is for want of an end in life, of an idea of some perfec-
tion of living to which every experience should be made to
contribute. Our list of indispensables is greatly changed
by a new and better idea of the object of life ; and the old
blind economy of custom then betrays many inconsisten-
ces and much sad waste.
Again. Such economy creates rebels against itself. So
cheerless is its aspect, that some reject it altogether and
grow shiftless. Often, too, it forgets itself, and loses the
run of its own operations in the dulness of mind which it
engenders. Drudgery or shiftlessness, one or the other,
sometimes both, are the unfailing inmates and lawgivers in
a family inspired by no idea of personal improvement.
But this is the least part. These effects are only nega-
tive. This is only neglecting to live well. Indifference,
whether seen in the regular machine-work of economy, or
in the slovenliness of the want thereof, is only indifference.
But still we are by nature active beings; and the activity
of the hands, and the stupor of idleness cannot wholly
suppress the stirrings of deeper wants, the yearnings for
nobler occupation! The pent-up restlessness of the soul,
denied its exercise in our common-place, narrow forms of
life, will still leak out, as it were, in innumerable petty
vexations, angers, jealousies, and an ever-running sore of
discontent. Much of your admirable economy, for in-
stance, costs a great deal of scolding; and domestic order
seems to be at the expense of domestic peace and love,
and to drive out many a sunny smile.
Consider, too, when there is no spirit of improvement in
domestic life, how the passions riot. The mind uncultured,
unfurnished with intellectual resources, is poorly armed
against little daily disappointments. Escaped from the
regular restraint of custom and economy, which only tame
but do not educate, the appetites rush to excess. If home


1841.)
455
Ideals of Every-Day Life. No. II.
be not a sphere for moral self-improvement, if it be not a
school, a temple, as well as a retreat and shelter, it will be
made miserable by all the evil spirits of ignorance and self-
love. It needs all the wealth of mind and heart and
imagination, all the energies of the will, all the sensibilities
of taste, all the arts and all the muses, all the wisdom of
sages, all the visions of faith, above all, the spirit of Jesus,
and the hourly offering up of a life to the Invisible Perfect
One, to make a happy home. It needs these more than
it needs fortune. If it be not a kingdom of heaven, it
will be a kingdom of hell. Home is home only when it is
the home of blessed spirits, like the home of Mary and of
Martha, where the riches of the spirit made good the want
of other riches ; where a sentiment of the heart was rev-
erenced more deeply than pedantic rules of household
thrift; and where it was counted good economy to pour
out costly ointment upon the Saviour's feet.
II. Not much better will his home be, who, not con-
tented with merely getting along, thinks chiefly of getting
up. With him the ruling idea is prosperity, success, com-
fort; and his maxim is utility, or “ strive and thrive."
Very well, as far as it goes. But the elements of sure and
lasting happiness are not found in this system. It needs a
better spirit, to make home a heaven. Here is, indeed,
some spirit of improvement, which is better than shiftless
acquiescence to mere necessity or custom. Here is the
will to better one's condition, to increase one's resources,
to make home a more comfortable place. But it overlooks
the first requisites of happiness, in bestowing all this care
upon the outward estate. Such a man commits the capital
mistake of seeking only to improve the condition of his
family, when he should seek their own improvement; of
increasing their outward resources, when he should think
more of unfolding the inward resources of the mind and
heart; of securing comfort in the house, when perhaps
character is much more wanting. He prays for blessings,
and not for blessedness. He becomes absorbed in the love
of gain. The toils and calculations of business occupy
almost the whole of him, so that his own mind suffers,
and his heart too, and his whole inward man, for want of
profitable leisure and opportunities of free exercise of all
his higher powers; his intellect gets disciplined in only


456
[April,
Ideals of Every-Day Life. No. 11.
one very partial way, conversing only with one narrow
range of subjects; his feelings soured or deadened by the
anxieties, the severities, the questionable morals of a selfish
system of trade into which he has let himself be hurried,
blinding his eyes and steeling his heart; and he goes daily
to his home, unfurnished for the task of instructing his
children by his conversation, with no inspiration which he
can impart to them ; feeling that he has no time to attend
to their minds and morals, and accustomed by his own
pursuits to underrate, and either despise, or put off for want
of time, all higher culture. Behold a prosperous, a comfort-
able home, but filled with most uncomfortable spirits. The
dinner is most punctually and copiously and skilfully provid-
ed; but not the cheerfulness, the love, the peace of mind, the
activity of thought, the readiness of observation and reply,
which alone can lend a relish. Alas! there is no good
dinner without good spirits; no feast without some flow of
soul; no pleasure in each others' society without love.
No wonder that the meal is hurried off, despatched in sul-
len silence, if not in a storm of petty irritations, complaints,
and disputes. The evenings too are dull at home; or
home is often deserted for the poor excitements of empty
fashionable amusement. Business is overdriven with the
prospect of prosperous leisure; and the occupation of lei-
sure is the consumption thereof in any readiest and most
senseless way. For what is time but so much life? and
those who know not how to live must kill time. The
habitual anxiety of this man's mind carries gloom into his
home. He lets the goodly garden run to weeds, and all
those flowers of paradise, the natural affections, droop as
in a frost; the rainbow-colored beams of thought, the quick
play of intellect and fancy, are wanting there. Such is
too apt to be the home of the enterprising man of the
world. Were it not, that there is sometimes a faithful
angel there, whose heavenly patience, whose devoted love,
whose pure forgetfulness of self in the thought of her
children's welfare, whose piety and trust in God, with all
the clearness of mind and energy of will with which such
sentiments inspire the feeblest, whose whole influence
sweetly pervading every part and every arrangement, creates
a spell and a charm in the domestic sanctuary, which com-
pel him, in spite of himself, to shake off the dust of world-


1841.) Ideals of Every-Day Life. No. II. 457
liness from his shoes when he enters, — there would be
little comfort there, there would be little hope for those
who are learning their earliest and most permanent habits
and impressions there!
The passion for gain, I repeat it, is the poison of do-
mestic happiness; and that too, when it often starts with
the laudable desire of getting the means of making a
happy home, with the feeling of obligation, imposed by
conscience and by love, to support and elevate one's family,
and place them in a favored and respectable relation with
the world. All that trade and enterprise can manufacture
or produce, all that wealth can buy, can never make
good the want of inward, moral, and intellectual re-
sources.
III. From the best home which worldly enterprise can
make, turn now to another, less favored with fortune's
abundance, but supplied with rich resources of a higher,
surer, and more satisfactory kind. See what education can
do. See the treasures of the mind brought out. See how the
poor in this world's goods are sometimes rich in one another.
The house and furniture are plain, but marked by taste
and happy invention and arrangement; revealing many a
token of the pleasant walk, the deep enjoyment of nature,
while calm enthusiasm lifts the jaded soul out of the ruts
and holes of daily care, and puts it in possession of itself,
of its own freedom and immortal life. The space is small;
but by the magic of great thoughts, of noble, quickening sen-
timents, read and conversed about and mused upon in the
midst of busy duties, expanded to a boundless fairy-land.
There may not be great store of luxuries, but there are
books, wells of pleasure inexhaustible. There may not be
excitements and gayeties, with which the great endeavor to
forget themselves; but there are habits of mental activity,
which never lets society grow dull, or the most familiar
friends grow weary of one another. They draw upon the
treasures of the mind, and find what worlds of wonders lie
within them. They may not own the splendid decorations,
the proud architecture, the costly works of Art which
another's wealth can purchase ; but they may have a culti-
vated taste, a sensibility to the charms of earth and sky,
which they have only to step to the door or the window to
see ; or they are in the possession of some beautiful art,
VOL. I. — NO. iv.
58


458
(April,
Ideals of Every-Day Life. No. II.
like music or drawing, which gives them the key to all the
glorious invisible, but no less real, halls and galleries of
Beauty; and they can be delighted and inspired at home,
as if the rapids of Niagara were leaping around them, or
the glaciers of the Alps sparkling beneath them. They
are without the advantages of colleges and of business
which lies in the same direction with learning. But they
are determined that scholars and professional characters
shall not monopolize the treasures of the mind. The ma-
terials of the sublimest thoughts are open to them. Nature
and the soul and God are never beyond their reach ; but
are always inviting them to angelic meditation and com-
munion, if they are duly willing, and have the energy to
put down the disturbing voices of appetite and passion, and
to slip the reins of grovelling habit. The Bible is with
them; and to them it is not a book occupying so many
cubic inches of space on a shelf, and so many minutes of
the day in the formal reading; but it is another world into
which they enter, transported on the wings of thoughts and
heavenly passions quickened by its words ; it is a talisman
in their midst which sheds a sweet, holy light around it, and
making all the place and all their forms transfigured. The
daily meal will be frugal, but seasoned to an exquisite zest
by happy affections, happy thoughts, and endless variety of
intellectual entertainment; not that there need be any ped-
antry or effort to talk wise; it only needs active minds
which know how to feel free from care, free from jealousies,
suspicions, and low fears, abundance of good feeling,
sensibilities alive, and tastes refined, — and let them take
care of themselves; they will without much forcing pro-
vide abundant entertainment and make the meal an hour
of sweet society, a truly intellectual repast. Every new
power which is cultivated, every new talent which is en-
couraged and kept in requisition in the bosom of a family,
is so much reduction of the huge clouds of common-place
and dulness which settle down upon us. Such a home is
a fond retreat in the midst of a most interesting world,
whither all minds from their own eager adventures, or
enthusiastic walks with nature, or fruitful lessons of labor,
or failure, or silent studies in the search of truth, resort to
contribute all they have, and feel their treasures increased
an hundred fold, like the loaves and fishes in the miracle,


1841.)
459
Ideals of Every-Day Life. No. II.
by bringing them together. Multiply inward resources
then, and you put the sense of poverty to flight; you
reduce worldly desires to a reasonable moderation, and
endow yourself with skill to compass any reasonable end,
or turn any ordinary failure to good account. Home is not
merely a place ; nor is it enough that it be a comfortable
place; it should be a school, a sphere for the exercise of
our whole nature. If we want the true spirit of Home,
then home is not a place any more than Heaven is. We
are at home, where we are most in possession of our-
selves; where we are most ; where the activity of all our
powers is best ensured. And ought not every one to be
most in his home; shall he reserve his dullest and worst
moods for that sacred place; shall he go out into the world
for excitement, and make no provision for the mild and
never-failing and satisfying excitement of conversation, of
useful studies and employments, of refining arts and amuse-
ments, in his home? Shall he drown himself in business
or politics all day abroad, only to drown himself in sleep
at home? Shall he be worth less in the midst of his
family than he is anywhere else? Shall the ignis-fatuus
of money-making or of professional ambition withdraw,
if not his affections, yet the presence of his affections
from home, and leave the family altar desolate and
cold?
I cannot but think that the progress of light and educa-
tion in the world is to show one of its great results in this ;
to transport the theatre of ambition from the field of battle,
from the senate and the popular assembly, from the mart
of commerce, to the humbler sphere of home, and that
heroism, more modest and unpretending, will find ample
scope for enterprise in the daily duties, in warring with the
hourly petty enemies which try one's virtue and temper,
and whose name is legion, and in making one spot truly
blest, instead of covering a nation with glory, instead of
real blessings, like most heroes of renown. Reforming
one's own little world is the way to reform the great world
quickest. Then a man will feel that it is greater to surround
himself with an intelligent and happy family, than to get
rich and build a palace; that the education and love of
his children is worth the sum total of all the fame of all
the famous ; and that the still influence of the Christian


460
[April,
Ideals of Every-Day Life. No. II.
chance ar condition is not prosperite a happy,
mother is more sublime, more deeply felt, than that of the
most courting and courted politician.
IV. But still we have not reached, except by way of
chance allusions, the first and last condition, the key to all
the other conditions, of a happy home. It is not shelter,
it is not comfort, it is not prosperity, it is not knowledge,
taste, refinement, which can make a happy home. It is
not fortune, it is not education, which hold the keys to
that kingdom of heaven. There is a greater than the mer-
chant, the artist, or the scholar. The idea of necessity
produces dulness. The idea of enterprise or of worldly
success does not much more. The idea of self-improve-
ment or refinement, if merely intellectual, creates more
wants than it satisfies. Besides, neither of these ideas
furnishes motive enough to keep the whole in action. Nei-
ther of these principles is so high, that all the faculties of
the mind, all the plans and purposes of life, can serve it,
and work harmoniously under it. We need Principle, in
the broad sense of the term, which admits no plural num-
ber. We need the idea of Moral Perfection, of Right, of
Duty, of God. Home must be not only a retreat, not only
a school, but a temple. The worship of the Perfect Es-
sence of Love, Truth, and Holiness, must pervade the
economy and all the intercourse of home. The family
must remember that they are God's children, and must look
for light from above, for peace in obedience to the perfect
rule of right, for society and union with one another in the
love of that Being whom all can love, and yet feel nearer
one another.
“Out of the heart are the issues of life.” The cur-
rents of life flow into all our faculties, and revive all our
drooping sensibilities and aspirations, only from the Source
of Life, to which we have access only through the Moral.
“ Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”
Light from above must bathe our senses to keep them
fresh and vigorous and cheerful. Knowledge and Science
pall, and we dismiss them as empty things, unless they be
inspired by Piety. Religion alone can exercise a genial
fostering influence over mind and heart and imagination.
She only can keep thought free and clear, imagination
healthy ; she alone can warm the feelings and nerve the
will. She only can put us in possession of ourselves.


1841.
461
Listen to the Wind. -- The Wind Again.
She only can make frank intercourse possible between us
and our nearest friends. Our plan of life must be disin-
terested, or it will somewhere soon begin to thwart itself."
Our highest interest must be beyond and above ourselves,
or we cannot trust its leadings. The thought of moral
perfection alone can give consistency and peace to our
manifold strivings and feelings, — can bind up in beauty
the petty or contradictory details of daily experience. It
requires a love of something more than the world, to make
us at home in the world.
D
LISTEN TO THE WIND.
OFT do I pause amid this various life,
And ask me whence and to what end I be,
And how this world is, with its busy strife,
Till all seems new and marvellous to me.
The faces and the forms, which long had grown
Tedious and common to my wearied sense,
Seem in a moment changed to things unknown,
And I gaze at them with an awe intense;
But none do stop to wonder with me too,
So I pass on and mingle with the rest,
And quite forget the far and wondrous view
In glimpses shown, when mystery was my guest.
Yet, when I sit and prate of idle things
With idle men, the night wind's howl I hear,
And straight come back those dim, wild questionings,
Like ghosts who wander through a sense-bound sphere.
THE WIND AGAIN.
So wistfully the wind doth moan, —
What does it want of me?
It sweeps round the house with mournful tone,
As if it fain would flee
From its wide wanderings sad and lone;-
Come, woful wind — I will love thee!
Swiftly, swiftly the wind is blowing,
Wild wandering wind, where art thou going ?
I know not where,
I go on forever,
I've no toil or care,
Yet rest I never.
Ah woful wind! thou art like me,
Dost thou not strive from thyself to flee ?


462
[April,
Leila.
LEILA.
" In a decp vision's intellectual scene.”
I HAVE often but vainly attempted to record what I
know of Leila. It is because she is a mystery, which can
only be indicated by being reproduced. Had a Poet or
Artist met her, each glance of her's would have suggested
some form of beauty, for she is one of those rare beings
who seem a key to all nature. Mostly those we know
seem struggling for an individual existence. As the proces-
sion passes an observer like me, one seems a herald, another
a basket-bearer, another swings a censer, and oft-times
even priest and priestess suggest the ritual rather than
the Divinity. Thinking of these men your mind dwells on
the personalities at which they aim. But if you looked
on Leila she was rather as the fetiche which to the mere
eye almost featureless, to the thought of the pious wild
man suggests all the elemental powers of nature, with
their regulating powers of conscience and retribution. The
eye resting on Leila's eye, felt that it never reached the
heart. Not as with other men did you meet a look which
you could define as one of displeasure, scrutiny, or tender-
ness. You could not turn away, carrying with you some
distinct impression, but your glance became a gaze from
a perception of a boundlessness, of depth below depth,
which seemed to say " in this being (couldst thou but rightly
apprehend it) is the clasp to the chain of nature." Most
men, as they gazed on Leila were pained ; they left her
at last baffled and well-nigh angry. For most men are bound
in sense, time, and thought. They shrink from the overflow
of the infinite ; they cannot a moment abide in the cold-
ness of abstractions; the weight of an idea is too much
for their lives. They cry,“O give me a form which I may
clasp to the living breast, fuel for the altars of the heart,
a weapon for the hand.” And who can blame them ; it is
almost impossible for time to bear this sense of eternity.
Only the Poet, who is so happily organized as continually
to relieve himself by reproduction, can bear it without
falling into a kind of madness. And men called Leila
mad, because they felt she made them so. But I, Leila,


1841.]
463
Leila.
could look on thee ; — to my restless spirit thou didst
bring a kind of peace, for thou wert a bridge between me
and the infinite; thou didst arrest the step, and the eye as
the veil hanging before the Isis. Thy nature seemed large
enough for boundless suggestion. I did not love thee,
Leila, but the desire for love was soothed in thy presence.
I would fain have been nourished by some of thy love,
but all of it I felt was only for the all.
We grew up together with name and home and parent-
age. Yet Leila ever seemed to me a spirit under a mask,
which she might throw off at any instant. That she did not,
never dimmed my perception of the unreality of her exist-
ence among us. She knows all, and is nothing. She stays
here, I suppose, as a reminder to man of the temporary
nature of his limitations. For she ever transcends sex,
age, state, and all the barriers behind which man en-
trenches himself from the assaults of Spirit. You look on
her, and she is the clear blue sky, cold and distant as the
Pole-star; suddenly this sky opens and flows forth a mys-
terious wind that bears with it your last thought beyond
the verge of all expectation, all association. Again, she is
the mild sunset, and puts you to rest on a love-couch of rosy
sadness, when on the horizon swells up a mighty sea and
rushes over you till you plunge on its waves, affrighted,
delighted, quite freed from earth.
When I cannot look upon her living form, I avail my-
self of the art magic. At the hour of high moon, in the
cold silent night, I seek the centre of the park. My daring
is my vow, my resolve my spell. I am a conjurer, for Leila
is the vasty deep. In the centre of the park, perfectly
framed in by solemn oaks and pines, lies a little lake, oval,
deep, and still it looks up steadily as an eye of earth should
to the ever promising heavens which are so bounteous, and
love us so, yet never give themselves to us. As that lake
looks at Heaven, so look I on Leila. At night I look into
the lake for Leila.
If I gaze steadily and in the singleness of prayer, she
rises and walks on its depths. Then know I each night a
part of her life; I know where she passes the midnight
hours.
In the day she lives among men ; she observes their
deeds, and gives them what they want of her, justice or


464
[April,
Leila.
love. She is unerring in speech or silence, for she is dis-
interested, a pure victim, bound to the altar's foot; Ged
teaches her what to say.
In the night she wanders forth from her human invest-
ment, and travels amid those tribes, freer movers in the
game of spirit and matter, to whom man is a supplement.
I know not then whether she is what men call dreaming,
but her life is true, full, and more single than by day.
I have seen her among the Sylphs' faint florescent forms
that hang in the edges of life's rainbows. She is very fair,
thus, Leila ; and I catch, though edgewise, and sharp-
gleaming as a sword, that bears down my sight, the peculiar
light which she will be when she finds the haven of her-
self. But sudden is it, and whether king or queen, blue
or yellow, I never can remember; for Leila is too deep a
being to be known in smile or tear. Ever she passes sud-
den again from these hasty glories and tendernesses into
the back-ground of being, and should she ever be detected
it will be in the central secret of law. Breathless is my
ecstasy as I pursue her in this region. I grasp to detain what
I love, and swoon and wake and sigh again. On all such
beauty transitoriness has set its seal. This sylph nature
pierces through the smile of childhood. There is a mo-
ment of frail virginity on which it has set its seal, a silver
star which may at any moment withdraw and leave a fur-
row on the brow it decked. Men watch these slender
tapers which seem as if they would burn out next moment.
They say that such purity is the seal of death. It is so ;
the condition of this ecstasy is, that it seems to die every
moment, and even Leila has not force to die often; the
electricity accumulates many days before the wild one
comes, which leads to these sylph nights of tearful sweet-
ness.
After one of these, I find her always to have retreated
into the secret veins of earth. Then glows through her
whole being the fire that so baffles men, as she walks on
the surface of earth; the blood-red, heart's-blood-red of
the carbuncle. She is, like it, her own light, and beats
with the universal heart, with no care except to circulate
as the vital fluid ; it would seem waste then for her to rise
to the surface. There in these secret veins of earth she
thinks herself into fine gold, or aspires for her purest self,


1841.)
465
Leila.
dains fires are prepient self. I venter steps through the
till she interlaces the soil with veins of silver. She dis-
dains not to retire upon herself in the iron ore. She knows
that fires are preparing on upper earth to temper this
sternness of her silent self. I venerate her through all
this in awed silence. I wait upon her steps through the
mines. I light my little torch and follow her through the
caves where despair clings by the roof, as she trusts herself
to the cold rushing torrents, which never saw the sun nor
heard of the ocean. I know if she pauses, it will be to
diamond her nature, transcending generations. Leila !
thou hast never yet, I believe, penetrated to the central
ices, nor felt the whole weight of earth. But thou search-
est and searchest. Nothing is too cold, too heavy, nor too
dark for the faith of the being whose love so late smiled
and wept itself into the rainbow, and was the covenant of
an only hope. Am I with thee on thy hours of deepest
search ? I think not, for still thou art an abyss to me,
and the star which glitters at the bottom, often withdraws
into newer darknesses. O draw me, Star, I fear not to
follow; it is my eye and not my heart which is weak.
Show thyself for longer spaces. Let me gaze myself into
religion, then draw me down, — down.
As I have wished this, most suddenly Leila bursts up
again in the fire. She greets the sweet moon with a smile
so haughty, that the heavenly sky grows timid, and would
draw back; but then remembering that the Earth also is
planetary, and bound in one music with all its spheres, it
leans down again and listens softly what this new, strange
voice may mean. And it seems to mean wo, wo! for, as
the deep thought bursts forth, it shakes the thoughts in
which time was resting; the cities fall in ruins; the hills
are rent asunder; and the fertile valleys ravaged with fire
and water. Wo, wo! but the moon and stars smile denial,
and the echo changes the sad, deep tone into divinest
music. Wait thou, O Man, and walk over the hardened
lava to fresh wonders. Let the chain be riven asunder ;
the gods will give a pearl to clasp it again.
Since these nights, Leila, Saint of Knowledge, I have
been fearless, and utterly free. There are to me no re-
quiems more, death is a name, and the darkest seeming
hours sing Te Deum.
VOL. 1. — NO. IV. 59


466
[April,
Leila.
See with the word the form of earth transfused to stel-
lar clearness, and the Angel Leila showers down on man
balm and blessing. One downward glance from that God-
filled eye, and violets clothe the most ungrateful soil, fruits
smile healthful along the bituminous lake, and the thorn
glows with a crown of amaranth. Descend, thou of the
silver sandals, to thy weary son ; turn hither that swan-
guided car. Not mine but thine, Leila. The rivers of bliss
flow forth at thy touch, and the shadow of sin falls sepa-
rate from the form of light. Thou art now pure ministry,
one arrow from the quiver of God; pierce to the centre of
things, and slay Dagon for evermore. Then shall be no
more sudden smiles, nor tears, nor searchings in secret
caves, nor slow growths of centuries. But floating, hover-
ing, brooding, strong-winged bliss shall fill eternity, roots
shall not be clogged with earth, but God blossom into
himself for evermore.
Straight at the wish the arrows divine of my Leila
ceased to pierce. Love retired back into the bosom of
chaos, and the Holy Ghost descended on the globes of
matter. Leila, with wild hair scattered to the wind, bare
and often bleeding feet, opiates and divining rods in each
over-full hand, walked amid the habitations of mortals as a
Genius, visited their consciences as a Demon.
At her touch all became fluid, and the prison walls grew
into Edens. Each ray of particolored light grew populous
with beings struggling into divinity. The redemption of
matter was interwoven into the coronal of thought, and
each serpent form soared into a Phenix.
Into my single life I stooped and plucked from the
burning my divine children. And ever, as I bent more
and more with an unwearied benignity, an elected pain
like that of her, my wild-haired Genius; more beauteous
forms, unknown before to me, nay, of which the highest
God had not conscience as shapes, were born from that
suddenly darting flame, which had threatened to cleave
the very dome of my being. And Leila, she, the moving
principle; O, who can speak of the immortal birthis of her
unshrinking love. Each surge left Venus Urania at her
feet; from each abjured blame, rose floods of solemn in-
cense, that strove in vain to waft her to the sky. And I
heard her voice, which ever sang, “I shrink not from the


1841.]
467
Leila.
baptism, from slavery let freedom, from parricide piety, from
death let birth be known.”
Could I but write this into the words of earth, the se-
cret of moral and mental alchymy would be discovered,
and all Bibles have passed into one Apocalypse ; but not
till it has all been lived can it be written.
Meanwhile cease not to whisper of it, ye pines, plant
here the hope from age to age; blue dome, wait as ten-
derly as now; cease not, winds, to bear the promise from
zone to zone ; and thou, my life, drop the prophetic treas-
ure from the bud of each day, — Prophecy.
Of late Leila kneels in the dust, yea, with her brow in
the dust. I know the thought that is working in her
being. To be a child, yea, a human child, perhaps man,
perhaps woman, to bear the full weight of accident and
time, to descend as low as ever the divine did, she is pre-
paring. I also kneel. I would not avail myself of all this
sight. I cast aside my necromancy, and yield all other
prowess for the talisman of humility. But Leila, wondrous
circle, who hast taken into thyself all my thought, shall I
not meet thee on the radius of human nature? I will be
thy fellow pilgrim, and we will learn together the bliss of
gratitude.
Should this ever be, I shall seek the lonely lake no more,
for in the eye of Leila I shall find not only the call to
search, but the object sought. Thou hast taught me to
recognise all powers; now let us be impersonated, and
traverse the region of forms together. Together, can that
be, thinks Leila, can one be with any but God ? Ah! it
is so, but only those who have known the one can know
the two. Let us pass out into nature, and she will give
us back to God yet wiser, and worthier, than when clinging
to his footstool as now. “Have I ever feared,” said Leila.
Never! but the hour is come for still deeper trust. Arise!
let us go forth!
for in the che object soughlet us be impersher. CAN that


468
(April,
Poems on Art.
POEMS ON ART.
THE GENUINE PORTRAIT.
“ And really it is not more flattered than art ought to flatter. Art
should paint the picture as inventive nature (granting there is such a
thing) designed it, repairing the imperfections which necessarily result
from the resistance of the material worked in, repairing also the injury
done it by conquering time." - Translated from the German of LESSING.
Ask you why the portrait bears not
The romance of those lips or lashes ?
Why that bosom's blush it shares not?
Mirrors not her eye's quick flashes ?
Is it false in not revealing
Her secret consciousness of beauty -
The graceful, half-developed feeling —
Desire opposing fancied duty ?
For, on the canvass, shadowy hair
Streams backward from an earnest face;
The features one expression bear,
The various lines one story trace.
And what is that expression ? — Love!
Not wild-fire passion, bright but damp.
A purer flame, which points above —
Though kindled at an earthly lamp.
Call it Devotion - Call it Joy —
'T is the true love of woman's heart-
Emotion pure from all alloy —
Action complete in every part.
Blame not the Artist, then, who leaves
The circumstances of the hour,
Within the husk the fruit perceives,
Within the bud, the future flower,
He took the one pervading grace,
Which charms in all and placed it here,
The inmost secret of her face
The key to her locked character.
The spirit of her life, which beats
In every pulse of thought and feeling,
The central fire which lights and beats -
Explaining Earth, and Heaven revealing.
THE REAL AND THE IDEAL.
ON THE MARBLE BUST OF SCHILLER
A.
No! This is not the portrait of my friend!
Where is the graceful pensiveness of the eyelids?
Where the sweet tremulousness of the mouth?
Where the refinement, the tender sensibility,


1841.) Hermitage. - The Angel and the Artist.
469
B.
The exquisite loveliness of posture and feature ?
Loftiness and antique majesty are here,
But I find not my friend in his domestic character.
And should the marble which lives through centuries
Chronicle the fleeting interest of the Day?
Let it rather speak the eternal language
Of human nature in its noble simplicity.
This is not Schiller, your companion and friend,
But Schiller the Poet, his country's glory -
Therefore is it proud, majestic and powerful,
Expressing his Genius, not his character.
17. Ei
HERMITAGE.
Men change; that heaven above not more,
Which now with white clouds is all beautiful
Soon is with gray mists a poor creature dull,
Thus in this human theatre actions pour
Like slight waves on a melancholy shore;
Nothing is fixed, - the human heart is null,
'Tis taught by scholars, is rehearsed in lore, —
Methinks this human heart might well be o'er;
O precious pomp of eterne vanity,
O false fool world, whose actions are a race
Of monstrous puppets ; - I can't frame one plan
Why any man should wear a smiling face,
World, thou art one green sepulchre to me,
Through which, mid clouds of dust, slowly I pace.
THE ANGEL AND THE ARTIST.
ANGEL. Back back must thou go,
Spirit proud and poor!
To be in the Essence, to love and to know,
Thou canst not yet endure.
Artist. Ah! but I did in that glorious hour
When all was mine. -
ANGEL. No, not for a moment hast thou had power
The Cause to divine.
Why despise forms from which Spirit doth speak ?
ARTIST. I will obey.
Beautiful forms! in you will I seek
The All-shining Day.


470
(April,
Shelley.
SHELLEY.*
which sank. Long sinom all symp
It is now well nigh a score of years since Shelley set
sail from Leghorn, for Lerici, in that treacherous boat
which sank, with all on board, to the bottom of the Medi-
terranean. Long since, have partisan critics ceased their
attempts to cut off from all sympathy, and chance of fame,
one, whose life of scarce thirty years was yet too long for
the success of their unworthy endeavors. No longer is
the name of Shelley cast out from English society, or
mentioned but with the expression of bitter and undisguised
contempt. A late number of one of the leading British
journals has, at length, acknowledged the preëminence of
his genius : and hardly an Englishman now gazes at the
pyramid of Caius Cestius, beneath the walls of Rome,
who does not also turn a subdued eye towards the spot,
that “might make one in love of death, to think one
should be buried in so sweet a place," where, by the side
of his friend Keats, lie the ashes of Percy Bysshe Shelley.
And now that the prejudice, which Shelley's career so
naturally excited, has in a great measure died away ; and
now that, with the publication of these Poems and Essays,
the evidence has closed, which, at least the present genera-
tion is to have, in making up its judgment upon the
merits and demerits of their author, we propose to lay be-
fore our readers a brief sketch of, particularly, his charac-
ter and opinions. It is generally acknowledged at pre-
sent, that during Shelley's lifetime his poetical produc-
tions were most wrongfully cried down by critics, who
possessed not a tithe of the genius they so designedly
ignored; that great as were his youthful follies, the man-
ner in which he was commonly treated was as unkind
and ungenerous, as it was injurious; and that damnable
as were his errors, some of those, who were the first to
throw their stone at him, would have derived benefit from
but touching the border of his garment. We do not wish
* 1. The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley. Edited by Mrs.
Shelley. London. 1840.
2. Essays, Letters from Abroad, Translations and Fragments, by
Percy Bysshe Shelley. Edited by Mrs. Shelley. 2 vols. Philadelphia :
Lea and Blanchard. 1840.


1841.)
471
Shelley.
to palliate the poet's unpardonable offences; nor do we
design to prove the unbeliever to have been a Christian ;
but we think it merely an act of justice and charity, to
attempt to disinter his excellencies from the obscurity to
which they have too long been consigned. And, surely,
there should be no office more grateful than that of en-
larging the sphere of human charity, by recalling to
memory the smallest degree of virtue in those great men
who have delighted us in song, instructed us in wisdom,
or benefited us by action.
The complete works of Shelley have been presented
to the public by his widow, unaccompanied by a full ac-
count of his life. The Editor has not only not given us
the biographical information necessary for the formation
of a sure judgment concerning the entire character and
conduct of her late husband ; but has even cut off all our
expectation of ever receiving such a desirable bequest.
Those actions therefore of Shelley, performed during his
minority, which have left in public estimation a stain upon
his name, have not been cleared up. What palliating
circumstances might have existed; what extraordinary
temptations may, in any slight degree, have extenuated
his failings; what, after all, were the true motives from
which alone his acts derived their moral character; of all
this, quite the kernel of the whole matter, we still remain in
ignorance. From all the evidence there is in the case, we
are permitted to believe that the great practical mistakes
which marred the daily beauty of Shelley's life, owed
their origin, in a very remarkable degree, to antecedent
theoretical mistakes. Touching this point, Moore has
given us the following interesting testimony.
“ Though never personally acquainted with Mr. Shelley,
I can join freely with those who most loved him in ad-
miring the various excellencies of his heart and genius;
and lamenting the too early doom that robbed us of the
mature fruits of both. His short life had been like his
poetry, a sort of bright erroneous dream, false in the gen-
eral principles upon which it proceeded, though beautiful
and attaching in most of its details. Had full time been
allowed for the over-light of his imagination to have been
tempered down by the judgment which, in him, was still
in reserve, the world at large would have been taught to


1 472
(April,
Shelley.
pay that high homage to his genius which those only who
saw what he was capable of can now be expected to
accord to it." *
It seems to have been from lack of that judgment,
which was “still in reserve," together with excess of imag-
ination, quick impulses, and an extraordinary love of in-
tellectual freedom — not from gross passions and a vicious
temper, that proceeded the numerous practical errors,
which impaired both the happiness and usefulness of his
life. Lord Byron, who lived on terms of intimacy with
him, in Italy, and who, amid his career of vulgar and
desperate dissipation in that country, was more restrained,
perhaps, by the purity of Shelley's counsels and example,
than by any other influences, said of him, “ you were all mis-
taken about Shelley, who was, without exception, the best
and least selfish man I ever knew." Those who knew
him best, were won by his estimable qualities, to speak of
him in terms of highest praise : and the tender, constant,
and passionate devotion he exhibited for the aimable and
intelligent partner of his life, seems to have been most
generously returned. Mr. Trelawney, a friend of his, pro-
nounced him to be “a man absolutely without selfishness.”
Leigh Hunt, who was long and most familiarly acquainted
with him, and has borne testimony to the excellence of his
private character, in his “Recollections of Lord Byron and
some of his Contemporaries,” among other things, said," he
was pious towards nature, towards his friends, towards the
whole human race, towards the meanest insect of the
forest.”
Though frugal in his personal habits, he was disinter-
estedly generous to his friends, to the poor, and the
stranger. His temper, though naturally irritable, became
sweet. While cherishing a cosmopolitan benevolence for
the oppressed nations, unlike most world-reformers, he
was kindly and affectionate to his immediate associates ; his
boldness of purpose and action was tempered by an almost
feminine gentleness. The ardor, with which he maintained
and carried out in action his peculiar views, was relieved
by mild forbearance towards those from whom he differed.
Though subject to hot and tumultuous impulses, his tastes
* Moore's Life of Byron, vol. ii. p. 424.


1841.]
473
Shelley.
were pure, and his sensibilities delicate. However perti-
nacious in his attachment to personal liberty, bordering upon
license, he was still not a trespasser upon the freedom and
rights of others. He was refined without being unmanly;
trembling from nervous excitability, yet resolute almost to
stoicism; chaste by nature, and not by restraint; simple,
firm, free, unsophisticated.
So much are we bound to say in Shelley's favor; while
we most deeply regret that a misguided understanding,
rather than a corrupt disposition, should have led him to
embrace many principles as fatal to his own peace, as dele-
terious in their influences on society. To his principles,
false or true, he was inviolably faithful. Having formed,
when a schoolboy at Eton, an unfavorable opinion of the
English system of fagging, he at once set on foot a con-
spiracy among his mates for resisting it. Sent to Oxford
at the early age of sixteen, and being there taught the
elements of logic, he proceeded to apply these principles
to the investigation of theological subjects; and when con-
ducted to skeptical results, immediately printed a disserta-
tion on the being of a God, in which he advocated senti.
ments that the authorities required him to retract; and
upon his refusal, expelled him from the university in his
second term. At the age of seventeen or eighteen, he
married the pretty daughter of a retired coffee-house, keeper;
and this Gretna-Green match not turning out happily, from
the very great dissimilarity in the characters and disposi-
tions of the parties, they soon separated by mutual consent.
Meanwhile, Shelley, having embraced the views of Godwin
and Mary Wollstonecraft, respecting the institution of
marriage, not long afterwards, and before the suicide of
his first wife, paid his addresses to and finally married
Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin. Acting in these and other
instances on false principles, he notwithstanding acted on
those which had already obtained, and through life con-
tinued to preserve, full possession of his faith.
Engaging in philosophical speculations with a fearless-
ness which no consequences could intimidate, and a single-
ness of mind that no considerations of personal interest
could seduce, Shelley committed the great mistake, fre-
quent among young inquirers, but unfortunately by no
means confined to them, of putting a too implicit trust in
VOL. 1. — NO. IV.
60


474
[April,
Shelley.
the conclusions of his individual understanding. This
stripling in his teens has his doubts about the infallibility of
his teachers, notwithstanding the solemn authoritativeness
of their decisions. This tyro in logic rejects, and rejects
forever, the faith of his fathers, the belief of his country-
men, the dogmas current for centuries in the cloisters of
Oxford, the creed supported by the sanctity, learning,
wealth, and power of almost universal Christendom. This
freshman at the university rejects it, and accepts, in ex-
change, the convictions of his untaught, unripe understand-
ing. We are amazed at this precocious self-confidence.
Since the world began, men of the highest capacity have
espoused different sides of the same great questions. The
various races, nations, centuries, have entertained views,
more or less peculiar, on matters of gravest concernment.
Individuals of different temperaments, ages, sexes — indi-
viduals placed in dissimilar circumstances, dissimilarly edu-
cated, dissimilarly endowed, looking at truth from diverse
points of view, have never agreed in their opinions, but, at
most, and at best, have been able only to agree to differ.
And yet in the face of this imporiant fact, we find Shelley,
and the great majority of men besides, doggedly and un-
charitably attached to the conclusions of their individual
understandings. Many think they do well, if they only
look down with self-complacent contempt, more or less dis-
guised, on all who have the infirmity, or fault, of looking out
of their own eyes; while some have not been able to stop short
of blackening the names, or burning the bodies, or even
damning the souls, of the poor wretches, who did not
please to be of their way of thinking. This opiniative-
ness, in men who have never had the means of learning
any better, is, perhaps, not to be blamed ; but in men, who
are or aspire to be philosophers, it is pitiful.
Nowhere, perhaps, has this folly of wise minds been
more conspicuous, than among the metaphysicians of Ger-
many. Every system of philosophy, from that of Kant to
that which Schelling still keeps in reserve, has constructed
its foundations out of the ruins of its predecessors; and
has claimed for itself to be the only true, orthodox system,
without the pale of which there can be no saving know-
ledge. Doubtless every one — at least every one who
knows anything about the matter — will acknowledge that


1841.]
475
Shelley.
there has been a regular and necessary advancement in
philosophical science, as from Thales to Kant, so from the
latter to Hegel, and the Schelling that is to be. But what
we condemn is, not that every new German metaphy-
sician has claimed to have carried forward his science, but
that he has authoritatively set up his system as that in
which alone all the facts of human nature have been ob-
served, and their relations harmoniously explained, and
confidently looked on himself as the last of God's pro-
phets, after whose day there would be an end of all
signs, visions, and revelations. It would seem almost like
a fantastic trick in nature, to have endowed those persons,
who have showed the most incredulous skepticism towards
other men's faiths, with the most superstitious credulity for
their own; or rather, it would seem as though God be-
stowed upon the men of most original and powerful ge-
nius, at the same time, the sincerest and intensest self-
trust.
Shelley shared largely in this infirmity of noble minds.
The firmness with which he grasped the conclusions of his
intellect, was not more remarkable, however, than the
singleness of purpose and boldness of spirit with which he
acted from them. But for the irresistible attachment, that
was born with him, to freedom of faith, speech, and action,
the boy of thirteen might have gained more prizes for
writing Latin verses at Eton, than he actually did. At the
university he was an apt scholar, and later in life showed
himself to be such, by his acquisition of the German,
Italian, French, Latin, and Greek languages, in the last of
which he attained a high degree of proficiency, as well as
by his acquaintance with metaphysics and natural philoso-
phy, and he might have borne off blushing honors from
Oxford. He was the eldest son of a Baronet, and instead
of having been abandoned by him, after his expulsion from
college, and his marriage, might at least have enjoyed the
· advantages of a support befitting the consequence of a
young lord. He was offered a seat in parliament, and
might have been one of the richest men in Sussex, could
he only so far have compromised his principles, as to be-
come the tool of a party. He had been endowed by nature
with a graceful figure, with a face small, but beautifully
turned, and full of sensibility, with a fair complexion, curl-


476
[April,
Shelley.
tunes.ttered in newspadine at my lor by beauty, we host
criticalirect of Cho have evening of such in
ing locks, and large, beaming eyes, and might possibly
have won smiles from ladies of gentle blood and dazzling
fortunes. He was a poet of highest song, and might have
been flattered in newspapers and reviews, caressed in se-
lectest circles, asked to dine at my lord's table, and walked
daintily on flowers strewed in his way by beauty, wit, rank,
and fashion. Thus would he have escaped the host of
persecutors, who drove him from his country; he would
have escaped the loss of his children by the first mar-
riage, taken from him by the Court of Chancery on the
alleged ground of his being an atheist; he would have
escaped that sacrilegious blow, dealt by an Englishman
personally unacquainted with him, who chanced to hear
him mention his name for letters at a continental post-
office; he would have' escaped the paid and personal
malice with which the London Quarterly so zealously sup-
ported the altars of Christ, the throne of England, and the
critical chair of Mr. Gifford; he would have escaped the
cut direct of Christian friends too fastidiously afraid of
contamination, to have even their feet washed with the
tears and wiped with the hair of such a sinner.
So much did Shelley sacrifice for principles — principles,
alas, in too many instances, unsound, and injurious. Still
though disapproving these, and deprecating their influence
on society, may we not commend the simplicity of heart,
and heroism of character, with which he followed to their
consequence the principles his judgment approved as just
and fit? That the conclusions of a man's intellect should
be erroneous, is indeed unfortunate; and generally a
matter of blame ; but that his heart be single, that his
speech be sincere, that his acting be the full expression of
his belief, that his force of passion support the unchange-
ableness of his will, so that its decrees come not short of
the certainty of fate, that no soft whisper about forbidden
fruit be permitted to foul the ear of his integrity, nor any
selfish desire, covertly nestling in his bosom, to steal away
the virginal purity of his disinterestedness — this is a
matter of approval among all men, and enough to cover
no small multitude of metaphysical sins. We may learn
from Shelley other lessons, besides those of warning. And
we wish that many a lazy advocate of orthodoxy would
take of this unbeliever lessons in impetuosity. We wish
soft whispe.come not change-


1841.]
477
Shelley.
that those who in order to be virtuous lack but the courage
to be natural, who in order to become saints and heroes
even need but to be themselves, who from their youth up
have kept all the commandments, save that of not truck-
ling to public opinion, when false and tyrannical, would set
themselves free and public opinion right, by imitating the
intrepidity of this sickly sentimentalist.” One may learn
from Hercules, to beard the lion ; from Napoleon, at Lodi,
to charge at the cannon's mouth; from Martin Luther, to
throw his inkstand at the Devil; but from Shelley — he
may learn, when armed with principles — still more when
they are not false ones, to fear not even public opinion.
What the opinions were, which Shelley so boldly
formed, and independently expressed, we have now more
adequate means of ascertaining since the publication of his
Essays and Letters. These disclose to us very fully the
sentiments and convictions that made the man, and con-
trolled his conduct.
In Queen Mab, which he wrote and printed at the age
of eighteen — though he never published it — he denied
the existence of a God, who created the world, and was
clothed with the attributes usually assigned to him by
Christians.
“Infinity within,
Infinity without, belie creation ;
The exterminable spirit it contains
Is nature's only God.”
In commenting on this passage, in his Notes to this
Poem, he says, “ this negation must be understood solely
to affect a creative Deity. The hypothesis of a pervading
Spirit, coeternal with the universe remains unshaken.”
This and other irreligious views expressed in Queen
Mab, though modified, doubtless, with the enlargement of
his experience and the development of his intellect, were,
however, notwithstanding the representations sometimes
made to the contrary, never essentially changed. For
when in 1821 this poem was surreptitiously published by
a London bookseller, Shelley wrote to the Editor of the
Examiner as follows. “I doubt not but that the poem is
perfectly worthless in point of literary composition ; and
that in all that concerns moral and political speculation,
as well as in the subtler discriminations of metaphysical


478
[April,
Shelley.
and religious doctrine, it is still more crude and immature.
I am a devoted enemy, to religious, political, and domestic
oppression; and I regret this publication not so much from
literary vanity, as because I fear it is better fitted to injure
than to serve the sacred cause of freedom.” Here is noth-
ing like a distinct disavowal of his early opinions. And in
a private letter to John Gisborne Esq., he wrote about the
same time as follows; “ for the sake of a dignified appear-
ance, and because I wish to protest against all the bad
poetry in Queen Mab, I have given orders to say that it is
all done against my desire.” From this, it appears, that
his regret on account of the publication of the poem pro.
ceeded from other causes, than a fundamental change of
belief.
The views of his later years respecting the Deity, not
materially different from those of his youth, are quite dis-
tinctly expressed in his Hymn to Intellectual Beauty, writ-
ten in 1816. His belief in an all-pervading Spirit appears
from the following lines.
“ The awful shadow of some unseen Power
Floats, tho' unseen, among us."
From this spirit of Beauty which “ to human thought
is nourishment;" from this awful Loveliness to which he
looked " to set this world free from its dark slavery," he
invokes a blessing on himself in the concluding lines of
the hymn.
“Thus let thy power, which like the truth
Of nature on my passive youth
Descended, to my onward life supply
Its calm, to one who worships thee,
And every form containing thee,
Whom, Spirit fair, thy spells did bind
To fear himself, and love all human kind."
In his short essay on Life, Shelley takes a pantheistic
view of things. The words I, and you, and they are,
according to him, merely convenient grammatical devices,
totally destitute of the exclusive meaning usually attach-
ed to them, and no more than marks to denote the
different modifications of the one mind. Moreover he is an
Idealist, receiving the Intellectual system as stated by Sir
William Drummond, in his Academical Questions. He
confesses that he is unable to refuse his assent to the con-


1841.]
479
Shelley.
clusions of those philosophers, who assert that nothing
exists, but as it is perceived. He declares that the differ-
ence is merely nominal between those two classes of
thought, vulgarly distinguished by the names of ideas, and
of external objects. Putting these two views together, the
God of Shelley turns out to be none other than Shelley
himself. For though he modestly denies that his mind is
anything more than a portion of the one universal intel-
ligence, yet as he maintains that nothing exists save in the
mind's perception, it follows, of course, not only that no
material body, but also no spiritual being, can be proved to
exist beyond the limits of his own mind. The latter is as
much an hypothesis as the former ; both fictions of the
mind, for which no satisfactory proof can be given. There
would remain accordingly, though Shelley himself disal-
lowed the inference, in the dread immensity of space,
nought save this one solitary mind, nought else would remain
during the ages of a lonely eternity. “Nothing exists but
as it is perceived." The forms of friendship, the eyes of
love, the shapes of dear familiar things, are all but in the
mind's eye. Our beloved homes, the temples of God, the
noble ruins of antiquity, our mother earth, with all her
fair array of cities, and streams, and vales, and moun-
tains, and overspreading sky, the very Deity himself, have
not the substance of thinnest air, and mock the dearest
hopes of the soul of man.
Though proſessing the greatest admiration of the moral
principles of Jesus Christ, and being in the habit of reading
with great delight many, particularly the poetical, parts of
the Bible, Shelley entertained a decided repugnance to the
doctrines of the New Testament, and to the doctrinal
teachings of the Christian clergy. He considered the
Christian Church as pledged for the maintenance of big-
otry, and the suppression of free inquiry. By requiring
unquestioning belief in an irrational scheme of theology,
by inculcating implicit reliance on the superior sanctity and
wisdom of those supernaturally called to be other men's
counsellors, and by condemning to loss of reputation, or
employment, or life even, with eternal punishment in the
world to come, whomsoever embraced and acted upon
principles at variance with the Pulpit and the Word, Shel-
ley thought that the Church had been the nurse of pride,


480
[April,
Shelley.
.
intolerance, and fanaticism. He affirmed the despotism of
Christianity, which was eternal, to be worse even than
the pernicious French and Material philosophy, that was
but temporary. The only true religion, according to his
view, was true love. Walking one day in the cathedral
at Pisa, while the organ was playing, he said to Leigh
Hunt, “ What a divine religion might be found out, if
charity were really made the principle of it instead of
faith.” So prejudiced was this unbeliever against Chris-
tianity, that he seems to have made little account of the
salutary restraint it has imposed on the madness of human
passion, the formal respect it has secured for virtue, even
where failing to create a genuine devotion, the elevation
of men from the dominion of sense to that of power un-
seen, and supernatural ; moreover the consolations it has
ministered to bereavement, the patience it has supported
in sickness, the contentment it has cherished under pover-
ty, and the hopes it has made to bloom upon the grave.
Also did he leave quite out of view the inspiration which
poetry has drawn, the themes painting has borrowed, the
forms architecture has learned, and the sublime melodies
that music has caught from Christianity. He had even
lived in Italy, and still expressly asserted that the influence
of Christianity upon the fine arts had been unfavorable ;
he had travelled in France and Germany, and asserted
that its influence had been unfavorable to philosophy ;
born and bred an Englishman, he asserted that it had
been unfavorable to civilization. He sighed over the fate
of the Grecian republics, displaced by the prevalence of
Roman and Christian institutions; and amid all the bless-
ings of modern science, law, and religion, vainly wished
back again the unreturning Past.
Among the Essays of Shelley, is a fragment of a treatise
on Morals, by which we are particularly informed, re-
specting his views of the nature of virtue. The fragment
has little worth, besides that of making us acquainted with
the sentiments which Shelley himself entertained on this
subject; and that also of proving that he possessed an
insight into the springs of human character, which, when
years had brought experience, and his understanding had
more fully unfolded its resources, might perhaps have
made a moralist out of the poet. He appears to have
the sentirand that also of human chara cinderstandin


1841.)
481
Shelley.
taken a strong interest in speculations on morals, as we
infer from the following passage in one of his letters. “I
consider poetry very subordinate to moral and political
science, and if I were well, certainly I would aspire to the
latter, for I can conceive a great work, embodying the
discoveries of all ages, and harmonizing the contending
creeds by which mankind have been ruled.”
A virtuous action, according to his definition, is one
designed and fitted to produce to the greatest number of
persons the highest pleasure. The two constituent parts
of virtue are benevolence, and justice; the former, the
desire of being the disinterested author of good; and the
latter, the desire of distributing this good among men, ac-
cording to their claims and needs. By good, is meant
that, which produces pleasure; and by evil, that which
produces pain. Shelley believed that the main aim of life
should be the production and diffusion of the greatest
amount of happiness. He did not, like Epicurus, make
happiness to consist in sensual gratification ; but in that
enjoyment which accompanies the harmonious action of
all the powers of man. Disallowing the gratification of no
natural instinct, nor censuring the indulgence of passion
and the senses, he still would subject the action of these
baser parts of our nature to the control of enlightened rea-
son and the most scrupulous conscientiousness. Every
one of the faculties bestowed by God upon man should be
allowed its just play and proportionate scope, the lower
being subordinate to the higher, the sensual to the spiritual,
and reason being enthroned sovereign of them all. Reason
he placed on the summit of man, not conscience; because
conscience is a feeling that is blind, and dependent for its
action upon the understanding and reason, the decision,
of which it follows, not guides. Other ends, which have
been pointed out as the chief ones of life, were thought by
him not to be ultimate. But when the greatest amount
of the highest and truest happiness of which human nature
is capable is aimed at, the mind is perfectfy satisfied, asks
no further questions, and is struck at once with the absur-
dity of still demanding a reason, why we ought to promote
universal happiness.
In Queen Mab, Shelley calls necessity the mother of
the world ; and in the Notes, denies the self-determining
VOL. 1. — NO. IV.
61


482
[April,
Shelley.
power of the human will. He held that as well in the
spiritual as the natural world, every effect must have its
antecedent cause ; that motives are the causes of volitions;
and that, according to the formula of President Edwards,
the will is always as the strongest motive. We have no
reason to believe that Shelley ever changed his sentiments
on this point. On the contrary, in his Speculations on
Morals he represents the absurdity of refusing to admit
that human actions are necessarily determined by motives,
as similar to that of denying the equal length of all the
radii of a circle. The charge of fatalism has frequently
been made against these views of the necessarians, who
agree in denying the self-determining power of the will;
but without discussing the soundness or unsoundness of
either system we may take the liberty of stating our rea-
sons for believing that they are not the same.
Fatalisın is the belief, that the events which fill up our
lives are determined by a will above us; necessity, that
all these events take place according to the fixed laws
of our nature. Fatalism teaches that let a man think,
speak, or act, as he please, or not think, speak, or act at
all, the issues of his life will be the same. Necessity
teaches that our fate depends on our dispositions, judg-
ments, and actions, modified by the natural influences of
surrounding circumstances. Fatalism encourages a man
to violate all laws human and divine, because in either
case, he is sure of God's approval and his own. Necessi-
ty warns him that every transgression of a law of his being
will, sooner or later, receive its punishment, and no ob-
servance ever lose its reward ; that the man who neglects
the cultivation of the higher parts of his nature will fail in
spiritual power and true happiness, and that he who exer-
cises the meaner parts, condemns himself to low pleasures
and a base lot; it admonishes him that, by the improper
indulgence of vulgar passions, he will become their de-
graded bondman, until they shall have run their course,
or, perchance, some dormant spiritual energy have awaked
from its slumber to disenthral their dominion; it cautions
him against relying upon the interposition of a self-deter-
mining will, to rescue him from the temptations with
which he has tampered, and to trammel up the conse-
quence of his failings, or his crimes; in a word, it enjoins


1841.]
483
Shelley.
the greatest care of one's intellectual and moral nature,
by showing him, that he, and he only, is sure of his for-
tunes, who is sure of his capacity and his honor. The
two systems have this point of union, that they both teach
that God hath foreordained whatsoever things come to
pass; but they differ fundamentally respecting the mode,
damentali pecting hehelmendes
in which the divine decrees are realized. The believers
in the one system surrender their fates to chance; those in
the other perceive their well-being to lie in the fulfilment
of established law. The one doctrine dishonors all human
agencies; the other acknowledges them to be the only
means, by which are secured, or forfeited, the wisdom,
virtue, and happiness of mankind.
We can conceive how Shelley, receiving the doctrines
of those who deny the self-determination of the will, could
still hold to a law of moral obligation. He, as well as the
advocates of the opposite theory, could experience a pleas-
ing satisfaction, in acting according to the instructions of
reason and the admonitions of conscience, and a feeling of
painful degradation, in yielding to the suggestions of self-
ishness, or giving reins to the impulses of grovelling and
destructive passions. This sense of pleasure and pain is
the execution of a moral law, by which man's happiness is
increased by acting in accordance with what in him is
noblest, and diminished by sacrificing this high joy for the
sake of selfish or sensual indulgence. The necessarian
sees that he must take the consequences of his actions,
and therein finds one of the strongest possible motives for
giving good heed to them. The pains of life and the
pangs of conscience, he does not indeed consider so much
punishment, as admonitions ; nor the delights of the mind,
so much rewards, as encouragements. Remorse becomes,
to him, regret, yet not the less painful, for his having acted
from the lower, instead of the higher motives. The feel-
ing of desert of praise is self-congratulation ; of desert of
blame, self-abhorence. He does not hold himself account-
able for what he has not the power to hinder, or help;
but he does take the responsibility of whatever lies within
the circumference of his utmost possibility.
In his Essay on a Future State, Shelley, arguing from
reason and analogy, expresses views unfavorable to the
future personal existence of the human soul. But the


484
(April,
Shelley.
o which
for knowledo form a pcuffering
essay is unfinished, and from several passages in his works,
we are led to hope and believe that this fragment does not
give his entire views on this subject. In one of his letters
he writes, “ the destiny of man can scarcely be so degrad-
ed, that he was born only to die.” And in a journal are
recorded the following thoughts, suggested by a dangerous
exposure of himself and Mrs. Shelley at sea; “Death
was rather a thing of discomfort and disappointment than
terror to me. We should never be separated; but in
death we might not know and feel our union as now. I
hope — but my hopes are not unmixed with fear for what
will befall this inestimable spirit when we appear to die."
Mrs. Shelley, in speaking of the fragment on a future
state, says; “I cannot pretend to supply the deficiency,
nor say what Shelley's views were — they were vague,
certainly; yet as certainly regarded the country beyond the
grave as by no means foreign to our interests and hopes.
Considering his individual mind as a unit divided from a
mighty whole, to which it was united by restless sympa-
thies and an eager desire for knowledge, he assuredly be-
lieved that hereafter, as now, he would form a portion of
that whole — and a portion less imperfect, less suffering,
than the shackles inseparable from humanity impose on all
who live beneath the moon.” It appears therefore that, with
respect to the question of immortality, Shelley's mind was
in a state of doubt, though often cheered by earnest hopes,
at the time when death unexpectedly settled the question
which had puzzled his brief span of life.
Shelley left also some speculations on Metaphysics, more
fragmentary, and of less value even than those on Morals.
His nature contained not the stuff which metaphysicians
are made of. Imagination indeed he had enough of, and no
power is more necessary than this in philosophical studies.
It is the pioneer of the philosophical faculties. It opens
the way for observation and experiment, which left to
themselves know not in what direction to proceed, and
find their way, if at all, but slowly, and by accident.
Truly, indeed, must observation and experiment closely
follow, though they cannot well precede, the steps of the
conceptive faculty ; for it is they who are to test its guesses,
and authoritively decide upon their correctness or incorrect-
ness. In this way have been made the greatest discove-


1841.]
485
Shelley.
ries. But the trouble with Shelley would have been,
that his imagination not being supported by a sound
judgment, and its modes of action not being in harmony
with the spirit and constitution of things, he would have
stood a fair chance of guessing wrong. He would have
displayed extraordinary fecundity in the production of
erroneous hypotheses, with no gift of patience to subject
them to the scrutiny of experiment. Besides, he would
have been entirely wanting in the close and subtle logic,
that makes the dialectician. He would have shared,
with the great majority of his countrymen, their want of
strict logical method, the surprising nonchalance with which
they take for granted the premises of their arguments, the
exceedingly tender examination through which popular axi-
oms are made to pass in order to be admitted into the inex-
pugnable fortress of first truths. To the dialecticians of the
broad land which lies between the Oder, the Danube, and
the Rhine, have been bequeathed, it would seem, the pens
of Heraclitus, Plato, and Aristotle.
But Shelley is better known as a disciple of social and
moral Reform, than of metaphysics. He was offered a
seat in Parliament; and at one time, had some thoughts of
becoming a politician ; but fortunately, did not. He pos-
sessed hardly judgment enough for the well-ordering of
his own life, much less for the judicious management of
public affairs. He would, indeed, have been superior to
most politicians, by the circumstance of having principles
of some sort, by which to direct his movements; but, un-
fortunately, they would very likely have been false prin-
ciples. In the senate, he would have displayed more zeal
for the interests of men, than knowledge of them ; more
hatred of the short-sighted and corrupt selfishness in the
midst of which he would have found himself, than of skill
to bring it into subserviency to his purposes ; more elo-
quence in advocating schemes for the speedy reform of the
wide world, than insight into the real pressing wants of
society, and the practicable means of relief. He would
have succeeded no better than young men have since in
demonstrating the superiority, in the guidance of national
councils, of youthful inexperience, presumption, and im-
petuosity, over the prudence, sobriety, and wisdom of age;
and he would have distinguished himself, like other world-


486
(April,
Shelley.
reformers, in the art of diluting the substantial consistency
of his benevolence, for the sake of doling out the more to
distant and remediless necessities, as well as by his aptness
in overlooking home duties in his anxiety to extend the
jurisdiction of his responsibility into the precincts of other
men's concerns. Living at a time when the career of
Napoleon was destroying many of the social and political
forms in which society had existed since the middle ages,
and inhaling freely the spirit of modern times, then first
universally diffused, Shelley placed himself in the van of
the revolutionary movement, and struck most passionately
his lyre to celebrate the uprising of liberty in Spain, Greece,
and Italy. Shelley was a radical of the school which
seems not yet to have become quite extinct. He could not
see that thrones and altars subserved any other than the
purposes of tyranny; and he wished to have all men kings
and 'priests for themselves. Having experienced, by his
first marriage, the evils of ill sorted matches, and being
possessed with the spirit of Milton's doctrines on divorce,
together with the more extravagant notions of Godwin
and Mary Wollstonecraft, he openly advocated the substi-
tution of the vow of love for the band of matrimony.
Destitute of a true insight into the uses subserved by both
poverty and riches in the system of economy, which God
has established for the education and redemption of man,
Shelley believed, with Sir Thomas More, in the desirable-
ness of a community of property. What after the annihi-
lation of these institutions, he expected to have remaining,
we will not undertake to inform our readers. Certain,
however, it is, that by these changes he expected men
would be great gainers in the power of self-government, in
genuine piety, in chastity, and in happiness. Believing
evil not to be inherent in the system of things, but to be
an accident which might be expelled by the force of the
will of man, he eagerly maintained that, by the prevalence
of the disinterested love which would everywhere spring
up under the shelter of freer institutions, would be realized
the renovation of nature, the perfection of man, and the
defecation of human life of all its miseries.
The first mistake of this reformer was his over-estimate
of the evils of the existing state of society. An invalid, he
turned his mind too much from the consideration of the


1841.)
487
Shelley.
happiness which smiled around the fireside of the poorest
peasantry, from the comfortable degree of freedom enjoyed
even beneath the eye of the most despotic princes of Eu-
rope, from the amount of genuine virtue, bred in retire-
ment, and of fair character, then adorning the households
of all classes and conditions. His melancholy eye was
keenest to detect everywhere the evidences of oppression,
misery, and vice; and to the man, whose eye has not light
in itself, all things indeed are darkness. It is true, that
society had outgrown some parts of the framework, which
for centuries had encased it; but yet, not so as to occasion
any very important hindrances to the liberal enjoyment of
life, and the cultivation of enlightened character. The
great and free soul is, indeed, always too large for the
narrow rules of his times. But he does not so much need
the support which factitious forms must minister to the
immaturity of virtue, and to the imbecility of vice. He
can walk alone, without help from stool, or staff. Yet
while the few spirits who have travelled on in advance of
their age, may find the old conventional regulations less
suited to themselves than to their contemporaries generally,
the great majority of men find their highest welfare in
diverging but cautiously from the beaten paths of past
custom, and are generally farthest both from harm and
mischief, while content to graze within their accustomed
length of tether. Besides, most of the forms of society
which Shelley enumerated among inherited evils, have de-
scended to us from remote centuries, only because they
grew naturally out of the instinctive depths of humanity,
and are destined alike for eternal duration and universal
diffusion. For example, Shelley might have spared himself
the pain he experienced in view of the unequal distribution
of property. That poverty, for which no place can be
found in the resplendent visions of a certain school of
reformers, occupies a pretty important one in the great
economy of God, would seem to be obvious enough from
the simple fact, that the world over, from the beginning of
time up to the present hour, men have been born, bred,
and buried, in a condition not so far removed from starva-
tion as from affluence. Our divine Maker seems hitherto
to have thought that adversity had uses for man ; that the
soul might be rightly tempered by the ministry of sorrows;


488
(April,
Shelley.
that fortitude might be hardened by self-denial; health
promoted by temperance; learning pricked on by indi-
gence; invention quickened by necessity; virtue purified
by suffering; and, in fine, the best interests of the world
secured by obedience to that first great law, “ in the sweat
of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the
ground.” Besides, we are all poor. He feels his poverty,
whose treasures are unequal to his desires. And when are
they equal ? Our plans outstrip our means; our wants
increase with supply ; by the cultivation of benevolence,
is enlarged the sphere of our charities; by the refinement
of our taste, are multiplied the objects demanded for its
gratification ; with the growth of industrial enterprise, the
demand is heightened for larger and still larger capital;
by the improvement of our intellect, are, an hundred fold,
augmented the resources it would purchase from the costly
labors of learning. There is little of much worth to man,
but what he gets by his own labor, and little that he keeps,
save by care; there is no situation in life walled in from
the invasion of anxieties, sorrows, temptations, and toils as
fatal — or rather as beneficial - as those which beset the
door of poverty; and, in fact, the only satisfactory wealth
to which man can attain, lies in resignation, in self-denial,
in contentment, and in the joyous consciousness of physical
and mental ability. Finally, neither the plan of Shelley,
nor any that we have heard advocated, much less any one
that has been reduced to practice, is adequate to feed in-
dolence from the earnings of industry, to supply heedless-
ness with the resources of forecast, and lavish upon prodi-
gality the treasures which the laws of nature promise to
virtue.
The second mistake of Shelley lay in his proposed
means of reformation. He proposed to change institu-
tions, not men. He attributed to the oppressive weight
imposed upon society by barbarous laws and customs, its
grovelling tastes, and degraded passions; and believed
that with the bestowment of freer social, civil, and religious
institutions would be given the virtue which overspreads
life with blessings. That the only safe and the most im-
portant reform that can be effected in a nation, is a reform
of the individuals who compose it, he did not perceive.
Accordingly, we see him most interested in hailing the
grovelling pon society by barbied to the oppr


1841.]
489
Shelley.
outbreak of foreign revolutions, in cheating his hope with
visions of Platonic republics, and in watching the progress
of all the measures in parliament, which promised to change
whatever was established in the social and political relations
of his countrymen. Instead of endeavoring to improve
men by cultivating their acquaintance, he courted the
irresponsibility of cloistered seclusion, as appears from the
following extract from one of his letters to his wife. “My
greatest content would be utterly to desert all human socie-
ty. I would retire with you and our child to a solitary island
in the sea, would build a boat, and shut upon my retreat
the floodgates of the world ; I would read no reviews, and
talk with no authors. If I dared trust my imagination, it
would tell me that there are one or two chosen companions
beside yourself, whom I should desire. But to this I would
not listen.” In the place of discharging the duties of a
citizen of England, he travelled from place to place, and lived
much upon the continent. His plans for reforming Eton,
and Oxford, resulted only in his early removal from the
former, and his expulsion from the latter. About all he
did to improve the homes of England was, to make him-
self an outcast from his own. Instead of illustrating by
his example the benefits of domestic virtue, he caused the
children of his early marriage to be taken from him by the
Court of Chancery, and broke, as we are left to suppose,
the heart of his first wife, however much devotion he may
have felt for the second. Instead of conforming so far to
the requirements of public opinion, as to enable himself to
hold a place in society, from which he might have exerted
a reforming influence by his conduct, and have gained an
unprejudiced hearing for his opinions, he fulminated, by
the bold avowal of doctrines shocking to the moral sense
of the community, a declaration of war against the very
society he aimed to reform.
But notwithstanding the unsoundness of most of the
views Shelley entertained respecting the advancement of
society, and the mistakes in his mode of procedure, we
must still acknowledge that views, similar to some enter-
tained by him, have been adopted in modern legislation.
Capital punishments, the abolition of which he advocated,
have become less frequent; the rights of the people have
since received a more full acknowledgment in the English
VOL. I. — NO. IV.
62


490
[April,
Shelley.
reform bill; the action of law has become more favorable
to divorce, though the institution of marriage, it is hoped,
will not be immediately dispensed with; the progress of
civilization seems to have settled the maxim, that it is not
so much the business of legislation to take care of the
people, as to secure to them the opportunity of taking care
of themselves, and that self-government, so far as it can
be attained, is preferable to that of laws and constitutions.
All the ameliorations of society seem to contribute to the
independence of the individual. The modern applications
of machinery tend to make him less dependent upon the
labor of his fellow men ; the diffusion of the means of
education makes him rely less on the authority of the
learned ; the freedom of all trades and professions gives
him a fair chance of securing a competency by his own
exertions ; the abolition of social caste opens his way to a
station of gentility; the increase of intelligence throughout
all classes, furnishes his mind with ampler means of happi-
ness and of power; and thus, the general advancement
in wealth, power, knowledge, and virtue, produces in the
individual more self-control, self-reliance, and self-respect.
We see this tendency towards individual independence
strikingly illustrated in Goethe, who having laid under
contribution all the improvements of the age in building
up his lofty genius, at last reposed on the summit of mod-
ern civilization in all the sufficiency of Jupiter on Olym-
pus.
To Shelley must also be awarded the praise of having
entertained a generous confidence in the perfectibility of
man. His opinions on this subject, though, as we have
already observed, by no means free from extravagance,
were still conformable, in many respects, to the conclusions
of reason, and the prophecies of scripture. They bespeak
also a generous soul, — one whose consciousness of great-
ness was capable of high hopes of the humanity he shared
in, - one which, having set its own aim high above the
aspiration of vulgar ambition, seemed to discern that of
the race shining at a height of still more inaccessible per-
fection.
These opinions of Shelley we have gathered, mainly,
from his Letters and Essays. The latter are all frag-
ments, except the Defence of Poetry. This is written in


1841.)
491
Shelley.
a style, brilliant, graceful, and harmonious. The thoughts
unite the beauty of poetry with the profundity of phi-
losophy; and indicate an impassioned and enlighten-
ed devotion to his art. His letters are beautiful speci-
mens of easy, familiar, epistolary writing. He appears in
them, as he was, simple, free, and earnest. Those ad-
dressed to his wife, combine, in a remarkable degree, ten-
derness with manliness. Those written from Italy are
exceedingly interesting, on account of the beautiful and
discriminating criticisms they contain on the treasures
of Italian art. In one of them, he thus finely and philo-
sophically expresses his aim in these pleasing studies :
“One of my chief objects in Italy is the observing in
statuary and painting the degree in which, and the rules
according to which, that ideal beauty, of which we have
so intense, yet so obscure an apprehension, is realized in
external forms."
As a poet, Shelley is not so popular as some others who
have less merit. His immoderate love of allegory has ren-
dered his style in many places obscure and cold ; the
metaphysical cast of thought does not supply to sensibility
the excitement it craves from poetry ; the long and lofty
flights of his imagination tire the wings of duller fancies ;
while the occasional morbidness of his muse, together with
his frequent attacks upon the established order of things
in church and state, have sometimes repelled from his page
the subjects of delicate feelings, and the friends of ancient
observance.
In the power of his conceptive faculty, few will deny
that he was unsurpassed by any of his contemporaries.
His poetry is chiefly “the expression of the imagination."
His mind was not also endowed, like Shakspeare's, with
that large wisdom, that soundness of judgment, that won-
derful tact in observation, which directed to the real world
would have enable him to see things as they are ; but his
unaided imagination filled immensity with the shapes of
things that are not. But while he possessed, in such su-
perabundance the creative power of genius to form new
combinations from the materials of real existence, it must
be confessed that these combinations were oftener striking
and beautiful, than analogous to reality, and illustrative of
truth.


492
(April,
·
Shelley.
The fire of the impassioned poet burns most intensely
and purely in his lyrics and smaller pieces, as in the Ode
to the West Wind, Lines written in dejection near Naples,
the Cloud, and the Stanzas to a Sky-lark. Into these he
breathed his entire soul. In the last-mentioned piece,
suggested while listening to the lark carolling in the Italian
heavens, he cannot find words enough to exhaust his pas-
sionate admiration ; he cannot collect together images
enough with which to compare the glad melodies of this
spirit in the sky; nothing is to him so tender or ardent,
nothing so sweet and joyous, nothing in sound that so fills
the ear and the soul, as the spontaneous song of this bird,
that singing soars, and soaring sings.
Love of the beautiful was another characteristic of
Shelley's genius. No eye was quicker to detect, or slower
to turn from, the beauty, wherein, according to his belief,
consisted the divinity of things. The beautiful in the
forms, colors, motions, and sounds of the external crea-
tion; the beautiful expression in the human face divine,
and in the face of nature; the beautiful in language,
thought, character, and life, was his constant study and
supreme delight. For the cultivation of this native deli-
cacy of taste, he devoted himself, as all poets should, to
the study of the poetry of Greece. Sensibility to beauty
was the characteristic trait of Grecian genius. It was
beauty that the Greeks sung of in verse, beauty they sought
in architecture, beauty they cut out from marble. Nor were
their orators, historians, or even philosophers, wanting in
this means of gaining the ear of their countrymen. Na-
tive to the soul of Greece, beauty overspread all her art,
literature, and even life, as it did her vales, and isles, and
seas, and skies.
Shelley was a complete master of all poetic measures,
and had at his sovereign disposal all the treasures of the
English language. His numbers are smooth, various, and
musical ; his language rich, tasteful, and expressive. Still,
so thick-coming were his fancies, so subjective often the
theme of his song, so etherial the substance of his imagin-
ings, so subtle, abstract, idealized, were many of his con-
ceptions, that not unfrequently he seems to labor in the
pains of utterance. The main characteristic of his style
has been thus pointed out by his Editor : “More popular


1841.)
493
Shelley.
poets clothe the ideal with familiar and sensible imagery ;
Shelley loved to idealize the real; to gift the mechanism
of the material universe with a soul and a voice, and to
bestow such also on the most delicate and abstract emotions
and thoughts of the mind.”
During his short and youthful life, Shelley made but in-
frequent excursions into the real world ; and his experience
in these was such, as to make him still more attached to
his home in the ideal. From this fact, resulted not only
this peculiarity of style ; but also most of the faults, which
are usually noticed in his poetry. Hence his cold allego-
ries, his metaphysical splendors, the lack of human interest
in his subjects, the meagreness of his cantos in incidents,
the occasional subtlety, vagueness, and fantastic extrava-
gancies of his, sometimes, too intellectual muse. Yet with
all their deficiences, whether in expression ór thought, do
these sons of genius, who, like Shelley, love too well to
wander in the realms of fairy fancy, subserve no unimpor-
tant purposes in human life. To these imaginative minds,
so unfit for the business of life, so disdainful of its drudg-
ery, so unfamiliar with all the processes of the practical
understanding, so destitute of common sense as to provoke
the mirth and contempt of the vulgar, do we owe most of
the miracles of art, and many of the greatest discoveries in
science. They execute a divine behest in portraying with
fascinating pencil the exceeding excellence of the ideal
man, and the beauty of a perfect life ; in deciphering the
prophecies of coming greatness hid in the hieroglyphics,
which cover the monuments of the past; in tracing the
mystic analogies that so closely ally the worlds of matter
and spirit; in pointing out in the spiritual expression of
all terrestrial things the fulness and overflowing of the
Divinity, and in uttering from the depths of their divinely
moved souls the sublime truths often revealed to those who
are poorest in the wisdom of the world, and the most unfit
for the marshalling of its affairs.
M. M.


494
[April,
A Dialogue.
A DIALOGUE.
POET. CRITIC.
Poet. Approach me not, man of cold, steadfast eye
and compressed lips. At thy coming nature shrouds her-
self in dull mist; fain would she hide her sighs and smiles,
her buds and fruits even in a veil of snow. For thy un-
kindly breath, as it pierces her mystery, destroys its creative
power. The birds draw back into their nests, the sunset
hues into their clouds, when you are seen in the distance
with your tablets all ready to write them into prose.
Critic. O my brother, my benefactor, do not thus re-
pel me. Interpret me rather to our common mother; let
her not avert her eyes from a younger child. I know I
can never be dear to her as thou art, yet I am her child,
nor would the fated revolutions of existence be fulfilled
without my aid.
Poet. How meanest thou? What have thy measure-
ments, thy artificial divisions and classifications to do with
the natural revolutions? In all real growths there is a
“ give and take” of unerring accuracy ; in all the acts of
thy life there is falsity, for all are negative. Why do you
not receive and produce in your kind, like the sunbeam
and the rose ? Then new life would be brought out, were
it but the life of a weed, to bear witness to the healthful
beatings of the divine heart. But this perpetual analysis,
comparison, and classification never add one atom to the
sum of existence.
Critic. I understand you.
Poet. Yes, that is always the way. You understand
me, who never have the arrogance to pretend that I under-
stand myself.
Critic. Why should you ? — that is my province. I
am the rock which gives you back the echo. I am the
tuning-key, which harmonizes your instrument, the regu-
lator to your watch. Who would speak, if no ear heard ?
nay, if no mind knew what the ear heard ?
Poet. I do not wish to be heard in thought but in love,
to be recognised in judgment but in life. I would pour
forth my melodies to the rejoicing winds. I would scatter


1841.]
495
A Dialogue.
my seed to the tender earth. I do not wish to hear in
prose the meaning of my melody. I do not wish to see
my seed neatly put away beneath a paper label. Answer in
new pæans to the soul of our souls. Wake me to sweeter
childhood by a fresher growth. At present you are but an
excrescence produced by my life; depart, self-conscious
Egotist, I know you not.
Critic. Dost thou so adore Nature, and yet deny me?
Is not Art the child of Nature, Civilization of Man? As
Religion into Philosophy, Poetry into Criticism, Life into
Science, Love into Law, so did thy lyric in natural order
transmute itself into my review.
Poet. Review! Science! the very etymology speaks.
What is gained by looking again at what has already been
seen? What by giving a technical classification to what is
already assimilated with the mental life?
Critic. What is gained by living at all ?
Poet, Beauty loving itself, — Happiness !
CRITIC. Does not this involve consciousness?
Poet. Yes! consciousness of Truth manifested in the
individual form.
Critic. Since consciousness is tolerated, how will you
limit it?
Poet. By the instincts of my nature, which rejects
yours as arrogant and superfluous.
CRITIC. And the dictate of my nature compels me to
the processes which you despise, as essential to my peace.
My brother (for I will not be rejected) I claim my place
in the order of nature. The word descended and became
flesh for two purposes, to organize itself, and to take cog-
nizance of its organization. When the first Poet worked
alone, he paused between the cantos to proclaim, “ It is
very good.” Dividing himself among men, he made some
to create, and others to proclaim the merits of what is cre-
ated.
Poet. Well ! if you were content with saying, “it is
very good ”; but you are always crying, “it is very bad,"
or ignorantly prescribing how it might be better. What
do you know of it? Whatever is good could not be
otherwise than it is. Why will you not take what suits
you, and leave the rest? True communion of thought is
worship, not criticism. Spirit will not flow through the
sluices nor endure the locks of canals.


496
(April,
A Dialogue.
Critic. There is perpetual need of protestantism in
every church. If the church be catholic, yet the priest
is not infallible. Like yourself, I sigh for a perfectly natu-
ral state, in which the only criticism shall be tacit rejection,
even as Venus glides not into the orbit of Jupiter, nor do
the fishes seek to dwell in fire. But as you soar towards
this as a Maker, so do I toil towards the same aim as a
Seeker. Your pinions will not upbear you towards it in
steady flight. I must often stop to cut away the brambles
from my path. The law of my being is on me, and the
ideal standard seeking to be realized in my mind bids me
demand perfection from all I see. To say how far each
object answers this demand is my criticism.
Poet. If one object does not satisfy you, pass on to
another, and say nothing.
Critic. It is not so that it would be well with me. I
must penetrate the secret of my wishes, verify the justice of
my reasonings. I must examine, compare, sift, and winnow;
what can bear this ordeal remains to me as pure gold. I
cannot pass on till I know what I feel and why. An ob-
ject that defies my utmost rigor of scrutiny is a new step on
the stair I am making to the Olympian tables.
Poet. I think you will not know the gods when you
get there, if I may judge from the cold presumption I feel
in your version of the great facts of literature.
Critic. Statement of a part always looks like igno-
rance, when compared with the whole, yet may promise
the whole. Consider that a part implies the whole, as the
everlasting No the everlasting Yes, and permit to exist the
shadow of your light, the register of your inspiration.
As he spake the word he paused, for with it his com-
panion vanished, and floating on the cloud left a starry
banner with the inscription “ AFFLATUR NUMINE.” The
Critic unfolded one on whose flag-staff he had been lean-
ing. Its heavy folds of pearly gray satin slowly unfolding,
gave to view the word Notitia, and Causarum would
have followed, when a sudden breeze from the west caught
it, those heavy folds fell back round the poor man, and
stifled him probably, — at least he has never since been
heard of.
F.


1841.]
497
Thoughts on Labor.
THOUGHTS ON LABOR.
“God has given each man a back to be clothed, a mouth
to be filled, and a pair of hands to work with.” And since
wherever a mouth and a back are created a pair of hands
also is provided, the inference is unavoidable, that the
hands are to be used to supply the needs of the mouth
and the back. Now, as there is one mouth to each pair
of hands, and each mouth must be filled, it follows quite
naturally, that if a single pair of hands refuses to do its
work, then the mouth goes hungry, or, which is worse, the
work is done by other hands. In the one case, the sup-
ply failing, an inconvenience is suffered, and the man dies;
in the other he eats and wears the earnest of another
man's work, and so a wrong is inflicted. The law of na-
ture is this, “If a man will not work neither shall he eat."
Still further, God has so beautifully woven together the
web of life, with its warp of Fate, and its woof of Free-
will, that in addition to the result of a man's duty, when
faithfully done, there is a satisfaction and recompense in
the very discharge thereof. In a rational state of things,
Duty and Delight travel the same road, sometimes hand in
hand. Labor has an agreeable end, in the result we gain ;
but the means also are agreeable, for there are pleasures in
the work itself. These unexpected compensations, the gra-
tuities and stray-gifts of Heaven are scattered abundantly
in life. Thus the kindness of our friends, the love of our
children is of itself worth a thousand times all the pains
we take on their account. Labor, in like manner, has a
reflective action, and gives the working man a blessing
over and above the natural result which he looked for.
The duty of labor is written on man's body, in the stout
muscle of the arm and the delicate machinery of the hand.
That it is congenial to our nature appears from the alacrity
with which children apply themselves to it and find pleas-
ure in the work itself, without regard to its use. The
young duck does not more naturally betake itself to the
water, than the boy to the work which goes on around him.
There is some work, which even the village sluggard and
the city fop love to do, and that only can they do well.
These two latter facts show that labor, in some degree, is
VOL. 1. — NO. IV.
63


498
[April,
Thoughts on Labor.
no less a pleasure than a duty, and prove, that man is not
by nature a lazy animal who is forced by Hunger to dig and
spin.
Yet there are some who count labor a curse and a pun-
ishment. They regard the necessity of work, as the great-
est evil brought on us by the “ Fall;" as a curse that will
cling to our last sand. Many submit to this yoke, and
toil, and save, in hope to leave their posterity out of the
reach of this primitive curse.
Others, still more foolish, regard it as a disgrace.
Young men,—the children of honest parents, who living by
their manly and toil-hardened hands, bear up the burthen
of the world on their shoulders, and eat with thankful
hearts their daily bread, won in the sweat of their face,-
are ashamed of their fathers' occupation, and forsaking the
plough, the chisel, or the forge, seek a livelihood in what is
sometimes named a more respectable and genteel vocation ;
that is in a calling which demands less of the hands, and
quite often less of the head likewise, than their fathers'
hardy craft; for that imbecility, which drives men to those
callings has its seat mostly in a higher region than the
hands. Affianced damsels beg their lovers to discover (or
invent) some ancestor in buckram who did not work. The
Sophomore in a small college is ashamed of his father who
wears a blue frock, and his dusty brother who toils with
the saw and the axe. These men, after they have wiped
off the dirt and soot of their early life, sometimes become
arrant coxcombs, and standing like the heads of Hermes
without hands, having only a mouth, make faces at such
as continue to serve the state by plain handiwork. Some
one relates an anecdote which illustrates quite plainly this
foolish desire of young men to live without work. It hap-
pened in one of our large towns, that a Shopkeeper and a
Blacksmith, both living in the same street, advertised for
an apprentice on the same day. In a given time fifty
beardless youngsters applied to the Haberdasher, and not
one to the Smith. But this story has a terrible moral,
namely, that forty-nine out of the fifty were disappointed at
the outset.
It were to be wished that this notion of labor being dis-
graceful was confined to vain young men and giddy maid-
ens of idle habits and weak heads, for then it would be


1841.)
499
Thoughts on Labor.
looked upon as one of the diseases of early life, which we
know must come, and rejoice when our young friends have
happily passed through it, knowing it is one of “the ills
that flesh is heir to," but is not very grievous, and comes
but once in the lifetime. This a version to labor, this no-
tion that it is a curse and a disgrace, this selfish desire to
escape from the general and natural lot of man, is the
sacramental sin of " the better class” in our great cities.
The children of the poor pray to be rid of it, and what
son of a rich man learns a trade or tills the soil with his
own hands? Many men look on the ability to be idle as
the most desirable and honorable ability. They glory in
being the Mouth that consumes, not the Hand that works.
Yet one would suppose a man of useless hands and idle
head, in the midst of God's world, where each thing works
for all; in the midst of the toil and sweat of the human
race, must needs make an apology for his sloth, and would
ask pardon for violating the common law, and withdrawing
his neck from the general yoke of humanity. Still more
does he need an apology, if he is active only in getting into
his hands the result of others' work. But it is not so.
The man who is rich enough to be idle values himself on
his leisure, and what is worse, others value him for it.
Active men must make a shamefaced excuse for being
busy, and working men for their toil, as if business and
toil were not the Duty of all and the support of the world.
In certain countries men are divided horizontally into two
classes, the men who work and the men who rule, and
the latter despise the employment of the former as mean
and degrading. It is the slave's duty to plough, said a
Heathen poet, and a freeman's business to enjoy at leisure
the fruit of that ploughing. This same foolish notion finds
favor with many here. It is a remnant of those barbarous
times, when all labor was performed by serfs and bondsmen,
and exemption from toil was the exclusive sign of the free-
born. But this notion, that labor is disgraceful, conflicts as
sharply with our political institutions, as it does with com-
mon sense, and the law God has writ on man. An old
author centuries before Christ was so far enlightened on
this point, as to see the true dignity of manual work, and
to say, “God is well pleased with honest works; he suffers
the laboring man, who ploughs the earth by night and day,


500
[April,
Thoughts on Labor.
to call his life most noble. If he is good and true, he
offers continual sacrifice to God, and is not so lustrous in
his dress as in his heart.”
Manual labor is a blessing and a dignity. But to state
the case on its least favorable issue, admit it were both a
disgrace and a curse, would a true man desire to escape it
for himself, and leave the curse to fall on other men ? Cer-
tainly not. The generous soldier fronts death, and charges
in the cannon's mouth; it is the coward who lingers be-
hind. If labor were hateful, as the proud would have us
believe, then they who bear its burthens, and feed and
clothe the human race, and fetch and carry for them,
should be honored as those have always been, who defend
society in war. If it be glorious, as the world fancies, to
repel a human foe, how much more is he to be honored
who stands up when Want comes upon us, like an armed
man, and puts him to rout? One would fancy the world
was mad, when it bowed in reverence to those who by
superior cunning possessed themselves of the earnings of
others, while it made wide the mouth and drew out the
tongue at such as do the world's work. Without these,"
said an ancient, “ cannot a city be inhabited, but they
shall not be sought for in public council, nor sit high in the
congregation;" and those few men and women who are
misnamed the World, in their wisdom have confirmed the
saying. Thus they honor those who sit in idleness and
ease; they extol such as defend a state with arms, or those
who collect in their hands the result of Asiatic or Ameri-
can industry, but pass by with contempt the men who rear
corn and cattle, and weave and spin, and fish and build
for the whole human race. Yet if the state of labor were
so hard and disgraceful as some fancy, the sluggard in fine
raiment and the trim figure — which, like the lilies in the
Scripture, neither toils nor spins, and is yet clothed in
more glory than Solomon — would both bow down before
Colliers and Farmers, and bless them as the benefactors of
the race. Christianity has gone still farther, and makes a
man's greatness consist in the amount of service he renders
to the world. Certainly he is the most honorable who by
his head or his hand does the greatest and best work for
his race. The noblest soul the world ever saw appeared
not in the ranks of the indolent; but “ took on him the


1841.]
501
Thoughts on Labor.
form of a servant," and when he washed his disciples' feet,
meant something not very generally understood perhaps in
the nineteenth century.
Now manual labor, though an unavoidable duty, though
designed as a blessing, and naturally both a pleasure and a
dignity, is often abused, till, by its terrible excess, it be-
comes really a punishment and a curse. It is only a proper
amount of work that is a blessing. Too much of it wears
out the body before its time; cripples the mind, debases
the soul, blunts the senses, and chills the affections.
It makes the man a spinning jenny, or a ploughing ma-
chine, and not “a being of a large discourse, that looks
before and after.” He ceases to be a man, and becomes a
thing
In a rational and natural state of society,—that is, one in
which every man went forwards toward the true end he was
designed to reach, towards perfection in the use of all his
senses, towards perfection in wisdom, virtue, affection, and
religion, — labor would never interfere with the culture of
what was best in each man. His daily business would be
a school to aid in developing the whole man, body and
spirit, because he would then do what nature fitted him to
do. Thus his business would be really his calling. The
diversity of gifts is quite equal to the diversity of work
to be done. There is some one thing which each man
can do with pleasure, and better than any other man, be-
cause he was born to do it. Then all men would labor,
each at his proper vocation, and an excellent farmer would
not be spoiled to make a poor lawyer, a blundering phy-
sician, or a preacher, who puts the world asleep. Then a
small body of men would not be pampered in indolence, to
grow up into gouty worthlessness, and die of inertia ; nor
would the large part of men be worn down as now by
excessive toil before half their life is spent. They would
not be so severely tasked as to have no time to read, think,
and converse. When he walked abroad, the laboring man
would not be forced to catch mere transient glimpses of
the flowers by the way side, or the stars over his head, as
the dogs, it is said, drink the waters of the Nile, running
while they drink, afraid the crocodiles should seize them if
they stop. When he looked from his window at the land-
scape, Distress need not stare at him from every bush.


502
[April,
Thoughts on Labor.
He would then have leisure to cultivate his mind and heart
no less than to do the world's work.
In labor as in all things beside, moderation is the law.
If a man transgresses and becomes intemperate in his work,
and does nothing but toil with the hand, he must suffer.
We educate and improve only the faculties we employ,
and cultivate most what we use the oftenest. But if
some men are placed in such circumstances that they can
use only their hands, who is to be blamed if they are ig-
norant, vicious, and without God? Certainly not they.
Now it is a fact, notorious as the sun at noon-day, that
such are the circumstances of many men. As society ad-
vances in refinement, more labor is needed to supply its
demands, for houses, food, apparel, and other things must
be refined and luxurious. It requires more work, there-
fore, to fill the mouth and clothe the back, than in simpler
times. To aggravate the difficulty, some escape from their
share of this labor, by superior intelligence, shrewdness,
and cunning, others by fraud and lies, or by inheriting
the result of these qualities in their ancestors. So their
share of the common burthen, thus increased, must be
borne by other hands, which are laden already with more
than enough. Still farther, this class of mouths, forgetting
how hard it is to work, and not having their desires for
the result of labor checked by the sweat necessary to satis-
fy them, but living vicariously by other men's hands, refuse
to be content with the simple gratification of their natural
appetites. So Caprice takes the place of Nature, and
must also be satisfied. Natural wants are few, but to
artificial desires there is no end. When each man must
pay the natural price, and so earn what he gets, the hands
stop the mouth, and the soreness of the toil corrects the
excess of desire, and if it do not, none has cause of com-
plaint, for the man's desire is allayed by his own work.
Thus if Absalom wishes for sweet cakes, the trouble of
providing them checks his extravagant or unnatural appe-
tite. But when the Mouth and Hand are on different
bodies, and Absalom can coax his sister, or bribe his
friend, or compel his slave to furnish him dainties, the
natural restraint is taken from appetite, and it runs to
excess. Fancy must be appeased; peevishness must be
quieted ; and so a world of work is needed to bear the


1841.]
503
Thoughts on Labor.
burthens which those men bind, and lay on men's shoul-
ders, but will not move with one of their fingers. The
class of Mouths thus commits a sin, which the class of
Hands must expiate.
Thus by the treachery of one part of society, in avoid-
ing their share of the work; by their tyranny in increasing
the burthen of the world, an evil is produced quite unknown
in a simpler state of life, and a man of but common ca-
pacities not born to wealth, in order to insure a subsistence
for himself and his family, must work with his hands so
large a part of his time, that nothing is left for intellectual,
moral, æsthetic, and religious improvement. He cannot
look at the world, talk with his wife, read his Bible, nor
pray to God, but Poverty knocks at the door, and hurries
him to his work. He is rude in mind before he begins his
work, and his work does not refine him. Men have at-
tempted long enough to wink this matter out of sight,
but it will not be put down. It may be worse in other
countries, but it is bad enough in New England, as all
men know who have made the experiment. There must
be a great sin somewhere in that state of society, which al-
lows one man 10 waste day and night in sluggishness or riot,
consuming the bread of whole families, while from others,
equally well-gifted and faithful, it demands twelve, or six-
teen, or even eighteen hours of hard work out of the
twenty-four, and then leaves the man so weary and worn,
that he is capable of nothing but sleep, — sleep that is
broken by no. dream. Still worse is it when this life of
work begins so early, that the man has no fund of acquired
knowledge on which to draw for mental support in his
hours of toil. To this man the blessed night is for nothing
but work and sleep, and the Sabbath day simply what Mo-
ses commanded, a day of bodily rest for Man as for his Ox
and his Ass. Man was sent into this world to use his best
faculties in the best way, and thus reach the high end of a
man. How can he do this while so large a part of his
time is spent in unmitigated work ? Truly he cannot.
Hence we see, that while in all other departments of nature
each animal lives up to the measure of his organization,
and with very rare exceptions becomes perfect after his
kind, the greater part of men are debased and belittled,
shortened of half their days, and half their excellence, so


504
[April,
Thoughts on Labor.
that you are surprised to find a man well educated whose
whole life is hard work. Thus what is the exception in nature,
through our perversity becomes the rule with man. Every
Black-bird is a black-bird just as God designs; but how
many men are only bodies? If a man is placed in such
circumstances, that he can use only his hands, they only
become broad and strong. If no pains be taken to obtain
dominion over the flesh, the man loses his birthright, and
dies a victim to the sin of society. No doubt there are
men, born under the worst of circumstances, who have
redeemed themselves from them, and obtained an excel-
lence of intellectual growth, which is worthy of wonder;
but these are exceptions to the general rule; men gifted
at birth with a power almost superhuman. It is not from
exceptions we are to frame the law.
Now to put forward the worst possible aspect of the
case. Suppose that the present work of the world can
only be performed at this sacrifice, which is the best, that
the work should be done, as now, and seven tenths of men
and women should, as the unavoidable result of their toil,
be cursed with extremity of labor, and ignorance, and
rudeness, and unmanly life, or that less of this work be
done, and for the sake of a wide-spread and generous cul-
ture, we sleep less softly, dine on humbler food, dwell in
mean houses, and wear leather like George Fox? There
is no doubt what answer Common Sense, Reason, and
Christianity would give to this question, for wisdom, virtue,
and manhood are as much better than sumptuous dinners,
fine apparel, and splendid houses, as the Soul is better
than the Senses. But as yet we are slaves. The senses
overlay the soul. We serve brass and mahogany and
beef and porter. The class of Mouths oppresses the class
of Hands, for the strongest and most cunning of the latter
are continually pressing into the ranks of the former, and
while they increase the demand for work, leave their own
share of it to be done by others. Men and women of
humble prospects in life, while building the connubial nest
that is to shelter them and their children, prove plainly
enough their thraldom to the senses, when such an outlay
of upholstery and joiners' work is demanded, and so little
is required that appeals to Reason, Imagination, and Faith.
Yet when the mind demands little besides time, why


1841.]
505
Thoughts on Labor.
at she caught fronte
prepare so pompously for the senses, that she cannot have
this, but must be cheated of her due? One might fancy
he heard the stones cry out of the wall, in many a house,
and say to the foolish people who tenant the dwelling, —
“O, ye fools, is it from the work of the joiner, and the craft
of those who are cunning in stucco and paint, and are
skilful to weave and to spin, and work in marble and mortar,
that you expect satisfaction and rest for your souls, while
ye make no provision for what is noblest and immortal
within you? But ye also have your reward !” The
present state of things, in respect to this matter, has no
such excellencies that it should not be changed. It is no
law of God, that when Sin gets a footing in the world it
should hold on forever, nor can Folly keep its dominion
over society simply by right of "adverse possession.” It were
better the body went bare and hungry, rather than the soul
should starve. Certainly the Life is more than the meat,
though it would not weigh so much in the butcher's
scales.
There are remedies at hand. It is true a certain amount
of labor must be performed, in order that society be fed and
clothed, warmed and comforted, relieved when sick, and
buried when dead. If this is wisely distributed, if each per-
forms his just portion, the burthen is slight, and crushes no
one. Here, as elsewhere, the closer we keep to nature, the
safer we are. It is not under the burthens of Nature that so-
ciety groans, but the work of Caprice, of Ostentation, of con-
temptible Vanity, of Luxury, which is never satisfied, these
oppress the world. If these latter are given up, and each
performs what is due from him, and strives to diminish the
general burthen and not add to it, then no man is oppress-
ed, there is time enough for each man to cultivate what is
noblest in him, and be all that his nature allows. It is
doubtless right that one man should use the service of
another; but only when both parties are benefited by the
relation. The Smith may use the service of the Collier,
the Grocer, and the Grazier, for he does them a service in
return. He who heals the body deserves a compensation
at the hands of whomsoever he serves. If the Painter,
the Preacher, the Statesman, is doing a great work for
mankind, he has a right to their service in return. His
fellow man may do for him what otherwise he ought
VOL. I. —NO. IV.
64


506
[April,
Thoughts on Labor.
to do for himself. Thus is he repaid, and is at liberty to
devote the undivided energy of his genius to the work.
But on what ground an idle man, who does nothing for
society, or an active man, whose work is wholly selfish,
can use the services of others, and call them to feed and
comfort him, who repays no equivalent in kind, it yet re-
mains for Reason to discover. The only equivalent for
service is a service in return. If Hercules is stronger,
Solon wiser, and Job richer than the rest of men, it is not
that they may demand more of their fellows, but may do
more for them. “We that are strong ought to bear the
infirmities of the weak,” says a good man. In respect,
however, to the matter of personal service, this seems to
be the rule, that no one, whatever be his station, wants,
attainments, or riches, has any right to receive from an-
other any service which degrades the servant in his own
eyes, or the eyes of the public, or in the eyes of him who
receives the service. It is surely unmanly to receive a
favor which you would not give. If it debases David to
do a menial service for Ahud, then it debases Ahud just
as much to do the same to David. The difference between
King and Slave vanishes when both are examined from the
height of their common humanity, just as the difference be-
tween the west and northwest side of a hair on the surface
of the Earth is inconsiderable to an eye that looks down
from the Sun, and takes in the whole system, though
it might appear stupendous to the motes that swim un-
counted in a drop of dew. But no work, useful or orna-
mental to human life, needs be debasing. It is the lasting
disgrace of society, that the most useful employments are
called “ low.” There is implied in this very term, the
tacit confession, on the part of the employer, that he has
wronged and subjugated the person who serves him, for when
these same actions are performed by the mother for her
child, or the son for his father, and are done for love and
not money, they are counted not as low, but rather en-
nobling.
The Law of nature is, that work and the enjoy-
ment of that work go together. Thus God has given each
animal the power of self-help, and all necessary organs.
The same Robin builds the nest and lives in it. Each
Lion has claws and teeth, and kills his own meat. Every


1841.]
507
Thoughts on Labor.
Beaver has prudence and plastic skill, and so builds for
himself. In those classes of animals where there is a di-
vision of labor, one brings the wax, another builds the
comb, and a third collects the honey, but each one is at
work. The drones are expelled when they work no more.
Even the Ruler of the colony is the most active member
of the state, and really the mother of the whole people.
She is only “ happy as a king,” because she does the most
work. Hence she has a divine right to her eminent sta-
tion. She never eats the bread of sin. She is Queen of
the Workers. Here each works for the good of all, and
not solely for his own benefit. Still less is any one an injury
to the others. In nature those animals that cannot work,
are provided for by Love. Thus the young Lion is fed by
the Parent, and the old Stork by its children. Were a full
grown Lion so foolish that he would not hunt, the result is
plain, he must starve. Now this is a foreshadowing of man's
estate. God has given ten fingers for every two lips. Each is
to use the ability he has for himself and for others. Who
that is able will not return to society, with his head or his
hand, an equivalent for what it received ? Only the Sluggard
and the Robber. These two, the Drones and Pirates of
Society, represent a large class. It is the plain duty of each,
so far as he is able, to render an equivalent for what he
receives, and thus to work for the good of all; but each in
his own way; Dorcas the seamstress at her craft, and Moses
and Paul at theirs. If one cannot work through weakness,
or infancy, or age, or sickness, — Love works for them,
and they too are fed. If one will not work, though he
can, the law of nature should have its effect. He ought
to starve. If one insist simply upon getting into his hands
the earnings of others, and adding nothing to the common
stock, he is a robber, and should properly meet with the
contempt and the stout resistance of society. There is in
the whole world but a certain amount of value, out of
which each one is to have a subsistence while here; for we
are all but life-tenants of the Earth, which we hold in com-
mon. We brought nothing into it, we carry nothing out
of it. No man, therefore, has a natural right to any more
than he earns or can use. He who adds anything to the
common stock and inheritance of the next age, though it
be but a sheaf of wheat, or cocoon of silk he has pro-


508
[April,
Thoughts on Labor.
duced, a napkin or a brown loaf he has made, is a bene-
factor to his race, so far as that goes. But he who gets
into his hands, by force, cunning, or deceit, more than he
earns, does thereby force his fellow mortal to accept less
than his true share. So far as that goes, he is a curse to
mankind.
There are three ways of getting wealth. First, by seiz-
ing with violence what is already in existence, and appro-
priating it to yourself. This is the method of the old
Romans, of Robbers and Pirates, from Sciron to Captain
Kidd. Second, by getting possession of goods in the way
of traffic, or by some similar process. Here the agent is
Cunning, and not Force; the instrument is a gold coin,
and not an iron sword, as in the former case. This method
is called Trade, as the other is named Robbery. But in
both cases wealth is acquired by one party and lost by the
other. In the first case there is a loss of positive value ; in
the latter there is no increase. The world gains nothing
new by either. The third method is the application of
labor and skill to the earth, or the productions of nature.
Here is a positive increase of value. We have a dozen
potatoes for the one that was planted, or an elegant dress
instead of an handful of wool and flax. The two former
classes consume much, but produce nothing. Of these
the Roman says, “ fruges consumere nati," they are born
to eat up the corn. Yet in all ages they have been set in
high places. The world dishonors its workmen, stones
its prophets, crucifies its Saviours, but bows down its neck
before wealth, however won, and shouts till the welkin
rings again, LONG LIVE VIOLENCE AND FRAUD.
The world has always been partial to its oppressors.
Many men fancy themselves an ornament to the world,
whose presence in it is a disgrace and a burthen to the
ground they stand on. The man who does nothing for the
race, but sits at his ease, and fares daintily, because wealth
has fallen into his hands, is a burthen to the world. He
may be a polished gentleman, a scholar, the master of ele-
gant accomplishments, but so long as he takes no pains to
work for man, with his head or his hands, what claim has
he to respect, or even a subsistence? The rough-handed
woman, who with a salt-fish and a basket of vegetables
provides substantial food for a dozen working men, and


1841.]
509
Thoughts on Labor.
washes their apparel, and makes them comfortable and
happy, is a blessing to the land, though she have no edu-
cation, while this fop with his culture and wealth is a curse.
She does her duty so far as she sees it, and so deserves the
thanks of man. But every oyster or berry that fop has
eaten, has performed its duty better than he. “It was
made to support human nature, and it has done so," while
he is but a consumer of food and clothing. That public
opinion tolerates such men is no small marvel.
The productive classes of the world are those who bless
it by their work or their thought. He who invents a ma-
chine, does no less a service than he who toils all day with
his hands. Thus the inventors of the plough, the loom,
and the ship were deservedly placed among those society
was to honor. But they also, who teach men moral and
religious truth, who give them dominion over the world ;
instruct them to think; to live together in peace, to love
one another, and pass good lives enlightened by Wisdom,
charmed by Goodness, and enchanted by Religion ; they
who build up a loftier population, making man more manly,
are the greatest benefactors of the world. They speak to
the deepest wants of the soul, and give men the water of
life and the true bread from Heaven. They are loaded
with contumely in their life, and come to a violent end.
But their influence passes like morning from land to land,
and village and city grow glad in their light. That is a
poor economy, common as it is, which overlooks these men.
It is a very vulgar mind, that would rather Paul had con-
tinued a tent-maker, and Jesus a carpenter.
Now the remedy for the hard service that is laid upon
the human race consists partly in lessening the number of
unproductive classes, and increasing the workers and think-
ers, as well as in giving up the work of Ostentation and
Folly and Sin. It has been asserted: on high authority,
that if all men and women capable of work would toil
diligently but two hours out of the twenty-four, the work
of the world would be done, and all would be as comfort-
ably fed and clothed, as well educated and housed, and
provided for in general, as they now are, even admitting
they all went to sleep the other twenty-two hours of the
day and night. If this were done, we should hear nothing
of the sickness of sedentary and rich men. Exercise for


510
(April,
Thoughts on Labor.
the sake of health would be heard of no more. One class
would not be crushed by hard work, nor another oppressed
by indolence, and condemned, in order to resist the just
vengeance nature takes on them, to consume nauseous
drugs, and resort to artificial and hateful methods to pre-
serve a life that is not worth the keeping, because it is
useless and ignominious. Now men may work at the least
three or four times this necessary amount each day, and
yet find their labor a pastime, a dignity, and a blessing,
and find likewise abundant opportunity for study, for social
intercourse, and recreation. Then if a man's calling were
to think and write, he would not injure the world by even
excessive devotion to his favorite pursuit, for the general
burthen would still be slight.
Another remedy is this, the mind does the body's work.
The head saves the hands. It invents machines, which,
doing the work of many hands, will at last set free a large
portion of leisure time from slavery to the elements.
The brute forces of nature lie waiting man's command,
and ready to serve him. At the voice of Genius, the river
consents to turn his wheel, and weave and spin for the
antipodes. The mine sends him iron Vassals, to toil in
cold and heat. Fire and Water embrace at his bidding,
and a new servant is born, which will �etch and carry at
his command; will face down all the storms of the Atlan-
tic; will forge anchors, and spin gossamer threads, and run
of errands up and down the continent with men and
women on his back. This last child of Science, though
yet a stripling and in leading strings, is already a stout
giant. The Fable of Orpheus is a true story in our times.
There are four stages of progress in regard to labor, which
are observable in the history of man. First, he does his
own work by his hands. Adam tills the ground in the
sweat of his own face, and Noah builds an ark in many
years of toil. Next he forces his fellow mortal to work for
him, and Canaan becomes a servant to his brother, and Job
is made rich by the sweat of his great household of slaves.
Then he seizes on the beasts, and the Bull and the Horse
drag the plough of Castor and Pollux. At last he sets free
his brother, works with his own hands, commands the
beasts, and makes the brute force of the elements also toil
for him. Then he has dominion over the earth, and enjoys
his birthright.


1841.)
511
Thoughts on Labor.
Man, however, is still in bondage to the elements; and
since the beastly maxim is even now prevalent, that the
Strong should take care of themselves, and use the weak
as their tools, though to the manifest injury of the weak,
the use of machinery has hitherto been but a trifling boon
in comparison with what it may be. In the village of
Humdrum, its thousand able-bodied men and women, with-
out machinery, and having no intercourse with the rest of
the world, must work fourteen hours out of the twenty-four,
that they may all be housed, fed, and clothed, warmed,
instructed, and made happy. Some ingenious hands in-
vent water-mills, which saw, plane, thrash, grind, spin,
weave, and do many other things, so that these thousand
people need work but five hours in the day to obtain the
result of fourteen by the old process. Ilere then a vast
amount of time — nine hours in the day – is set free from
toil. It may be spent in study, social improvement, the
pursuit of a favorite art, and leave room for amusement
also. But the longest heads at Humdrum have not Chris-
tian but only selfish hearts beating in their bosoms, and
sending life into the brain. So these calculators think the
men of Humdrum shall work fourteen hours a day as be-
fore. “It would be dangerous,” say they, “ to set free so
much time. The deluded creatures would soon learn to
lie and steal, and would speedily end by eating one another
up. It would not be Christian to leave them to this fate.
Leisure is very good for us, but would be ruinous to them.”
So the wise men of Humdrum persuade their neighbors to
work the old fourteen hours. More is produced than is
consumed. So they send off the superfluities of the vil-
lage, and in return bring back tea and porcelain, rich
wines, and showy gew-gaws, and contemptible fashions
that change every month. The strong-headed men grow
rich; live in palaces; their daughters do not work, nor
their sons dirty their hands. They fare sumptuously every
day; are clothed in purple and fine linen. Meanwhile the
common people of Humdrum work as long as before the
machines were invented, and a little harder. They also
are blest by the “ improvement." The young women have
red ribbons on their bonnets, French gloves on their hands,
and shawls of India on their shoulders, and “tinkling orna-
ments” in their ears. The young man of Humdrum is


512
[April,
Thoughts on Labor.
better off than his father who fought through the Revolu-
tion, for he wears a beaver hat, and a coat of English cloth,
and has a Birmingham whittle, and a watch in his pocket.
When he marries he will buy red curtains to his windows,
and a showy mirror to hang on his wall. For these valu-
able considerations he parts with the nine hours a day,
which machinery has saved ; but has no more bread than
before. For these blessings he will make his body a slave,
and leave his mind all uncultivated. He is content to grow
up a body — nothing but a body. So that if you look
therein for his Understanding, Imagination, Reason, you
will find them like three grains of wheat in three bushels
of chaff. You shall seek them all day before you find
them, and at last they are not worth your search. At
Humdrum, Nature begins to revolt at the factitious inequal-
ity of condition, and thinks it scarce right for bread to come
fastest into hands that add nothing to the general stock,
So many grow restless and a few pilfer. In a ruder state
crimes are few :— the result of violent passions. At Hum-
drum they are numerous; — the result of want, indolence,
or neglected education ; they are in great measure crimes
against property. To remedy this new and unnatural evil,
there rises a Court-house and a Jail, which must be paid for
in work; then Judges and Lawyers and Jailors are needed
likewise in this artificial state, and add to the cominon
burthen. The old Athenians sent yearly seven beautiful
youths and virgins:— a tribute to the Minotaur. The
wise men of Humdrum shut up in Jail a larger number:-
a sacrifice to the spirit of modern cupidity ; unfortunate
wretches, who were the victims not the foes of society;
men so weak in head or heart, that their bad character
was formed for them, through circumstances far more
than it was formed by them, through their own free-will.
Still farther, the men who violate the law of the body,
using the Mouth much and the Hand little, or in the op-
posite way, soon find Nature taking vengeance for the
offence. Then unnatural remedies must oppose the arti-
ficial disease. In the old time, every sickly dunce was
cured “ with Motherwort and Tansey," which grew by the
road-side, suited all complaints, and was administered by
each mother in the village. Now Humdrum has its
“medical faculty," with their conflicting systems, homoeo-


1841.]
513
Thoughts on Labor.
pathic and allopathic, but no more health than before.
Thus the burthen is increased to little purpose. The
strong men of Humdrum have grown rich and become
educated. If one of the laboring men is stronger than
his fellows, he also will become rich, and educate his chil-
dren. He becomes rich, not by his own work, but by
using the hands of others whom his cunning overreaches.
Yet he is not more avaricious than they. He has perhaps
the average share of selfishness, but superior adroitness to
gratify that selfishness. So he gets and saves, and takes
care of himself; a part of their duty, which the strong
have always known how to perform, though the more
difficult part, how to take care of others, to think for them,
and help them to think for themselves, they have yet to
learn, at least to practise. Alas, we are still in bondage to
the elements, and so long as two of the “enlightened”
nations of the earth, England and America, insist on weav-
ing the garments for all the rest of the world, not because
they would clothe the naked, but that their strong men
might live in fine houses, wear gay apparel, dine on costly
food, and their Mouths be served by other men's Hands,
we must expect that seven tenths of mankind will be de-
graded, and will hug their chains, and count machinery an
evil. Is not the only remedy for all the evils at Humdrum
in the Christian idea of wealth, and the Christian idea of
work ?
There is a melancholy back ground to the success and
splendid achievements of modern society. You see it in
rural villages, but more plainly in large cities, where the
amount of Poverty and Wealth is suinmed up as in a table
of statistics, and stands in two parallel columns. The
wretchedness of a destitute mother contrasts sadly with a
warehouse, whence she is excluded by a single pane of
glass, as cold as popular charity and nearly as thin. The
comfortless hutch of the poor, who works, though with
shiftless hands and foolish head, is a dark back ground to
the costly stable of the rich man, who does nothing for
the world, but gather its treasures, and whose horses are
better fed, housed, trained up, and cared for than his
brother. It is a strange relief to the church of God, that,
with thick granite walls, towers up to Heaven near by. One
cannot but think, in view of the suffering there is in the
VOL. 1. — NO. iv.
65


514
[April,
Thoughts on Labor.
world, that most of it is the fault of some one ; that God,
who made men's bodies, is no bankrupt, and does not pay
off a penny of Satisfaction for a pound of Want, but has
made enough and to spare for all his creatures, if they will
use it wisely. Who does not sometimes remember that
saying, Inasmuch as you have done it unto the least of
these, you have done it unto me ?.
The world no doubt grows better ; comfort is increased
from age to age. What is a luxury in one generation, scarce
attainable by the wealthy, becomes at last the possession of
most men. Solomon with all his wealth had no carpet on
his chamber floor, no glass in his windows, nor shirt to his
back. But as the world goes, the increase of comforts
does not fall chiefly into the hands of those who create
them by their work. The mechanic cannot use the costly
furniture he makes. This, however, is of small consequence,
but he has not always the more valuable consideration,
TIME TO GROW WISER AND BETTER IN. As society advances,
the standard of poverty rises. A man in New England
is called poor at this day, who would have been rich a
hundred and fifty years ago; but as it rises, the number
that falls beneath that standard becomes a greater part of
the whole population. Of course the comfort of a few is
purchased by the loss of the many. The world has grown
rich and refined, but chiefly by the efforts of those who
themselves continue poor and ignorant. So the Ass, while
he carried wood and spices to the Roman bath, contributed
to the happiness of the State, but was himself always dirty
and overworked. It is easy to see these evils, and weep
for them. It is common also to censure some one class of
men — the Rich or the Educated, the Manufacturers, the
Merchants, or the Politicians, for example - as if the
sin rested solely with them, while it belongs to society at
large. But the world yet waits for some one to heal these
dreadful evils, by devising some new remedy, or applying
the old. Who shall apply for us Christianity to social
life?
But God orders all things wisely. Perhaps it is best that
man should toil on some centuries more before the race
becomes of age, and capable of receiving its birthright.
Every wrong must at last be righted, and he who has borne
the burthen of society in this ephemeral life, and tasted none


1841.]
515
Thoughts on Labor.
of its rewards, and he also, who has eaten its loaves and
fishes and yet earned nothing, will no doubt find an equivo
alent at last in the scales of divine Justice. Doubtless the
time will come when labor will be a pleasant pastime, when
the sour sweat and tears of life shall be wiped away from
many faces; when the few shall not be advanced at the
expense of the many; when ten pairs of female hands
shall not be deformed to nurse a single pair into preter-
natural delicacy, but when all men shall eat bread in the
sweat of their face, and yet find leisure to cultivate what
is best and divinest in their souls, to a degree we do not
dream of as yet; when the strong man who wishes to
be a Mouth and not a Hand, or to gain the treasures of
society by violence or cunning, and not by paying their
honest price, will be looked upon with the same horror we
feel for pirates and robbers, and the guardians who steal
the inheritance of their wards, and leave them to want
and die. No doubt it is a good thing that four or five men
out of the thousand should find time, exemption from la-
bor, and wealth likewise to obtain a generous education of
their Head and Heart and Soul, but it is a better thing, it
is alone consistent with God's law, that the world shall be
managed, so that each man shall have a chance to obtain
the best education society can give him, and while he
toils, to become the best and greatest his nature is capable
of being, in this terrene sphere. Things never will come
to their proper level so long as Thought with the Head,
and Work with the Hands are considered incompatible.
Never till all men follow the calling they are designed for
by nature, and it becomes as common for a rich man's son
to follow a trade as now it is happily for a poor man's to
be rich. Labor will always be unattractive and disgrace-
ful, so long as wealth unjustly obtained is a distinction, and
so long as the best cultivation of a man is thought incon-
sistent with the life of the farmer and the tailor. As things
now are, men desert a laborious occupation for which they
are fitted, and have a natural fondness, and seek bread and
honor in the “ learned professions,” for which they have
neither ability nor taste, solely because they seek a gener-
ous education, which is thought inconsistent with a life of
hard work. Thus strong heads desert the plough and the
anvil, to come into a profession which they dislike, and


516
[April,
Thoughts on Labor.
then to find their Duty pointing one way and their Desire
another. Thus they attempt to live two lives at the same
time, and fail of both, as he who would walk eastward
and westward at the same time makes no progress.
Now the best education and the highest culture, in a
rational state of society, does not seem inconsistent with a
life of hard work. It is not a figure of speech, but a plain
fact, that a man is educated by his trade, or daily calling.
Indirectly, Labor ministers to the wise man intellectual,
moral, and spiritual instruction, just as it gives him directly
his daily bread. Under its legitimate influence, the frame
acquires its due proportions and proper strength. To speak
more particularly, the work of a farmer, for example, is a
school of mental discipline. He must watch the elements;
must understand the nature of the soil he tills; the char-
acter and habits of the plants he rears; the character and
disposition of each animal that serves him as a living in-
strument. Each day makes large claims on him for know.
ledge, and sound judgment. He is to apply good sense
to the soil. Now these demands tend to foster the babit
of observing and judging justly; to increase thought, and
elevate the man. The same may be said of almost all
trades. The sailor must watch the elements, and have all
his knowledge and faculties at command, for his life often
depends on having “ the right thought at the right time."
Judgment and decision are thus called forth. The educa-
tion men derive from their trade is so striking, that crafts-
men can express almost any truth, be it never so deep and
high, in the technical terms of the “ shop.” The humblest
business may thus develop the noblest power of thinking.
So a trade may be to the man in some measure what the
school and the college are to the scholar. The wise man
learns more from his corn and cattle, than the stupid
pedant from all the folios of the Vatican. The habit of
thinking thus acquired is of more value than the greatest
number of thoughts learned by rote, and labelled for use.
But an objection may readily be brought to this view, and
it may be asked, why then are not the farmers as a class so
well instructed as the class of lawyers ? Certainly there
may be found farmers who are most highly educated. Men
of but little acquaintance with books, yet men of thought,
observation, and sound judgment. Scholars are ashamed


1841.]
517
Thoughts on Labor.
before them when they meet, and blush at the home-
ly wisdom, the acute analysis, the depth of insight and
breadth of view displayed by laborers in blue frocks. But
these cases are exceptions. These men were geniuses of
no mean order, and would be great under any circum-
stances. It must be admitted, that, as a general rule, the
man who works is not so well educated as the lawyer.
But the difference between them rises not so much from
any difference in the two callings, as from this circumstance,
that the lawyer enters his profession with a large fund of
knowledge and the habits of intellectual discipline, which
the farmer has not. He therefore has the advantage so
long as he lives. If two young men of the same age and
equal capacity were to receive the same education till they
were twenty years old, both taking proper physical exercise
at the same time, and one of them should then spend three
years in learning the science of the Law, the other in the
science of the Farm, and then both should enter the full
practice of the two callings, each having access to books if
he wished for them, and educated men and women, can
any one doubt that the farmer, at the age of forty, would
be the better educated man of the two ? The trade teach-
es as much as the profession, and it is as well known that
almost every farmer has as much time for general reading
as the lawyer, and better opportunity for thought, since he
can think of what he will when at his work, while the
lawyer's work demands his thought all the time he is in it.
The farmer would probably have the more thoughts; the
lawyer the more elegant words. If there is any employ
ment which degrades the man who is always engaged in
it, cannot many bear the burthen — each a short time-
and so no one be crushed to the ground ?
Morality, likewise, is taught by a trade. The man
must have dealings with his fellows. The afflicted call for
his sympathy; the oppressed for his aid. Vice solicits his
rebuke, and virtue claims bis commendation. If he buys
and sells, he is presented with opportunities to defraud.
He may conceal a fault in his work, and thus deceive his
employer. So an appeal is continually made to his sense
of Right. If faithful, he learns justice. It is only by
this exposure to temptation, that virtue can be acquired.
It is in the water that men learn to swim. Still more, a


518
[April,
Thoughts on Labor.
man does not toil for himself alone, but for those dearest
to his heart; this for his father; that for his child ; and
there are those who out of the small pittance of their daily
earnings contribute to support the needy, print Bibles for
the ignorant, and preach the gospel to the poor. Here the
meanest work becomes Heroism. The man who toils for
a principle ennobles himself by the act.
Still farther, Labor has a religious use. It has been well
said, “an undevout astronomer is mad.” But an undevout
farmer, sailor, or mechanic, is equally mad, for the duties
of each afford a school for his devotion. In respect to this
influence, the farmer seems to stand on the very top of the
world. The laws of nature are at work for him. For him
the sun shines and the rain falls. The earth grows warm
to receive his seed. The dew moistens it; the blade springs
up and grows he knows not how, while all the stars come
forth to keep watch over his rising corn. There is no
second cause between him and the soul of all. Everything
he looks on, from the earliest flowers of spring to the au-
stere grandeurs of a winter sky at night, is the work of
God's hand. The great process of growth and decay,
change and reproduction, are perpetually before him. Day
and Night, Serenity and Storm visit and bless him as they
move. Nature's great works are done for no one in
special ; yet each man receives as much of the needed
rain, and the needed heat, as if all rain and all heat were
designed for his use alone. He labors, but it is not only
the fruit of his labor that he eats. No; God's exhaustless
Providence works for him ; works with him. His laws
warm and water the fields, replenishing the earth. Thus
the Husbandman, whose eye is open, walks always in the
temple of God. He sees the divine goodness and wisdom
in the growth of a flower or a tree; in the nice adjustinent
of an insect's supplies to its demands; in the perfect con-
tentment found everywhere in nature - for you shall search
all day for a melancholy fly, yet never find one. The in-
fluence of all these things on an active and instructed
mind is ennobling. The man seeks daily bread for the
body, and gets the bread of life for the soul. Like his
corn and his trees, his heart and mind are cultivated by his
toil; for as Saul seeking his father's stray cattle found a
kingdom, as stripling David was anointed king while keep-


1841.]
519
The Out-Bid.
ing a few sheep in the wilderness, and when sent to carry
bread to his brothers in the camp slew a giant, and became
monarch, so each man who with true motives, an instructed
mind, and soul of tranquil devotion, goes to his daily work,
however humble, may slay the giant Difficulty, and be
anointed with gladness and possess the Kingdom of Heav-
en. In the lowliest calling he may win the loftiest result,
as you may see the stars from the deepest valley as well as
from the top of Chimborazo. But to realize this end the
man must have some culture and a large capital of infor-
mation at the outset; and then it is at a man's own
option, whether his work shall be to him a blessing or a
curse.
P.
THE OUT-BID.
Upon a precious shrine one day
I placed a gay and sweet bouquet,
The brightest flowers of my young thought
Were with its finest perfumes wrought,
And with a riband bound, whose hue
Emblemed a heart forever true.
Upon that shrine there also lay
A gorgeous, many-hued bouquet,
And every flower that told a thought
Was with a golden thread inwrought;
O, not so beauteous to mine eye,
As the love-knot which mine did tie.
I lingered what seemed ages there,
In hope that, answering to my prayer,
The cloud might ope, and show revealed
The form of her to whom I kneeled,
Then from that pure and jealous cloud
A lily hand its lustre showed,
And drew within the envious veil
The gift where gold made yellow pale.
I left my flowers to wither there –
That must they soon with my despair,
No more the pathway to that shrine
Shall know these wonted feet of mine;
I scorn my love's best gifts to bring
For an unworthy bargaining.


520
(April,
Theme for a World-Drama.
THEME FOR A WORLD-DRAMA.
THE MAIDEN - THE ADOPTED FATHER
THE ADOPTED MOTHER
THE LOVER.
I would that we had spoke two words together,
For then it had gone right, but now all still,
This perfect stillness fastens on my heart
Like night, — nothing can come of it.
Why art thou so sad ?
O, I do not know.
But thou must know. Whoever knew not living
Some of his inner self; who had no consciousness
Of all his purposes, his doings, — will?
Why this we call the mind, what is it, save
A knowledge of ourselves?
I would it were so.
What were so ?
Come — let us be alone awhile; I'm weary.
If you would be left, I'll leave you.
Do so, - I'm glad he's gone;
I think of him even when my guardian here,
So gentle and affectionate a man,
Would converse with me of myself. Alas!
And yet why do I say alas! — am I
Not happy in the depth of this my sorrowing,
The only treasure which is simply mine,
That watchful eye is now upon me, ever.
If I look abroad and recognise the forms
Of those familiar mountains, my brothers,
And see the trees soft-waving in the wind
This summer's day; - what then? I cannot, cannot!
One thing it is to have an outward life,
Another - such as mine.
Why is she then so sad?
Partly it is her nature to be so.
These delicate beings look not o'er
The earth and the rough surface of society,
As commoners. They breathe a finer air,
And their enraptured senses, sudden brought


1841.]
521
Theme for a World-Drama.
Into harsh contact with the scaly folds
Of the enormous serpent, Sin, shatter;
As if a glass in which an image dwelt
Of an all-perfect seeming were rudely
On a bitter stone employed, smiting it
Into a million fragments. — She is of this breed,
This narrow suffrage in a world of dross
Of gold thrice molten, and it seems to me
That, with a strange peculiar care of love,
We should encompass her with lovely thoughts,
Forms breathing Italy in every bend,
Scarce enough products of our northern vale.
I feel that, although she is not our child,
We do regard her with a parent's love
But 0, our love is a poor mockery
Of what that love had been. We do not live,
As marrow in the bone, within her life,
As parents had. Nature has ministered to these,
In such full kind; they are the double worlds,
As man, if truly wise, a twice-told tale,
First for himself, and then for Nature.
I am all aware that with what stress of mind
I strive to paint a parent's love for her
In my imagination, will drop short
O’ the mark; I cannot sling the stone, as one
Who from his hand the whirling pebble sent
To dive into another's life.
Let us not despair !
This world is much too wide for that;
I pity him, the poor despairing man,
Who walks the teeming earth, a solitude;
Who groans his soul away, as if it were
The conduit pipe of a dull city, or
The dreadful hum of oiled machinery,
Which from the doors, where starveling weavers ply
Their horrid toil, down to the sunset hour
Floats out upon the tune of all this visible love,
A clanging echo of the miser's shrieks.
Our very freedom is to be awake,
Alive to inspiration from the whole
Of a fair universe.
I feel myself, I do not see myself;
But my particular nature masters me,
Even here, among these waving spirits
Who haunt the reedy banks of this calm river,
Nor will displace a thought their long year lives.
I defy all but this, and this I must
VOL. 1. — NO. IV.
66


522
[April,
Theme for a World-Drama.
Obey, - I cannot this defy. This is
The oracular parent of the child,
Whose simple look can wind him into tasks
Hateful and hated. — I did not wish
To love; I said, - here stands a man whose soul
The imprisoning forms of things shall master,
Not without a strife convulsed as death;
I stand upon an adamantine basis
Never to rock; I triumphed over much;
The whimperings of the youth I changed to words;
Nor scoffs, nor jeers, nor place, nor poverty
Gained footing in the scale of my design.
This girl came to me on a summer's day,
The day of my o'ermastery, which passes
From my mind but with my life. Up she rose
As the first revelation to the Poet's soul
Of his dear art, thenceforth to him his spring;
A radiance circled her with grace, as I
Have seen about the fronts of Raphael's
Time-defying saints, — a ring of glory,
Waxing immeasurably potent
In its symbolical form; her motion
Flung me to the ground in prayer, I hardly
Daring to translate my eyes again to hers,
Lest another glance would represent a thin
And shadowy lustre fading fast away.
At length, with breath suspended, looked again,
And there in very form she was. I felt
I know not what I will not venture on a chance
That I may hit the sense of my expression,
Yet I was expressed; a copious sense
Of knowledge that my former mind of beauty
Was inconceivably blind, rushed through me;
A decided view of perfect loveliness,
Bore information of celestial heights,
At whose first inch I had thus far stood idle
Into the Ideal in my mind; there fixed
The simple surface of her body; the hair
Of tender brown, not negligent disposed,
The unrivalled tracing through her dress
Of a prodigious nature; her life
Glowed out in the embalming whiteness of her neck;
All that she is in fact came to me then,
And in me now finds ready utterance.


1841.]
523
Man the Reformer.
MAN THE REFORMER.
[A Lecture read before the Mechanics' Apprentices' Library Association,
at the Masonic Temple, Boston, 25th January, 1841, and now pub-
lished at their request. By R. W. EMERSON.]
MR. PRESIDENT, AND GENTLEMEN,
I wish to offer to your consideration some thoughts on
the particular and general relations of man as a reformer.
I shall assume that the aim of each young man in this
association is the very highest that belongs to a rational
mind. Let it be granted, that our life, as we lead it, is
common and mean ; that some of those offices and func-
tions for which we were mainly created are grown so rare
in society, that the memory of them is only kept alive in
old books and in dim traditions ; that prophets and poets,
that beautiful and perfect men, we are not now, no, nor
have even seen such ; that some sources of human in-
struction are almost unnamed and unknown among us ;
that the community in which we live will hardly bear to
be told that every man should be open to ecstasy or a di-
vine illumination, and his daily walk elevated by inter-
course with the spiritual world. Grant all this, as we must,
yet I suppose none of my auditors, - no honest and in-
telligent soul will deny that we ought to seek to establish
ourselves in such disciplines and courses as will deserve
that guidance and clearer communication with the spiritual
nature. And further, I will not dissemble my hope, that
each person whom I address has felt his own call to cast
aside all evil customs, timidities, and limitations, and to
be in his place a free and helpful man, a reformer, a
benefactor, not content to slip along through the world
like a footman or a spy, escaping by his nimbleness and
apologies as many knocks as he can, but a brave and up-
right man, who must find or cut a straight road to every-
thing excellent in the earth, and not only go honorably
himself, but make it easier for all who follow him, to go in
honor, and with benefit.
In the history of the world the doctrine of Reform had
never such scope as at the present hour. Lutherans,
Hernhutters, Jesuits, Monks, Quakers, Knox, Wesley,
Swedenborg, Bentham, in their accusations of society, all


524
Man the Reformer.
[April,
respected something, — church or state, literature or his-
tory, domestic usages, the market town, the dinner table,
coined money. But now all these and all things else hear
the trumpet and must rush to judgment, - Christianity, the
laws, commerce, schools, the farm, the laboratory; and
not a kingdom, town, statute, rite, calling, man, or woman,
but is threatened by the new spirit.
What if some of the objections and objectors whereby
our institutions are assailed are extreme and speculative,
and the reformers tend to idealism; that only shows the
extravagance of the abuses which have driven the mind
into the opposite extreme. It is when your facts and per-
sons grow unreal and fantastic by too much falsehood,
that the scholar flies for refuge to the world of ideas, and
aims to recruit and replenish nature from that source.
Let ideas establish their legitimate sway again in society,
let life be fair and poetic, and the scholars will gladly be
lovers, citizens, and philanthropists.
It will afford no security from the new ideas, that the
old nations, the laws of centuries, the property and insti-
tutions of a hundred cities, are all built on other founda-
tions. The demon of reform has a secret door into the
heart of every lawmaker, of every inhabitant of every
city. The fact, that a new thought and hope have dawned
in your breast, should apprise you that in the same hour a
new light broke in upon a thousand private hearts. That
secret which you would fain keep, — as soon as you go
abroad, lo ! there is one standing on the doorstep, to tell you
the same. There is not the most bronzed and sharpened
money-catcher, who does not, to your consternation al-
most, quail and shake the moment he hears a question
prompted by the new ideas. We thought he had some
semblance of ground to stand upon, that such as he at
least would die hard, but he trembles and flees. Then
the scholar says, “Cities and coaches shall never impose on
me again; for, behold every solitary dream of mine is
rushing to fulfilment. That fancy I had and hesitated to
utter because you would laugh, the broker, the attorney,
the market-man are saying the same thing. Had I waited
a day longer to speak, I had been too late. Behold, State
Street thinks, and Wall Street doubts and begins to proph-
esy!'


1841.]
525
Man the Reformer.
It cannot be wondered at that this general inquest into
abuses should arise in the bosom of society, when one
considers the practical impediments that stand in the way
of virtuous young men. The young man on entering life
finds the ways to lucrative employments blocked with
abuses. The ways of trade are grown selfish to the bor-
ders of theft, and supple to the borders (if not beyond the
borders) of fraud. The employments of commerce are
not intrinsically unfit for a man, or less genial to his facul-
ties, but these are now in their general course so vitiated
by derelictions and abuses at which all connive, that it re-
quires more vigor and resources than can be expected of
every young man, to right himself in them; he is lost in
them; he cannot move hand or foot in them. Has he
genius and virtue ? the less does he find them fit for him
to grow in, and if he would thrive in them, he must sacri-
fice all the brilliant dreams of boyhood and youth as
dreams; he must forget the prayers of his childhood ; and
must take on him the harness of routine and obsequious-
ness. If not so minded, nothing is left him but to begin
the world anew, as he does who puts the spade into the
ground for food. We are all implicated, of course, in this
charge; it is only necessary to ask a few questions as to
the progress of the articles of commerce from the fields
where they grew, to our houses, to become aware that we
eat and drink and wear perjury and fraud in a hundred
commodities. How many articles of daily consumption
are furnished us from the West Indies; yet it is said, that,
in the Spanish islands, the venality of the officers of the
government has passed into usage, and that no article pass-
es into our ships which has not been fraudulently cheap-
ened. In the Spanish islands, every agent or factor of the
Americans, unless he be a consul, has taken oath that he is
a Catholic, or has caused a priest to make that declaration
for him. The abolitionist has shown us our dreadful debt
to the southern negro. In the island of Cuba, in addition
to the ordinary abominations of slavery, it appears, only
men are bought for the plantations, and one dies in ten
every year, of these miserable bachelors, to yield us sugar.
I leave for those who have the knowledge the part of sift-
ing the oaths of our custom-houses; I will not inquire
into the oppression of the sailors; I will not pry into the


526
(April,
Man the Reformer.
usages of our retail trade. I content myself with the fact,
that the general system of our trade, (apart from the black-
er traits, which, I hope, are exceptions denounced and un-
shared by all reputable men,) is a system of selfishness; is
not dictated by the high sentiments of human nature; is
not measured by the exact law of reciprocity; much less
by the sentiments of love and heroism, but is a system of
distrust, of concealment, of superior keenness, not of giv-
ing but of taking advantage. It is not that which a man
delights to unlock to a noble friend; which he meditates
on with joy and self-approval in his hour of love and aspi-
ration ; but rather that which he then puts out of sight,
only showing the brilliant result, and atoning for the man-
ner of acquiring by the manner of expending it. I do
not charge the merchant or the manufacturer. The sins
of our trade belong to no class, to no individual. One
plucks, one distributes, one eats. Every body partakes,
every body confesses, — with cap and knee volunteers his
confession, yet none feels himself accountable. He did
not create the abuse; he cannot alter it; what is he? an
obscure private person who must get his bread. That is
the vice, — that no one feels himself called to act for man,
but only as a fraction of man. It happens therefore that
all such ingenuous souls as feel within themselves the irre-
pressible strivings of a noble aim, who by the law of their
nature must act for man, find these ways of trade unfit for
them, and they come forth from it. Such cases are be-
coming more numerous every year.
But by coming out of trade you have not cleared your-
self. The trail of the serpent reaches into all the lucrative
professions and practices of man. Each has its own
wrongs. Each finds a tender and very intelligent con-
science a disqualification for success. Each requires of the
practitioner a certain shutting of the eyes, a certain dap-
perness and compliance, an acceptance of customs, a se-
questration from the sentiments of generosity and love, a
compromise of private opinion and lofty integrity. Nay,
the evil custom reaches into the whole institution of prop-
erty, until our laws which establish and protect it seem
not to be the issue of love and reason, but of selfishness.
Suppose a man is so unhappy as to be born a saint, with
keen perceptions, but with the conscience and love of an
and practice tender and reach requires of Jap


1841.]
527
Man the Reformer.
angel, and he is to get his living in the world; he finds
himself excluded from all lucrative works; he has no farm,
and he cannot get one ; for, to earn money enough to buy
one, requires a sort of concentration toward money, which
is the selling himself for a number of years, and to him
the present hour is as sacred and inviolable as any future
hour. Of course, whilst another man has no land, my
title to mine, your title to yours, is at once vitiated. Inex-
tricable seem to be the twinings and tendrils of this evil,
and we all involve ourselves in it the deeper by forming
connexions, by wives and children, by benefits and debts.
It is considerations of this kind which have turned the
attention of many philanthropic and intelligent persons to
the claims of manual labor as a part of the education of
every young man. If the accumulated wealth of the past
generations is thus tainted, no matter how much of it is
offered to us, — we must begin to consider if it were not
the nobler part to renounce it, and to put ourselves into
primary relations with the soil and nature, and abstaining
from whatever is dishonest and unclean, to take each of us
bravely his part, with his own hands, in the manual labor
of the world.
But it is said, What! will you give up the immense
advantages reaped from the division of labor, and set every
man to make his own shoes, bureau, knife, wagon, sails,
and needle? This would be to put men back into bar-
barism by their own act.' I see no instant prospect of a
virtuous revolution; yet I confess, I should not be pained
at a change which threatened a loss of some of the luxu-
ries or conveniencies of society, if it proceeded from a
preference of the agricultural life out of the belief, that our
primary duties as men could be better discharged in that
calling. Who could regret to see a high conscience and a
purer taste exercising a sensible effect on young men in
their choice of occupation, and thinning the ranks of com-
petition in the labors of commerce, of law, and of state ?
It is easy to see that the inconvenience would last but a
short time. This would be great action, which always
opens the eyes of men. When many persons shall have
done this, when the majority shall admit the necessity of
reform in all these institutions, their abuses will be redress-
ed, and the way will be open again to the advantages


528
[April,
Man the Reformer.
which arise from the division of labor, and a man may se-
lect the fittest employment for his peculiar talent again,
without compromise.
But quite apart from the emphasis which the times give
to the doctrine, that the manual labor of society ought to
be shared among all the members, there are reasons proper
to every individual, why he should not be deprived of it.
The use of manual labor is one which never grows obso-
lete, and which is inapplicable to no person. A man
should have a farm or a mechanical craft for his culture.
We must have a basis for our higher accomplishments, our
delicate entertainments of poetry and philosophy, in the
work of our hands. We must have an antagonism in the
tough world for all the variety of our spiritual faculties, or
they will not be born. Manual labor is the study of the
external world. The advantage of riches remains with
him who procured them, not with the heir. When I go
into my garden with a spade, and dig a bed, I feel such an
exhilaration and health, that I discover that I have been
defrauding myself all this time in letting others do for me
what I should have done with my own hands. But not
only health but education is in the work. Is it possible
that I who get indefinite quantities of sugar, hominy, cot-
ton, buckets, crockery ware, and letter paper, by simply
signing my name once in three months to a cheque in favor
of John Smith and Co. traders, get the fair share of exer-
cise to my faculties by that act, which nature intended for
me in making all these far-fetched matters important to my
comfort ? It is Smith himself, and his carriers, and deal-
ers, and manufacturers, it is the sailor, and the hide-drogher,
the butcher, the negro, the hunter, and the planter, who
have intercepted the sugar of the sugar, and the cotton of
the cotton. They have got the education, I only the com-
modity. This were all very well if I were necessarily ab-
sent, being detained by work of my own, like theirs, —
work of the same faculties; then should I be sure of my
hands and feet, but now I feel some shame before my wood-
chopper, my ploughman, and my cook, for they have some
sort of self-sufficiency, they can contrive without my aid to
bring the day and year round, but I depend on them, and
have not earned by use a right to my arms and feet.
Consider further the difference between the first and


1841.]
529
Man the Reformer.
second owner of property. Every species of property is
preyed on by its own enemies, as iron by rust; timber by
rot; cloth by moths; provisions by mould, putridity, or
vermin ; money by thieves; an orchard by insects; a
planted field by weeds and the inroad of cattle; a stock of
cattle by hunger; a road by rain and frost; a bridge by
freshets. And whoever takes any of these things into his
possession, takes the charge of defending them from this
troop of enemies, or of keeping them in repair. A man
who supplies his own want, who builds a raft or a boat to
go a fishing, finds it easy to caulk it, or put in a thole-pin,
or mend the rudder. What he gets only as fast as he
wants for his own ends, does not embarrass him, or take
away his sleep with looking after. But when he comes to
give all the goods he has year after year collected, in one
estate to his son, house, orchard, ploughed land, cattle,
bridges, hard-ware, wooden-ware, carpets, cloths, provis-
ions, books, money, and cannot give him the skill and ex-
perience which made or collected these, and the method
and place they have in his own life, the son finds his hands
full — not to use these things, — but to look after them
and defend them from their natural enemies. To him they
are not means, but masters. Their enemies will not re-
mit; rust, mould, vermin, rain, sun, freshet, fire, all
seize their own, fill him with vexation, and he is converted
from the owner into a watchman or a watch-dog to this
magazine of old and new chattels. What a change! In-
stead of the masterly good humor, and sense of power, and
fertility of resource in himself; instead of those strong and
learned hands, those piercing and learned eyes, that supple
body, and that mighty and prevailing heart, which the
father had, whom nature loved and feared, whom snow
and rain, water and land, beast and fish seemed all to
know and to serve, we have now a puny, protected person
guarded by walls and curtains, stoves and down beds,
coaches, and men-servants and women-servants from the
earth and the sky, and who, bred to depend on all these, is
made anxious by all that endangers those possessions, and
is forced to spend so much time in guarding them, that he
has quite lost sight of their original use, namely, to help
him to his ends, — to the prosecution of his love ; to the
helping of his friend, to the worship of his God, to the en-
· VOL. I. — NO. IV.
67


530
(April,
Man the Reformer.
largement of his knowledge, to the serving of his country,
to the indulgence of his sentiment, and he is now what is
called a rich man, — the menial and runner of his riches.
Hence it happens that the whole interest of history lies
in the fortunes of the poor. Knowledge, Virtue, Power
are the victories of man over his necessities, his march to
the dominion of the world. Every man ought to have this
opportunity to conquer the world for himself. Only such
persons interest us, Spartans, Romans, Saracens, English,
Americans, who have stood in the jaws of need, and have
by their own wit and might extricated themselves, and
made man victorious.
I do not wish to overstate this doctrine of labor, or in-
sist that every man should be a farmer, any more than that
every man should be a lexicographer. In general, one
may say, that the husbandman's is the oldest, and most uni-
versal profession, and that where a man does not yet dis-
cover in himself any fitness for one work more than anoth-
er, this may be preferred. But the doctrine of the Farm
is merely this, that every man ought to stand in primary re-
lations with the work of the world, ought to do it himself,
and not to suffer the accident of his having a purse in his
pocket, or his having been bred to some dishonorable and
injurious craft, to sever him from those duties; and for this
reason, that labor is God's education ; that he only is a sin-
cere learner, he only can become a master, who learns the
secrets of labor, and who by real cunning extorts from na-
ture its sceptre.
Neither would I shut my ears to the plea of the learned
professions, of the poet, the priest, the lawgiver, and men of
study generally; namely, that in the experience of all men
of that class, that degree of manual labor which is necessa-
ry to the maintenance of a family, indisposes and disquali-
fies for intellectual exertion. I know it often, perhaps
usually, happens, that where there is a fine organization apt
for poetry and philosophy, that individual finds himself
compelled to wait on his thoughts, to waste several days
that he may enhance and glorify one; and is better taught
by a moderate and dainty exercise, such as rambling in the
fields, rowing, skating, hunting, than by the downright
drudgery of the farmer and the smith. I would not quite
forget the venerable counsel of the ancient Egyptian mys-


1841.1
531
.
Man the Reformer.
teries, which declared that “there were two pair of eyes
in man, and it is requisite that the pair which are be-
neath should be closed, when the pair that are above
them perceive, and that when the pair above are closed,
those which are beneath should be opened.” Yet I will
suggest that no separation from labor can be without
some loss of power and of truth to the seer himself;
that, I doubt not, the faults and vices of our literature
and philosophy, their too great fineness, effeminacy, and
melancholy, are attributable to the enervated and sickly
habits of the literary class. Better that the book should
not be quite so good, and the bookmaker abler and better,
and not himself often a ludicrous contrast to all that he has
written.
But granting that for ends so sacred and dear, some re-
laxation must be had, I think, that if a man find in him-
self any strong bias to poetry, to art, to the contemplative
life, drawing him to these things with a devotion incompat-
ible with good husbandry, that man ought to reckon early
with himself, and, respecting the compensations of the Uni-
verse, ought to ransom himself from the duties of economy,
by a certain rigor and privation in his habits. For privi-
leges so rare and grand, let him not stint to pay a great
tax. Let him be a cænobite, a pauper, and if need be,
celibate also. Let him learn to eat his meals standing, and
to relish the taste of fair water and black bread. He may
leave to others the costly conveniences of housekeeping
and large hospitality and the possession of works of art.
Let him feel that genius is a hospitality, and that he who
can create works of art needs not collect them. He must
live in a chamber, and postpone his self-indulgence, fore-
warned and forearmed against that frequent misfortune of
men of genius, — the taste for luxury. This is the trage-
dy of genius, – attempting to drive along the ecliptic with
one horse of the heavens and one horse of the earth, there
is only discord and ruin and downfall to chariot and char-
ioteer.
The duty that every man should assume his own vows,
should call the institutions of society to account, and ex-
amine their fitness to him, gains in emphasis, if we look
now at our modes of living. Is our housekeeping sacred
and honorable ? Does it raise and inspire us, or does it


532
(April,
Man the Reformer.
and not so paper, for a boot. We no pou
cripple us instead? I ought to be armed by every part
and function of my household, by all my social function,
by my economy, by my feasting, by my voting, by my traf-
fic. Yet now I am almost no party to any of these things.
Custom does it for me, gives me no power therefrom, and
runs me in debt to boot. We spend our incomes for
paint and paper, for a hundred trifles, I know not what,
and not for the things of a man. Our expense is almost
all for conformity. It is for cake that we run in debt; 't is
not the intellect, not the heart, not beauty, not worship,
that costs so much. Why needs any man be rich? Why
must he have horses, and fine garments, and handsome
apartments, and access to public houses, and places of
amusement ? Only for want of thought. Once waken in
him a divine thought, and he flees into a solitary garden or
garret to enjoy it, and is richer with that dream, than the
fee of a county could make him. But we are first
thoughtless, and then find that we are moneyless. We
are first sensual, and then must be rich. We dare not
trust our wit for making our house pleasant to our friend,
and so we buy ice-creams. He is accustomed to car-
pets, and we have not sufficient character to put floor-
cloths out of his mind whilst he stays in the house, and so
we pile the floor with carpets. Let the house rather be a
temple of the Furies of Lacedæmon, formidable and holy
to all, which none but a Spartan may enter or so much as
behold. As soon as there is faith, as soon as there is so-
ciety, comfits and cushions will be left to slaves. Expense
will be inventive and heroic. We shall eat hard and lie
hard, we shall dwell like the ancient Romans in narrow
tenements, whilst our public edifices, like theirs, will be
worthy for their proportion of the landscape in which we
set them, for conversation, for art, for music, for worship.
We shall be rich to great purposes ; poor only for selfish
ones.
Now what help for these evils ? How can the man who
has learned but one art, procure all the conveniences of
life honestly ? Shall we say all we think? – Perhaps with
his own hands. Suppose he collects or makes them ill;-
yet he has got their lesson. If he cannot do that. — Then
perhaps he can go without. Immense wisdom and riches
are in that. It is better to go without, than to have them


1841.]
533
Man the Reformer.
at too great a cost. Let us learn the meaning of economy.
Economy is a high, humane office, a sacrament, when its
aim is grand; when it is the prudence of simple tastes,
when it is practised for freedom, or love, or devotion.
Much of the economy which we see in houses, is of a base
origin, and is best kept out of sight. Parched corn
eaten to-day that I may have roast fowl to my dinner
on Sunday, is a baseness; but parched corn and a house
with one apartment, that I may be free of all pertur-
bations of mind, that I may be serene and docile to what
the God shall speak, and girt and road-ready for the lowest
mission of knowledge or goodwill, is frugality for gods and
heroes.
Can we not learn the lesson of self-help? Society is full
of infirm people, who incessantly summon others to serve
them. They contrive everywhere to exhaust for their sin-
gle comfort the entire means and appliances of that luxury
to which our invention has yet attained. Sofas, ottomans,
stoves, wine, game-fowl, spices, perfumes, rides, the thea-
tre, entertainments, — all these they want, they need, and
whatever can be suggested more than these, they crave
also, as if it was the bread which should keep them from
starving; and if they miss any one, they represent them-
selves as the most wronged and most wretched persons on
earth. One must have been born and bred with them to
know how to prepare a meal for their learned stomach.
Meantime, they never bestir themselves to serve another
person; not they! they have a great deal more to do for
themselves than they can possibly perform, nor do they
once perceive the cruel joke of their lives, but the more
odious they grow, the sharper is the tone of their complain-
ing and craving. Can anything be so elegant as to have
few wants and to serve them one's self, so as to have some-
what left to give, instead of being always prompt to grab ?
It is more elegant to answer one's own needs, than to be
richly served ; inelegant perhaps it may look to-day, and to
a few, but it is an elegance forever and to all.
I do not wish to be absurd and pedantic in reform. I
do not wish to push my criticism on the state of things
around me to that extravagant mark, that shall compel me
to suicide, or to an absolute isolation from the advantages
of civil society. If we suddenly plant our foot, and say, -
ing and craxnd to serve the of being,


534
[April,
Man the Reformer.
I will neither eat nor drink nor wear nor touch any food
or fabric which I do not know to be innocent, or deal
with any person whose whole manner of life is not clear
and rational, we shall stand still. Whose is so ? Not
mine; not thine; not his. But I think we must clear our-
selves each one by the interrogation, whether we have
earned our bread to-day by the hearty contribution of our
energies to the common benefit ? and we must not cease to
tend to the correction of these flagrant wrongs, by laying
one stone aright every day. .
But the idea which now begins to agitate society has a
wider scope than our daily employments, our households,
and the institutions of property. We are to revise the
whole of our social structure, the state, the school, religion,
marriage, trade, science, and explore their foundations in
our own nature; we are to see that the world not only
fitted the former men, but fits us, and to clear ourselves of
every usage which has not its roots in our own mind.
What is a man born for but to be a Reformer, a Re-maker
of what man has made; a renouncer of lies; a restorer of
truth and good, imitating that great Nature which embosoms
us all, and which sleeps no moment on an old past, but
every hour repairs herself, yielding us every morning a new
day, and with every pulsation a new life? Let him re-
nounce everything which is not true to him, and put all his
practices back on their first thoughts, and do nothing for
which he has not the whole world for his reason. If there
are inconveniences, and what is called ruin in the way,
because we have so enervated and maimed ourselves, yet
it would be like dying of perfumes to sink in the effort to
reattach the deeds of every day to the holy and mysterious
recesses of life.
The power, which is at once spring and regulator in all
efforts of reform, is faith in Man, the conviction that
there is an infinite worthiness in him which will appear at
the call of worth, and that all particular reforms are the
removing of some impediment. Is it not the highest duty
that man should be honored in us? I ought not to allow
any man, because he has broad lands, to feel that he is rich
in my presence. I ought to make him feel that I can do
without his riches, that I cannot be bought, — neither by
comfort, neither by pride, and though I be utterly pen-


1841.)
535
Man the Reformer.
niless, and receiving bread from him, that he is the poor
man beside me. And if, at the same time, a woman or a
child discovers a sentiment of piety, or a juster way of
thinking than mine, I ought to confess it by my respect and
obedience, though it go to alter my whole way of life.
The Americans have many virtues, but they have not
Faith and Hope. I know no two words whose meaning is
more lost sight of. We use these words as if they were as
obsolete as Selah and Amen. And yet they have the
broadest meaning and the most cogent application to Bos-
ton in 1841. The Americans have no faith. They rely
on the power of a dollar; they are deaf to a sentiment.
They think you may talk the north wind down as easily as
raise society; and no class more faithless than the scholars
or intellectual men. Now if I talk with a sincere wise
man and my friend, with a poet, with a conscientious
youth who is still under the dominion of his own wild
thoughts, and not yet harnessed in the team of society to
drag with us all in the ruts of custom, I see at once how
paltry is all this generation of unbelievers, and what a
house of cards their institutions are, and I see what one
brave man, what one great thought executed might effect.
I see that the reason of the distrust of the practical man
in all theory, is his inability to perceive the means whereby
we work. Look, he says, at the tools with which this
world of yours is to be built. As we cannot make a
planet, with atmosphere, rivers, and forests, by means of the
best carpenters' or engineers’ tools, with chemist's labora-
tory and smith's forge to boot, - so neither can we ever
construct that heavenly society you prate of, out of foolish,
sick, selfish men and women, such as we know them to be.
But the believer not only beholds his heaven to be possible,
but already to begin to exist, but not by the men or ma-
terials the statesman uses, but by men transfigured and
raised above themselves by the power of principles. To
principles something else is possible that transcends all the
power of expedients.
Every great and commanding moment in the annals of
the world is the triumph of some enthusiasm. The victo-
ries of the Arabs after Mahomet, who, in a few years, from
a small and mean beginning, established a larger empire
than that of Rome, is an example. They did they knew


536
[April,
Man the Reformer.
not what. The naked Derar, horsed on an idea, was
found an overmatch for a troop of Roman cavalry. The
women fought like men, and conquered the Roman men.
They were miserably equipped, miserably fed. They were
Temperance troops. There was neither brandy nor flesh
needed to feed them. They conquered Asia, and Africa,
and Spain, on barley. The Caliph Omar's walking stick
struck more terror into those who saw it, than another
man's sword. His diet was barley bread; his sauce was
salt; and oftentimes by way of abstinence he ate his bread
without salt. His drink was water. His palace was built
of mud; and when he left Medina to go to the conquest
of Jerusalem, he rode on a red camel, with a wooden platter
hanging at his saddle, with a bottle of water and two sacks,
one holding barley, and the other dried fruits.
But there will dawn ere long on our politics, on our
modes of living, a nobler morning than that Arabian faith,
in the sentiment of love.. This is the one remedy for all
ills, the panacea of nature. We must be lovers, and in-
stantly the impossible becomes possible. Our age and his-
tory, for these thousand years, has not been the history of
kindness, but of selfishness. Our distrust is very expen-
sive. The money we spend for courts and prisons is very
ill laid out. We make by distrust the thief, and burglar,
and incendiary, and by our court and jail we keep him so.
An acceptance of the sentiment of love throughout Christ.
endom for a season, would bring the felon and the outcast
to our side in tears, with the devotion of his faculties to
our service. See this wide society of laboring men and
women. We allow ourselves to be served by them, we
live apart from them, and meet them without a salute in
the streets. We do not greet their talents, nor rejoice in
their good fortune, nor foster their hopes, nor in the assem-
bly of the people vote for what is dear to them. Thus we
enact the part of the selfish noble and king from the foun-
dation of the world. See, this tree always bears one fruit.
In every household, the peace of a pair is poisoned by the
malice, slyness, indolence, and alienation of domestics.
Let any two matrons meet, and observe how soon heir
conversation turns on the troubles from their “ help," as
our phrase is. In every knot of laborers, the rich man
does not feel himself among his friends, and at the polls
he finds them arrayed in a mass in distinct opposition to


1841.)
Man the Reformer.
537
him. We complain that the politics of masses of the peo-
ple are so often controlled by designing men, and led in
opposition to manifest justice and the common weal, and
to their own interest. But the people do not wish to be
represented or ruled by the ignorant and base. They only
vote for these because they were asked with the voice and
semblance of kindness. They will not vote for them long.
They inevitably prefer wit and probity. To use an Egyp-
tian metaphor, it is not their will for any long time “to
raise the nails of wild beasts, and to depress the heads of
the sacred birds." Let our affection flow out to our fellows;
it would operate in a day the greatest of all revolutions.
It is better to work on institutions by the sun than by the
wind. The state must consider the poor man, and all
voices must speak for him. Every child that is born must
have a just chance for his bread. Let the amelioration in
our laws of property proceed from the concession of the
rich, not from the grasping of the poor. Let us begin by
habitual imparting. Let us understand that the equitable
rule is, that no one should take more than his share, let
him be ever so rich. Let me feel that I am to be a lover.
I am to see to it that the world is the better for me, and to
find my reward in the act. Love would put a new face on
this weary old world in which we dwell as pagans and ene-
mies too long, and it would warm the heart to see how fast
the vain diplomacy of statesmen, the impotence of armies,
and navies, and lines of defence, would be superseded by
this unarmed child. Love will creep where it cannot go,
will accomplish that by imperceptible methods, — being its
own lever, fulcrum, and power, — which force could never
achieve. Have you not seen in the woods, in a late au-
tumn morning, a poor fungus or mushroom,- a plant with-
out any solidity, nay, that seemed nothing but a soft mush
or jelly, — by its constant, total, and inconceivably gentle
pushing, manage to break its way up through the frosty
ground, and actually to lift a hard crust on its head ? It
is the symbol of the power of kindness. The virtue of
this principle in human society in application to great in-
terests is obsolete and forgotten. Once or twice in histo-
ry it has een tried in illustrious instances, with signal
success. This great, overgrown, dead Christendom of ours
still keeps alive at least the name of a lover of mankind.
VOL. I. — NO. IV.
68


538
(April,
Man the Reformer.
But one day all men will be lovers; and every calamity
will be dissolved in the universal sunshine.
Will you suffer me to add one trait more to this portrait
of man the reformer? The finished man should have a
great prospective prudence, that he may perform the high
office of mediator between the spiritual and the actual
world. An Arabian poet describes his hero by saying,
“Sunshine was he
In the winter day;
And in the midsummer
Coolness and shade.”
He who would help himself and others, should be not a
subject of irregular and interrupted impulses of virtue, but
a continent, persisting, immovable person, — such as we
have seen a few scattered up and down in time for the
blessing of the world; men who have in the gravity of
their nature a quality which answers to the fly-wheel in a
mill, which distributes the motion equably over all the
wheels, and hinders it from falling unequally and suddenly
in destructive shocks. It is better that joy should be spread
over all the day in the form of strength, than that it should
be concentrated into ecstasies, full of danger and followed
by reactions. There is a sublime prudence, which is the
very highest that we know of man, which, believing in a
vast future, - sure of more to come than is yet seen, -
postpones always the present hour to the whole life; post-
ponès always talent to genius, and special results to char-
acter. As the merchant gladly takes money from his
income to add to his capital, so is the great man very wil.
ling to lose particular powers and talents, so that he gain
in the elevation of his life. The opening of the spiritu-
al senses disposes men ever to greater sacrifices, to leave
their signal talents, their best means and skill of procuring
a present success, their power and their fame, — to cast all
things behind, in the insatiable thirst for divine communi-
cations. A purer fame, a greater power rewards the sac-
rifice. It is the conversion of our harvest into seed. Is
there not somewhat sublime in the act of the farmer, who
casts into the ground the finest ears of his grain ? The
time will come when we too shall hold nothing back, but
shall eagerly convert more than we now possess into means
and powers, when we shall be willing to sow the sun and
the moon for seeds.


1841.)
539
Music of the Winter.
MUSIC OF THE WINTER.
The past winter has afforded a great variety of enter-
tainment to the musical world. It has been characterized
by much activity, and by a decided expression of popular
interest, with which no fault could be found, but that of
its usual want of nice discernment. Instrumental music
has made rapid strides, especially orchestral performances,
and a liberal patronage, in some cases ill-bestowed, has
attended the numerous vocalists, who have urged their
claims upon us. A comparison of the present condition of
the public ear with its former apathy, promises a still
greater improvement, a more lively susceptibility to, and
understanding of this divine art, and a stronger sympathy
for the artist. To be able to discover true genius, to dis-
tinguish science from empiricism, and the effrontery of
pretension from the confidence of real merit, we must hear
much music, and weigh not only its momentary impres-
sions, but its after influences; the former are phantoms,
the latter are truth, and are laid up with our other gifts of
beauty. A cultivated taste is the fruit of time, experience,
and thought; it can be acquired, where no natural defect
opposes a barrier to the power of sound, and the audiences
of the past winter have shown a willingness to hear, which
will gradually ripen into an appreciation of all that is wor-
thy and undying in the art.
The Boston Academy of Music have presented some of
the finest orchestral performances that we have ever heard.
The unity of effect, and the equality and precision of their
instrumental music, are worthy of the highest praise,
and reflect credit upon the members of the band, as
well as their accomplished and graceful leader. Mr.
Schmidt is an ornament to his profession, and a true sup-
porter of its dignity, a musician of rare taste and steady
growth. The choir of the Academy is large and well-
trained, and the organ parts are sustained by Mr. Müller
with great readiness and accuracy.
The concerts and oratorios of the Handel and Haydn
Society have been deservedly well attended throughout the
winter. The chorus is excellent, and its members have at-
tained a high degree of perfection in the performance of their


540
[April,
Music of the Winter.
parts. If any suggestion could be made, it would be the
propriety of a little more light and shade, which is with
difficulty imparted to such a volume of tone. A larger choir
might be more impressive, but we doubt whether any of equal
number could be found more correct and effective. The
solos are seldom well given; and there are many, such as
“ I know that my Redeemer liveth,” and “ Thou shalt dash
them in pieces," from the Messiah, that are only within the
scope of the most exalted talent, and are the cause of pain
when poorly executed. The former of these songs, we
believe, is never heard, except under the auspices of some
distinguished vocalist. A proper performance of such com-
positions can hardly be expected from an amateur; to do
them justice, requires the preliminary study of years, and
the extreme cultivation of an artist. In the engagement of
Mr. Braham, this society have not only contributed to their
own improvement, but greatly added to the pleasure of the
musical world.
The fame and talents of this wonderful singer deserve a
separate and lengthened notice ; for he has been the bright
star of our winter season. He was heralded by a reputa-
tion, upon which forty years have been shedding a con-
stant lustre, and he has passed away without leaving upon our
minds one feeling of disappointment, and no regret, except
that which his farewell has awakened. The name of Braham
is connected with all that is dear in English music ; for years
and years he has ruled the audiences of his native land
with the sway of an autocrat, till his genius has been al-
most deified, and his blemishes excused, and even imitated
with fondness. Nature has denied him nothing, while Art
has moulded his pliant qualities nearly to perfection. In
the prime of life, when his physical powers answered every
demand of an exuberant fancy, and the resources of soul
and voice were equal, we can conceive of that general en-
thusiasm, which recognised no fault in this King of Song;
and it is, perhaps, to the sacrifices that he has made for
unbounded popularity, that we may attribute the faults,
which have long displeased even those who loved him
best. Mr. Braham's arrival in this country was unexpect-
ed, and the announcement of his first appearance in this
city aroused an interest, which showed the extent of his
fame. Many will remember the thronged audience that


1841.] Music of the Winter.
541
greeted him, the mingled expressions of disappointment
and pleasure, which were called forth by his singing, and
the ignorant and unjust criticism which followed upon ex-
pectations unrealized. Very few remembered his history,
his age and services; and the novelty of his style, because
not immediately comprehended, was by many received with
coldness; but there were some, whose respect for the name
of Braham made them cautious of first impressions, and
upon these minds the beauties of his performance dawned
steadily and calmly. His voice is a pure tenor, possessing
fulness, richness, delicacy, pathos, and the most wonderful
flexibility. His compass was originally about nineteen
notes, and this, though slightly impaired, he seems to re-
tain ; while throughout its whole extent there is a remark-
able equality of tone and skilful blending of the registers,
that render every portion available. With all these natu-
ral qualifications of voice, Mr. Braham has the greatest
science, the most undoubted taste, and an experience which
enables him to surmount all the obstacles of his profession.
The versatility of his talents, and the ease with which he
has at any time been able to sacrifice his own preferences
to popular will, has subjected him to that harsh criticism,
which for many years has analyzed so closely the beauties
and defects of his style. Yet the steady splendor which
he has maintained in the face of disparagement, and the
strength of wing, which, after descending to pamper a vul-
gar taste, could bear him unrivalled into the regions of clas-
sic song, have given to Braham the reputation of the world's
greatest tenor. Although he is emphatically an English
singer, yet the traces of an Italian education are percepti-
ble, especially in the expression of sentiment and passion.
In this, we think, lies bis forte, but not to the exclusion of
other beauties. There is at times a purity of tone that ap-
pears almost unearthly ; a clear, transparent undulation,
that seems as free from physical agency as the sound of
dropping water; sometimes it breathes of tenderness, some-
times of grief; now it startles the ear like the note of a
clarion, and now we follow its dying cadence into the soft-
est whisper of pity or love. Remember the accents of de-
spair in the recitative of “ Jeptha's Vow," and the sweet-
ness of the prayer that follows it; the tremulant grief of
Samson for the loss of sight; the divine expression given


542
(April,
Music of the Winter.
to those passages of the Messiah, “Comfort ye my people,"
and “ Thy rebuke hath broken his heart;" the magnificent
execution of “ Thou shalt dash them in pieces," and we
must think of Braham as peerless and alone. Listen to his
voice in the gentle and captivating melody of Beethoven's
“ Adelaide ;" in the playfulness of his Scotch and Eng.
lish ballads ; in the thrilling strains of “ Marmion,” the
“ Death of Nelson,” Napoleon's Midnight Review," and
the fine nautical song, the “ Bay of Biscay," it is still
unrivalled, unsurpassed.
With the deepest enthusiasm for the singing of Braham,
we could not, if we would, esteem him faultless ; his de-
fects are too glaring to escape even the uncultivated ear;
they expose him to illiberal and ignorant criticism, to preju-
dice and neglect. They have become confirmed during a
long life of professional industry and exertion. For many,
an indulgent public are accountable; for others, his own
neglect, not ignorance, must stand rebuked. He is often
careless and loose in execution, displaying at times a redun-
dancy of ornament, which is uncalled for and unmeaning,
and displeases a severe taste, even when well performed.
His genius supports him equally in the purest orchestral
style, as in the most brilliant and meretricious composi-
tion; he is simple or ornate, chaste or unrefined, with the
audience before him; and displays a willingness to surren-
der his own knowledge of the beautiful, for the sake of in-
discriminate gratification. A frequent explosive and abrupt
manner of terminating a tone is one of his most unpleasant
defects, for the ear is startled and pained by being harshly
deserted ; and an incorrectness of tune, the most unpar-
donable fault in a singer, is by no means of rare occur-
rence.
Yet, with all that may be said in disparagement of Mr.
Braham, we believe him to have been the finest tenor of
the world ; and now that age has crept upon him, we would
view his failings with tenderness, for the sake of the glory
that has been ; and glean from the ruin the splendid relics
of the past. We must now estimate him by the power of
imagination, and fancy the noon-day brightness of that sun,
which is near its setting. There are many, who think he
has stayed too long; that he should have “rushed to his
burning bed ” with undimmed splendor, like that of tropic


1841.] Music of the Winter. : 543
eve. With such we cannot sympathize. We would
cherish to the last that genius, over the grave of which
ages will pass and bring no equal; and hang with rapture
over the last echo that returns the voice of Braham.
The opera has been maintained with credit by Mr. and
Mrs. Wood, and Brough. This trio have always been fa-
vorites with the Boston public, and their reception was
flattering. Mrs. Wood, we think, has improved in strength,
but lost somewhat in delicacy of expression ; her style is
now too florid, and at times, her singing is almost coarse.
Mr. Wood has gained much; and though by no means a
remarkable singer, exhibits much pathos and feeling in
the execution of passionate music. Mr. Brough, during
his whole engagement, disappointed those who had for-
merly commended him ; he was negligent and careless, and
seems to augur no farther excellence. Mr. Wood has
promised to return with a new selection of music, and re-
tire himself from the stage in favor of some more distin-
guished tenor. We wish that there were a more general
attendance upon operatic performances. A familiarity
with them gives discrimination to popular taste, and pre-
pares the ear to receive and appreciate more dignified and
elevated musical composition.
It is very evident, that, at the present time, the simplest
music is that which is the most kindly listened to; and for
this reason, as well as their freedom from pretension, the
Rainers have become favorites with the public. We
should like to hear them sing on the bosom of one of those
beautiful lakes in their native land, with a full moon above,
and the ripple below, where the simple harmony of their
quartette would be in keeping with the scene; in the con-
cert-room, there is a monotony and repetition in their mu-
sic, which soon becomes tiresome.
The winter has, of course, not passed, without one or
more visits from Mr. Russell. Under the auspices of this
distinguished man, a new class of songs has sprung to life,
which seems devoted to the romance of domestic antiqui-
ties, such as old nurse-lamps, old farm-gates, and old arm-
chairs. We were somewhat surprised at the versatility of
talent, that could descend from a theme so grand as the
“Skeptic,” (which, to say the least, contains some inter-
esting reminiscences,) to subjects so humble ; the step,


544
[April, 1841.
Farewell.
however, from the sublime to the ridiculous is but short,
and we doubt not these compositions will, like the Jew's
razors, answer the end for which they were created.
T.
FAREWELL!
And memories so blessed bore she hence
Of all she knew in those few earthly years
As were to her the lovely models, whence
To shape the hopes she formed for unknown spheres.
And gently then the spirit stole away,
Leaving the body in a quiet sleep,
As if 't were too much pain with living sense
To break a tie such precious years did keep;
As if it feared to trust the waking hour,
When that form, lovely as an angel's need,
Should question why the soul left such abode,
Or why with it to heaven it might not speed.
Still lies thy child with an unspotted brow,
Earth's dust is shaken from her young feet now,
And, raying light, she stands in Heaven's clear day,
Girt for an onward and victorious way;
Whom God hath housed wilt thou call back to brave
Anew those storms from which thou canst not save?














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