusion)?
Let us see then. There are certain things which fall
to the lot of all humanity ; certain things which every man
must do and bear. In what spirit does he do them and
bear them? In what spirit does he work, walk abroad,
talk with bis neighbor, bury his dead, store himself with
knowledge, betake himself to the house of worship ? Ac-
cording to the spirit with which he does these things, will
the field or shop, the school or study, the walk, the fireside
circle, the church, the scene of suffering, be to him dull,
discouraging, and degrading, or beautiful and full of ever
increasing interest and hope. The Christian finds his
heaven in each of these ; and each of them may be enu-
merated among the pleasures of religion.
1. First, then, behold the religious' man at work. The
first question asked about every one is: What does he do ?
What is his business? And this very justly; for, until a
man have something to do, he has no right to be thought
of in any other relation.
It is the law of nature, that man must work. An out-
ward necessity, if not an inward one, compels him to it.
Two causes keep us always active. A restlessness of our
own, an inward natural tendency to do things, or what is


308
(Jan.
Ideals of Every-day Life.
called an active impulse, keeps us busy always, with one
or more of our faculties, creating or destroying; keeps us
working for the pleasure of it, whether profitably or not.
But should this inward impulse fail, Want, our stern task-
master, threatening to cut off our supplies, still warns us
from without that we must either work or die. All men
work, then, somehow, either because they love to do so, or
because they must. Labor affords the only means of
keeping ourselves alive ; and when life is secured, labor
still becomes the first condition of enjoying it. Yet labor
is full of hardship. It is oftentimes degrading, narrowing,
and enslaving to the mind. It is so precisely in propor-
tion as it is the labor of necessity, rather than of choice.
Man's daily occupation may be a dull routine, to which
he dooms himself, although a weariness; or it may be
a cheerful, entertaining, instructive, and improving exer-
cise. Most men only support themselves by labor. A
wise man both supports and educates and amuses himself
by it. To one it is all drudgery, to another a delight.
One man by the labor of his hands is rendered coarse and
ignorant, the slave of habit, slow to detect opportunities of
improvement, unaware of his own resources and capabili-
ties, blind to the beauties there are around him, uninter-
esting for lack of thought, with nothing to say for him-
self when he meets his friends, a weariness to him-
self and others, a mere hand on the field, a mere eater
and sleeper at home, to whom life is an old story alto-
gether, slightly varied from day to day, but always grow-
ing duller, want and vexations of all sorts continually
pressing upon him without, balanced by little mental fac-
ulty or cheerful occupation of the mind within. The slave
of circumstances he, spending all his life in these dull arts
of keeping himself alive. Another man from the same
labor gains strength and dignity and intelligence, and
becomes more and more a man, with every task to which
he stoops. His labor is occupation not only to his hands,
but also to his mind. His observation grows more active,
his judgment more sound, his heart warmer and stouter;
he learns to rely upon himself, he finds what resources he
has within himself to draw from, he sees the significance
of common sights and sounds, nature becomes full of
meaning to him, the beauty of the world increases upon


1841.]
309
Ideals of Every-day Life.
him, God is manifest to him in every shifting cloud, or
opening flower; in the mysterious processes of growth he
traces analogies and correspondencies with his own men-
tal and moral growth, his soul fills with wisdom, his heart
with hope and confidence, and to him life becomes more
new and beautiful and interesting, the longer he lives.
So different a thing may the same work be to two men
working side by side. It is the end that dignifies the
means. The meanest occupation, through which shines a
lofty purpose, becomes glorious. No work is low or de-
grading in itself. The coarsest handicraft is as honorable
as the most respectable profession, when the laborer re-
spects himself, and is working for a noble end, namely, the
perfection of his own nature, or the happiness of those he
loves. Let a man propose to himself the higher object
for which to live, and all he does partakes of the dignity
of his life-plan, of his being's end and aim. Then the
toil which looks immediately to bread and subsistence,
looks farther too, and becomes in a higher sense part of the
eternal culture of the soul; and the fruits of one's labor
are not only bread to eat, but bread of life.
The religious man lives for one great object; - to
perfect himself, to unite himself by purity with God, to fit
himself for heaven by cherishing within him a heavenly
disposition. He has discovered that he has a soul; that
his soul is himself; that it changes not with the changing
things of life, but receives its discipline from them; that
man does not live by bread alone, but that the most real
of all things, inasmuch as they are the most enduring, are
the things which are not seen; that faith and love and
virtue are the sources of his life, and that he realizes
nothing, except he lay fast hold upon them. For these,
then, he lives. And, whatever may be bis trade, to what-
ever work, impelled by physical necessity, or the habits of
his neighborhood, he turns his hand, this purpose of his
life appears in it. He extracts a moral lesson, a lesson of
endurance or of perseverence, for himself, or a new evi-
dence of God and of his own immortal destiny, from every
day's hard task. He builds up not only his fortune, but
himself by it; he stores not only his garners, but his mind.
As he drops the seeds into the earth, all-instructive nature
having caught his eye, drops other seeds, that bear


310
[Jan.
Ideals of Every-day Life.
fruit more than once, into his soul. As he clears the
ground of weeds, with unseen hand the while he pulls
away the weeds of prejudice and wrong desire, that are
growing up to choke the plants of Paradise within the
garden of his heart. The sunshine on his fertile fields
looks doubly clear to him, because of the sunshine of con-
science in his breast. And, as he reaps his golden grain,
his soul reaps golden hopes and golden approbation in
the field which he is tilling for his God.
Drudgery is one thing. True labor is another. No
man has any right to be a drudge; no man was ever
made for that. If true to himself, he cannot but be some-
thing more. The seeds of something more are in him.
In his very nature there wait faculties to be unfolded,
which he has no right whatever to neglect, faculties re-
ligious, moral, intellectual, in exercising which he liſts him-
self above the sense of want, above the power of fear, of
fortune, or of death, feels his immortality, becomes him-
self, what God intended him to be. In any kind of busi-
ness or labor he can find sphere for the exercise of these,
his greatest faculties; if he cannot, he is bound to labor
somewhere else. No one has a right to live, merely to
“get a living.” And this is what is meant by drudgery.
Drudgery is not confined to the labor of the hands, not
to any one class of occupations. There are intellectual
and fashionable drudges. And there are hard-working,
humble laborers, more free, more dignified and manly, in
all they do, or look, or think, than any who look down
upon them. Some soil their hands with the earth; others
soil their minds indelibly by the pride and vanity which
keep their hands so delicate. The true man “stoops to
conquer.” The vain man wears his head aloft, while the
rock is wasting from under his feet, and the glow of dis-
interested activity, the beauty on which he prides himself,
fades from his face.
The Christian makes his business, of whatsoever sort,
contribute equally to his acquisition of knowledge, to his
amusement, to the trial of his faith, the growth of his
affections, no less than to his health and his support. In-
to all his work he carries thought. He makes it a science;
and so saves time for other things, while he makes his
labor interesting, not the same old story every day, but


1841.] Ideals of Every-day Life.
311
full of new and valuable suggestions to his mind. To his
curious mind the work of his hands, becomes a practical
illustration of principles; and so the thorough-going doer
becomes the healthy thinker. He thinks for whom and
for what he labors, and his faith and his affections are in-
creased. Haply, too, his imagination, his sense of beauty,
become quickened. Daily conversant with nature, the glo-
rious scenery of his labors, a quiet enthusiasm kindles in
the heart of the farmer, and a new source of happiness is
now unlocked to him. An intelligent farmer is certainly
the happiest of men. His daily toil is reconcilable with
every kind of higher culture. He may make himself in
every sense a man. He need not be a mere hand. He
may trace out the laws of nature, and let the sight of
principles inspire him. He may be a philosopher on the
field. He may cultivate a sympathy for all men, while
everything around him may fill him with sweet gratitude to
God. The all-surrounding beauty may take possession
of his soul, till in his heart unconsciously he becomes a
poet. To ensure this, it only needs a religious spirit, a
spirit of constant self-improvement. For religion unlocks
all the fountains of the soul, and puts a man gradually in
possession of all his powers. He first finds out what he is
and what is in him, when he devotes himself to God. If
he is truly religious, he will grow intelligent, free, and
happy; and life to him will never lose its interest ; rest
will not be idleness ; toil will not be drudgery. But while
he bends to his work, he will be seeking truth, loving his
neighbor, and communing with his God.
In labor, too, the Christian feels a sweet renunciation,
when he makes himself independent of his comforts; and
so is he both happy in himself without them, enjoying the
triumph of his own spirit; and he returns to them with keener
zest. We know not the sweetness of any pleasure, until
we can forego it; we appreciate none of our advantages,
until we cease to depend upon them. All things become
more beautiful to us, when we find we can do without
them. There can be no rest where there has been no
labor. There is no sabbath to him who has not had his
week of work.
D.
Parkt


312
Jan.
To Nydia.
TO NYDIA.
“ Call it a moment's work, (and such it seems,)
This tale's a fragment from the life of dreams;
But say, that years matured the silent strife,
And 't is a record from the dream of life.”
Lady – I bring a flower, a token
Of all the thousand deep heart-beatings,
So warmly felt, yet all unspoken,
Which thrilled me at our former meetings;
When I hung o'er thy form, and dwelt
In quiet luxury of vision,
Nought but thy fairy beauty felt,
And our dull world — a home Elysian.
A token of the better power,
Thy purity of soul has given,
To strengthen me in trial's hour,
And lead me nearer on to Heaven.
For, gazing in thy eyes, I scanned
In them thy nature, trusting, mild,
Unchanged since from thy Maker's hand
Thou cam'st, his gentle, loving child.
A nobler love upon me came,
My heart adored with prayer and hymn,
That truth, thy being's central flame,
Which no earth-mists had power to dim.
Alas! that Time and Change must ever
Round this pale orb united go;
Alas! that love is constant never,
And human faith so weak below!
Could we have thought, when, side by side,
The thickly sparkling stars have seen us,
That this dark cloud of fear and pride
And cold distrust could roll between us?
Lady! by thy deep trusting eyes,
By thy most lovely smile, I swore
That, firm as these o'er-arching skies,
Our hearts were chained forevermore.
They still are chained — nor stars, nor storms,
Nor severing length of lonely years,
Can break the tie young passion forms,
The links of thy past smiles and tears,
Though, dearest, thou forget my name,
Though memory's tear-dimmed glass be broken,
The Past will ever live the same,
And hold what we have done and spoken.
The summer flower forgets the dew,
· Which fed its young buds through the spring,
But, in its ripe leaf's burning hue,
Those pure May-drops are revelling.


1841.]
313
To Nydia.
I know my fate - to drift alone
Across life's many-tinted ocean,
Singly to hear its tempests moan,
Singly to feel its heavy motion ;
Love's waves, turned backward on my breast,
Must stagnate, and grow bitter there,
To live, unblessing and unblest,
This is my fate; I know and bear.
But round thee, dearest, there shall cling
And cluster many hearts; another,
A better love than mine shall bring
To the fair bride and happy mother.
Though a few years have wasted all
My youthful powers of deep affection,
Yet, on my sunless day shall fall
From thy calm joy a warm reflection.
Farewell! - and when this flower has faded,
Let each too tender thought decay,
Each memory too deeply shaded
Die, when its leaves have dropped away.
But I - within my secret heart -
All thy kind deeds and words will treasure,
Each scene where thou hast borne a part,
Shall be my mind's loved home of pleasure.
Farewell! - I dwell upon the word,
For, though we oft may meet again,
Nought in our cold tones shall be heard
To tell of bygone joy or pain.
'Tis the last time that I shall speak,
Freely, as I so oft have spoken,
When lit thine eye and burned thy cheek,
At hopes now blighted, pledges broken.
And now 't is past. For me, no more
Has Heaven a sunbeam, earth a flower,
I see life's poetry is o'er,
And welcome duty's trial-hour.
I call on toil, to wear away
These trembling feelings, ill-repressed;
I call on custom's wintry sway
To freeze the hot blood of my breast.
The caged bird dies whose mate has flown,
Why should my heart's sensation last,
Its twin-soul fled, its love-bowers on
The dim horizon of the Past!
A
VOL. 1. —NO. III.


314
[Jan.
The Violet. - Stanzas.
THE VIOLET.
Why lingerest thou, pale violet, to see the dying year;
Are autumn's blasts fit music for thee, fragile one, to hear;
Will thy clear blue eye, upward bent, still keep its chastened glow,
Still tearless lift its slender form above the wintry snow ?
Why wilt thou live when none around reflects thy pensive ray?
Thou bloomest here a lonely thing in the clear autumn day.
The tall green trees, that shelter thee, their last gay dress put on;
There will be nought to shelter thee when their sweet leaves are gone.
O violet, like thee, how blest could I lie down and die,
When summer light is fading, and autumn breezes sigh;
When winter reigned I'd close my eye, but wake with bursting spring,
And live with living nature, a pure rejoicing thing.
I had a sister once who seemed just like a violet;
Her morning sun shone bright and calmly purely set;
When the violets were in their shrouds, and summer in its pride,
She laid her hopes at rest, and in the year's rich beauty died.
STANZAS.
NATURE doth have her dawn each day,
But mine are far between ;
Content, I cry, for sooth to say,
Mine brightest are, I ween.
For when my sun doth deign to rise,
Though it be her noontide,
Her fairest field in shadow lies,
Nor can my light abide.
Sometimes I bask me in her day,
Conversing with my mate;
But if we interchange one ray,
Forthwith her heats abate.
Through his discourse I climb and see,
As from some eastern hill,
A brighter morrow rise to me
Than lieth in her skill.
As 't were two summer days in one,
Two Sundays come together,
Our rays united make one Sun,
With fairest summer weather.
D. H. T.


1841.]
315
German Literature.
GERMAN LITERATURE.
OPINIONS are divided respecting German literature. If
we are to believe what is currently reported, and generally
credited, there is, somewhere in New England, a faction of
discontented men and maidens, who have conspired to love
everything Teutonic, from Dutch skates to German infidel-
ity. It is supposed, at least asserted, that these misguided
persons would fain banish all other literature clean out of
space; or, at the very least, would give it precedence of
all other letters, ancient or modern. Whatever is German,
they admire ; philosophy, dramas, theology, novels, old
ballads, and modern sonnets, histories, and dissertations, and
sermons; but above all, the immoral and irreligious writ-
ings, which it is supposed the Germans are chiefly engaged
in writing, with the generous intention of corrupting the
youth of the world, restoring the worship of Priapus, or
Pan, or the Pope, -it is not decided which is to receive
the honor of universal homage, — and thus gradually pre-
paring for the Kingdom of Misrule, and the dominion of
Chaos, and “most ancient Night.” It is often charitably
taken for granted, that the lovers of German works on
Philosophy and Art amongst us, are moved thereto, either by
a disinterested love of whatever is German, or else, which
is the more likely, by a disinterested love of evil, and the
instigation of the devil, who, it is gravely said, has actually
inspired several of the most esteemed writers of that nation,
This German epidemie, we are told, extends very wide.
It has entered the boarding-schools for young misses, of
either sex, and committed the most frightful ravages there-
in. We have been apprised that it has sometimes seized
upon a College, nay, on Universities, and both the Faculty
and the Corporation have exhibited symptoms of the fatal
disease. Colleges, did we say ?
“No place is sacred, not the Church is free.”
* Specimens of Foreign Standard Literature, edited by George Rip-
LET, Vol. VII., VIII., and IX., containing German Literature, translated
from the German of Wolfgang Menzel, by C. C. Felton; in Three Vol-
umes. Boston: Hilliard, Gray and Co. 1840.


316
(Jan.
German Literature.
It has attacked clergymen, in silk and in lawn. The
Doctors of Divinity fall before it. It is thought, that
" Fever and ague, jaundice and catarrh,
The grim-looked tyrant's heavy horse of war;
And apoplexies, those light troops of death,
That use small ceremony with our breath,”
are all nothing to the German epidemic. We meet men
with umbrellas and over-shoes, men “shawled to the
teeth," and suppose they are prudent persons, who have put
on armor against this subtle foe. Histories of this plague,
as of the cholera, have been written; the public has often
been called to defend itself from the enemy, and quarantine
regulations are put in force against all suspected of the in-
fection. In short, the prudent men of the land, men wise
to foresee, and curious to prevent evil, have not failed to
advise the public from time to time of the danger that is
imminent, and to recommend certain talismans, as effectual
safeguards. We think a copy of the “ Westminster Cate-
chism," or the “ Confessions of Faith adopted by the Coun-
cil of Trent,' or the “ Athanasian Creed," perhaps, if hung
about the neck, and worn next the skin, might save little
children, and perhaps girls nearly grown up, especially, if
they read these amulets every morning, fasting. But a
more important specific has occurred to us, which we have
never known to fail, and it has been tried in a great many
cases, in both hemispheres. The remedy is simple; it is a
strong infusion of Dulness. Continued applications of this
excellent nostrum, will save any person, we think, from all
but very slight attacks of this epidemic. Certainly it will
secure the patient from the worst form of the disease, -
the philosophical frenzy, which it is said prevails in colleg-
es, and among young damsels. We think it does not at-
tack the pulpit. The other forms of the malady are mainly
cutaneous, and easily guarded against.
It has often been matter of astonishment to us, that the
guardians of the public welfare did not discover German lit-
erature when it first set foot in America, and thrust it back
into the ocean ; and we can only account for the fact of its
extension here, from the greater activity of Evil in gen-
eral. “Rank weeds do grow apace.” So this evil has
grown up in the absence of our guardians, as the golden
calf was made, while Moses was in the mount, fasting.


1841.)
317
German Literature.
awaked.","%, 07 peradial have been
While the young men and maidens have been eating the
German lotus, the guardians of the public weal have been
" talking, or pursuing, or journeying, or peradventure, they
slept, and must needs be awaked.” However this may be,
they are now awake, and in full cry.
Now for our own part, we have never yet fallen in with
any of these dangerous persons, who have this exaggerated
admiration for whatever is Teutonic, still less this desire to
overthrow Morality, and turn Religion out of the world.
This fact may be taken as presumptive evidence of blind-
ness on our part, if men will. We sometimes, indeed, meet
with men, and women also, well read in this obnoxious
literature ; they are mostly, yes, without a single excep-
tion, as we remember, — unoffending persons. They “ gang
their ain gait," and leave others the same freedom. They
have tastes of their own; scholarly habits; some of them
are possessed of talent, and no contemptible erudition, judg.
ing by the New England standard. They honor what they
find good, and to their taste, in German literature as else-
where. Men and women, some of them are, who do not
think all intellectual and asthetic excellence is contained
in a hundred volumes of Greek and Roman authors, pro-
found and beautiful as they are. They study German
Philosophy, Theology, Criticism, and Literature in general,
as they would the similar works of any nation, for the good
they contain. This, we think, is not forbidden by the Re-
vised Statutes, or any other universal standard of right and
wrong. Why should not a man study even Sanscrit Phi-
losophy, if he will, and profit by it, in peace, if he can? We
do not say there are no enthusiastic or fanatical admirers of
this literature ; nor, that there are none, who “go too far"
in their admiration, — which means, in plain English, farther
than their critic, - but that such persons are by no means
common; so that there seems, really, very small cause for
the panic, into which some good people have seen fit to
fall. We doubt the existence, therefore, of this reputed
faction of men and maidens, who design to reinstate Con-
fusion on her throne.
But, on the other hand, we are told, — and partly believe
it, — that there is a party of cool-headed, discreet, mode-
rate, sound, and very respectable persons, who hate Ger-
man literature. Of these we can speak from knowledge.


318
(Jan.
German Literature.
Most men have heard of them, for they have cried out like
Bluebeard in the tale, “ till all shook again." They are plenty
as acorns in autumn, and may be had for the asking. This
party has, to speak gently, a strong dislike to German lite-
rature, philosophy, and theology. Sometimes this dislike
is founded on a knowledge of facts, an acquaintance with
the subject, in which case no one will find fault; but far
oftener it rests merely on prejudice, – on the most utter
ignorance of the whole matter. Respecting this latter class
of haters without knowledge, we have a few words to say.
We have somewhere seen it written, “ he that answereth a
matter before he heareth it, it is a folly and shame unto
him.” We commend it to the attention of these judges.
They criticise German literature by wholesale and retail, -
to adopt the ingenious distinction of Dr. Watts. They
issue their writs, and have the shadow of some poor Ger-
man brought into the court of their greatness, and pass
sentence with the most speedy justice, never examining the
evidence, nor asking a question, nor permitting the prison-
er at the bar to say a word for himself, till the whole mat-
ter is disposed of. Before this honorable bench, Goethe,
and Schleiermacher, and Schiller, and Arndt, and Kant,
and Leibnitz, Henry Heine, and Jacob Böhme, Schel-
ling of universal renown, and Schefer of Muskau in
Nieder-Lausitz, and Hegel, and Strauss, with their
aids and abettors, are brought up and condemned as
mystics, infidels, or pantheists; in one word, as Germans.
Thus the matter is disposed of by the honorable court.
Now we would not protest against this method of proceed-
ing, ancient as it is, and supported by precedents from
the time of Jethro to General Jackson. Such a protest
would be “ a dangerous innovation," no doubt. We would
have no exceptions from the general method made in favor
of German letters. No literature was ever written into more
than temporary notice, and certainly none was ever written
down. German literature amongst us encounters just the
same treatment the classic authors received at the hands of
the middle ages. When those old sages and saints began
to start out of the corners where night had overtaken them,
men were alarmed at their strange faces and antique
beards, and mysterious words. “What,” said they, as
they gaped on one another, in the parlor, the court, the


1841.)
319
-
German Literature.
camp, or the church, with terror in their faces, — “What!
study Greek and Roman letters! Greek and Roman phi-
losophy ? shall we men of the TENTH century, study authors
who lived two thousand years ago, in an age of darkness?
Shame on the thought! Shall we, who are Christians, and
live in an age of light, look for instruction to Plato, Aris-
totle, Cicero, or Seneca, men from dark pagan times? It
were preposterous ! Let such works perish, or sink back
to their original night.'' * So it goes with us, and it is
said, “ Shall we Americans, excellent Christians as we are,
who live in a land of education, of righteousness, of religion,
and know how to reconcile it all with our three mil-
lions of slaves; in the land of steamboats and railroads,
we Americans, possessed of all needed intelligence and
culture, shall we read the books of the Germans, infidels as
they are ? Germans, who dwell in the clouds, and are
only fitted by divine grace to smoke tobacco and make dic-
tionaries! Out upon the thought.”
No doubt this decision is quite as wise as that pronounc-
ed so gravely by conservatives and alarmists of the middle
ages. “Would you have me try the criminal before I pass
sentence?" said the Turkish justice ; “ that were a waste
of words and time, for if I should condemn him after ex-
amination, why not before, and so save the trouble of look-
ing into the matter ?" Certainly the magistrate was wise,
and wherever justice is thus administered, the traditional
complaint of the “law's delay" will never dare lift up its
voice. Honor to the Turkish judge and his swift decision;
long may it be applied to German literature. Certainly it
is better that ninety-and-nine innocent persons should suffer
outrageous torture, than that one guilty should escape. Why
should not public opinion lay an embargo on German
words, as on India crackers, or forbid their sale? Certain-
ly it costs more labor to read them, than the many excellent
books in the mother tongue. No doubt a ready reader
• The following anecdote is quite to the point: One day, in the year
1530, a French monk said in the pulpit, “ a new language has been dis-
covered, which is called Greek. You must take good heed, and keep
out of its way. This language engenders all heresies. I see in the hands
of many, a book written in this language. It is called the New Testa-
ment. It is a book full of thorns and vipers. As for the Hebrew lan-
guage, all who study that become Jews immediately." – Sismondi, His-
toire des Francais, T. XVI. p. 364, cited in Michelet's Hist. Luther.


320
(Jan.
German Literaturene.
.
would go over the whole ninety-eight volumes of Sir Wal-
ter Scott, in less time than he could plod through and mas-
ter the single obstinate book of Kant's Kritik of the Pure
Reason. Stewart, and Brown, and Reid, and Paley, and
Thomas Dick, and Abercrombie, are quite easy reading.
They trouble no man's digestion, though he read them after
dinner with his feet on the fender. Are not these writers,
with their illustrious progenitors, successors, and coadjutors,
sufficient for all practical purposes ? Why, then, allow our
studious youth in colleges and log-cabins to pore over Leib-
nitz and Hegel till they think themselves blind, and the red
rose yields to the white on their cheek?
In the name of good sense, we would ask if English lit-
erature, with the additions of American genius, is not rich
enough without our going to the Hercynian forest, where
the scholars do not think, but only dream? Not to mention
Milton, and Shakspeare, and Bacon, — names confessedly
without parallel in the history of thought, — have we not
surpassed the rest of the world, in each department of
science, literature, philosophy, and theology? Whence
come the noble array of scientific works, that connect gen-
eral laws with single facts, and reveal the mysteries of
nature? Whence come the most excellent works in poetry,
criticism, and art ? Whence the profound treatises on
ethics and metaphysics ? Whence the deep and wide
volumes of theology, the queen of all sciences ? Whence
come works on the classics of Greece and Rome? Whence
histories of all the chief concerns of man? Do they not all
come, in this age, from England and our own bosom?
What need have we of asking favors from the Germans, or
of studying their literature? As the middle-age monks
said of the classics, — ANATHEMA SIT. It is certainly right,
that the ghost of terror, like Mr. Littlefaith in the story,
should cross itself in presence of such a spirit, and utter
its APAGE Sathanas. Such an anathema would, no doubt,
crush the Monadnock — or a sugar-plum.
But let us come out of this high court of Turkish justice,
and for a moment look German literature in the face, and
allow it to speak for itself. To our apprehension, German
literature is the fairest, the richest, the most original, fresh,
and religious literature of all modern times. We say this


1841.]
321
German Literature.
advisedly. We do not mean to say Germany has produced
the greatest poetic genius of modern times. It has no
Shakspeare, as the world has but one, in whom the Poetic
Spirit seems to culminate, though it will doubtless rise high-
er in better ages. But we sometimes hear it said, admitting
the excellence of two or three German writers, yet their
literature is narrow, superficial, and poor, when compared
with that of England. Let us look at the facts, and com-
pare the two in some points. Classical taste and culture
have long been the boast of England. There is a wealth
of classical allusion in her best writers, which has an inex-
pressible charm, and forms the chief minor grace, in many
a work of poetic art. Classical culture is the pride, we
take it, of her two “ancient and honorable universities,"
and their spirit prevails everywhere in the island. The
English scholar is proud of his " quantity,” and the correct-
ness of his quotations from Seneca and Demosthenes. But
from what country do we get editions of the classics, that
are worth the reading, in which modern science and art are
brought to bear on the ancient text? What country nur-
tures the men that illustrate Homer, Herodotus, the An-
thology of Planudes, and the dramatic poets ? Who ex-
plain for us the antiquities of Athens, and write minute
treatises on the law of inheritance, the castes, tribes, and
manners of the men of Attica? Who collect all the neces-
sary facts, and reproduce the ideas lived out, consciously
or unconsciously, on the banks of the Eurotas, the Nile, or
the Alpheus? Why, the Germans. We do not hesitate to
say, that in the present century not a Greek or a Roman
classic has been tolerably edited in England, except through
the aid of some German scholar. The costly editions of
Greek authors that come to us from Oxford and London,
beautiful reprints of Plato, Aristotle, Aristophanes, Euripi-
des, Sophocles, Æschylus, Herodotus, the Attic orators,
and Plotinus; all these are the work of German erudition,
German toil, German genius sometimes. The wealthy
islanders, proud of their classic culture, furnish white paper
and luminous type ; but the curious diligence that never
tires; the profound knowledge and philosophy which brings
the whole light of Grecian genius to illuminate a single
point; all this is German, and German solely. Did it not
happen within ten years, that the translation of a German
VOL. 1. — NO. III.


322
[Jan.
German Literature.
work, containing some passages in Greek, incorrectly point-
ed in the original edition, and, therefore, severely censured at
home, was about being published in Edinburgh, and no man
could be found in the Athens of the North, and “ no man in
all Scotland,” who could correctly accent the Greek words !
The fact must be confessed. So the book was sent to its
author,-a Professor of Theology, and he put it into
the hands of one of his pupils, and the work was done.
These things are trifles, but a straw shows which way the
stream runs, when a mill-stone would not. Whence come
even the grammars and lexicons, of almost universal use in
studying the ancient authors? The name of Reimer, and
Damm, and Schneider, and Büttmann, and Passow, give the
answer. Where are the English classical scholars in this
country, who take rank with Wolf, Heyne, Schweighauser,
Wyttenbach, Boeckh, Herrmann, Jacobs, Siebelis, Hoff-
mann, Siebenkis, Müller, Creutzer, Wellauer, and Ast?
Nay, where shall we find the rivals of Dindorf, Shäfer, Stall-
baum, Spitzner, Bothe, and Bekker, and a host more, for we
have only written down those which rushed into our mind ?
What English name of the present century can be men-
tioned with the least of these ? Not one. They labor,
and we may enter into their labors, if we are not too fool-
ish. Who write ancient history like Niehbühr, and Müller,
and Schlosser ? But for the Germans, the English would
have believed till this day, perhaps, all the stories of Livy,
that it rained stones, and oxen spoke, for so it was written
in Latin, and the text was unimpeachable.
But some may say, these are not matters of primary con-
cern; in things of “great pith and moment,” we are supe-
rior to these Teutonic giants. Would it were so. Per-
haps, in some of the physical sciences, the English surpass
their German friends, though even here we have doubts,
which are strengthened every month. One would expect
the most valuable works on physical geography from Eng-
land; but we are disappointed, and look in vain for any one
to rival Ritter, or even Mannert. In works of general civil
and political history in the present century, though we have
two eminent historians in our own country, one of whom must
take rank with Thucydides and Tacitus, Gibbon and Hume,
England has nothing to equal the great works of Von Ham-
mer, Wilkins, and Schlosser. Why need we mention the


1841.]
German Literature.
323
German histories of inventions, of art, of each science, of clas-
sical education, of literature in general ? Why name their
histories of Philosophy, from Brucker down to Brandis and
Michelet? In English, we have but Stanley, good in his
time, and valuable even now, and Enfield, a poor compiler
from Brucker. The Germans abound in histories of literature,
from the beginning of civilization down to the last Leipsic
fair. In England, such works are unknown. We have
as yet no history of our own literature, though the Germans
have at least one, quite readable and instructive. Even
the dry and defective book of Mr. Hallam, - for such it is
with all its many excellencies, – is drawn largely from its
German predecessors, though it is often inferior to them in
vigor, and almost always in erudition and eloquence.
Doubtless, the English are a very learned people; a very
Christian people likewise, no doubt. But within the pres-
ent century, what has been written in the English tongue,
in any department of theological scholarship, which is of
value, and makes a mark on the age ? The Bridgewater
Treatises, and the new edition of Paley, — we blush to
confess it, — are the best things. In the criticism and ex-
planation of the Bible, Old Testament or New Testament,
what has been written, that is worth reading ? Nothing,
absolutely nothing of any permanent value, save some half
dozen of books, it may be, drawn chiefly from German sourc-
es. Who have written the grammars and lexicons, by which
the Hebrew and Greek Testaments are read? Why, the
Germans. Who have written critical introductions to the
Bible, useful helps in studying the sacred letters? Why, the
Germans. Who have best, and alone developed the doctrines
of the Bible, and explained them, philosophically and practi-
cally? Why, the Germans again. Where are the men, who
shall stand up in presence of Gesenius, Fürst, Schleusner,
and Wahl ; Winer, and Ewald, and Nordheimer; Michaelis,
Eichhorn, Jahn, and Bertholdt, Hug, and De Wette; the
Rosenmüllers, Maurer, Umbreit, Credner, Paulus, Kuinoel,
Fritzsche, Von Meyer, Lücke, Olshausen, Hengstenberg,
and Tholuck, and take rank as their peers? We look for
them, but in vain. “We put our finger on them, and they
are not there.” What work on theology, which has de-
served or attracted general notice, has been written in Eng-
lish, in the present century? We know of none. In Ger-


324
German Literature.
[Jan.
many, such works are numerous. They have been written
by pious men, and the profoundest scholars of the age.
Wegscheider's Theology is doubtless a poor work; but its
equal is nowhere to be found in the English tongue. Its
equal, did we say? There is nothing that can pretend to
approach it. Where, then, shall we find rivals for such
theologians as Ammon, Kase, Daub, Baumgarten Crusius,
Schleiermacher, Breschneider, and De Wette? even for
Zachariæ, Vatke, and Kaiser ?
In ecclesiastical history every body knows what sort of
works have proceeded from the English and American
scholars. Jortin, Milner, Priestley, Campbell, Echard, Erskine,
Jones, Waddington, and Sabine; these are our writers.
But what are their works? They are scarcely known in the
libraries of scholars. For our knowledge of ecclesiastical
history we depend on the translations from Du Pin, and Til-
lemont, or more generally on those from the German Mo-
sheim and Gieseler. All our English ecclesiastical histories,
what are they when weighed against Mosheim, the Walchs,
Vater, Gieseler, Schröekh, Planck, Muenscher, Tzschirner,
and Neander ? Why they might make sumptuous repasts
on the crumbs which fall from these men's table. The
Germans publish the Fathers of the Greek and Latin church,
and study them. To the English they are almost “a gar-
den shut up and a fountain sealed.” It is only the Germans
in this age, who study theology, or even the Bible, with the
aid of enlightened and scientific criticism. There is not
even a history of theology in our language.
But this is not all, by no means the chief merit of the Ger-
man scholars. Within less than threescore years there have
appeared among them four philosophers, who would have
been conspicuous in any age, and will hereafter, we think, be
named with Plato, Aristotle, Bacon, Descartes, and Leib-
nitz—among the great thinkers of the world. They are
Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. Silently these lights
arose and went up the sky without noise, to take their
place among the fixed stars of Genius and shine with them,
names that will not fade out of heaven until some ages shall
have passed away. These men were thinkers all; deep,
mighty thinkers. They knelt reverently down before Na-
ture, with religious hearts, and asked her questions. They
sat on the brink of the well of Truth, and continued to draw


1841.]
325
German Literature.
for themselves and the world. Take Kant alone, and in
the whole compass of thought, we scarce know his supe-
rior. From Aristotle to Leibnitz, we do not find his equal.
No, nor since Leibnitz. Need we say it? Was there not many
a Lord Bacon in Immanuel Kant ? Leibnitz himself was not
more capacious, nor the Stagyrite more profound. What
revolutions are in his thoughts. His books are battles.
Philosophical writers swarm in Germany. Philosophy seems
epidemic almost, and a score of first rate American, or half
a dozen English reputations, might be made out of any of
their philosophical writers of fourth or fifth magnitude.
Here, one needs very little scholarship to establish a name.
A small capital suffices for the outfit, for the credit system
seems to prevail in the literary, as well as the commercial
world ; and one can draw on the Bank of Possibilities, as
well as the fund of achievements. One need but open any
number of the Berlin Jahrbucher, the Jena Allgem-
eine Literatur Zeitung, or the Studien and Kritiken, to
see what a lofty spirit prevails among the Germans in phi-
losophy, criticism, and religion. There, a great deal is
taken for granted, and supposed to be known to all readers,
which here is not to be supposed, except of a very few, the
most learned. Philosophy and theology, we reckon as the
pride of the Germans. Here their genius bursts into
bloom, and ripens into fruit. But they are greatly eminent,
likewise, in the departments of poetry, and elegant letters
in general. Notwithstanding their wealth of erudition, they
are eminently original. Scandinavia and the East, Greece
and the middle ages, all pour their treasures into the lap of -
the German muse, who not only makes trinkets therefrom,
but out of her own stores of linen, and wool, and silk, spins
and weaves strong and beautiful apparel for all her house-
hold, and the needy everywhere. “She maketh herself
coverings of tapestry ; her clothing is silk and purple.” No
doubt, among the Germans there is an host of servile imitat-
ors, whose mind travels out of itself, so to say, and makes
pilgrimages to Dante, or Shakspeare, or Pindar, or Thucy-
dides. Some men think they are very Shakspeares, because
they transgress obvious rules. The sickly negations of Byron,
his sensibility, misanthropy, and affectation, are aped every
day in Berlin and Vienna Horace and Swift, Anacreon
and Bossuet, and Seneca and Walter Scott, not to name


326
(Jan.
German Literature.
others, have imitators in every street, who remind one con-
tinually of the wren that once got into the eagle's nest, set
up to be king of the birds, and attempted a scream. Still the
staple of their literature is eminently original. In point of
freshness, it has no equal since the days of Sophocles.
Who shall match with Wieland, and Lessing, the Schlegels,
Herder, so sweet and beautiful, Jean-Paul, Tieck, and
Schiller, and Goethe ? We need not mention lesser names,
nor add more of their equals.
In what we have said, we would not underrate English
literature, especially the works of former ages. We would
pay deep and lasting homage to the great poets, historians,
philosophers, and divines of the mother country, in her best
days. Their influence is still fresh and living throughout
the world of letters. But as these great spirits ascended,
the mantle of their genius, or inspiration, has fallen on the
Germans, and not the English. Well says a contemporary,
“ Modern works are greatly deficient both in depth and
purity of sentiment. They seldom contain original and
striking views of the nature of man, and of the institutions
which spring from his volition. There is a dearth of thought
and sterility of sentiment among us. Literature, art, phi-
losophy, and life, are without freshness, ideality, verity, and
spirit. Most works, since the days of Milton, require little
thought; they want depth, freshness; the meaning is on
the surface; and the charm, if any, is no deeper than the
fancy; the imagination is not called into life; the thoughts
are carried creepingly along the earth, and often lost amid
the low and uncleanly things of sense and custom.” “I do
not, at this time, think of any writer since Milton, except-
ing Coleridge and Wordsworth, whose works require a
serene and thoughtful spirit, in order to be understood." *
As little would we be insensible to the merits of the
rising literature of our own land. Little could be expected
of us, hitherto. Our business has been, to hew down the
forest; to make paths and saw-mills; railroads and steam-
boats ; to lay the foundation of a great people, and provide
for the emergencies of the day. As yet, there is no Amer-
ican literature, which corresponds to the first principles of
our institutions, as the English or French literature corre-
* A. B. Alcott in "Record of a School."


1841.)
327
German Literature.
sponds to theirs. We are, perhaps, yet too young and raw
to carry out the great American idea, either in literature or
society. At present, both are imitations, and seem rather
the result of foreign and accidental circumstances, than the
offspring of our own spirit. No doubt the time will come,
when there shall be an American school, in science, letters,
and the elegant arts. Certainly, there is none now. The
promise of it must be sought in our newspapers, and speech-
es, oftener than in our books. Like all other nations, we
have begun with imitations, and shall come to originals,
doubtless, before we end.
But there is one peculiar charm in this literature, quite
unequalled, we think, in modern days, that is, the RELIG-
1ous character of German works. We know it is often
said, the Germans are licentious, immoral in all ways, and
above all men, — not the old giants excepted, — are haters
of religion. One would fancy Mezentius or Goliath was
the archetype of the nation. We say it advisedly, that this
is, in our opinion, the most religious literature the world has
seen since the palmy days of Greek writing, when the re-
ligious spirit seemed fresh, and warm, coming into life, and
playing grateful with the bland celestial light, reflected from
each flower-cup, and passing cloud, and received direct and
straightway from the source of all. It stands an unconscious
witness to the profound piety of the German heart. We
had almost said it was the only Christian national literature
the world has ever seen. Certainly, to our judgment, the
literature of Old England, in her best days, was less re-
ligious in thought and feeling, as it was less beautiful
in its form, and less simple in its quiet, loving holiness,
than this spontaneous and multiform expression of the Ger-
man soul. But we speak not for others ; let each drink of
" that spiritual rock," where the water is most salubrious to
him. But we do not say that German literature comprises
no works decidedly immoral and irreligious. Certainly we
have read such, but they are rare, while almost every book,
not entirely scientific and technical, breathes a religious
spirit. You meet this, coming unobtrusively upon you,
where you least of all expect it. We do not say, that the
idea of a Christian literature is realized in Germany, or
likely to be realized. No; the farthest from it possible.
No nation has yet dreamed of realizing it. Nor can this


328
[Jan.
German Literature.
be done, until Christianity penetrates the heart of the na-
tions, and brings all into subjection to the spirit of life.
The Christianity of the world is yet but a baptized heathen-
ism, so literature is yet heathen and profane. We dare not
think, lest we think against our Faith. As if Truth were
hostile to Faith, and God's house were divided against it-
self. The Greek literature represents the Greek religion ;
its ideal and its practical side. But all the literature of all
Christian nations, taken together, does not represent the
true Christian religion, only that fraction of it these nations
could translate into their experience. Hence, we have as
yet only the cradle song of Christianity, and its nursery
rhymes. The same holds true in art, — painting, sculpture,
and architecture. Hitherto it is only the church militant,
not the church triumphant, that has been represented. A
Gothic cathedral gives you the aspiration, not the attain-
ment, the resting in the fulness of God, which is the end
of Christianity. We have Magdalens, Madonnas; saints,
emaciated almost to anatomies, with most rueful visage, and
traditional faces of the Saviour. These, however, express
the penitence, the wailing of the world lying in darkness,
rather than the light of the nations. The Son OF MAN
risen from the grave, is yet lacking in art. The Christian
Prometheus, or Apollo, is not yet ; still less the triple
graces, and the Olympian Jove of Christianity. What is
Saint Peter's to the Parthenon, considered as symbols of
the two religions ? The same deficiency prevails in litera-
ture. We have inherited much from the heathen, and so
Christianity, becoming the residuary legatee of deceased
religions, has earned but little for itself. History has not
yet been written in the spirit of the Christian scheme ; as a
friend says, hitherto it has been the “history of elder broth-
ers." Christianity would write of the whole family. The
great Christian poem, the Tragedy of Mankind, has not yet
been conceived. A Christian philosophy founded on an ex-
haustive analysis of Man, is among the things that are dis-
tant. The true religion has not yet done its work in the
heart of the nations. How, then, can it reach their litera-
ture, their arts, their society, which come from the nation's
heart? Christianity is still in the manger, wrapped in
swaddling bands, and unable to move its limbs. Its Jewish
parent watches fearful, with a pondering heart. The shep-
friend
Christian poer Christianis amoneta


1841.]
329
German Literature.
herds that honor the new-born are Jewish still, dripping as
yet with the dews of ancient night. The heathen magi-
cians have come up to worship, guided by the star of truth,
which goes before all simple hearts, and lighteth every man
that cometh into the world. But they are heathen even
now. They can only offer “gold, and frankincense, and
myrrh.” They do not give their mind, and still less their
heart. The celestial child is still surrounded by the oxen,
that slumber in their stalls, or wake to blame the light that
prevents their animal repose. The Herod of superstition
is troubled, and his city with him. Alarmed at the new
tidings, he gathers together his mighty men; his chief
priests and scribes, to take counsel of his twin prophets,
the Flesh and the Devil, and while he pretends to seek only
to worship, he would gladly slay the young child, that is
born King of the world. But Christianity will get grow
up to manhood, and escape the guardianship of traditions,
to do the work God has chosen. Then, and not till then,
will the gospel of beautiful souls, fair as the light, and
“ terrible as an army with banners,” be written in the lit-
erature, arts, society, and life of the world. Now when we
say that German literature is religious, above all others, we
mean, that it comes nearer than any other to the Christian
ideal of literary art. Certainly it by no means reaches the
mark.
Such, then, is German literature. Now with those among
us, who think nothing good can come of it, we have noth-
ing to say. Let them rejoice in their own cause, and be
blessed in it. But from the influence this rich, beloved, and
beautiful literature will exert on our infant world of letters,
we hope the most happy results. The diligence which
shuns superficial study; the boldness which looks for the
causes of things, and the desire to fall back on what alone
is elementary and eternal, in criticism, philosophy, and re-
ligion ; the religious humility and reverence which pervades
it, may well stimulate our youth to great works. We would
not that any one should give in his adhesion to a German
master, or copy German models. All have their defects.
We wonder that clear thinkers can write so darkly as some
do, and that philosophers and theologians are content with
their slovenly paragraphs, after Goethe has written such
VOL. I. — NO. III.
42


330
[Jan.
German Literature.
luminous prose. We doubt, that their philosophical or
theological systems can ever take root in the American
mind. · But their method may well be followed ; and for-
tunate will it be for us if the central truths, their systems
are made to preserve, are sown in our soil, and bear abun-
dant fruit. No doubt, there is danger in studying these
writings; just as there is danger in reading Copernicus,
or Locke, Aristotle, or Lord Brougham, or Isaiah and
St. John. As a jocose friend says, “it is always dan-
gerous for a young man to think, for he may think
wrong, you know.” It were sad to see men run mad after
German philosophy ; but it is equally sad to see them go
to the same excess in English philosophy. If - Transcen-
dentalism” is bad, so is Paleyism, and Materialism. Truth
is possessed entire by no sect, German or English. It re-
quires all schools to get at all Truth, as the whole Church
is needed to preach the whole Gospel. Blessed were the
days when Truth dwelt among men in her wholeness. But
alas ! they only existed in fable, and now, like Osiris in the
story, she is cut into fragments and scattered world-wide,
and sorrowing mortals must journey their life-long, to gath-
er here a piece and there a piece. But the whole can
never be joined and reanimated in this life. Where there
is much thought, there will be some truth, and where there
is freedom in thinking, there is room for misconduct also.
We hope light from Germany; but we expect shadows
with it. The one will not eclipse the sun, nor the other be
thicker than the old darkness we have “ felt” from our
youth up. We know there is sin among the Germans; it is
so wherever there are men and women. Philosophy, in Ger-
many or England, like the stout man a journeying, advances
from day to day ; but sometimes loses the track and wan-
ders, “ not knowing whither he goeth ; " nay, sometimes
stumbles into a ditch. When this latter accident, — as
it is confessed, — has befallen Philosophy in America and
England, and men declare she is stark dead, we see not why
her friends might not call on her German sister, to extricate
her from the distress, and revive' her once more, or at least
give her decent burial. We are sorry, we confess it, to see
foolish young men, and old men not burthened with wis-
dom, trusting wholly in a man ; thinking as he thinks, and
moving as he pulls the strings. It is dangerous to yield


1841.]
331
German Literature.
thus to a German, or a Scotch philosopher. It were bad to
be borne off on a cloud by Fichte and Hegel, or to be made
“ spouse of the worm and brother of the clay,” by Priestley
or Paley. But we fancy it was better to fall into the hands
of Jove than Pluto. We cannot predict the result of the
German movement in philosophy ; but we see no more
reason for making Henry Ileine, Gutzkow, and Schefer the
exponents of that movement, — as the manner of some is,
– than for selecting Bulwer, Byron, Moore, and Taylor
the infidel, to represent the Church of England. Seneca
and Petronius were both Roman men, but which is the
type ? Let German literature be weighed in an even bal-
ance, and then pass for what it is worth. We have
no fear that it will be written down, and should be sorry to
see any exaggerated statement of its excellence, which would
in the end lead to disappointment.
We turn now to the book named at the head of our ar-
ticle. The author's design is to give a picture of German
literature. His work does not pretend to be a history, nor
to point out the causes which have made the literature what
it is. His aim is to write of subjects, rather than to talk
about books. His work is merely a picture. Since this
is so, its character depends on two things, namely, the
artist's point of sight, and the fidelity with which he has
painted things as they appear, from that point. The first
question then is, from what point does he survey the field ?
It is not that of philosophy, theology, or politics. He is no
adept in either of these sciences. He is eminently nation-
al, and takes the stand of a German amateur. Therefore it
is his duty to paint things as they appear to a disinterested
German man of letters ; so he must treat of religion, philoso-
phy, education, history, politics, natural science, poetry, law,
and criticism, from this point of view. It would certainly re-
quire an encyclopedical head to discuss ably all these sub-
jects, and bring them down to the comprehension of the
unlearned. It was scarcely to be expected, that any one
man should be so familiar with all departments of thought
in a literature so wide and rich as this, as never to make
mistakes, and even great mistakes. Now Mr. Menzel does
not give us a faithful picture of things as seen from this
position, as we shall proceed to show in some details. He


332
German Literature.
[Jan.
carries with him violent prejudices, which either blind his
eyes to the truth, or prevent him from representing it as it
is. On his first appearance, his unmanly hostility to Goethe
began to show itself.* Nay, it appeared, we are told, in
his Streckverse, published a little before. This hostility
amounts to absolute hatred, we think, not only of the works,
but of the man, himself. This animosity towards distin-
guished authors, vitiates the whole work. Personal feel-
ings and prepossessions perpetually interrupt the cool judg-
ment of the critic. When a writer attempts, as Men-
zel does, to show that an author who has a reputation,
which covers the world, and rises higher and higher each
year; who is distinguished for the breadth of his studies,
and the newness of his views, and his exquisite taste in all
matters of art, - is only a humbug, what can we do but
smile, and ask, if effects come without causes ? Respect-
ing this hostility to Goethe, insane as it obviously is, we
have nothing to say. Besides, the translator has ably re-
ferred to the matter in the preface. That Goethe, as a
man, was selfish to a very high degree, a debauchee and
well-bred epicurean, who had little sympathy with what
was highest in man, so long as he could crown himself
with rose-buds, we are willing to admit. But let him
have justice, none the less. Mr. Menzel sets up a false
standard, by which to judge literary productions. Philoso-
phy, ethics, art, and literature, should be judged of by their
own laws. We would not censure the Laocoon, because it
did not teach us agriculture, nor the Iliad, because it was
not republican enough for our taste. Each of these works
is to be judged by its own principles. Now, we object to
our friend, that he judges literary works by the political
complexion of their author. Thus, for example, not to
mention Goethe, he condemns Johann von Müller, — whom,
as a Swiss, he was not bound to mention among German
writers, — and all his works, because he was no patriot.
For him “ of all the German writers, I entertain the pro-
foundest contempt.” No doubt, the venerable historian, as
some one has said, would be overwhelmed as he stands in
* Eurossaischen Blattern for 1824, I. B. 8, 101 - 108, and IV., and 233,
seq. But these we have never seen, and only a few stray numbers of the
Literatur-Blatt.


1841.]
333
German Literature.
the Elysian fields, with Tacitus and Thucydides, to be de-
spised by such an historian as Menzel !* So Krug is con-
demned, not for his fustiness and superficiality, but because
he wrote against the Poles. It is surprising to what a
length this is carried. He ought to condemn the “Ego-
ism” of Fichte, no less than that of Hegel. But because
the former is a liberal, and the latter a conservative, the
same thing is tolerated in the one and condemned in the
other Words cannot express his abhorrence of Hegel.
Fries is commended as a philosopher, because he was
“almost the only true patriot among our philosophers."
Oken must not be reproached with his coarse Material-
ism, because he resigned his professorship at Jena, rather
than give up his liberal journal. These few instances are
sufficient to show the falseness of his standard.
He indulges in personal abuse ; especially does he pour
out the vials of his calumny on the “young Germans,"
whom he censures for their personal abuse. He seems to
have collected all the " little city twaddle," as the Germans
significantly name it, as material for his work, and very
striking are the colors, indeed. His abuse of this kind is so
gross, that we shall say no more of it.f Mr. Menzel is the
Berserker of modern critics. He scorns all laws of literary
warfare, scalps, and gouges, and stabs under the fifth rib,
and sometimes condescends to tell a downright lie, as we
shall show in its place. He often tries the works he censures
by a moral, and not a critical or artistic standard. No
doubt the moral is the highest, and a work of art, wherein
the moral element is wanting, deserves the severest cen-
sure. No man can insist on this too strongly. But when
a man writes for the artistic point of view, we think it his
duty to adhere to his principles. If a work is immoral, it
is so far false to the first principles of art. It does very
little good, we fancy, merely to cry out, that this book of
Gutzkow, or that of Goethe, is immoral. It only makes
foolish young men the more eager to read it. But if the
critic would show, that the offending parts were false, no
* See an able defence of Von Muller, in Strauss's Streitschriften,
Heft 2. Tubingen : 1837. p. 100.
Vol. I. p. 235, seq.
Read who will, Vol. III. p. 228, for an example.


334
[Jan.
German Literature.
less than wicked, and mere warts and ulcers on the body
of the work, he would make the whole appear loathsome,
and not attractive. Mr. Menzel is bound to do this, for he
believes that the substance and the form of art are insepa-
rable, or in plain English, that virtue is beautiful, and vice
ugly. Having made this criticism, he might justly pro-
nounce the moral sentence also. If truth is harmonious,
then a licentious work is false and detestable, as well in an
artistic as in a moral point of view. But we cannot en-
large on this great question at the end of an article.
Judging Menzel from his own point of view, this
work is defective in still graver points. He carries his
partisan feelings wherever he goes, and with very super-
ficial knowledge passes a false sentence on great men and
great things. His mistakes are sometimes quite amusing,
even to an American scholar, and must be doubly ludicrous
to a German, whose minute knowledge of the literature of
his own country would reveal more mistakes than meet our
eye. We will point out a few of these in only two chap-
ters. That on philosophy and religion. In the first, we
think the author may safely defy any one to divine from his
words the philosophical systems of the writers he treats of.
Take, for a very striking example, his remarks upon Leibnitz,
(Vol. I. p. 219.) “The great Leibnitz, who stood on the
boundary line between the old times of astrology, magic, and
sympathetic influences, and the later times of severe scien-
tific method, united the labyrinth of life, belonging to these
austere dark days, with the clear light of our own. He was
animated with deep religious faith, but still had the full
vigor of thought. Living faith in God was his rock ; but
his system of world-harmony,* showed nothing of the
darkly-colored cathedral light of the ancient mystics; it
stood forth in the clear white light of the day, like a mar-
ble temple on the mountain-top.” From this state-
ment, one would naturally connect Leibnitz with Pythago-
ras, Kepler, and Baron Swedenborg, who really believed and
taught the world-harmony. But who would ever dream of
the Monads, which play such a part in the system of Leib-
* Mr. Felton has translated Weltharmonie " Preëstablished Harmo-
ny," which Leibnitz believed in, but it is not the meaning of the
word.


1841.)
German Literature.
335
nitz ? He tells us, that Eberhard has written a onesided
and Kantian history of philosophy, which is very strange in
a man who lived a Wolfian all his days, and fought against
the critical philosophy, though with somewhat more zeal
than knowledge, it is thought. Besides, bis history of
Philosophy was published in 1788, before the Kantian phi-
losophy had become lord of the ascendant. As he criticises
poets by the patriotic standard, so he tries the philosophers
by his æsthetic rule, and wonders they are hard to under-
stand. But these are minor defects; come we to the greater.
His remarks on Kant are exceedingly unjust, not to speak
more harshly. “ The philosophical century wanted an earth
without a heaven, a state without a church, man without a
God. No one has shown so plainly as Kant, how with this
limitation earth may still be a paradise, the state a moral
union, and man a noble being, by his own reason and
power, subjected to law.” (Vol. I. p. 223.) We do not see
low any one could come to this conclusion, who had read
Kant's Kritik of Judgment, and Practical Reason, and con-
clude our critic, forgetting to look into these books, in his
abhorrence of scholastic learning, and “study, that makes
men pale,” cut the matter short, and rode over the “ high
priori road,” in great state to the conclusion. We pass
over his account of Fichte and Schelling, leaving such as
have the ability to determine, from his remarks, what were
the systems of these two philosophers, and reconstruct them
at their leisure. There is an old remark we have somewhere
heard, that it takes a philosopher to judge a philosopher ;
and the truth of the proverb is very obvious to the readers
of this chapter. Hegel seems the object of our author's
most desperate dislike. His sin, however, is not so much
his philosophy, as his conservative politics, as it appears.
He does not condescend, — as an historian might do once in
a while, — to give us a portrait, or even a caricature of his
system ; but contents himself with such abuse as the fol-
lowing precious sentences. “Hegel first reduced God to a
mere speculation, led about by an evil spirit, in the void of
his heavenly heath, who does nothing but think, indeed,
nothing but think of thinking.” (Vol. I. p. 259.) “He
makes no distinction between himself and God; he gives
himself out for God.” He says God first came to a clear
consciousness of himself “in the philosopher who has the


336
(Jan.
German Literature.
only right philosophy, therefore in himself, in the person of
Hegel. Thus we have, then, a miserable, hunch-backed,
book-learned God; a wooden and squinting academical
man, a man of the most painful and pompous scholas-
ticism; in a word, a German pedant on the throne of the
world.” We need make no comments on the spirit which
suggests such a criticism upon a philosopher like Hegel.
Still farther, he says, Förster “ declared, over the grave of
Hegel, that, beyond all doubt, Hegel was himself the Holy
Ghost, the third person in the Godhead.” When we read
this several years ago, we believed the words were uttered
by some man of an Oriental imagination, who meant no
harm by his seeming irreverence. But on inquiry we find
it is not so. One who heard Mr. Förster's Oration, who
had it lying before him, in print, at the time of writing,
declares, there was no such thing in it, but the strongest
passage was this; “ Was it not he, who reconciled the un-
believers with God, inasmuch as he taught us truly to
understand Jesus Christ ?"*
But enough on this subject. Let us say a word respect-
ing the chapter on Religion, more particularly on that part
relating to theology. Here the learned author's abhorrence
of book-learning is more conspicuous than elsewhere, though
obvious enough in all parts of the book. We pass over
the first part of the chapter, — which contains some very
good things, that will come to light in spite of the smart
declamations in which they are floating, -and proceed to his
account of Catholicism in Germany. (Vol. I. p. 114 - 139.)
Here, in a work on German literature, we naturally expect
a picture of the Catholic theology, at least a reference to
the chief Catholic writers in this department. But we are
disappointed again. We find declamations and anecdotes
well fitted for the Penny Magazine, as a German critic
says, to whom we are indebted for some hints on this topic.t
He throws together such remarks as would make excellent
and smart paragraphs in a newspaper; but gives no calm,
philosophical view of the subject. He can enlarge on the
Jesuits, or Jansenists, on the influence of Kant's and Schel-
ling's philosophy, and the reaction in favor of Catholicism,
- -- -
* Strauss, ubi sup. p. 212, 213.
+ A writer in Rheinwald's Repertorium, Vol. XV., p. 14, seq.


1841.)
337
German Literature.
for these subjects are in all mouths; but he scarce looks at
the great philosophical question, on which the whole mat-
ter hinges. His acquaintance with modern Catholic wri-
ters seems to be as narrow as his philosophy is superficial.
Gunther, Pabst, Möhler, Singler, Staudenmaier, Klee, and
Hermes, have escaped the sharp glance of our author. * In
the portion of the chapter which relates to Protestantism,
we find the same defects. The sketch of the history of
theology since Luther is hasty and inaccurate. It does not
give the reader a clear conception of the progress of ideas.
He makes some amusing misrepresentations on page 159
and 173, to which we will only refer. Among the most
celebrated of German preachers, since the middle of the
last century, he forgets to mention Teller, Löffler, Zollikof-
fer, Lavater, Herder, Tzschirner, Schmalz, Röhr, Zimmer-
mann, De Wette, Marheineke, Nitzsch, Tholuck, Ehren-
berg, Strauss, Reinhard, Therimin, Couard, Lisco, and
many others of equal fame. Mosheim is mentioned as a
distinguished writer on morals, Ammon and Bretschneider
are dispatched in a word. Wetstein is mentioned among
the followers of Ernesti and Semler, and is put after Eich-
horn, though he died only two years after the latter was
born. But it is an ungrateful task to point out these de-
fects. Certainly we should but name them, if there were
great and shining excellencies beside. But they are not to
be found. The chapter gives a confused jumble of ideas,
and not a true picture. True, it contains passages of great
force and beauty, but throughout the whole section, order
and method, accurate knowledge and an impartial spirit,
are grievously wanting. Who would guess what great
things had been done in Biblical criticism, from Mr. Men-
zel's words? Who would know that De Wette had writ-
ten profound works in each of the four great departments
of theology ; indeed, that he wrote anything but a couple
of romances ? But we are weary with this fault-finding.
However, one word must be said, by way of criticism upon
his standing point itself. German literature is not to be
surveyed by an amateur merely. The dilettante has no rule
and compasses in his pocket, by which he can measure all
the objects in this German ocean of books. No doubt his-
---
-
-
* See Rheinwald, ubi sup. 16.
VOL. 1. --NO. III.
43


338
German Literature.
[Jan.
tories of literature have hitherto been too often “ written in
the special interest of scholastic learning," and are antiqua-
rian lists of books and not living histories. It is certainly
well to write a history of literature so that all men may
read. But it would require a most uncommon head to
treat ably of all departments of literature and science. In
one word, it is quite impossible to judge all by one rule.
The writer, therefore, must change his position as often as
he changes the subject. He must write of matters per-
taining to religion, with the knowledge of a theologian; on
philosophical subjects, like a philosopher, and so of the
rest. Any attempt to describe them all from one point of
sight seems as absurd as to reckon pounds, shillings, and
pence, and drachms, ounces, quarters, and tons in the same
column. A sketch of German theological literature ought
to tell what had been done, and what was now doing by
Protestants and Catholics, in the four great departments of
exegetical, historical, systematic, and practical theology.
It should put us in possession of the idea, which lies at the
bottom of Catholicism and Protestantism, and tell what
form this idea assumes, and why it takes this form, and no
other. But to this Mr. Menzel makes no pretension. He
has not the requisite knowledge for this. His learning
seems gathered from reviews, newspapers, the conversations
lexicon, literary gossip, and a very perfunctory perusal of
many books. The whole work lacks in plan. There is
no unity to the book. It seems a compilation of articles,
written hastily in the newspapers, and designed for imme-
diate effect. So the spirit of the partisan appears every-
where. We have declamation instead of matter-of-fact
and cool judgment. Still the work is quite entertaining.
Its author, no doubt, passes for a man of genius; but as a
friend says, who rarely judges wrong, " he has more show
than sinew, and makes up in smartness, what he wants in
depth.” We are glad to welcome the book in its Eng.
lish dress, but we hope it will be read with caution, as a
guide not to be trusted. Its piquant style, and withering
sarcasm, remind us often of Henry Heine, and the young
Germans, with whom the author would not wish to be
classed. We think it will not give a true idea of the Ger-
man mind and its workings, to the mere English, or aid
powerfully the student of German to find his way amid


1841.]
339
The Snow-Storm.
that labyrinthian literature. The book is very suggestive,
if one will but follow out the author's hints, and avoid his
partialities and extravagance.
Professor Felton seems to have performed the work of
translation with singular fidelity. His version is uncom-
monly idiomatic and fresh. It reads like original English.
But here and there we notice a slight verbal inaccuracy in
translating, which scarce any human diligence could
avoid.* We regard the version as a monument of dili-
gence and skill. The metrical translations are fresh and
spirited.
3. P.arhe
THE SNOW-STORM.
ANNOUNCED by all the trumpets of the sky
Arrives the snow, and driving o'er the fields,
Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air
Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven,
And veils the farm-house at the garden's end.
The sled and traveller stopped, the courier's feet
Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit
Around the radiant fire-place, enclosed
In a tumultuous privacy of storm.
Come see the north-wind's masonry.
Out of an unseen quarry evermore
Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer
Curves his white bastions with projected roof
Round every windward stake, or tree, or door.
Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work
So fanciful, so savage, nought cares he
For number or proportion. Mockingly
On coop or kennel he hangs Parian wreaths;
A swan-like form invests the hidden thorn;
Fills up the farmer's lane from wall to wall,
Maugre the farmer's sighs, and at the gate
A ta pering turret overtops the work.
And when his hours are numbered, and the world
Is all his own, retiring, as he were not,
Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art
To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone,
Built in an age, the mad wind's night-work,
The frolic architecture of the snow.
* It would have been a convenience to the readers, if it had been stated in
the preface, that the version was made from the second German edition,
published at Stuttgart, 1836; for the author only treats of things as they
were at that time, or before it.


340
[Jan.
Menzel's View of Goethe.
MENZEL'S VIEW OF GOETHE
Is that of a Philistine, in the least opprobrious sense of
the term. It is one which has long been applied in Ger-
many to petty cavillers and incompetent critics. I do not
wish to convey a sense so disrespectful in speaking of
Menzel. He has a vigorous and brilliant mind, and a wide,
though imperfect, culture. He is a man of talent, but tal-
ent cannot comprehend genius. He judges of Goethe as a
Philistine, inasmuch as he does not enter into Canaan, and
read the prophet by the light of his own law, but looks at
him from without, and tries him by a rule beneath which
he never lived. That there was something he saw, what
that something was not he saw, but what it was he could
not see, none could see ; it was something to be felt and
known at the time of its apparition, but the sight of it was
reserved to a day far enough removed from its sphere to
get a commanding point of view. Has that day come? -
A little while ago it seemed so; certain features of Goethe's
personality, certain results of his tendency, had become so
manifest. But as the hours mature the plants he planted,
they shed a new seed for a yet more noble growth. A
wider experience, a deeper insight, make rejected words
come true, and bring a more refined perception of meaning
already discerned. Like all his elder brothers of the elect
band, the forlorn hope of humanity, he obliges us to live
and grow, that we may walk by his side; vainly we strive
to leave him behind in some niche of the hall of our ances-
tors, a few steps onward and we find him again, of yet
serener eye and more towering mien than on his other pedes-
tal. Former measurements of his size have, like the girdle
bound by the nymphs round the infant Apollo, only served
to make him outgrow the unworthy compass. The still
rising sun, with its broader light, shows us it is not yet noon.
In him is soon perceived a prophet of our own age, as well
as a representative of his own, and we doubt whether the
revolutions of the century be not required to interpret the
quiet depths of his Saga.
Sure it is that none has yet found his place, as sure that
none can claim to be his peer, who has not sometime, aye,
and for a long time, been his pupil!


1841.]
341
Menzel's View of Goethe.
Yet much truth has been spoken of him in detail, some
by Menzel, but in so superficial a spirit, and with so narrow
a view of its bearings, as to have all the effect of falsehood.
Such denials of the crown can only fix it more firmly on
the head of the “ Old Heathen.” To such, the best an-
swer may be given in the words of Bettina Brentano, “ The
others criticize thy works; - I only know that they lead
us on and on (fort und fort) till we live in them.” And
thus will all criticism end in making more men and
women read these works, and on and on, till they forget
whether the author be a patriot or a moralist, in the deep
humanity of the thought, the breathing nature of the scene.
While words they have accepted with immediate approval
fade from memory, these oft-denied words of keen, cold
truth return with ever new force and significance.
Man should be true, wise, beautiful, pure, and aspiring.
This man was true and wise, capable of all things. Be-
cause he did not in one short life complete his circle, can
we afford to lose him out of sight? Can we, in a world
where so few men have in any degree redeemed their in-
heritance, neglect a nature so rich and so manifestly pro-
gressive?
Historically considered, Goethe needs no apology. His
so called faults fitted him all the better for the part he had
to play. In cool possession of his wide-ranging genius, he
taught the imagination of Germany, that the highest flight
should be associated with the steady sweep and undazzled
eye of the eagle. Was he too much the connoisseur, did
he attach too great an importance to the cultivation of
taste, where just then German literature so much needed
to be refined, polished, and harmonized ? Was he too skep-
tical, too much an experimentalist; how else could he
have formed himself to be the keenest, and, at the same
time, most nearly universal of observers, teaching theolo-
gians, philosophers, and patriots that nature comprehends
them all, commands them all, and that no one develop-
ment of life must exclude the rest. Do you talk, (in the
easy cant of the day,) of German obscurity, extravagance,
pedantry, and bad taste, — and will you blame this man,
whose Greek - English - Italian — German mind steered
so clear of these rocks and shoals, clearing, adjusting, and
calming on each side, wherever he turned his prow? Was


342
(Jan.
Menzel's View of Goethe.
deepest and dotter ideas wote the che Goeth
he not just enough of an idealist, just enough of a realist,
for his peculiar task ? If you want a moral enthusiast, is
not there Schiller? If piety, of purest mystic sweetness, who
but Novalis ? Exuberant sentiment, that treasures each
withered leaf in a tender breast, look to your Richter.
Would you have men to find plausible meaning for the
deepest enigma, or to hang up each map of literature, well
painted and dotted on its proper roller, there are the
Schlegels. Men of ideas were numerous as migratory crows
in autumn, and Jacobi wrote the heart into philosophy (as
well as he could. Who could fill Goethe's place to Ger-
many, and to the world, of which she is now the teacher ?
His much-reviled, aristocratic turn was at that time a re-
conciling element. It is plain why he was what he was,
for his country and for his age.
Whoever looks into the history of his youth, will be
struck by a peculiar force with which all things worked
together to prepare him for his office of artist-critic to the
then chaotic world of thought in his country. What an
unusually varied scene of childhood and of youth! What
endless change and contrast of circumstances and influ-
ences ! Father and mother, life and literature, world and
nature, playing into one another's hands, always by antag.
onism! Never was a child so carefully guarded by fate
against prejudice, against undue bias, against any engross-
ing sentiment. Nature having given him power of poetical
sympathy to know every situation, would not permit him
to make himself at home in any. And how early what was
most peculiar in his character manifested itself, may be
seen in these anecdotes, related by his mother to Bettina.
Of Goethe's childhood. — “He was not willing to play
with other little children, unless they were very fair. In a
circle he began suddenly to weep, screaming, 'Take away
the black, ugly child, I cannot bear to have it here. He
could not be pacified ; they were obliged to take him home,
and there the mother could hardly console him for the
child's ugliness. He was then only three years old.”
"His mother was surprised, that when his brother Jacob
died, who had been his playmate, he shed no tear, but
rather seemed annoyed by the lamentations of those around
him. But afterwards, when his mother asked whether he
had not loved his brother, he ran into his room and brought


1841.]
343
Menzel's View of Goethe.
from under his bed a bundle of papers, all written over,
and said he had done all this for Jacob.”
Even so in later years, had he been asked if he had not
loved his country and his fellow men, he would not have
answered by tears and vows, but pointed to his works.
In the first anecdote is observable that love of symmetry
in external relations which, in manhood, made him give up
the woman he loved, because she would not have been in
place among the old fashioned furniture of his father's
house ; and dictated the course which, at the crisis of his
life, led him to choose an outward peace rather than an
inward joy. In the second, he displays at the earliest age,
a sense of his vocation as a recorder, the same which drew
him afterwards to write his life into verse, rather than clothe
it in action. His indirectness, his aversion to the frankness
of heroic meetings, is repulsive and suspicious to generous
and flowing natures, yet many of the more delicate pro-
ducts of the mind seem to need these sheaths, lest bird and
insect rifle them in the bud. And if this subtlety, isolation,
and distance be the dictate of nature, we submit, even as
we are not vexed that the wild bee should hide its honey
in some old moss-grown tree, rather than in the glass hives
of our gardens. We believe it will repay the pains we take
in seeking for it, by some peculiar flavor from unknown
flowers. Was Goethe the wild bee? We see that even in
his boyhood, he showed himself a very Egyptian, in his
love for disguises, forever expressing his thought in round-
about ways, which seem idle mummery to a mind of Spar-
tan or Roman mould. Had he some simple thing to tell
his friend, he read it from the newspaper, or wrote it into
a parable. Did he make a visit, he put on the hat or wig
of some other man, and made his bow as Schmidt or
Schlosser, that they might stare when he spake as Goethe.
He gives, as the highest instance of passionate grief, that
he gave up one day watching the tedious ceremonies of the
imperial coronation. In daily life many of these carefully
recorded passages have an air of platitude, at which no
wonder the Edinburgh Review laughed. Yet, on examina-
tion, they are full of meaning. And when we see the same
propensity writing itself into Ganymede, Mahomet's song,
the Bayadere, and Faust, telling all Goethe's religion in


344
[Jan.
Menzel's View of Goethe.
Mignon and Makaria, all his wisdom in the Western-East-
ern Divan, we respect it, accept, all but love it.
This theme is for a volume, and I must quit it now. A
brief summary of what Goethe was suffices to vindicate his
existence, as an agent in history and a part of nature, but
will not meet the objections of those who measure him, as
they have a right to do, by the standard of ideal manhood.
Most men, in judging another man, ask, Did he live up
to our standard ?
But to me, it seems desirable to ask rather, Did he live
up to his own?
So possible is it that our consciences may be more en-
lightened than that of the Gentile under consideration.
And if we can find out how much was given him, we are
told, in a pure evangelium, to judge thereby how much
shall be required.
Now Goethe has given us both his own standard, and the
way to apply it. "To appreciate any man, learn first what
object he proposed to himself; next, what degree of earn-
estness he showed with regard to attaining that object."
And this is part of his hymn for man made in the divine
image, “ The Godlike.”
“Hail to the Unknown, the
Higher Being
Felt within us!
“ Unfeeling
Is nature
Still shineth the sun
Over good and evil,
And on the sinner,
Smile as on the best
Moon and stars.
Fate too, &c.
“ There can none but man
Perform the Impossible.
He understandeth,
Chooseth, and judgeth,
He can impart to the
Moment duration.
“He alone may
The Good reward,
The guilty punish,
Mend and deliver;
All the wayward, anomalous
Bind in the useful.


1841.]
345
Menzel's View of Goethe.
“ And the Immortals,
Then we reverence
As if they were men, and
Did, on a grand scale,
What the best man in little
Does, or fain would do.
“Let noble man
Be helpful and good;
Ever creating
The Right and the Useful;
Type of those loftier
Beings of whom the heart whispers."
This standard is high enough. It is what every man
should express in action, the poet in music!
And this office of a judge, who is of purer eyes than to
behold iniquity, and of a sacred oracle, to whom other men
may go to ask when they should choose a friend, when
face a foe, this great genius does not adequately fulfil. Too
often has the priest left the shrine, to go and gather sim-
ples by the aid of spells whose might no pure power needs.
Glimpses are found in his works of the highest spirituality,
but it is blue sky seen through chinks, in a roof which
should never have been built. He has used life to excess.
He is too rich for his nobleness, too judicious for his inspi-
ration, too humanly wise for his divine mission. He might
have been a priest; he is only a sage.
An Epicurean sage, says the foregoing article. This
seems to me unjust. He is also called a debauchee.
There may be reason for such terms, but it is partial, and re-
ceived, as they will be by the unthinking, they are as false
as Menzel's abuse, in the impression they convey. Did
Goethe value the present too much ? It was not for the
Epicurean aim of pleasure, but for use. He, in this, was
but an instance of reaction, in an age of painful doubt and
restless striving as to the future. Was his private life stain-
ed by profligacy? That far largest portion of his life,
which is ours, and which is expressed in his works, is an
unbroken series of efforts to develop the higher elements
of our being. I cannot speak to private gossip on this sub-
ject, nor even to well-authenticated versions of his private
life. Here are sixty volumes, by himself and others, which
contain sufficient evidence of a life of severe labor, stead-
fast forbearance, and an intellectual growth almost unpar-
VOL. I. —NO. III.
44


346
[Jan.
Menzel's View of Goethe.
alleled. That he has failed of the highest fulfilment of his
high vocation is certain, but he was neither epicurean nor
sensualist, if we consider his life as a whole.
Yet he had failed to reach his bighest development, and
how was it that he was so content with this incompleteness,
nay, the serenest of men ? His serenity alone, in such a
time of skepticism and sorrowful seeking, gives him a claim
to all our study. See how he rides at anchor, lordly, rich
in freight, every white sail ready to be unfurled at a mo-
ment's warning. And it must be a very slight survey,
which can confound this calm self-trust with selfish indiffer-
ence of temperament. Indeed, he in various ways, which
I shall mention in a future essay, lets us see how little he
was helped in this respect by temperament. But we need
not bis declaration; the case speaks for itself. Of all that
perpetual accomplishment, that unwearied constructiveness,
the basis must be sunk deeper than in temperament.
He never halts, never repines, never is puzzled, like other
men ; that tranquillity, full of life, that ceaseless but graceful
motion, “ without haste, without rest," for which we all are
striving, he has attained. And is not his lore of the noblest
kind, — Reverence the highest, have patience with the low-
est. Let this day's performance of the meanest duty be
thy religion. Are the stars too distant, pick up that pebble
that lies at thy foot, and from it learn the All. Go out, like
Saul, the son of Kish, look earnestly after the meanest of
thy father's goods, and a kingdom shall be brought thee.
The least act of pure self-renunciation hallows, for the mo-
ment, all within its sphere. The philosopher may mislead,
the devil tempt, yet innocence, though wounded and bleed-
ing as it goes, must reach at last the holy city. The power
of sustaining himself, and guiding others, rewards man
sufficiently for the longest apprenticeship. Is not this lore
the noblest ?
Yes, yes, but still I doubt. 'Tis true, he says all this in
a thousand beautiful forms, but he does not warm, he does
not inspire me. În his certainty is no bliss, in his hope no
love, in his faith no glow. How is this?
A friend, of a delicate penetration, observed, “ His atmo-
sphere was so calm, so full of light, that I hoped he would
teach me his secret of cheerfulness. But I found, after
long search, that he had no better way, if he wished to


1841.]
347
Suum Cuique.
check emotion or clear thought, than to go to work. As
his mother tells us, “My son, if he had a grief, made it into
a poem, and so got rid of it. This mode is founded in
truth, but does not involve the whole truth. I want the
method which is indicated by the phrase, Perseverance of
the Saints.'”
This touched the very point. Goethe attained only the
perseverance of a man. He was true, for he knew that
nothing can be false to him who is true, and that to genius
nature had pledged her protection. Had he but seen a
little farther, he would have given this covenant a higher
expression, and been more deeply true to a diviner
nature.
I hope, in the next number of the Dial, to give some ac-
count of that period, when a too determined action of the
intellect limited and blinded him for the rest of his life.
I mean only in comparison with what he should have been.
Had it been otherwise, what would he not have attained,
who, even thus self-enchained, rose to Ulyssean stature.
Connected with this is the fact, of which he spoke with
such sarcastic solemnity to Eckermann, “My works will
never be popular.”
I wish, also, to consider the Faust, Elective Affinities,
Apprenticeship and Pilgrimages of Wilhelm Meister, and
Iphigenia, as affording indications of the progress of his
genius here, of its wants and prospects in future spheres of
activity. For the present, I bid him farewell, as his friends
always have done, in hope and trust of a better meeting.
F.
n. Juller
SUUM CUIQUE.
The rain has spoiled the farmer's day ;
Shall sorrow put my books away?
Thereby are two days lost.
Nature shall mind her own affairs,
I will attend my proper cares,
In rain, or sun, or frost.


348
[Jan.
The Sphinx.
THE SPHINX.
TAE Sphinx is drowsy,
Her wings are furled,
Her ear is heavy,
She broods on the world.
“ Who 'll tell me my secret
The ages have kept?
I awaited the seer
While they slumbered and slept.
“ The fate of the manchild, -
The meaning of man, —
Known fruit of the unknown, -
Dedalian plan.
Out of sleeping a waking,
Out of waking a sleep,
Life death overtaking,
Deep underneath deep.
“Erect as a sunbeam
Upspringeth the palm;
The elephant browses
Undaunted and calm;
In beautiful motion
The thrush plies his wings,
Kind leaves of his covert !
Your silence he sings.
“ The waves unashamed
In difference sweet,
Play glad with the breezes,
old playfellows meet.
The journeying atoms,
Primordial wholes,
Firmly draw, firmly drive,
By their animate poles.
“Sea, earth, air, sound, silence,
Plant, quadruped, bird,
By one music enchanted,
One deity stirred,
Each the other adorning,
Accompany still,
Night veileth the morning,
The vapor the hill.
“ The babe, by its mother
Lies bathed in joy,
Glide its hours uncounted,
The sun is its toy ;


1841.]
349
The Sphinx.
Shines the peace of all being
Without cloud in its eyes,
And the sum of the world
In soft miniature lies.
" But man crouches and blushes,
Absconds and conceals;
He creepeth and peepeth,
He palters and steals;
Infirm, melancholy,
Jealous glancing around,
An oaf, an accomplice,
He poisons the ground.
“ Outspoke the great mother
Beholding his fear; —
At the sound of her accents
Cold shuddered the sphere; -
• Who has drugged my boy's cup
Who has mixed my boy's bread?
Who, with saduess and madness,
Has turned the manchild's head ?""
I heard a poet answer
Aloud and cheerfully,
“Say on, sweet Sphinx ! — thy dirges
Are pleasant songs to me.
Deep love lieth under
These pictures of time,
They fade in the light of
Their meaning sublime.
“ The fiend that man harries
Is love of the Best,
Yawns the Pit of the Dragon
Lit by rays from the Blest;
The Lethe of Nature
Can't trance him again,
Whose soul sees the Perfect
Which his eyes seek in vain.
“Profounder, profounder
Man's spirit must dive:
To his aye-rolling orbit
No goal will arrive.
The heavens that now draw him
With sweetness untold,
Once found, - for new heavens
He spurneth the old.
“ Pride ruined the angels,
Their shame then restores :
And the joy that is sweetest
Lurks in stings of remorse.


350
(Jan.
The Sphinx.
Have I a lover
Who is noble and free,
I would he were nobler
Than to love me.
“ Eterne alternation
Now follows, now flies,
And under pain, pleasure, -
Under pleasure, pain lies.
Love works at the centre
Heart heaving alway,
Forth speed the strong pulses
To the borders of day.
“ Dull Sphinx, Jove keep thy five wits!
Thy sight is growing blear;
Hemlock and vitriol for the Sphinx
Her muddy eyes to clear."
The old Sphinx bit her thick lip, —
Said, “ Who taught thee me to name?
Manchild! I am thy spirit;
Of thine eye I am eyebeam.
“ Thou art the unanswered question:-
Couldst see thy proper eye,
Alway it asketh, asketh,
And each answer is a lie. .
So take thy quest through nature,
It through thousand natures ply,
Ask on, thou clothed eternity,
Time is the false reply.”
Uprose the merry Sphinx,
And crouched no more in stone,
She bopped into the baby's eyes,
She hopped into the moon,
She spired into a yellow flame,
She flowered in blossoms red,
She flowed into a foaming wave,
She stood Monadnoc's head.
Thorough a thousand voices
Spoke the universal dame,
“Who telleth one of my meanings
Is master of all I am."
Sinerea


1841.]
351
Orphic Sayings.
ORPHIC SAYINGS.
BY A. BRONSON ALCOTT.
LI. REFORM.
The trump of reform is sounding throughout the world
for a revolution of all human affairs. The issue we cannot
doubt; yet the crises are not without alarm. Already is
the axe laid at the root of that spreading tree, whose trunk
is idolatry, whose branches are covetousness, war, and
slavery, whose blossom is concupiscence, whose fruit is
hate. Planted by Beelzebub, it shall be rooted up. Abad-
don is pouring his vial on the earth.
LII. REFORMERS.
Reformers are metallic; they are sharpest steel; they
pierce whatsoever of evil or abuse they touch. Their souls
are attempered in the fires of heaven; they are mailed in
the might of principles, and God backs their purpose. They
uproot institutions, erase traditions, revise usages, and ren-
ovate all things. They are the noblest of facts. Extant
in time, they work for eternity; dwelling with men, they
are with God.
LIII. ARMS.
Three qualities are essential to the reformer, -insight,
veneration, valor. These are the arms with which he takes
the world. He who wields these divinely shall make an
encroachment upon his own age, and the centuries shall
capitulate to him at last. To all else, are institutions, men,
ages, invulnerable.
for wordsing and exiled, or
LIV. HERESY.
The reformer substitutes things for words, laws for usage,
ideas for idols. But this is ever a deed, daring and damned,
for which the culprit was aſoretime cropped, exiled, or
slain. In our time, his sentence is commuted to slight and
starvation.
LV. SIMPLICITY.
The words of a just man are mirrors in which the felon


352
[Jan.
Orphic Sayings.
beholds his own features, and shrinks from the portrait
painted therein by the speaker. Beware of a just man, he
is a limner of souls; he draws in the colors of truth.
Cunning durst not sit to him.
LVI. PERSON.
Divinely speaking, God is the only person. The per-
sonality of man is partial, derivative; not perfect, not orig-
inal. He becomes more personal as he partakes more
largely of divinity. Holiness embosoms him in the God-
head, and makes him one with Deity:
LVII. PORTRAITS.
We are what we seek; desire, appetite, passion, draw
our features, and show us whether we are gods or men,
devils or beasts. Always is the soul portraying herself;
the statue of our character is hewn from her affections and
thoughts. — Wisdom is the soul in picture; holiness in
sculpture.
LVIII. PERSONALITY.
Truth is most potent when she speaks in general and
impersonal terms. Then she rebukes everybody, and all
confess before her words. She draws her bow, and lets
fly her arrows at broad venture into the ages, to pierce all
evils and abuses at heart. She wounds persons through
principles, on whose phylactery, “thou art the man,” is
ever written to the eye of all men.
LIX. POPULARITY.
The saints are alone popular in heaven, not on earth;
elect of God, they are spurned by the world. They hate
their age, its applause, its awards, their own affections
even, save as these unite them with justice, with valor, with
God. Whoso loves father or mother, wife or child, houses
or lands, pleasures or honors, or life, more than these, is an
idolater, and worships idols of sense; his life is death;
his love hate; his friends foes ; his fame infamy.
LX. FAME.
Enduring fame is ever posthumous. The orbs of virtue
and genius seldom culminate during their terrestrial periods.


1841.]
353
Orphic Sayings.
Slow is the growth of great names, slow the procession of
excellence into arts, institutions, life. Ages alone reflect
their fulness of lustre. The great not only unseal, but
create the organs by which they are to be seen. Neither
Socrates nor Jesus is yet visible to the world.
LXI. TEMPTATION.
The man of sublime gifts has his temptation amidst the
solitudes to which he is driven by his age as proof of his
integrity. Yet nobly he withstands this trial, conquering
both Satan and the world by overcoming himself. He
bows not down before the idols of time, but is constant to
the divine ideal that haunts his heart, - a spirit of serene
and perpetual peace.
LXII. LIGHT.
Oblivion of the world is knowledge of heaven,- of sin,
holiness, — of time, eternity. The world, sin, time, are
interpolations into the authentic scripture of the soul, de-
noting her lapse from God, innocence, heaven. Of these
the child and God are alike ignorant. They have not
fallen from their estate of divine intuition, into the dark
domain of sense, wherein all is but shadowy reminiscence
of substance and light, of innocence and clarity. Their
life is above memory and hope, - a life, not of knowledge,
but of sight.
LXIII. PROBITY.
The upright man holds fast his integrity amidst all re-
verses. Exiled by his principles from the world, a solitary
amidst his age, he stands aloof from the busy haunts and
low toils of his race. Amidst the general sterility he ripens
for God. He is above the gauds and baits of sense. His
taskmaster is in heaven; his field eternity ; his wages
peace. Away from him are all golden trophies, fames,
honors, soft flatteries, comforts, homes, and couches in time.
He lives in the smile of God; nor fears the frowns, nor
courts the favor of men. With him the mint of immortal
honor is not in the thronged market, but in the courts of
the heart, whose awards bear not devices of applaud-
ing hosts, but of reviling soldiery, - of stakes and gibbets,
VOL. 1. -- NO. W.
45


354
Orphic Sayings.
(Jan.
Always are ich, state, schoond genius an
- and are the guerdon not of the trial imposed, but of the
valor that overcame it.
LXIV. SOPHISTRY.
Always are the ages infested with dealers in stolen
treasures. Church, state, school, traffic largely in such
contraband wares, and would send genius and probity, as
of old, Socrates and Jesus, into the markets and thorough-
fares, to higgle with publicans and sophists for their own
properties. But yet the wit and will of these same vagrants
is not only coin, but stock in trade for all the business of
the world. Mammon counterfeits the scripture of God,
and his partners, the church, the state, the school, share the
profit of his peculations on mankind.
LXV. BREAD.
Fools and blind ! not bread, but the lack of it is God's
high argument. Wouldst enter into life? Beg bread then.
In the kingdom of God are love and bread consociated,
but in the realm of mammon, bread sojourns with lies, and
truth is a starvling. Yet praised be God, he has bread in his
exile which mammon knows not of.
LXVI. LABOR.
Labor is sweet; nor is that a stern decree that sends
man into the fields to earn his bread in the sweat of his
face. Labor is primeval; it replaces man in Eden, — the
garden planted by God. It exalts and humanizes the soul.
Life in all its functions and relations then breathes of
groves and fountains, of simplicity and health. Man dis-
courses sublimely with the divinities over the plough, the
spade, the sickle, marrying the soul and the soil by the
rites of labor. Sloth is the tempter that beguiles him of
innocence, and exiles him from Paradise. Let none esteem
himself beloved of the divine Husbandman, unless he earn
the wages of peace in his vineyard. Yet now the broad
world is full of idlers; the fields are barren; the age is
hungry; there is no corn. The harvests are of tares and
not of wheat. Gaunt is the age; even as the seedsman
winnows the chaff from the wheat, shall the winds of re-
form blow this vanity away.


1841.)
355
Urphic Sayings.
LXVII. DIABOLUS.
Seek God in the seclusion of your own soul; the prince
of devils in the midst of multitudes. Beelzebub rules mas-
ses, God individuals. Vox populi vox dei, — never, (save
where passion and interest are silent,) but vox populi vox
diaboli.
LXVIII. DOGMATISM.
The ages dogmatize, and would stifle the freest and
boldest thought. Their language is, — our possessions skirt
space, and we veto all possible discoveries of time. We
are heirs of all wisdom, all excellence; none shall pass our
confines; vain is the dream of a wilderness of thought
to be vanquished by rebellion against us; we inherit the
patrimony of God, — all goods in the gift of omnipotence.
LXIX. GENIUS AND SANCTITY.
A man's period is according to the directness and inten-
sity of his light. Not erudition, not taste, not intellect,
but character, describes his orbit and determines the worlds
he shall enlighten. Genius and sanctity cast no shadow;
like the sun at broad noon, the ray of these orbs pours di-
rect intense on the world, and they are seen in their own
light.
LXX. CHARACTER.
Character is the genius of conscience, as wit is of intel-
lect. The prophet and bard are original men, and their
lives and works being creations of divine art, are inimita-
ble. Imitation and example are sepulchres in which
the ages entomb their disciples. The followers of God are
alone immortal.
LXXI. LIFE.
It is life, not scripture ; character, not biography, that
renovates mankind. The letter of life vitiates its spirit.
Virtue and genius refuse to be written. The scribe weaves
his own mythus of superstition always into his scripture.
LXXII. BARRENNESS.
Opinions are life in foliage ; deeds, in fruitage. Always
is the fruitless tree accursed.


356
[Jan
Orphic Sayings.
LXXIII. SCRIPTURE.
All scripture is the record of life, and is sacred or pro-
fane, as the life it records is holy or vile. Every noble life
is a revelation from heaven, which the joy and hope of
mankind preserve to the world. Nor while the soul en-
dures, shall the book of revelation be sealed. Her scrip-
tures, like herself, are inexhaustible, without beginning or
end.
LXXIV. SACRED BOOKS.
The current version of all sacred books is profane. The
ignorance and passions of men interpolate themselves into
the text, and vitiate both its doctrine and ethics. But this
is revised, at successive eras, by prophets, who, holding di-
rect communication with the source of life and truth,
translate their eternal propositions from the sacred into the
common speech of man, and thus give the word anew to
the world.
LXXV. RESURRECTION.
A man must live his life to apprehend it. There have
been few living men and hence few lives; most have lived
their death. Men have no faith in life. There goes in-
deed a rumor through the ages concerning it, but the few,
who affirm knowledge of the fact, are slain always to veri-
fy the popular doubt. Men assert, not the resurrection of
the soul from the body, but of the body from the grave, as
a revelation of life. Faithless and blind! the body is
the grave; let the dead arise from these sepulchres of con-
cupiscence, and know by experience that life is immortal.
Only the living know that they live; the dead know only
of death.
LXXVI. MIRACLES.
To apprehend a miracle, a man must first have wrought
it. He knows only what he has lived, and interprets all
facts in the light of his experience. Miracles are spiritual
experiences, not feats of legerdemain, not freaks of nature.
It is the spiritual sight that discerns whatsoever is painted
to sense. Flesh is faithless and blind.


1841.]
357
Orphic Sayings.
LXXVII. FACT AND FABLE.
Facts, reported, are always false. Only sanctity and
genius are eyewitnesses of the same; and their intuition,
yet not their scriptures, are alone authentic. Not only all
scripture, but all thought is fabulous. Life is the only pure
fact, and this cannot be written to sense; it must be lived,
and thus expurgate all scriptures.
LXXVIII. REVELATION.
Revelation is mediate or immediate; speculative or in-
tuitive. It is addressed to conscience or reason, – to
sight or sense. Reason receives the light through mediums
and mediators; conscience direct from its source. The
light of one is opake; of the other, clear. The prophet,
whose eye is coincident with the celestial ray, receives this
into his breast, and intensifying there, it kindles on his
brow a serene and perpetual day. But the worldling, with
face averted from God, reflects divinity through the obscure
twilight of his own brain, and remains in the blindness of
his own darkness, a deceptive meteor of the night.
LXXIX. PROPHET.
The prophet appeals direct to the heart. He addresses
the divine in the breast. His influence is subtle; the rev-
erence he inspires occult. His words are winged with
marvels; his deeds mysteries; his life a miracle. Piety
kneels at the shrine of his genius, and reads his mystic
scriptures, as oracles of the divinity in the breasts of all
men.
LXXX. TEACHER.
The true teacher defends his pupils against his own per-
sonal influence. He inspires self-trust. He guides their
eyes from himself to the spirit that quickens him. He will
have no disciples. A noble artist, he has visions of excel-
lence and revelations of beauty, which he has neither im-
personated in character, nor embodied in words. His life
and teachings are but studies for yet nobler ideals.
LXXXI. EXPERIENCE.
A man's idea of God corresponds to his ideal of himself.
The nobler he is, the more exalted his God. His own


358
[Jan.
Orphic Sayings.
culture and discipline are a revelation of divinity. He ap-
prehends the divine character as he comprehends his own.
Humanity is the glass of divinity ; experience of the soul
is a revelation of God.
LXXXII. OBEDIENCE.
Obedience is the mediator of the soul. It is the organ
of immediate inspiration; the hierophant of the Godhead.
It is the method of revelation ; the law of all culture.
LXXXIII. RETRIBUTION.
The laws of the soul and of nature are forecast and pre-
ordained in the spirit of God, and are ever executing them-
selves through conscience in man, and gravity in things.
Man's body and the world are organs, through which the
retributions of the spiritual universe are justified to reason
and sense. Disease and misfortune are memoranda of vio-
lations of the divine law, written in the letter of pain and
evil.
LXXXIV. WORSHIP.
The ritual of the soul is preordained in her relations to
God, man, nature, herself. Life, with its varied duties, is
her ordained worship ; labor and meditation her sacraments.
Whatsoever violates this order is idolatry and sacrilege. A
holy spirit, she hallows all times, places, services; and per-
petually she consecrates her temples, and ministers at the
altars of her divinity. Her censer flames always toward
heaven, and the spirit of God descends to kindle her devo-
tions.
LXXXV. BAPTISM.
Except a man be born of water and of spirit, he cannot
apprehend eternal life. Sobriety is clarity ; sanctity is
sight. John baptizes Jesus. Repent, abstain, resolve ; — thus
purify yourself in this laver of regeneration, and become a
denizen of the kingdom of God.
LXXXVI. CARNAGE.
Conceive of slaughter and flesh-eating in Eden.
LXXXVII. TRADITION.
Tradition suckles the young ages, who imbibe health or
disease, insight or ignorance, valor or pusillanimity, as the


1841.)
359
Orphic Sayings.
stream of life flows down from urns of sobriety or luxury,
from times of wisdom or folly, honor or shame.
LXXXVIII. RENUNCIATION.
Renounce the world, yourself; and you shall possess the
world, yourself, and God.
LXXXIX. VALOR.
Man's impotence is his pusillanimity. Duty alone is
necessity ; valor, might. This bridles the actual, yokes cir-
cumstance to do its bidding, and wields the arms of omnip-
otence. Fidelity, magnanimity, win the crown of heaven,
and invest the soul with the attributes of God.
XC. MEEKNESS.
All men honor meekness; and make her their confessor.
She wins all hearts; all vulgar natures do her homage.
The demons flee, and the unclean Calabans and Satyrs
become menials in her imperial presence. She is the poten-
tate of the world.
XCI. GENTLENESS.
I love to regard all souls as babes, yet in their prime and
innocency of being, nor would I upbraid rudely a fellow
creature, but treat him as tenderly as an infant. I would
be gentle alway. Gentleness is the divinest of graces, and
all men joy in it. Yet seldom does it appear on earth.
Not in the face of man, nor yet often in that of woman
(O apostacy,) but in the countenance of childhood it some-
times lingers, even amidst the violence, the dispathy that
beset it; there, for a little while, fed by divine fires, the
serene flame glows, but soon flickers and dies away, choked
by the passions and lusts of sense — its embers smouldering
alone in the bosoms of men.
XCII. INDIVIDUALS.
Individuals are sacred: creeds, usages, institutions, as
they cherish and reverence the individual. The world, the
state, the church, the school, all are felons whensoever they
violate the sanctity of the private heart. God, with his
saints and martyrs, holds thrones, polities, hierarchies,
amenable to the same, and time pours her vial of just retri-


360
(Jan.
Orphic Sayings.
bution on their heads. A man is divine ; mightier, holier,
than rulers or powers ordained of time.
XCIII. MESSIAS.
The people look always for a political, not spiritual
Messias. They desire a ruler from the world, not from
heaven -a monarch who shall conform both church and
state to their maxims and usages. So church and state
become functions of the world, and mammon, with his
court of priests and legislators, usurps the throne of con-
science in the soul, to rule saints and prophets for a time.
xciv. CHRISTENDOM.
Christendom is infidel. It violates the sanctity of man's
conscience. It speaks not from the lively oracles of the
soul, but reads instead from the traditions of men. It
quotes history, not life. It denounces as heresy and im-
piety the intuitions of the individual, denies the inspiration
of souls, and intrudes human dogmas and usages between
conscience and God. It excludes the saints from its bosom,
and with these, excommunicates, as the archheretic, Jesus
of Nazareth also.
XCV. CHRISTIANS.
Christians lean on Jesus, not on the soul. Such was not
the doctrine of this noble reformer. He taught man's
independence of all men, and a faith and trust in the
soul herself. Christianity is the doctrine of self-support.
It teaches man to be upright, not supine. Jesus gives his
arm to none save those who stand erect, independent of
church, state, or the world, in the integrity of self-insight
and valor. Cast aside thy crutch, O Christendom, and by
faith in the soul, arise and walk. Thy faith alone shall
make thee whole.
XCVI. PENTECOST.
The pentecost of the soul draws near. Inspiration, silent
long, is unsealing the lips of prophets and bards, and soon
shall the vain babblings of men die away, and their ears be
given to the words of the Holy Ghost; their tongues cloven
with celestial eloquence.


1841.)
361
Orphic Sayings.
XCVII. IMMORTALITY.
It is because the soul is immortal that all her organs de-
cease, and are again renewed. Growth and decay, sepul-
ture and resurrection, tread fast on the heel of the other.
Birth entombs death; death encradles birth. The incor-
ruptible is ever putting off corruption; the immortal mor-
tality. Nature, indeed, is but the ashes of the departed
soul, and the body her urn.
XCVIII. OBITUARY.
Things are memoirs of ideas; ideas the body of laws;
laws the breath of God. All nature is the sepulchre of the
risen soul, life her epitaph, and scripture her obituary.
xcix. ETERNITY.
The soul doth not chronicle her age. Her consciousness
opens in the dimness of tradition; she is cradled in mystery,
and her infancy invested in fable. Yet a celestial light
irradiates this obscurity of birth, and reveals her spiritual
lineage. Ancestor of the world, prior to time, elder than
her incarnation, neither spaces, times, genealogies, publish
her date. Memory is the history, Hope the prophecy of
her inborn eternity. Dateless, timeless, she is coeval with
God.
C. SILENCE.
Silence is the initiative to wisdom. Wit is silent, and
justifies her children by their reverence of the voiceless
oracles of the breast. Inspiration is dumb, a listener to the
oracles during her nonage; suddenly she speaks, to mock
the emptiness of all speech. Silence is the dialect of
heaven; the utterance of Gods.
VOL. 1. — NO. III.
46


362
[Jan
Woman.
WOMAN.
There have been no topics, for the two last years, more
generally talked of than woman, and “the sphere of woman."
In society, everywhere, we hear the same oft-repeated things
said upon them by those who have little perception of the
difficulties of the subject; and even the clergy have fre-
quently flattered " the feebler sex,” by proclaiming to them
from the pulpit what lovely beings they may become, if they
will only be good, quiet, and gentle, attend exclusively to
their domestic duties, and the cultivation of religious feel-
ings, which the other sex very kindly relinquish to them as
· their inheritance. Such preaching is very popular!
Blessed indeed would that man be, who could penetrate
the difficulties of this subject, and tell the world faithfully
and beautifully what new thing he has discovered about it,
or what old truth he has brought to light. The poet's
lovely vision of an etherial being, hovering half seen above
him, in his hour of occupation, and gliding gently into his
retirement, sometimes a guardian angel, sometimes an un-
obtrusive companion, wrapt in a silvery veil of mildest ra-
diance, his idealized Eve or Ophelia, is an exquisite picture
for the eye; the sweet verse in which he tells us of her,
most witching music to the ear; but she is not woman, she
is only the spiritualized image of that tender class of women
- he loves the best, - one whom no true woman could or
would become; and if the poet could ever be unkind, we
should deem him most so when he reproves the sex, planted
as it is, in the midst of wearing cares and perplexities, for
its departure from this high, beatified ideal of his, to which
he loves to give the name of woman. Woman may be
soothed by his sweet numbers, but she cannot be helped
by his counsels, for he knows her not as she is and must
be. All adjusting of the whole sex to a sphere is vain, for
no two persons naturally have the same. Character, intel-
lect creates the sphere of each. What is individual and
peculiar to each determines it. We hear a great deal
everywhere of the religious duties of women. That heaven
has placed man and woman in different positions, given
them different starting points, (for what is the whole
of liſe, with its varied temporal relations, but a starting


1841.1
363
Woman.
point,) there can be no doubt; but religion belongs to them
as beings, not as male and female. The true teacher ad-
dresses the same language to both. Christ did so, and this
separation is ruinous to the highest improvement of both.
Difference of position surely does not imply different quali-
ties of head and heart, for the same qualities, as we see
every day, are demanded in a variety of positions, the
variety merely giving them a different direction.
As we hear a great deal in society, and from the pulpit,
of the religious duties of women, so do we hear a great
deal of the contemplative life they lead, or ought to lead.
It seems an unknown, or at least an unacknowledged
fact, that in the spot where man throws aside his heavy
responsibilities, his couch of rest is often prepared by his
faithful wife, at the sacrifice of all her quiet contemplation
and leisure. She is pursued into her most retired sanctua-
ries by petty anxieties, haunting her loneliest hours, by
temptations taking her by surprise, by cares so harassing, that
the most powerful talents and the most abundant intellec-
tual and moral resources are scarce sufficient to give her
strength to ward them off. If there is a being exposed to
turmoil and indurating care, it is woman, in the retirement
of her own home; and if she makes peace and warmth
there, it is not by her sweet religious sensibility, her gentle
benevolence, her balmy tenderness, but by a strength and
energy as great and untiring as leads man to battle, or sup-
ports him in the strife of the political arena, though these
sturdier qualities unfold often, both in man and woman, in -
an atmosphere of exquisite refinement and sensibility. The
gentle breeze of summer pauses to rest its wing upon the
broad oak-leaf, as upon the violet's drooping flower. If wo-
man's position did not bring out all the faculties of the soul,
we might demand a higher for her ; but she does not need
one higher or wider than nature has given her. Very few of
her sex suspect even how noble and beautiful is that which
they legitimately occupy, for they are early deprived of the
privilege of seeing things as they are.
In our present state of society woman possesses not; she
is under possession. A dependant, except in extreme hours
of peril or moral conflict, when each is left to the mercy of
the unfriendly elements alone, for in every mental or physi-
cal crisis of life the Infinite has willed each soul to be alone,


364
[Jan.
Woman.
nothing interposing between it and himself. At times, when
most a being needs protection, none but the hightest can
protect. Man may soothe, but he cannot shelter from, or
avert the storm, however solemnly he may promise it to
himself or others in the bright hours. When most needed
he is most impotent.
Woman is educated with the tacit understanding, that she
is only half a being, and an appendage. First, she is so
to her parents, whose opinions, perhaps prejudices, are
engrafted into her before she knows what an opinion is.
Thus provided she enters life, and society seizes her; her
faculties of observation are sharpened, often become fear-
fully acute, though in some sort discriminating, and are
ever after so occupied with observing that she never pene-
trates. In the common course of events she is selected as
the life-companion of some one of the other sex ; because
selected, she fixes her affections upon him, and hardly ven-
tures to exercise upon him even her powers of observation.
Then he creates for her a home, which should be con-
structed by their mutual taste and efforts. She finds him
not what she expected; she is disappointed and becomes
captious, complaining of woman's lot, or discouraged and
crushed by it. She thinks him perfect, adopts his preju-
dices, adds them to her early stock, and ever defends them
with his arguments; where she differs from him in taste
and habits, she believes herself in the wrong and him in
the right, and spends liſe in conforming to him, instead of
moulding herself to her own ideal. Thus she loses her
individuality, and never gains bis respect. Her life is
usually bustle and hurry, or barren order, dreary decorum
and method, without vitality. Her children perhaps love
her, but she is only the upper nurse; the father, the oracle.
His wish is law, hers only the unavailing sigh uttered in
secret. She looks out into life, finds nothing there but confu-
sion, and congratulates herself that it is man's business, not
hers, to look through it all, and find stern principle seated
tranquilly at the centre of things. Is this woman's destiny?
Is she to be the only adventurer, who pursues her course
through life aimless, tossed upon the waves of circumstance,
intoxicated by joy, panic-struck by misfortune, or stupidly
receptive of it? Is she neither to soar to heaven like the
lark, nor bend her way, led by an unerring guide, to climes


1841.]
365
Woman.
congenial to her nature ? Is she always to flutter and flutter,
and at last drop into the wave? Man would not have it so,
for he reveres the gently firm. Man does not ridicule nor
expose to suffering the woman who aspires, he wishes not for
blind reverence, but intelligent affection; not for suprem-
acy, but to be understood ; not for obedience, but com-
panionship; it is the weak and ignorant of her own sex
who brand her, but the enigma still remains unsolved, why
are so many of the sex allowed to remain weak and friv-
olous ?
The minor cares of life thronging the path of woman,
demand as much reflection and clear-sightedness, and in-
volve as much responsibility, as those of man. Why is she
not encouraged to think and penetrate through externals to
principles ? She should be seen, after the first dreamlike
years of unconscious childhood are passed, meekly and rev-
erently questioning and encouraged to question the opinions
of others, calmly contemplating beauty in all its forms,
studying the harmony of life, as well as of outward nature,
deciding nothing, learning all things, gradually forming her
own ideal, which, like that represented in the sculptured
figures of the old Persian sovereigns, should cheeringly and
protectingly hover over her. Society would attract her,
and then gracefully mingling in it, she should still be herself,
and there find her relaxation, not her home. She should
feel that our highest hours are always our lonely ones, and
that nothing is good that does not prepare us for these.
· Beautiful and graceful forms should come before her as
revelations of divine beauty, but no charm of outward grace
should tempt her to recede one hair's breadth from her un-
compromising demand for the noblest nature in her chosen
companion, guided in her demands by what she finds within
herself, seeking an answering note to her own inner melody,
but not sweetly lulling herself into the belief that she has
found in hiin the full-toned harmony of the celestial choirs.
If her demand is satisfied, let her not lean, but attend on
him as a watchful friend. Her own individuality should
be as precious to her as his love. Let her see that the best
our most sympathising friend can do for us is, to throw a
genial atmosphere around us, and strew our path with
golden opportunities ; but our path can never be another's,
and we must always walk alone. Let no drudgery degrade


366
[Jan.
Sonnet.
her high vocation of creator of a happy home. Household
order must prevail, but let her ennoble it by detecting its
relation to that law which keeps the planets in their course.
Every new relation and every new scene should be a new
page in the book of the mysteries of life, reverently and
lovingly perused, but if folded down, never to be read again,
it must be regarded as only the introduction to a brighter
one. The faults of those she loves should never be veiled
by her affection, but placed in their true relation to char-
acter, by the deep insight