{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_36825/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_36825","id":"gutenberg_36825","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/36825","summary":null,"tags":["American essays -- 19th century","Category: Philosophy & Ethics"],"text":"</pre>\n\nE-text prepared by David Edwards, Carol Ann Brown, and the Online\nDistributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images\ngenerously made available by Internet Archive (http://www.archive.org)\n\n\n\nNote: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this\n      file which includes the original illustrations.\n      See 36825-h.htm or 36825-h.zip:\n      (https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/36825/pg36825-images.html)\n      or\n      (https://www.gutenberg.org/files/36825/36825-h.zip)\n\n\n      Images of the original pages are available through\n      Internet Archive. See\n      http://www.archive.org/details/tabletsamos00alcorich\n\n\n\n\n\nTABLETS\n\nby\n\nA. BRONSON ALCOTT\n\n\"For curious method expect none, essays for the most part\nnot being placed as at a feast, but placing themselves as at\nan ordinary.\"\n_Thomas Fuller._\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nBoston\nRoberts Brothers\n1868.\n\nEntered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1868, by\nA. Bronson Alcott,\nIn the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of\nMassachusetts.\n\nElectrotyped and Printed by\nAlfred Mudge & Son,\nNo. 34 School St., Boston.\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS.\n\n\n  BOOK I.--PRACTICAL.\n\n  I. THE GARDEN.                                PAGE.\n\n    1 Antiquity                                    5\n\n    2 Ornaments                                   11\n\n    3 Pleasures                                   14\n\n    4 Orchard                                     20\n\n    5 Sweet Herbs                                 25\n\n    6 Table Plants                                28\n\n    7 Rations                                     36\n\n    8 Economies                                   41\n\n    9 Rural Culture                               48\n\n\n  II. RECREATION.\n\n    1 The Fountains                               59\n\n    2 The Cheap Physician                         65\n\n\n  III. FELLOWSHIP.\n\n    1 Hospitality                                 69\n\n    2 Conversation                                75\n\n\n  IV. FRIENDSHIP.\n\n    1 Persons                                     81\n\n    2 Woman                                       88\n\n    3 Family                                      92\n\n    4 Children                                    95\n\n\n  V.  CULTURE.\n\n    1 Modern Teaching                            103\n\n    2 Socratic Dialectic                         108\n\n    3 Pythagorean Discipline                     113\n\n    4 Mother Tongue                              118\n\n\n  VI. BOOKS.                                     127\n\n\n  VII. COUNSELS.\n\n    1 Religious                                  139\n\n    2 Personal                                   145\n\n    3 Political                                  148\n\n    4 Soul's Errand                              151\n\n\n  BOOK II.--SPECULATIVE.\n\n  I. INSTRUMENTALITIES.\n\n    1 Tendencies                                 159\n\n    2 Method                                     162\n\n    3 Man                                        166\n\n\n  II. MIND.\n\n    1 Ideas                                      173\n\n    2 The Gifts                                  179\n\n    3 Person                                     181\n\n    4 Choice                                     184\n\n\n  III. GENESIS.\n\n    1 Vestiges                                   189\n\n    2 Serpent Symbol                             191\n\n    3 Embryons                                   193\n\n    4 Temperament                                195\n\n\n  IV. METAMORPHOSES.\n\n    1  Sleep                                     201\n\n    2  Reminiscence                              203\n\n    3  Immortality                               205\n\n\n\n\nTABLETS\n\n\n\n\nBOOK I\n\n  PRACTICAL\n\n    \"Philosophy, the formatrix of judgment and manners, has the\n     privilege of having a hand in everything.\"--MONTAIGNE.\n\n\n\n\nI.\n\nTHE GARDEN.\n\n    \"If Eden be on earth at all,\n    'Tis that which we the country call.\"\n                             HENRY VAUGHAN.\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration: Decorative banner of bird among grapes and leaves]\n\n\n\n\nTHE GARDEN\n\n\nI.--ANTIQUITY.\n\n\"I never had any desire so strong and so like to covetousness,\" says\nCowley, \"as that one which I have had always that I might be master at\nlast of a small house and ample garden, with very moderate conveniences\njoined to them, and there to dedicate the remainder of my life to the\nculture of them and the study of nature. Virgil's first wish was to be a\nwise man, the second to be a good husbandman. But since nature denies to\nmost men the capacity or appetite, and fortune allows but to very few\nthe opportunities or possibility of applying themselves wholly to\nwisdom, the best mixture of human affairs we can make, are the\nemployments of a country life. It is, as Columella calls it, the nearest\nneighbor or next in kindred to philosophy. And Varro says the principles\nof it are the same which Ennius made to be the principles of all nature;\nearth, water, air, and the sun. There is no other sort of life that\naffords so many branches of praise to a panegyrist; the utility of it to\na man's self, the usefulness or rather necessity of it to all the rest\nof mankind, the innocence, the pleasure, the antiquity, the dignity.\"\n\nThis wish of the poet's appears to be nearly universal. Almost every one\nis drawn to the country, and takes pleasure in rural pursuits. The\ncitizen hopes to become a countryman, and contrives to secure his\ncottage or villa, unless he fail by some reverse of fortune or of\ncharacter. 'Tis man's natural position, the Paradise designed for him,\nand wherein he is placed originally in the Sacred Books of the\ncultivated peoples; their first man being conceived a gardener and\ncountryman by inspiration as by choice.\n\nGardens and orchards plant themselves by sympathy about our dwellings,\nas if their seeds were preserved in us by inheritance. They distinguish\nMan properly from the forester and hunter. The country, as discriminated\nfrom the woods, is of man's creation. The savage has no country. Nor are\nfarms and shops, trade, cities, but civilization in passing and\nformation. Civilization begins with persons, ideas; the garden and\norchard showing the place of their occupants in the scale; these dotting\nthe earth with symbols of civility wherever they ornament its face. Thus\nby mingling his mind with nature, and so transforming the landscape into\nhis essence, Man generates the homestead, and opens a country to\ncivilization and the arts.\n\nIn like manner, are the woods meliorated and made ours. Melancholy and\nmorose, standing in their loneliness, we trim them into keeping with our\nwishes and so adopt them into our good graces, as ornaments of our\nestates, heraldries of our gentility.\n\nOur human history neither opens in forests nor in cities, but in gardens\nand orchards whose mythologies are woven into the faith of our race; the\npoets having made these their chosen themes from the beginning. And we\nturn, as with emotions of country and consanguinity to the classic\npictures of the Paradise, \"planted by the Lord God eastward in Eden, and\nwherein he put the man, whom he had formed to dress and keep it;\" where,\n\n  \"Out of the fertile ground he caused to grow\n  All trees of noblest kind for sight, smell, taste;\n  Groves whose rich trees wept odorous gums and balms,\n  Others whose fruit, burnished with golden rind, Hung amiable,--\n  Flowers of all hue, and without thorn the rose;\"--\n\nto this; or, of scarce inferior fame, to the gardens\nof the Hesperides with their golden apples;--or,\nto those other\n\n            \"----gardens feigned\n  Or of revived Adonis, or renowned Alcinous,\"\n\nwhereof Homer sings:\n\n  \"Without the hall and close upon the gate\n  A goodly orchard ground was situate\n  Of near ten acres, about which was led\n  A lofty quickset. In it flourished\n  High and broad fruit trees that pomegranates bore;\n  Sweet figs, pears, olives, and a number more\n  Most useful plants did there produce their store,\n  Whose fruits the hardest winter could not kill,\n  Nor hottest summers wither. There was still\n  Fruit in his proper season; all the year\n  Sweet zephyr breathed upon them blasts that were\n  Of varied tempers: these, he made to bear\n  Ripe fruits; these blossoms; pear grew after pear,\n  Apple succeeded apple, grape the grape,\n  Fig after fig; Time made never rape\n  Of any dainty there. A sprightly vine\n  Spread here her roots, whose fruit a hot sunshine\n  Made ripe betimes; there grew another green,\n  Here some were gathering; here some pressing seen;\n  A large allotted several each fruit had,\n  And all th' adorn'd grounds their appearance made\n  In flower and fruit.\"\n\nOr again to those preferred by the royal guest of Solomon above all\nother splendors of his court,\n\n  \"Though she on silver floors did tread,\n  With bright Assyrian carpets on them spread,\n      To hide the metal's poverty;\n  Though she looked up to roofs of gold,\n  And naught around her could behold\n    But silk and rich embroidery,\n    And Babylonian tapestry,\n    And wealthy Hiram's princely dye;\n  Tho' Ophir's starry stones met everywhere her eye,\n    Though she herself and her gay host were drest\n    With all the shining glories of the East,--\n    When lavish art her costly work had done,\n    The honor and the prize of bravery\n    Was by the garden from the palace won;\n    And every rose and lily there did stand\n    Better attired by nature's hand;\n  The case thus judged against the king you see,\n  By one that would not be so rich, though wiser far than he.\"\n\nSo the orchard of Academus suggests the ripest wisdom and most elegant\nlearning of accomplished Greece.\n\nThus we associate gardens and orchards with the perfect condition of\nmankind. Gardeners ourselves by birthright, we also mythologize and\nplant our Edens in the East of us, like our ancestors; the sacredness of\nearth and heaven still clinging to the tiller of the ground. Him we\nesteem the pattern man, the most favored of any. His labors have a\ncharming innocency. They yield the gains of a self-respect denied to\nother callings. His is an occupation friendly to every virtue; the\nfreest of any from covetousness and debasing cares. It is full of honest\nprofits, manly labors, and brings and administers all necessaries; gives\nthe largest leisure for study and recreation, while it answers most\ntenderly the hospitalities of friendship and the claims of home. The\ndelight of children, the pastime of woman, the privilege of the poor\nman, as it is the ornament of the gentleman, the praise of the scholar,\nthe security of the citizen, it places man in his truest relations to\nthe world in which he lives. And he who is insensible to these\npleasures, must lack some chord in the harp of humanity, worshipping, if\nhe worship, at some strange shrine.\n\n  Who loves a garden still his Eden keeps;\n  Perennial pleasures plants, and wholesome harvests reaps.\n\n\nII.--ORNAMENTS.\n\nIn laying out a garden there must be protection from the north winds,\nand if the hills are wooded thus much is gained for profit as for\nornament. Every homestead supposes a wood-lot and forest paths for\nwalking and meditation. So the garden claims some shading down from\npasture fields and the wilder scenery skirting it. The orchard is an\nimprovement on the garden, and holds a nobler relation to the house and\nits occupants. Without suitable ornaments and enclosures, these must be\nset to the side of the farm solely, not to the house, humanity, nor art.\nEyes and feet have their claims along with the hands upon the landscape,\nbeauty and convenience having one mind concerning the best ways of\ndealing with it. It is clear that art has an interest, and should have\nits hand, in a good well, wholesome cellar, as in the fertility of the\nsoil, the modesty of the grasses and shrubbery. Alleys are best\ndetermined by the nature of the grounds. They have a picturesque effect;\nso have gates, especially when they open into a wood, or are seen in\nperspective at the end of an avenue or a lane. Winding paths give\npleasing surprises, if accommodated to the grounds, take us by the most\nattractive route; slopes, swells, irregularities of surface, heightening\nthe pleasure attending the prospect. There are spots, too, that plead\nfor their clump of trees, for a single one, for an alcove, an arbor, a\nconservatory, for a fence,--structure of some sort, be it ever so\nplain--and these once there, please the eye as if grown there.\n\nArbors are especially ornamental. No country residence is furnished\nwithout the embellishment of a summer-house. It may be constructed of\nthe simplest stuff grown near at hand in the woods. For one shall not\nrange far in that direction without falling soon upon every curve in the\ngeometry of beauty, as if nature designing to surprise him anticipated\nhis coming, and had grown his materials in the underwood along the lines\nespecially of ancient fence rows, where young pines bent by the lopping\nof the axe, snow falls, or other accident, in seeking to recover their\nrectitude, describe every graceful form of curve or spiral suited to his\nrustic works. These may be combined in ways wonderfully varied; and the\npleasure attending the working them into a shapely whole, has charms\nakin to the composing of poems and pictures. There is a delight, too, in\nsurprising these stags of the woods in their coverts, of which only\nartists can speak.\n\n  Neath hemlocks dark and whispering pines,\n  Wandering he loiters curiously,\n  The forest Muse her searching sense combines\n  To range the shades their cunning curves to see--\n  Brackets grotesque, strange gnarled things,\n  Wreathed rails and balusters in twisted pairs,\n  Rhyming their rival coils for sportful stairs;\n  Scrolls, antlers, volutes--full-armed he brings\n  His fagot sheaf of spoils, and binds;\n  While frolic fancy sylvan serpents finds,\n  And Druid lyres for poet's pleasance strings.\n\nThen for rainy days, one has the choice of books, pen, or handicraft, to\nvary his pleasures. There is a charm in using tools to him who has\ncunning in his hands for converting woods to ornamental uses,--the\nsimplest, roughest sticks even,--in setting trellises, hurdles,\nespaliers for vines,\n\n      \"----auxiliary poles for hops,\n  Ascending spiral, ranged in meet array;\"\n\nin making or mending articles and implements of any kind, for house or\ngrounds, to be objects of interest whenever he views them afterwards.\n\nThe eyes have a property in things and territories not named in any\ntitle deeds, and are the owners of our choicest possessions. Nor do we\ndwell in this emblematic world, and call it ours, any part of it,\nwithout using them: that is ours which they have assisted the hands in\ncreating. Nature sketches rudely the outlines of her plans on the\nlandscape; 'tis the artist's privilege to fill out and finish these\ndraughts, improving upon her suggestions. Nor is there a spot which does\nnot kindly take ornament, as if its canvas were spread awaiting the\nfinishing touches. And had he a thousand hands, uninterrupted leisure,\nthe taste and genius, what pleasure were comparable to that of devoting\nthem to drawing lines thereon which shall survive him, to enrich every\neye beholding them, though it were only in passing! So a good man\nimpresses his image on the landscape he improves, and imparts qualities\nthat perpetuate its occupant to after times.\n\n\nIII.--PLEASURES.\n\n  \"Days may conclude with nights, and suns may rest\n    As dead within the west,\n  Yet the next morn regilds the fragrant east.\"\n\nI know not how it is with others, to me the spring's invitations are\nirresistible. I may be scholarly inclined, and my tasks indoors\ndelightful, yet my garden claims me, monopolizing all my morning hours;\nand I know for me has come the season's summons which I shall not set\naside: no, not for studies nor hospitalities which become rivals for my\ntime and attentions. My garden waits; is the civiller host, the better\nentertainer. Then I have a religion in this business, and duties must\nwaive compliments. My tasks are not postponable during the summer days;\nif called away from these engagements, I shall first take counsel of my\nplants for leave of absence, with intent of hastening back.\nImportunities were impertinent while the spell is on me. Would the sun\nbut shine all night long for my work to continue! Sure of gathering the\nbetter crop, I bend to my task, foreseeing the avails of leisure coming\nin at the close of my autumn rounds.\n\n    \"Me, let my poverty to ease resign\n  When my bright hearth reflects its blazing cheer,\n    In season let me plant the pliant vine,\n  And, with light hand, my swelling apples rear.\"\n\nSuch toils are wholesome. One cannot afford to dispense with their\nincome of vigor. Then they fill the days with varied business, the mind\ngliding from head to hands, from hands to head, in pleasing interludes,\nto pour for him so deep a draught of Lethe, and so refreshing, that the\nmorning breaks only to release the sleeper to begin anew his labors with\nthe old enthusiasm. Even the stiffness of his fatigues promotes\nrectitude and probity of carriage: his hearty affection for his pursuit,\nshedding lustre on all he takes in hand. His garden is ever charming,\nalways opportune. He walks there at all hours, at sunrise, noon,\nnightfall, finding more than he sought in it, each successive visit\nbeing as new as the first.\n\n\"All living things,\" says the Bhagavad Gita, \"are generated from the\nbread they eat; bread is generated from rain, rain from divine worship,\nand divine worship from good works.\" A creed dealing thus\nsupersensibly with the elements must have fertilizing properties, and\nbring the gardener to his task little tinctured by noxious notions of\nany kind. If he fall short of being the reverent naturalist, the devout\ndivine, surrounded thus by shapes of skill, types of beauty, tokens of\ndesign, every hue in the chromatic, every device in the symbolic gamut,\nI see not what shall make him these; nor why Newton, Goethe, Boehme,\nshould have published their discoveries for his benefit; why it should\noccur to him to use his eyes at all when he looks through this glass,\nregards these signatures, views these blooms, these clasping tendrils,\nlaughing leaves, Tyrian draperies, the sympathies of his plants and\ntrees with the weather, their sleep, their thirst for the mists, and\nworship of the East; as if\n\n    Moistures their mothers were,\n    Their fathers flames,\n\nand earth were virtually \"wife of heaven,\" as Homer says.\n\nHis is no mere cloud tillage, nor unproductive earth culture. The\nfirmament overhead reflects its lustre in his mind, the mists ascend\nthere from the watered ground beneath, and he sows the mingled sense and\nsunshine over his fields, enriching both them and himself. He takes\naccount of the double harvest of profits: both rewarding him for his\npleasures and painstakings. His faithful counsellor and genial moralist,\nthe ground, holds strict terms with him; nor weeds nor nettles have\ntales to tell, since they cannot thrive under his shadow. He minds his\nproper affairs; is industrious, punctual; home keeper, and time keeper\nno less, taking his tasks diligently as they rise. His work begins with\nthe spring, and continues till winter; nor has he many spare minutes;\nthe slipping away of twelve hours being the loss of a twelvemonth,\nunless he do that instantly which ought to be done at the moment.\n\nTaking timely counsel of his experience, he adapts his labors to the\nseasons as they pass; has his eye on sun and soil at once. Nor shall I\nthink the less of his piety, if he be touched a little with that amiable\nsuperstition concerning the planetary influences; since it ill becomes\nhim to hold lightly any faith that serves to brighten his affections and\nestablish sweet relationships between himself and natural things. In\nsympathy with earth and heaven, these conspire for his benefit: all\nhelping to fructify and ripen his crops. It is unlawful to regard them\nas enemies of human tillage. Gracefully the seasons come round for\nweaving into his fancy, if not his faith, the old world's ritual as a\nreligion of engagements. He is an ephemeris and weather-glass. He has\nhis signs too, and aspects, his seasons, periods and stints. The months\nsway him. What if he sympathize with the year as it rolls; take\nequinoxially his March and September? Will his intermediate times be the\nless genial in consequence, or his April fail of distilling mystic moods\nwith her fertilizing rains? His winter may come hoar with ideas, and\nbrown October shall be his golden age of orchards and their ambrosia.\nAnd as June best displays the garden's freshness, so October celebrates\nthe orchard's opulence, to crown the gardener for his labors. The golden\ndays running fast and full have not run to waste. Orchards and gardens\nbloom again. He harvests the richer crop these have ripened; bright\neffluences of the stars, for the feast of thought and the flow of\ndiscourse. Having thus \"gathered the first roses of spring and the last\napples of autumn,\" he is ready to dispute felicity with the happiest man\nliving, and to chant his paean of praise for his prosperity:--\n\n  The earth is mine and mine the sheaves,\n  I'll harvest all her bounty leaves,\n  Nor stinted store she deals to me,\n  Gives all she has, and gives it free,\n  Since from myself I cannot stir\n  But I become her pensioner:\n  Sun, cloud, flame, atom, ether, sea,\n  Beauteous she buildeth into me,\n  Seasons my frame with flowing sense,\n  Insinuates intelligence;\n  Feeds me and fills with sweet contents,\n  Deals duteously her elements:\n  Dawn, day, the noon, the sunset clear,\n  Delight my eye; winds, woods, my ear,\n  While apple, melon, strawberry, peach,\n  She plants and puts within my reach;\n  Regales with all the garden grows,\n  Whate'er the orchard buds and blows;\n  Lifts o'er my head her sylvan screens,\n  And sows my slopes with evergreens,\n  While odorous roses, mint, and thyme,\n  Steep soul and sense in softer clime;\n  Preserves me when lapsed memory slips\n  Fading in sleep's apocalypse;\n  Surprising tasks and leisures sends,\n  And crowns herself to give me friends;\n  The morn's elixir pours for me,\n  And brims my brain with ecstasy.\n\n  Earth all is mine and mine the sheaves,\n  I harvest all her Planter leaves.\n\n\nIV.--THE ORCHARD.\n\nOrchards are even more personal in their charms than gardens, as they\nare more nearly human creations. Ornaments of the homestead, they\nsubordinate other features of it; and such is their sway over the\nlandscape that house and owner appear accidents without them. So men\ndelight to build in an ancient orchard, when so fortunate as to possess\none, that they may live in the beauty of its surroundings. Orchards are\namong the most coveted possessions; trees of ancient standing, and\nvines, being firm friends and royal neighbors forever. The profits, too,\nare as wonderful as their longevity. And if antiquity can add any worth\nto a thing, what possession has a man more noble than these? so unlike\nmost others, which are best at first and grow worse till worth nothing;\nwhile fruit-trees and vines increase in worth and goodness for ages. An\norchard in bloom is one of the most pleasing sights the eye beholds; as\nif the firmament had stooped to the tree-tops and touched every twig\nwith spangles, and man had mingled his essence with the seasons, in its\nflushing tokens. And how rich the spectacle at the autumnal harvest:\n\n  \"Behold the bending boughs, with store of fruit they tear,\n  And what they have brought forth, for weight, they scarce can bear.\"\n\nApples are general favorites. Every eye covets, every hand reaches to\nthem. It is a noble fruit: the friend of immortality, its virtues blush\nto be tasted. Every Muse delights in it, as its mythology shows, from\nthe gardens of the Hesperides to the orchard of Plato. A basket of\npearmains, golden russets, or any of the choice kinds, standing in\nsight, shall perfume the scholar's composition as it refreshes his\ngenius. He may snatch wildness from the woods, get shrewdness from\ncities, learning from libraries and universities, compliments from\ncourts. But for subtlety of thought, for sovereign sense, for color, the\ngraces of diction and behavior, he best betakes himself\n\n  \"Where on all sides the apples scattered lie,\n  Each under its own tree.\"\n\nOr to his bins, best, Columella says, when beechen chests, such as\nsenators' and judges' robes were laid in in his day; these to be \"placed\nin a dry place, free from frosts, where neither smoke, nor any thing\nnoisome may come; the fruit spread on sawdust, and so arranged that the\nfleurets, or blossom ends, may look downwards, and the pedicles, or\nstalks, upwards, after the same manner as it grew upon the tree; and so\nas not to touch one another. And better if gathered a little green; the\nlids of the chests covering them close.\"\n\nThe ancient rustic authors give very little information concerning the\napples and pears of their time, thinking them too well known to be\ndescribed, as an author writing of our time might of ours. Most of them\nhad their names from men who brought them into Italy and there\ncultivated them, and, \"by so small a matter,\" says Pliny, \"have rendered\ntheir names immortal.\"\n\nPhillips thus describes the favorites of his time, most of which we find\nin our own orchards, and still in good repute:--\n\n  \"Now turn thine eye to view Alcinous' groves,\n  The pride of the Phoeacian isle, from whence,\n  Sailing the spaces of the boundless deep,\n  To Ariconian precious fruits arrived:--\n  The pippin burnished o'er with gold, the moyle\n  Of sweetest honied taste, the fair pearmain,\n  Tempered, like comeliest nymph, with red and white;\n  Nor does the Eliot least deserve thy care,\n  Nor John's apple, whose withered rind, intrenched\n  With many a furrow, aptly represents\n  Decrepit age; nor that from Harvey named,\n  Quick relishing. Why should we sing the thrift,\n  Codling, or Pomroy, or of pimpled coat\n  The russet; the red-streak, that once\n  Was of the sylvan kind, uncivilized,\n  Of no regard, till Scudamore's skilful hand\n  Improved her, and by courtly discipline\n  Taught her the savage nature to forget:\n  Let every tree in every garden own\n  The red-streak as supreme, whose pulpous fruit\n  With gold irradiate, and vermilion spires,\n  Tempting, not fatal, as the birth of that\n  Primeval interdicted plant, that won\n  Fond Eve, in hapless hour, to taste and die.\"\n\nA quaint old Englishman, writing about orchards, quotes the proverb: \"It\nwill beggar a doctor to live where orchards thrive.\" So Cowley writes:--\n\n  \"Nor does this happy place only dispense\n  Its various pleasures to the sense,\n  Here health itself doth live,\n  That salt of life which doth to all a relish give;\n  Its standing pleasure and intrinsic wealth,\n  The body's virtue, and the soul's good fortune, health.\n  The tree of life when it in Eden stood,\n  Did its immortal head to heaven rear;\n  It lasted a tall cedar till the flood,\n  Now a small thorny shrub it doth appear,\n  Nor will it thrive too everywhere;\n  It always here is freshest seen,\n  'Tis only here an evergreen:\n  If, through the strong and beauteous fence\n  Of temperance and innocence,\n  And wholesome labors and a quiet mind,\n  Diseases passage find,\n  They must fight for it, and dispute it hard\n  Before they can prevail;\n  Scarce any plant is growing here,\n  Which against death some weapon does not bear:\n  Let cities boast that they provide\n  For life the ornaments of pride;\n  But 'tis the country and the field\n  That furnish it with staff and shield.\"\n\nNor can we spare his praises of budding and grafting from our account:--\n\n  \"We nowhere art do so triumphant see,\n  As when it grafts or buds a tree;\n  In other things we count it to excel\n  If it a docile scholar can appear\n  To nature, and but imitates her well:\n  It overrules and is her master here:\n  It imitates her Maker's power divine,\n  And changes her sometimes, and sometimes does refine;\n  It does like grace, the fallen tree restore\n  To its blest state of Paradise before;\n  Who would not joy to see his conquering hand\n  O'er all the vegetable world command,\n  And the wild giants of the wood, receive\n  What laws he's pleased to give?\n  He bids the ill-natured crab produce\n  The gentle apple's winy juice,\n  The golden fruit that worthy is\n  Of Galatea's purple kiss;\n  He does the savage hawthorn teach\n  To bear the medlar and the pear;\n  He bids the rustic plum to rear\n  A noble trunk and be a peach;\n  Even Daphne's coyness he does mock,\n  And weds the cherry to her stock,\n  Though she refused Apollo's suit,\n  Even she, that chaste and virgin tree,\n  Now wonders at herself to see\n  That she's a mother made, and blushes in her fruit.\"\n\n\nV.--SWEET HERBS.\n\n  \"Thick growing thyme, and roses wet with dew,\n  Are sacred to the sisterhood divine.\"\n\nAs orchards to man, so are flowers and herbs to women. Indeed the garden\nappears celibate, as does the house, without womanly hands to plant and\ncare for it. Here she is in place,--suggests lovely images of her\npersonal accomplishments, as if civility were first conceived in such\ncares, and retired unwillingly, even to houses and chambers; something\nbeing taken from their elegancy and her nobleness by an undue absorption\nof her thoughts in household affairs. But there is a fitness in her\nassociation with flowers and sweet herbs, as with social hospitalities,\nshowing her affinities with the magical and medical, as if she were the\nplant All-Heal, and mother of comforts and spices. Once the herb garden\nwas a necessary part of every homestead; every country house had one\nwell stocked, and there was a matron inside skilled in their secret\nvirtues, having the knowledge of how her\n\n  \"Herbs gladly cure our flesh, because that they\n  Have their acquaintance there,\"\n\nher memory running back to the old country from whence they first came,\nand of which they retained the fragrance. Are not their names\nrefreshing? with the superstitions concerning the sign under which they\nwere to be gathered, the quaint spellings;--mint, roses, fennel,\ncoriander, sweet-cicely, celandine, summer savory, smellage, rosemary,\ndill, caraway, lavender, tanzy, thyme, balm, myrrh; these and many more,\nand all good for many an ail; sage, too, sovereign sage, best of\nall--excellent for longevity--of which to-day's stock seems running\nlow,--for\n\n  \"Why should man die? so doth the sentence say,\n  When sage grows in his garden day by day?\"\n\nThis persuasion that the things near us, and under our feet, stand in\nthat relationship from some natural affinity they have to our welfare,\nappears to be most firmly rooted with respect to the medical herbs,\nwhether growing wild in the fields and woods, or about the old\nhomesteads, though the names of most of them are now forgotten. A slight\nreference to the herbals and receipt books of the last century would\nshow the good uses to which they were applied, as that the virtues of\ncommon sense are also disowned, and oftentimes trodden under foot.\nCertainly, they are less esteemed than formerly, being superseded, for\nthe most part, by drugs less efficacious because less related\ngeographically to our flesh, and not finding acquaintance therewith.\nDoubtless many superstitions were cherished about them in ancient heads,\nyet all helpful to the cure. The sweet fennel had its place in the rural\ngarden, and was valued, not as a spice merely, but as a sacred seed,\nassociated with worship, sprigs of it, as of caraway and dill, being\ntaken to the pews, for appetizing the service. So the balm and rue had\ntheir sacredness. Pliny commends these natives to every housekeeper. \"A\ngood housewife,\" he says, \"goes to her herb garden, instead of a spice\nshop, for seasonings, and thus preserves the health of her family, by\nsaving her purse.\" So the poet sends her there, too, for spouse-keeping.\n\n  \"When Venus would her dear Ascanius keep,\n  A prisoner in the downy bands of sleep,\n  She odorous herbs and flowers beneath him spread,\n  As the most soft and sweetest bed,\n  Not her own lap would more have charmed his head.\"\n\n\nVI.--TABLE PLANTS.\n\nThe last two centuries have added several plants of eminent virtues to\nthe products of the orchard and garden. The cucumber, the potato, sweet\ncorn, the melon, are the principal acquisitions, especially the last\nnamed, for that line of Marvell's--\n\n  \"Stumbling on melons as I pass,\"\n\nmust be taken rhetorically, since Evelyn informs us, this fruit had but\njust been introduced into England from Spain, in the poet's time, and\nthe others but a little before. He says, \"I myself remember when an\nordinary melon would have sold for five or six shillings. 'Tis a fruit\nnot only superior to all of the gourd kind, but paragon with the noblest\nof the garden.\" And of the cucumber, \"This fruit, now so universally\neaten, was accounted little better than poison within my memory.\"\nColumella shows some good ones growing in the Roman gardens:--\n\n  \"The crooked cucumber, the pregnant gourd,\n  Sometimes from arbors pendant, and sometimes\n  Snake-like, through the cold shades of grass they creep,\n  And from the summer's sun a shelter seek.\"\n\nWhittier has sung our sweet corn, as Marvell the melon for Old England.\nBut Raleigh declined that service for his new Roanoke plant, the potato,\nleaving it for the books to give this prose version instead:--\"Sir\nWalter gave some samples of it to his gardener as a fine fruit from\nVirginia, desiring him to plant them. The roots flowered in August, and\nin September produced the fruit; but the berries were so different from\nwhat the gardener expected, that, in ill-humor, he carried them to his\nmaster, asking, if this was the fine fruit which he had praised so\nhighly? Sir Walter either was, or pretended to be ignorant of the\nmatter, and desired the gardener, since that was the case, to dig up the\nweed and throw it away.\" It appears, however, that the gardener, who was\nan Irishman, and had the best of rights to christen it, soon returned\nwith the good parcel of potatoes, from whose thrift his own country was\nsupplied, and in time distributed so widely as almost to supersede the\nancient turnips, once the favorite of husbandmen; the more religious of\nthem, Columella tells us, in his time, \"sprinkling the seed when they\nsowed it as if they meant to supply the King, and his subjects also.\"\n\nThe turnip and the bean--this last held sacred by the Greeks, and which\nPythagoras honored with a symbol--have lost much of the solid repute\nthey once enjoyed here in New England and elsewhere. Good citizens and\nloyal republicans were fed chiefly from their stanch virtues, knowing\nhow to prize their independence, and to secure it to their descendants.\nThe great staples were grown on their farms and manufactured into\nsubstantial comforts without loss of self-respect. Bread was home-grown,\nkneaded of fresh flour, ground in the neighborhood; the grain sown in\nhope, their\n\n  \"Six months' sunshine bound in sheaves,\"\n\nbeing brought home in thankfulness. The grain harvesting was the pride\nand praise of the country round, as good to be sung as the Syrian\npastoral of Ruth gleaning in the fields of Boaz. But this, and other\ncustoms, introduced with the cultivation of wheat into Britain, and\nbrought here by the Puritan planters, are fast fading from memory, and\nthe coming generation will need commentaries on Tusser and Thomson to\nmake plain our reaping-idyl.\n\n          As kindles now the blazing East\n          Afield I haste,\n          Eager the sickle's feat to play,\n  Sweeping along the stalked fields my widening way;\n          Vexing the eared spires,\n          Pricked with desires,\n  My golden gavels on the stubble spend,\n  And to the fair achievement every member lend,\n  The laughing breeze my colleague in my forte,\n  While the grave sun beams zealous on the sport.\n  Nor doth penurious gain famish my fist,\n  As earing fast it sheds abundant grist,\n  And gleaning damsels kerchief all they list,--\n  Kindly conceive me friendliest of peers,\n  And glad my brows adorn with yellow ears;\n  The wide-spread field, its sheafed hoard,\n  The lively symbol of their liberal Lord,\n  Whose plenteous crop, and ripe supply\n  Areaped is of every hand and eye--\n  An opulent shock for poor humanity.\n\nTheir garments, too, were home-spun. Every house, the scene of sprightly\nindustry, was Homeric as were the employments in the garden of Alcinous,\n\n  \"Where to encounter feast with housewifery,\n  In one room, numerous women did apply\n  Their several tasks; some apple-colored corn\n  Ground in fair querns, and some did spindles turn;\n  Some work in looms; no hand least rest receives,\n  But all have motion apt as aspen leaves;\n  And from the weeds they wove, so fast they laid\n  And so thick thrust together thread by thread,\n  That the oil of which the wool had drank its fill,\n  Did with his moisture in bright dews distil.\"\n\nIt was plain wool and flax which they spun and wove thus innocently, nor\nsuspected the web of sophistries that was to be twisted and coiled about\nthe countries' liberties from a coming rival. \"The weed which, planted\nlong ago by the kings of Tyre, made their city a great nation, their\nmerchantmen princes, and spread the Tyrian dye throughout the world; of\nwhich Solomon obtained a branch, and made his little kingdom the\nadmiration of surrounding nations; of which Alexander sowed the seed in\nthe city to which he gave his name, and Constantine transplanted to\nConstantinople; which the first Edward sowed on the banks of the Thames,\nand Elizabeth lived to see blossom through the nourishment which her\nenlightened mind procured, not only from the original soil of the Levant\nbut from the eastern and newly discovered western world, as well as from\nthe North,\"--this famous plant, thus cherished by kings, has now become\nKING, and wields its sceptre over the most cultivated and prosperous\nnations of the earth; its history for the last half century being more\nclosely woven with civilization, than perhaps any other commodity known\nto commerce. And whether it shall be woven into robes of coronation or\nthe shroud of freedom, for the freest of Republics, the fortunes of\nraces, the present moment is determining.\n\nLettuce has always been loyal. Herodotus tells us that it was served at\nroyal tables some centuries before the Christian era, and one of the\nRoman families ennobled its name with that of Lactucinu. So spinach,\nasparagus and celery have been held in high repute among the eastern\nnations, as with us. And the parable of the mustard seed shows that\nplant was known in Christ's time. The Greeks are said to have esteemed\nradishes so highly that, in offering oblations to Apollo, they presented\nthem in beaten gold. And the Emperor Tiberius held parsnips in such high\nrepute that he had them brought annually from the Rhine for his table.\nThe beet is still prized, but the carrot has lost the reputation it had\nin Queen Elizabeth's time, the leaves being used in the head-dresses of\nthe ladies of her court, from whence the epithet applied to the hair is\nderived.\n\nPeas had scarcely made their appearance at the tables of the court of\nElizabeth, \"being very rare,\" Fuller says, \"in the early part of her\nreign, and seldom seen except they were brought from Holland, and these\nwere dainties for ladies, they came so far and cost so dear.\" Nor did\nthe currant appear much earlier in European gardens, coming first under\nthe name of the Corinthian grape: Evelyn calls the berries Corinths. So\nthe damson took its name from Damascus; the cherry from Cerasus, a city\nof Pontus; and the peach from Persia. The quince, first known as the\nCydonian apple, was dedicated to the goddess of love; and pears, like\napples, are from Paradise.\n\nThe apple is the representative fruit, and owes most to culture in its\nancient varieties of quince, pear, pomegranate, citron, peach; as it\ncomprehended all originally. Of these, pears and peaches have partaken\nmore largely of man's essence, and may be called creations of his, being\ncivilized in the measure he is himself; as are the apple and the grape.\nThese last are more generally diffused over the earth, and their history\nembraces that of the origin and progress of mankind, the apple being\ncoeval with man; Eve's apple preserving the traditions of his earliest\nexperiences, and the grape appears in connection with him not long after\nhis story comes into clearness from the dimness of the past.\n\nFruits have the honor of being most widely diffused geographically,\ngrown with the kindliest care, and of being first used by man as food.\nThey still enter largely into the regimen of the cultivated nations, and\nare the fairest of civilizers; like Orpheus, they tame the human\npassions to consonance and harmony by their lyric influence. The use of\nthem is of that universal importance that we cannot subsist in any\nplenty or elegance without them. And everywhere beside the cultivated\nman grows the orchard, to intimate his refinement in those excellences\nmost befitting his race. The Romans designated the union of all the\nvirtues in the word we render fruit; and bread comes from Pan, the\nrepresentative of Nature, whose stores we gather for our common\nsustenance in our pantries. Biography shows that fruit has been the\npreferred food of the most illuminated persons of past times, and of\nmany of the ablest. It is friendly to the human constitution, and has\nbeen made classic by the pens of poets who have celebrated its beauty\nand excellence.\n\n\nVII.--RATIONS.\n\nThe food of a people may be taken as a natural gauge of their civility.\nIn any scale of the relative virtues of plants, fruits take their place\nat the top, the grains next, then the herbs, last and lowest the roots.\nThe rule seems this:\n\n_Whatever grows above ground, and tempered in the solar ray, is most\nfriendly to the strength, genius and beauty proper to man._\n\nThe poet has intimated the law:\n\n  \"Plants in the root with earth do most comply,\n  Their leaves with water and humidity;\n  The flowers to air draw near and subtilty,\n  And seeds a kindred fire have with the sky.\"\n\nSo the ancient doctrine affirms that the originals of all bodies are to\nbe found in their food, every living creature representing its root and\nfeeding upon its mother; and that from the food chosen, is derived the\nspirit and complexion of each; persons, plants, animals, being tempered\nof earth or sun, according to their likings.\n\n    Apollo feeds his fair ones, Ceres hers,\n  Pomona, Pan, dun Jove, and Luna pale;\n  So Nox her olives, so swarth Niobe.\n\nIt was the doctrine of the Samian Sage, that whatsoever food obstructs\ndivination, is prejudicial to purity and chastity of mind and body, to\ntemperance, health, sweetness of disposition, suavity of manners, grace\nof form, and dignity of carriage, should be shunned. Especially should\nthose who would apprehend the deepest wisdom and preserve through life\nthe relish for elegant studies and pursuits, abstain from flesh,\ncherishing the justice which animals claim at man's hands, nor\nslaughtering them for food nor profit. And, anciently, there existed\nwhat is called the Orphic Life, men keeping fast to all things without\nlife, and abstaining wholly from those that had.\n\nAnd, aside from all considerations of humanity for the animals, genius\nand grace alike enjoin abstinence from every indulgence that impairs the\nbeauty and order of things. Our instincts instruct us to protect, to\ntame and transform, as far as may be, the animals we domesticate into\nthe image of gentleness and humanity, and that these traits in ourselves\nare impaired by converting their flesh into ours. Nor do any pleas of\nnecessity avail. Since the experience of large classes of mankind in\ndifferent climates shows conclusively that health, strength, beauty,\nagility, sprightliness, longevity, the graces and attainments\nappertaining to body and mind, are insured, if not best promoted, by\nabstinence from animal food. Science, moreover, favors this experience,\nsince it teaches that man extracts his bodily nourishment mediately or\nimmediately from the vegetable kingdom, and thus lives at the cost of\nthe atmosphere, needing not the interfusion of the spirit of beasts into\nhis system to animalize and sustain him. \"He feeds on air alone, springs\nfrom it, and returns to it again.\"\n\nA purer civilization than ours can yet claim to be, is to inspire the\ngenius of mankind with the skill to deal dutifully with soils and souls,\nexalt agriculture and manculture into a religion of art; the freer\ninterchange of commodities which the current world-wide intercourse\npromotes, spread a more various, wholesome, classic table, whereby the\nrace shall be refined of traits reminding too plainly of barbarism and\nthe beast. \"Ye desire from the gods excellent health and a beautiful old\nage, but your table opposes itself, since it fetters the hands of\nZeus.\"[A]\n\n     [Footnote A: Grillis having been transformed from a beast\n     into a man, used to discourse with his table companions,\n     about how much better he fed while in that state than his\n     present one, since he then took instinctively what was best\n     for him, avoiding what was hurtful; but now, he said, though\n     endowed with reason and natural knowledge to guide him in\n     the selection, he yet seemed to have fallen below the beast\n     he was, since he found he liked what did not like him, and\n     took it, moreover, without shame.]\n\n      \"Time may come when man\n  With angels may participate and find\n  No inconvenient diet, no too light fare,\n  And, from these corporal nutriments, perhaps,\n  Their bodies may at last turn all to Spirit\n  Improved by tract of time, and winged ascend\n  Ethereal as they; or may at choice\n  Here, or in heavenly Paradises, dwell.\"\n\nAn elegant abstinence is complimentary to any one, as, fed from the\nvirgin essences of the season, his genius, dispositions, tastes, have no\nshame to blush for, and modestly claim the honor of being well bred. And\none's table, like Apelles', may be fitly pictured with the beauty of\nsobriety on the one side, the deformity of excess on the other, the\nfeast substantial as it is lyrical, praising itself and those who\npartake; and his guests as ready to compliment him, as Timotheus did\nPlato, when he said: \"They who dine with the philosopher never complain\nthe next morning.\"\n\n\n  THE SEER'S RATIONS.\n\n  Takes sunbeams, spring waters,\n  Earth's juices, meads' creams,\n  Bathes in floods of sweet ethers,\n  Comes baptized from the streams;\n  Guest of Him, the sweet-lipp'd,\n  The Dreamer's quaint dreams.\n\n  Mingles morals idyllic\n  With Samian fable,\n  Sage seasoned from cruets,\n  Of Plutarch's chaste table.\n\n  Pledges Zeus, Zoroaster,\n  Tastes Cana's glad cheer,\n  Suns, globes, on his trencher,\n  The elements there.\n\n  Bowls of sunrise for breakfast\n  Brimful of the East,\n  Foaming flagons of frolic\n  His evening's gay feast.\n\n  Sov'reign solids of nature,\n  Solar seeds of the sphere,\n  Olympian viand\n  Surprising as rare.\n\n  Thus baiting his genius,\n  His wonderful word\n  Brings poets and sibyls\n  To sup at his board.\n\n  Feeds thus and thus fares he,\n  Speeds thus and thus cares he,\n  Thus faces and graces\n  Life's long euthanasies,\n\n  His gifts unabated,\n  Transfigured, translated--\n  The idealist prudent,\n  Saint, poet, priest, student,\n  Philosopher, he.\n\n\nVIII.--ECONOMIES.\n\n    \"----Much will always wanting be\n  To him who much desires. Thrice happy he\n  To whom the indulgency of heaven,\n  With sparing hand, but just enough has given.\"\n\nLife, when hospitably taken, is a simple affair. Very little suffices to\nenrich us. Being, a fountain and fireside, a web of cloth, a garden, a\nfew friends, and good books, a chosen task, health and peace of\nmind--these are a competent estate, embracing all we need.\n\n  \"Like to one's fortune should be his expense,\n  Men's fortunes rightly held in reverence.\"\n\nThe country opens the best advantages for these enjoyments. And where\none has the privilege of choosing for himself, he prefers the scope for\nseclusion and society that a homestead implies. For his human\nsatisfactions, he draws upon his dispositions and gifts. His appetites\nhe willingly digs for, nor cares to cherish any that he is ashamed to\nown. For nobler pleasures he delights to climb. His best estate is in\nhimself. He needs little beside. With good sense for his main portion to\nmake the most of that little, he may well consider Hesiod's opinion of\nweight:\n\n  \"The half is better far than whole.\"\n\nIf his house is an ancient one, or ancestral, by so much the stronger\nare the ties that bind his affections to it; especially if it stand in\nan orchard, and have a good garden. Even if inconvenient in some\nrespects, he will hesitate about pulling it down in hopes of pleasing\nhimself better in a new one. The genius that repairs an old house\nsuccessfully may fail in building another. Besides, there were many\ncomforts provided for by our ancestors, who were old Englishmen even\nhere in New England, and knew well what a house was built for, and they\nbuilt for that, against any odds of counsel or expense. Then 'tis fatal\nto take time out of a building, which so consecrates it.\n\nAn old house, well built, pleases more with the repairs rendered\nnecessary than a costlier new one. There are good points about it which\nhave been proved by a century or two, and these may be adopted as parts\nfor preserving, while any additions may be made for holding the whole in\nkeeping with the orignal design, or as improvements on it. Perhaps there\nare snug recesses, and window-seats, spacious entries, hospitable\nstairways, wainscoting, finished summers running across the ceilings, a\ndry cellar, a good well, fence rows in natural places, shrubbery, which\nif not well set can be reset in the grounds; an orchard and garden whose\nmould is infused with the genius of years and humanized for culture.\nThen the tenement has its genealogy, and belongs to the race who have\nbuilt into it a history. Trees, too, venerable with age it has, or it\ncould not have been the residence of gentlemen. Outbuildings of any\nkind, useful or ornamental, have found their proper sites, and meet the\neye as if they had always been there. It takes some generations to\ncomplete and harmonize any place with the laws of beauty, as these best\nhonor themselves in that fairest of structures, a human mansion; which,\nnext to its occupant, is the noblest symbol of the mind that art can\nrender to the senses. One may spend largely upon it, if he have not\nousted his manliness in amassing the money. That is an honest house\nwhich has the owner's honor built into its apartments, and whose\nappointments are his proper ornaments.\n\nBuilding is a severe schoolmaster, and gets the best and worst out of\nus, both, before it has done with us. I conclude no man knows himself on\nterms cheaper than the building of one house at least, and paying for it\nout of his pains. The proverb says:\n\n  \"'Tis a sweet impoverishment, and a great waste of gall.\"\n\nDo we not build ourselves into its foundations, to stand or fall with\nits beams and rafters, every nail being driven in trouble from sills to\nroof-tree, and the whole proving often a defeat and disappointment: no\none liking it, the builder least of all? One may thank heaven, and not\nhimself, if he do not find\n\n  He builded costlier than he knew,\n  Unhoused himself and virtues too,\n\nat the dismission of his carpenters, and occupancy of it. Perhaps the\nidea of a house is too precious to be cut into shapes of comfort and\ncomeliness on cheaper conditions than this trial of his manliness by the\npayment of his equanimity as the fair equivalent for the privilege. Nor\nis this the end of the matter, since it costs many virtues to deal\ndutifully by his household, by servants--if served by second hands--day\nby day, and come forth from the stewardship with credit and\nself-respect.\n\nBut a garden is a feasible matter. 'Tis within the means of almost every\none; none, or next to none, are so destitute, or indifferent, as to be\nwithout one. It may be the smallest conceivable, a flower bed only, yet\nis prized none the less for that. It is loved all the more for its\nsmallness, and the better cared for. Virgil advises to\n\n  ----\"Commend large fields,\n    But cultivate small ones.\"\n\nAnd it was a saying of the Carthaginians, that \"the land should be\nweaker than the husbandman, since of necessity he must wrestle with it,\nand if the ground prevailed, the owner must be crushed by it.\" The\nlittle is much to the frugal and industrious; and the least most to him\nwho puts that little to loving usury.\n\n  \"We are the farmers of ourselves, yet may\n  If we can stock ourselves and thrive, repay\n  Much, much good treasure for the great rent day.\"\n\n'Tis a pity that men want eyes, oftentimes, to harvest crops from their\nacres never served to them from their trenchers. Civilization has not\nmeliorated mankind essentially while men hold themselves to services\nthey make menial and degrading. Aeleas, king of Scythia, was wont to say\ningeniously, that \"while he was doing nothing, he differed in nothing\nfrom his groom,\" thus discriminating between services proper to freemen\nand slaves. The humblest labors may ennoble us. Honorable in themselves\nwhen properly undertaken, they promote us from things to persons. They\ngive us the essential goods of existence as we deserve and can best\nenjoy them: order, namely, industry, leisure, of which idleness\ndefrauds, and distraction deprives us. Labor suffices. Putting us, for\nthe time, beyond anxiety and our caprices, it calls into exercise the\nsentiments proper to the citizen. It softens and humanizes other\npleasures. Like philosophy, like religion, it revenges on fortune, and\nso keeps us by THE ONE amidst the multitude of our perplexities--against\nreverses, and above want. By making us a party in the administration of\naffairs, and superior to Fate, it puts into our hands the iron keys for\nunlocking her wards, and thus gives us to opulence and independence. We\nbecome, thereby, the subjects and friends of Saturn, ever known to be a\nperson of so strict justice as he forces none to serve him unwillingly,\nand has nothing private to himself, but all things in common, as of one\nuniversal patrimony. And so, owning nothing, because wanting nothing, he\nhad all things desirable to make life rich and illustrious.\n\n  ----\"This Golden Age\n  Met all contentment in no surplusage\n  Of dainty viands, but, (as we do still,)\n  Drank the pure water of the crystal rill,\n  Fed on no other meats than those they fed--\n  Labor the salad that their stomachs bred.\"\n\nLabor saves us from the chaos of sloth, the pains of shiftlessness. It\nsweetens the fountains of our enjoyments; 'tis neighbor to the elements.\nComing in from July heats, we taste the sweetness of Pindar's line,\n\n  \"Water with purest lustre flows,\"\n\nof whose zest the idler knows nothing, and which the sensualist soils\nand spoils. Besides, there are advantages to be gained from intimacy\nwith farmers, whose wits are so level with the world they measure and\nwork in. We become one of them for the time, by sympathy of employment,\nand get the practical skill and adaptedness that comes from yoking our\nidealism in their harness of uses. Thus, too, we come to comprehend the\nbetter the working classes which minister so largely to the comforts of\nall men, and are so deserving of consideration for their services.\nMoreover, this laboring with plain men is the best cure for any\nfoolishness one may have never sounded in the depths of his egotism, or\nscorn of persons in humbler stations than his own; and the swiftest leap\nacross the gulf yawning between his pride and the humility gracing a\ngentleman in any walk of life.\n\n\nX.--RURAL CULTURE.\n\n  \"Nor need the muse to palaces resort,\n  Or bring examples only from the court,\n  The country strives to do our subject right,\n  And gard'ning is the gentleman's delight.\"\n\nI consider it the best part of an education to have been born and\nbrought up in the country; the arts of handicraft and husbandry coming\nby mother wit, like the best use of books, the language one speaks.\nThere is virtue in country houses, in gardens and orchards, in fields,\nstreams and groves, in rustic recreations and plain manners, that\nneither cities nor universities enjoy. Nor is it creditable to the\nteaching that so few college graduates take to husbandry and rural\npursuits. Held subordinate to thought, as every calling should be, these\npromote intellectual freshness and moral vigor. They have been made\nclassic by the genius of antiquity; are recreations most becoming to men\nof every profession and rank in life:--\n\n  \"Books, wise discourse, garden and fields,\n  And all the joys that unmixed nature yields.\"\n\nRural influences seem to be most desirable, if not necessary, for\ncherishing the home virtues, especially in a community like ours, where,\nby prejudices of tradition, we seek culture more through books and\nuniversities than from that closer contact with men and things to which\nnewer communities owe so much, which agriculture promotes, and for which\nthe classic authors chiefly deserve to be studied.\n\nMen follow what they love, and the love of rural enjoyments is almost\nuniversal. Every one likes the country whose tastes are cultivated in\nthe least, and who enjoys what is primitive and pure. The citizen tires\nof city pleasures. He soon finds that there is no freedom comparable to\nthat which the country affords; for though he dwell in the city for\nadvantages of libraries, and social entertainments, he seeks the country\nfor inspiration when these lose their attractions, his spirits as his\nfriendships, crave refreshment and renewal.\n\n          \"Who in sad cities dwell,\n  Are of the green trees fully sensible.\"\n\nWe see how this appetite declares itself in the general swarming during\nthe summer season from the cities to the suburban towns, if not to the\nhill countries, for the freedom, the health, found there; and how to\ngratify and meet the demand for more natural satisfactions, our Guide\nBooks have become, not only the most attractive geographies of the\nterritories therein described, but works of taste, combining some of the\nchoicest illustrations of poetry and prose in our literature: sketches\nof such scenes and parties are sure of an eager reading. The rustic\nbooks, too, are beginning to be inquired after; translations of the\nancient authors, which bring the sentiment of the originals within the\ngrasp of the plainest minds. And we look forward to the time, when,\naccording to the recommendation of Cowley and Milton,--poets who did so\nmuch for the culture of their time,--these authors will be studied in\nour schools and universities, as Virgil and Horace have been so long,\nfor cultivating the love of nature, of rural pursuits, beauty of\nsentiment, the graces of style, without an acquaintance with which, the\nepithet of a liberal and elegant culture were misapplied on any\ngraduate. Nor need the students be restricted to Greek and Roman\npastoral poets, when some of our own authors have given charming\nexamples of treating New England life and landscape in their pages. A\npeople's freshest literature springs from free soil, tilled by free men.\nEvery man owes primary duty to the soil, and shall be held incapable by\ncoming generations if he neglect planting an orchard at least, if not a\nfamily, or book, for their benefit.\n\n\"Agriculture, for an honorable and high-minded man,\" says Xenophon, \"is\nthe best of all occupations and arts by which men procure the means of\nliving. For it is a pursuit that is most easy to learn and most pleasant\nto practise; it puts the bodies of men in the fairest and most vigorous\ncondition, and is far from giving such constant occupation to their\nminds as to prevent them from attending to the interests of their\nfriends or their country. And it affords some incitement to those who\npursue it to become courageous, as it produces and sustains what is\nnecessary for human life without the need of walls or fortresses. A\nman's home and fireside are the sweetest of all human possessions.\"\n\nI have always admired the good sense and fine ambition of a friend of\nmine, who, on quitting College, with fair prospects of winning respect\nin any of the learned professions, chose rather to step aside into the\nquiet retreat of a cottage, and there give himself to the pleasures and\nduties of cultivating his family and grounds. And this he did from a\nsense of its suitableness to promote the best ends and aims; esteeming\nhis gifts and accomplishments due to pursuits which seemed the natural\nmeans of securing self-respect and independence. His first outlay was\nmoderate--a sequestered field, on which he erected a comfortable\ndwelling, planned for convenience and hospitality. His grounds were laid\nout and planted with shrubbery, the slopes dotted with evergreens and\nshapely trees. A nursery was set; a conservatory, with suitable\noutbuildings and ornaments. As he gave himself personally to the work,\neverything prospered that he touched. A few years' profits paid for his\ninvestment, and his thrift soon enabled him to add an adjoining orchard\nto his first purchase. And so successful was his adventure, that his\nmost sceptical neighbors, the old farmers, confessed him to be the\nbetter husbandman; his gold was ruddier than theirs; his fields the\nneater. Nor did our Evelyn disgrace social engagements. His friendships\nwere kept in as good plight as his grounds. He was none the worse\ncitizen for being the better neighbor and gentleman they found him to\nbe, nor the less worthy of the honors of his college. \"'Tis impossible\nthat he who is a true scholar, and has attained besides the felicity of\nbeing a good gardener, should give jealousy to the State in which he\nlives.\" Civilization has a deeper stake in the tillage of the ground\nthan in the other arts, since its roots are fast planted therein, and it\nthrives only as this flourishes. Omit the garden, degrade this along\nwith the orchard to mere material uses, treat these as of secondary\nimportance, and the State falls fast into worldliness and decay.\n\n  \"Oh blessed shades! oh gentle, cool retreat\n    From all the immoderate heat\n  In which the frantic world does burn and sweat!\n  This does the Lion-star, Ambition's rage;\n  This Avarice, the Dog-star's thirst assuage;\n  Everywhere else their fatal power we see,\n  They make and rule man's wretched destiny;\n    They neither set, nor disappear,\n    But tyrannize o'er all the year,--\n  Whilst we ne'er feel their heat nor influence here.\n    The birds that dance from bough to bough,\n    And sing above in every tree,\n    Are not from fears and cares more free,\n    Than we who muse or toil below,\n    And should by right be singers too.\n  What Prince's quire of music can excel\n    That which within this shade does dwell?\n    To which we nothing pay or give?\n    They, like all other poets, live\n  Without reward or thanks for their obliging pains;\n    'Tis well if they become not prey:\n  The whistling winds add their less ardent strains,\n  And a grave bass the murmuring fountains play.\n    Nature does all this harmony bestow;\n    But, to our plants, arts, music, too,\n    The pipe, theorbo, and guitar, we owe,\n  The lute itself, which once was green and mute;\n    When Orpheus struck the inspired lute\n    The trees danced round and understood,\n    By sympathy, the voice of wood.\"\n\n  Methinks I see great Dioclesian walk\n    In the Salonian garden's noble shade,\n    Which by his own imperial hands was made;\n  I see him smile, methinks, as he does talk\n    With the ambassadors, who come in vain\n    To entice him to a throne again.\n  \"If I, my friends,\" said he, \"should to you show\n  All the delights that in these gardens grow,\n  'Tis likelier much that you should with me stay,\n  Than 'tis that you should carry me away;\n  And trust me not, my friends, if every day\n    I walk not here with more delight\n    Than ever, after the most happy fight,\n    In triumph to the capitol I ride,\n  To thank the gods, and to be thought myself almost a god.\"\n\nDo we ask, on viewing the rural pictures which the Pastoral Poets afford\nus,--Whither is our modern civilization tending? What solid profits has\nit gained on the state of things they describe, seeing the primitive\nvirtues and customs, once enjoyed by our ancestors, are fading,--the\ngenerosity, the cheer, the patriotism, the piety, the republican\nsimplicity and heartiness of those times? Machinery is fast displacing\nthe poetry of farm and fireside; the sickle, the distaff, the\nchimney-piece, the family institution, being superseded by prose powers;\nand, with their sway, have come slavery, pusillanimity, dishonor. I know\nthere are reconciling compensations for all risks of revolution. For\nwhile the Demos thus takes his inch, Divinity secures his ell; so the\ngarment of mankind comes the fuller from the loom in this transfer of\nlabors. The fig leaf thus cunningly woven, costs fair honors,\nnevertheless, and we covet in our hearts the florid simplicity of times\nof sturdier virtues and unassailable integrity.[B]\n\n     [Footnote B: Evelyn draws a lively picture of those old\n     times, though not without sadness at the contrast with his\n     own. \"The style and method of life are quite changed as well\n     as the language, since the days of our ancestors, simple and\n     plain as they were, courting their wives for their modesty,\n     frugality, keeping at home, good housewifery, and other\n     economical virtues then in reputation. And when the young\n     damsels were taught all these at home in the country at\n     their parents' houses; the portion they brought being more\n     in virtue than money, she being a richer match than any one\n     who could bring a million and nothing else to commend her.\n     The presents then made when all was concluded, were a ring,\n     a necklace of pearls, and perhaps the fair jewel, the\n     paraphernalia of her prudent mother, whose nuptial kirtle,\n     gown and petticoat, lasted as many anniversaries as the\n     happy couple lived together, and were at last bequeathed\n     with a purse of old gold, as an heir-loom to her\n     granddaughter. The virgins and young ladies of that golden\n     age, put their hands to the spindle, nor disdained the\n     needle; were obsequious and helpful to their parents,\n     instructed in the management of the family, and gave presage\n     of making excellent wives. Their retirements were devout and\n     religious books, their recreations in the distillery and\n     knowledge of plants, and their virtues for the comfort of\n     their poor neighbors, and use of the family, which wholesome\n     diet and kitchen physic preserved in health. Nor were the\n     young gentlemen, though extremely modest, at all melancholy,\n     or less gay and in good humor. They could touch the lute and\n     virginal, sing\n\n       \"Like to the damask rose,\"\n\n     and their breath was as sweet as their voices. Then things\n     were natural, plain and wholesome; nothing was superfluous,\n     nothing necessary wanting. Men of estate studied the public\n     good, and gave examples of true piety, loyalty, justice,\n     sobriety, charity; and the good of the neighborhood composed\n     most differences. Laws were reasons, not craft; men's\n     estates were secure: they served their generation with\n     honor, left patrimonial estates improved to a hopeful heir,\n     who, passing from the free school to the college, and thence\n     to Inns of Court, acquainting himself with a competent\n     tincture of the laws of his country, followed the example of\n     his worthy ancestors. And if he travelled abroad, it was not\n     to count steeples, and bring home feather and ribbon and the\n     sins of other nations, but to gain such experience as\n     rendered him useful to his Prince and his countrymen upon\n     occasion, and confirmed him in the love of both of them\n     above any other. Hospitality was kept up in town and\n     country, by which the tenants were enabled to pay their\n     landlords at punctual day. The poor were relieved\n     bountifully, and charity was as warm as the kitchen, where\n     the fire was perpetual.\"]\n\n[Illustration: Small decoration of a flower and leaves]\n\n\n\n\nII.\n\nRECREATION.\n\n     \"Thou who wouldst know the things that be,\n     Bathe thy heart in the sunrise red,\n     Till its stains of earthly dross are fled.\"\n                             GOETHE.\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration: Decorative banner of a beetle among flowers and leaves]\n\n\n\n\nRECREATION.\n\n\nI.--THE FOUNTAINS.\n\nNature is wholesome. Without her elixirs daily taken we perish of\nlassitude and inanity. The fountains must be stirred to their depths and\ntheir torrents sent bounding along their sluices, else we sink presently\ninto the pool of inertia, victims of indecision and slaves of fate. \"Thy\nbody, O well disposed man, is a meadow through which flow three hundred\nand sixty-five rivulets.\" Every pulse pushes nature's quaternion along\nlife's currents recreating us afresh; the morn feeding the morn,\nMemnon's music issuing from every stop, as if the Orient itself had\nsung.\n\nNature is virtuous. Imparting sanity and sweetness, it spares from\ndecay, giving life with temperance and a continency that keeps our\npleasures chaste and perennial. Nothing short of her flowing atmosphere\nsuffices to refill our urns. Neither books, company, conversation,--not\nGenius even, the power present in persons, nature's nature pouring her\nfloods through mind,--not this is enough. Nature is the good Baptist\nplunging us in her Jordan streams to be purified of our stains, and\nfulfil all righteousness. And wheresoever our lodge, there is but the\nthin casement between us and immensity. Nature without, mind within,\ninviting us forth into the solacing air, the blue ether, if we will but\nshake our sloth and cares aside, and step forth into her great\ncontentments.\n\n        As from himself he fled,\n        Possessed, insane,\n  Tormenting demons drove him from the gate:\n        Away he sped,\n        Casting his woes behind,\n        His joys to find,\n        His better mind.\n\n        'Tis passing strange,\n        The glorious change,\n        The pleasing pain!\n\n            Recovered,\n        Himself again\n        Over his threshold led,\n        Peace fills his breast,\n        He finds his rest;\n  Expecting angels his arrival wait.\n\nIf we cannot spin our tops briskly as boys do theirs, the wailers may\nchant their dirges over us. Enthusiasm is existence; earnestness, life's\nexceeding great reward. How busy then, and above criticism. Our cup runs\nover. But a parted activity, divorcing us from ourselves, degrades our\nnoblest parts to the sway of the lowest and renders our task a drudgery\nand shame. For what avails, if while one's mind hovers about Olympus,\nhis members flounder in Styx, and he is drawn asunder in the conflict?\nLet the days deify the days, the work the workman, giving the joyous\ntask that leaves pleasant memories behind, and ennobles in the\nperformance:\n\n      Tasked days\n      Above delays;\n      Hours that borrow\n      Speed of the morrow,\n      Light from sorrow:\n      Business bate not,\n      Want nor wait not,\n      Doubt nor date not;\n  Life from limb forbid to sever,\n  Recreate in rapt endeavor.\n\nWe come as a muse to our toil and find amusement in it; to a taskmaster\nwhose company never tires. 'Tis life, the partaking of immortality. A\nday lived so, glorifies all moments afterwards. Long postponed, perhaps,\nthe hours wearisome, till broke this immortal morning with engagements\nthat time can complete never, nor compel, and whose importunity outlasts\nthe hours.\n\nSleep, too, having the keys of life in its keeping. How we rise from its\ndelectable divinations with eyes sovereign and anointed for the day's\noccupations. All our powers are touched with flame, all things are\npossible. But last night, the world had come to an end; the floods ebbed\nlow, as if the fates were reversing the torch. How we blazed all the\nmorning, to be cinders yesternight. Then came the god to re-kindle our\nfaded embers, the Phoenix wings her way to meet the rising dawn and\nembrace the young world once more. Sleep took the sleep out of us. From\nforth the void there rises a roseate morn upon us.\n\n  The flattering East her gates impearled,\n  We hunt the morning round the world.\n\nNor is a day lived if the dawn is left out of it, with the prospects it\nopens. Who speaks charmingly of nature or of mankind, like him who comes\nbibulous of sunrise and the fountains of waters?\n\n  \"Mornings are mysteries, the first world's youth,\n  Man's resurrection, and the future's bud\n  Shown in their birth; they make us happy,\n  Make us rich.\"\n\n    Rise in the morning, rise\n    While yet the streaming tide\n    Flames o'er the blue acclivities,\n    And pours its splendors wide;\n    Kindling its high intent\n    Along the firmament,\n    Silence and sleep to break,\n    Imaginations wake,\n    Ideas insphere\n    And bring them here.\n    Loiter nor play\n    In soft delay;\n    Speed glad thy course along\n    The orbs and globes among,\n    And as yon toiling sun\n    Attain thy high meridian:\n    Radiant and round thy day;--\n    Speed, speed thee on thy way.\n\n\"Every day is a festival, and that which makes it the more splendid is\ngladness. For as the world is a spacious and beautiful temple, so is\nlife the most perfect institution that introduces us into it. And it is\nbut just that it should be full of cheerfulness and tranquillity.\" Our\ndispositions are the atmosphere we breathe, and we carry our climate and\nworld in ourselves. Good humor, gay spirits are the liberators, the sure\ncure for spleen and melancholy. Deeper than tears, these irradiate the\ntophets with their glad heavens. Go laugh, vent the pits, transmuting\nimps into angels by the alchymy of smiles. The satans flee at the sight\nof these redeemers. And he who smiles never is beyond redemption. Once\nclothed in a suit of light we may cast aside forever our sables. Our\nbest economist of this flowing estate is good temper, without whose\npresidency life is a perplexity and disaster. Luck is bad luck and\nourselves a disappointment and vexation. Victims of our humors, we\nvictimize everybody. How the swift repulsions play: our atoms all\ninsular, insulating; demonized, demonizing, from heel to crown; at the\nmercy of a glance, a gesture, a word, and ourselves overthrown.\nEquanimity is the gem in Virtue's chaplet and St. Sweetness the\nloveliest in her calendar. \"On beholding thyself, fear,\" says the\noracle. Only the saints are sane and wholesome.\n\n\n  II.--THE CHEAP PHYSICIAN.\n\n  \"That which makes us have no need\n  Of physic, that's physic indeed.\n  Hark, hither, reader, wilt thou see\n  Nature her own physician be?\n  Wilt see a man all his own wealth,\n  His own music, his own health,--\n  A man whose sober soul can tell\n  How to wear her garments well:\n  Her garments that upon her sit,\n  As garments should do, close and fit;\n  A well-clothed soul that's not oppressed,\n  Nor choked with what she should be dressed;\n  A soul sheathed in a crystal shrine,\n  Through which all her bright features shine,\n  As when a piece of wanton lawn,\n  A thin, aerial veil is drawn\n  O'er beauty's face, seeming to hide,\n  More sweetly shows the blushing bride:\n  A soul, whose intellectual beams\n  No mists do mask, no lazy streams:\n  A happy soul that all the way\n  To heaven rides in a summer's day?\n  Wouldst see a man whose well-warmed blood\n  Bathes him in a genuine flood,--\n  A man whose tuned humors be\n  A seat of rarest harmony?\n  Wouldst see blithe looks, fresh cheeks beguile\n  Age; wouldst see December smile?\n  Wouldst see nests of new roses grow\n  In a bed of reverend snow?\n  Warm thought, free spirits flattering\n  Winter's self into a spring?\n  In sum, wouldst see a man that can\n  Live to be old, and still a man\n  Whose latest and most leaden hours\n  Fall with soft wings, stuck with soft flowers;\n  And when life's sweet fable ends,\n  Soul and body part like friends;\n  No quarrels, murmurs, no delay,\n  A kiss, a sigh,--and so away,--\n  This rare one, reader, wouldst thou see?\n  Hark within, and thyself be he.\"\n\n[Illustration: Triangular decoration of two intertwined griffins]\n\n\n\n\nIII.\n\n\nFELLOWSHIP.\n\n     \"Health is the first good lent to men,\n     A gentle disposition then,\n     Next competence by no by ways,\n     Lastly with friends to enjoy one's days.\"\n                             HERRICK.\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration: Decorative banner of two birds among leaves and flowers]\n\n\n\n\nFELLOWSHIP.\n\n\nI.--HOSPITALITY.\n\nEvelyn writes of the manners and architecture of his times: \"'Tis from\nthe want of symmetry in our buildings, decorum in our houses, that the\nirregularity of our humors and affections may be shrewdly discerned.\"\nBut not every builder is gifted with the genius and personal qualities\nto harmonize the apartments to the dispositions of the inmates. I\nconfess to a partiality for the primitive style of architecture\ncommended by Evelyn, and question whether in our refinements on these we\nhave not foregone comforts and amenities essential to true hospitality.\nWhat shall make good to us the ample chimney-piece of his day, with the\ncourtesies it cherished, the conversation, the cheer, the\nentertainments? Very welcome were the spacious yards and hospitable\ndoor-knockers on those ancestral mansions, fast disappearing from our\nlandscape, supplanted by edifices and surroundings more showy and\npretentious; yet, with all their costliness, looking somewhat asquint on\nthe visitor, as if questioning his right to enter them; and, when\nadmitted, seem unfamiliar, solitary, desolate, with their elaborate\ndecorations and furnishings. Can we not build an elegant comfort,\nconvenience, ease, into the walls and apartments, rendering the mansion\nan image of the nobilities becoming the residence of noblemen? To what\nend the house, if not for conversation, kindly manners, the\nentertainment of friendships, the cordialities that render the house\nlarge, and the ready receptacle of hosts and guests? If one's\nhospitalities fail to bring out the better qualities of his company, he\nfails of being the noble host, be his pretensions what they may. Let him\nentertain the dispositions, the genius, of his guests, the conversation\nbeing the choicer banquet; for, without baits for these, what were the\ntable but a manger, alike wanting in elegancy as in hospitality, and the\nfeast best taken in silence as an animal qualification, and no more.\n\nWhat solitude like those homes where no home is, no company, no\nconversation, into which one enters with dread, and from which he\ndeparts with sadness, as from the sight of hostile tribes bordering on\ncivilization, strangers to one another, and of mixed bloods! Civility\nhas not completed its work if it leave us unsocial, morose, insultable.\nSympathy wanting, all is wanting; its personal magnetism is the\nconductor of the sacred spark that lights our atoms, puts us in human\ncommunion, and gives us to company, conversation, and ourselves.\n\n  \"Oh wretched and too solitary, he\n  Who loves not his own company;\n    He'll find the weight of it many a day,\n  Unless he call in sin and vanity,\n    To help to bear it away.\"\n\nThe surest sign of age is loneliness. While one finds company in himself\nand his pursuits, he cannot be old, whatever his years may number.\n\nPerhaps those most prize society who find the best in solitude, being\nequal to either; strong enough to enjoy themselves aside from companies\nthey would gladly meet and repay by a freedom from prejudices and\nscruples in which these share and pride themselves, yet whose\nexclusiveness thrusts them out of their own houses and themselves also.\n\n                    \"It ever hath been known,\n  They others' virtues scorn who doubt their own.\"\n\nIf solitude makes us love ourselves, society gives us to others,\npeopling what were else a solitude. It takes us out of ourselves as from\na multitude to partake of closer intimacies and satisfactions. Alone and\napart, however well occupied, we lose the elasticity and dignity that\ncome from sympathy with the aims and prospects of others. Nor has any\nbeen found equal to uninterrupted solitude. Our virtues need the enamel\nof intercourse. Exalting us above our private piques, prejudices,\negotisms, into the commonwealth of charities, good company makes us\ncatholic, courteous, sane; we retire from it with a new estimate of\nourselves and of mankind. If intercourse have not this wholesome effect,\nit is dissipating and best shunned. Nor is fellowship possible without a\ncertain delicacy and respect of diffidence. There hides a natural piety\nin this personal grace, while nothing good comes of brass, from whose\nembrasures there vollies forth but impudence, insolence, defiance. But\nthe more influential powers are attended by a bashful genius, and step\nforth from themselves with a delicacy of boldness alike free from any\nblemishes of egotism or pretence. Nor do we accept as genuine the person\nnot characterized by this blushing bashfulness, this youthfulness of\nheart, this sensibility to the sentiment of suavity and self-respect.\nModesty is bred of self-reverence. Fine manners are the mantle of fair\nminds. None are truly great without this ornament. A fine genius has the\ntimidity, the graces of a virgin nature, whose traits are as transparent\nin the boldest flights of imagination as discernible in the stateliest\ntread of reason, the play of fancy: a pleasing hesitancy, a refrain,\nsetting off the more boldly by such graceful carriage, the natural\ngraces due to beauty and truth; and bearing down all else by its\ncharming persuasions.\n\nAffinities tell. Every one is not for every one; nor any one good enough\nto flatter or scorn any; the kindly recognition being due to the\nmeanest; even the humblest conferring a certain respect by his call. Yet\none might as properly entertain every passing vagary in the presence\nchamber of his memory as every vagrant visitor seeking his acquaintance.\nIntroductions are of small account. What are one's claims, a glance\ndetects; if ours, he stays, and house and heart are his by silent\nunderstanding. If not ours, nor we his, the way is plain. He leaves\npresently as a traveller the innkeeper's door, an inmate for his meal\nonly and the night.\n\nThe heroic bearing is always becoming. Egotists of the amiable species,\none kindly considers. But the sour malcontents, devastators of one's\ntime and patience,--what to do with such? Summon your fairest sunshine\nforthwith: give your visitor's humors no quarters from the shafts; smite\nhim with the kindly radiance for dissipating his melancholy, and so send\nhim away the wholesomer, the sweeter for the interview, if not a convert\nto the sun's catholicism, the courtesies due to civility and good\nfellowship. So when X, your worst sample approaches, meet him blandly at\nyour door, and ask him civilly to leave his dog outside. But if he\npersist in bringing him along into your parlor, never hesitate on\nsetting the cur forthwith upon his master though you should find him at\nyour throat straightways. It were giving your visitor the warmest\nreception possible under the circumstances, and an interview very\nmemorable to all parties. One need not fear dealing his compliments\nshort and significant on the occasion; the deer running down the dogs\nfor a wonder.\n\nDoes it seem cold and unhandsome, this specular survey of persons? Yet\nall hearts crave eyes whereby to measure themselves. And what better\nfoil for one's egotism than this reflection of himself in the mirror of\nanother's appreciation? The frank sun withholds his beams from none for\nany false delicacy. Nor till one rejoices in being helped to discern\nexcellence in another, desiring to comprehend and compliment his own\ntherein, is he freed from the egotism that excludes him from the best\nbenefits one can bestow. Happy if we have dissolved our individualism in\nthe fluent affections, and so made intercourse possible and delightful\nbetween us.\n\n\"We have three friends most useful to us; a sincere friend, a faithful\nfriend, a friend that hears every thing, examines what is told him, and\nspeaks little. But we have three also whose friendship is pernicious; a\nhypocrite, a flatterer, and a great talker. Contract friendship with the\nman whose heart is upright and sincere, who loves to learn and can teach\nyou something in his turn. And in what part of the world soever thou\nchance to spend thy life, correspond with the wisest and associate with\nthe best.\"\n\n\nII.--CONVERSATION.\n\nGood humor, flowing spirits, a sprightly wit, are essentials of good\ndiscourse. Add genial dispositions, graceful elocution, and to these\naccomplishments diffidence as the flower of the rest. There can be no\neloquence where these are wanting. Any amount of sense, of logic,\nmatter, leaves the discourse incomplete, interest flags, and\ndisappointment ensues. None has command of himself till he can wield his\npowers sportfully, life sparkling from all his gifts and taking captive\nalike speaker and hearer, as they were docile children of his genius and\nsurprised converts for the moment. \"And I,\" says Socrates, \"through my\nyouth often change my mind, but looking to you and apprehending that you\nspeak the things that are divine, I think so too.\" If one cannot inspire\nfaith in what he says, no arts avail. Earnestness, sincerity, are\norators whose persuasions are irresistible; they hold all gifts in\nfusion, magnetize, divinize, harmonize all. Good conversation is\nlyrical: a pentecost of tongues, touching the chords of melody in all\nminds, it prompts to the best each had to give, to better than any knew\nthey had, what none claims as his own, as if he were the organ of some\ninvisible player behind the scenes. What abandonments, reserves, which\nno premeditation, no cunning could have checked or called forth. What\nchasms are spanned with a trope, what pits forded, summits climbed,\nprospects commanded, perspectives gained,--the tour of the spheres made\nat a glance, a sitting; the circle coming safely out of the adventure.\nAll men talk, few converse; of gossip we have enough, of argument more\nthan enough, rhetoric, debate--omit these, speak from the heart to the\nheart underlying all differences, and we have conversation. For\ndisputing there is the crowd; for ruminating, the woods; the clubs for\nwit and the superficial fellowship.\n\nCompanionableness comes by nature. For though culture may mellow and\nrefine, it cannot give the flush of nobility to the current wherein ride\nour credentials for the posts of persuasion and of power. We meet\nmagically, and pass with sounding manners; else encounter repulses,\nstrokes of fate; temperament telling against temperament, precipitating\nus into vortices from which the nimblest finds no escape. We pity the\nperson who shows himself unequal to the occasion; the scholar, for\nexample, whose intellect is so exacting, so precise, that he cannot meet\nhis company otherwise than critically; cannot descend to meet, through\nthe senses or the sentiments, that common level where intercourse is\npossible with most. We pity him the more, who, from caprice or confusion\ncan meet through these only. Still more, the case of him who can meet\nneither as sentimentalist nor idealist, or, rather, not at all in a\nhuman way. Intellect interblends with sentiment in the companionable\nmind, wit with humor. We detain the flowing tide at the cost of lapsing\nout of perception into memory, into the limbo of fools. Excellent people\nwonder why they cannot meet and converse. They cannot. No. Their wits\nhave ebbed away, and left them helpless. Why, but because of hostile\ntemperaments, states of animation? The personal magnetism finds no\nconductor. One is individual, the other is individual no less.\nIndividuals repel. Persons meet. And only as one's personality is\nsufficiently overpowering to dissolve the other's individualism, can the\nparties flow together and become one. But individuals have no power of\nthe sort. They are two, not one, perhaps many. Prisoned within\nthemselves by reason of their egotism, like animals, they stand aloof,\nare separate even when they touch; are solitary in any company, having\nnone in themselves. But the freed personal mind meets all, is\napprehended by all, by the least cultivated, the most gifted; magnetizes\nall; is the spell-binder, the liberator of every one. We speak of\nsympathies, antipathies, fascinations, fates, for this reason.\n\n[Illustration: Small decoration of a leaf]\n\n\n\n\nIV.\n\nFRIENDSHIP.\n\n\n     \"So great a happiness do I esteem it to be loved, that I\n     really fancy every blessing both from gods and men ready to\n     descend spontaneously upon him who is loved.\"--XENOPHON.\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration: Decorative banner of two swans among flowers]\n\n\n\n\nFRIENDSHIP.\n\n\nI.--PERSONS.\n\nIt was a charming fancy of the Pythagoreans to exchange names when they\nmet that so they might partake of the virtues each admired in the other.\nAnd knowing the power of names they used only such as were musical and\npleasing. The compliment thus bestowed upon the sentiment of friendship\nis most deserved, and suggestive of the magic of its influence at every\nage, throughout every period of our existence; our life, properly\nspeaking, opening with the birth of fancy and the affections, and\nmaintaining its freshness only as we are under their sway. A friendship\nformed in childhood, in youth,--by happy accident at any stage of rising\nmanhood,--becomes the genius that rules the rest of life. What\naspirations it awakens! what prospects! To what advantages, adventures,\nsacrifices, successes, does it not lead its votaries! What if these\nearly unions are sometimes less tempered with discretion than those\nformed later, if they maintain their freshness and open out sure\nprospects of an endless future? He surely has no future who is without\nfriends to share it with him, and is wasting an existence meant to give\nhim that assurance. With this sentiment there comes every felicity into\nthe breasts of those who partake of it. How large the dividend of\ndelight! how diffusive! We are the richer for every outlay. We dip our\npitchers in these fountains to come away overspilling with satisfaction.\nAnd had we a thousand friends, every spring within us would gush forth\nat the touch of these wands of tenderness, and the days pass as\nuncounted moments in their company.\n\n  \"O friend, the bosom said,\n  Through thee alone the sky is arched,\n  Through thee the rose is red;\n  All things through thee take nobler form,\n  And look beyond the earth,\n  And is the millround of our fate\n  A sunpath in thy worth:\n  Me, too, thy nobleness has taught\n  To master my despair;\n  The fountains of my hidden life,\n  Are through thy friendship fair.\"\n\nHow handsome our friends are! Say they were not moulded at the celestial\npotteries, we paint them fair behind the plain exterior they wear to\nindifferent eyes, and as they appear in our gallery of enamels. For who\nhas not seen the plainest features light with a beauty the eyes had not\nconceived at the rise of a tender sentiment? a lively thought, the\nrecollection of a noble deed, effacing every trace of ancestral\nmeanness; the friend we love all there without blemish or spot, the\nimage we clasp to our breast and cannot forget.\n\nSpectral and cold, indeed, were life surveyed from the senses alone, not\nfrom the soul, wanting the enthusiasm that persons inspire, the faith\nwhich exalts us above ourselves, giving us friends to love, and a God to\nadore. We enter heaven through the gates of friendship. 'Tis by some\nsupreme fellowship that we complete ourselves, and are united to our\nkind.\n\nI esteem friendship the fairest as the eldest of religious faiths, being\nthe worship of the unseen through the seen, and excusing many\nsuperstitions coloring the need of a personal object of worship. The\nlove and service rendered to persons symbolizes love and service due the\nSupreme Person; and he must be pronounced deficient in piety who fails\nof winning the noblest of victories,--a friend. A need of the heart, the\nbest of our life is embosomed in others, much of it taken upon trust in\nsome one or more whom we call by tender names, and whose words accost us\nwith persuasions irresistible. How affectionately one name is pronounced\nthroughout a revering Christendom, because it symbolizes man's\nfriend,--that fairest word in the human vocabulary.\n\n   \"Fair flowery name, in none like thee\n    And thy nectareal fragrancy,\n      Hourly there meets\n    A universal synod of all sweets,\n    By whom it is defined thus:\n      That no perfume\n      May yet presume\n    To pass for odoriferous,\n  But such alone whose sacred pedigree\n  Can prove itself some kin, sweet name, to thee.\"\n\nWe crave objects abreast and above us. And are bereft of ourselves\nwithout such. Friends are the leaders of the bosom, being more ourselves\nthan we are, and we complement our affections in theirs. The passionless\nlaws that sway our unseen Personality are not made lovely to us till\nthus clothed in human attributes and brought near to our hearts, person\nembracing person. Not some _It_ in our friends, but the sentiment that\ntransfigures the _It_ into _Him_, into _Her_,--this alone makes them\nours personally and beloved. Theists in our faith, we pay our vows to\nthe Friend in our friend, thus becoming personally One with the Three,\nand alone no longer.\n\n  Nor elsewise man shall fellow meet,\n  In public place, in converse sweet,\n  In holy aisles, at market gate,\n  In learning's halls, or courts of state,\n  Nor persons properly shall find,\n  Save in the commonwealth of Mind;\n  Fair forms herein their souls intrude,\n  Peopling what else were solitude.\n\nPersons are love's world. Our Paradise is too fair to be planted out of\nour breasts. We chase the fleeing beauty all our lives long;\n\n  \"Nor is there near so brisk a fire\n  In fruition, as desire;\n  The niggard sense, too poor for bliss,\n  Pays us but dully with what is.\"\n\nOn, onwards, ever onwards are we led. Our Edens abreast of us journeying\nwith ever-opening prospects in the distance.\n\n\n  THE CHASE.\n\n  O'er earth and seas,\n  In sunshine, shade,\n  Blest Beauty crossed,\n  Nor stopt nor stayed,\n  Nor temples took,\n  Nor idols hewed,\n  Apart she dwelt\n  In solitude.\n\n  In solitude, Heart said:\n  \"Where find the maid?\n  My bride's a fugitive,\n  From sight doth live,\n  And hearts are hunters of the game,\n  Pursuers of the same\n  Through every passing form,\n  The Beauty that all eyes do seek,\n  All eyes do but deform;\n  The love our faithless lips would speak\n  Dies on the listless air,\n  Nature befriends us not,\n  Nor hearthside doth prepare\n  In all her ample plot;\n  Life's but illusion,\n  Cunning confusion;\n  Flings shadows pale about our path,\n  She shadow is, and nothing hath;\n  Eyes are divorced from seeing,\n  Hearts cloven clean from being;\n  My bride I cannot find,\n  My love I cannot bind;\n  The thousand fair ones of our sphere,\n  Fond, false ones all, nor mine, nor dear;\n    The Paradise\n    I would surprise,\n  From all my following flies,\n  And I'm a thousand infidelities;\n  There's none for me\n  In all I see;\n  Surely the Fair One bides not here,\n  Where dwells she, where, in any sphere?\"\n\n    \"In any sphere?\"\n  Love whispered: \"Where, where, if not here?\n  Here in thy breast the maiden find,\n  Ideas sole imparadise the mind;\n  Here heart's hymeneals begin,\n  Here's ours and only ours housed here within:\n  Through parting gates of human kind\n  Enter thou blest the Unseen Mind.\"\n\n\nII.--WOMAN.\n\n                              \"Virtue sure\n  Were blind as fortune, should she choose the poor\n  Rough cottage man to live in, and despise\n  To dwell in woman's stately edifice;\n  Woman's approved the fairer sex, and we\n  Mean men repent our pedigree.\n  Why choose the father's name, when we may take\n  The mother's a more honor'd blood to make,\n  Woman's of later, though of nobler birth,\n  For she of man was made, man made of earth,\n  The son of dust, and though her sin did breed\n  His fall, again she raised him in her seed;\n  Who had he not her blest creation seen,\n  An Anchorite in Paradise had been.\"\n\nPythagoras said that only good things were to be predicted of women,\nsince they were the mothers of ornaments, of conversation and of\nconfidence, and that he who invented names, perceiving that women were\nadapted to piety and friendship, gave to each of their ages the name of\nsome Deity--to a maiden, Core, or Proserpine, to a bride Nymphe, to a\nmother, Mater, to a grandmother, according to the Dorian dialect, Maia.\nAnd in accordance with the like persuasion the oracles were always\nunfolded into light by women. Tacitus tells us that the Northern nations\nalso held women in high esteem, \"believing ladies had something divine\nabout them.\" And this faith has descended to men of the Saxon name, the\nbest regarding her as endowed with magical properties, the type of the\nhighest culture the advanced nations have attained. Endowed with\nmagnetic gifts; by necessity of sex, a realist and diviner, she lives\nnearest the cardinal facts of existence, instinct with the mysteries of\nlove and fate; a romance ever attaching itself to her name and destiny.\nEntering the school of sensibility with life, she seizes personal\nqualities by a subtlety of logic overleaping all deductions of the\nslower reason; her divinations touching the quick of things as if\nherself were personally part of the chemistry of life itself. We cannot\nconceive her as distinct, distant, unrelated, she seems so personal,\nconcrete, so near; yet can never come quite up to her discernments, nor\ngainsay their delicacy and truthfulness. Then constancy, fidelity,\nfortitude, kindness, gratitude, grace, courtesy, discretion, taste,\nconversation, the adornments of life, were bare names without the\nsplendor of illustration of which the history of the sex affords so many\nbrilliant examples. It seems as if in moulding his world the Creator\nreserved his choicest work till the last, and consummated his art in her\nendowments. Shall our sex confess to some slight in not having been\nmingled more freely of her essence, that so we too might have had access\nto the crypts into which she is privileged by birthright to enter? Hers\nis the way of persuasion, of service, forbearance:\n\n  \"If thou dost anything confer that's sweet,\n  In me a grateful relish it shall meet,\n  But if thy bounties thou dost take away,\n  The least repining word I will not say.\"\n\nAs there was only solitude till she brought company, conversation,\ncivility, so stooping still to conquer, she is fast gaining ascendancy\nover passions and prejudices that have held her subservient and their\nvictim. Can we doubt the better rule will be furthered indefinitely by a\npartnership in power thus intimate and acknowledged by States? What\nideal republics have fabled, ours is to be. Nor need we fear the boldest\nexperiments which the moral sense of the best women conceive and\nadvocate. Certainly liberty is in danger of running into license while\nwoman is excluded from exercising political as well as social restraint\nupon its excesses. Nor is the state planted securely till she possess\nequal privileges with man of forming its laws and taking a becoming part\nin their administration. No jury of men, however honorable or wise, are\nequal to pronounce upon questions relating to woman; questions involving\nconsiderations that concern the whole structure, not only of society,\nbut of humanity itself. The public morals are insecure till the family\nis chastely planted, the state guarded by the continency of its male\nmembers.\n\nA man defines his standing at the court of chastity by his views of\nwomen. He cannot be any man's friend nor his own if not hers. Either\nnature dealt coldly by him in his descent, else he is the victim of\nvices which his passions have inflamed till they have their own way with\nhim.\n\n  \"They meet but with unwholesome springs,\n    And summers which infectious are;\n  They hear but when the mermaid sings,\n    And only see the falling star\n      Who ever dare\n  Affirm no woman chaste and fair.\"\n\nThe very name of woman becomes soiled if we seek to be related to her by\nthe coarse ties of appetite, instead of the tender threads of affection,\nthe charm of ideas. There are pleasures for keeping as enjoying,--for\nusing delicately, the zest lasting long, the more affluent when tasted\nwith moderation and seldom.\n\n  \"Who can to love more rich gift make\n  Than to love's self, for love's own sake?\n  Love, that imports in every sense delight,\n  Is fancied in the soul, not appetite:\n  Why love among the virtues is scarce known\n  Is that love is them all contract in one.\"\n\n\nIII.--FAMILY.\n\n  \"How fruitful may the smallest circle grow\n  When we the secret of its culture know.\"\n\nHere is room enough, however humble and unfurnished, for the most\nexpansive friendships, the purest delights, the noblest labors; for\nwhere women are, there open forth all possibilities of culture.\n\n  Here high o'er head of spiteful fate,\n  Jove cradles safe the ideal state.\n\n\"A married life is most beautiful. For what other thing can be such an\nornament to a family as the association of husband and wife? For it must\nnot be said that sumptuous edifices, walls covered with pictures, and\npiazzas adorned with stones,--so admired by those who are ignorant of\nthe Good; nor yet painted windows, myrtle walks; nor anything else which\nis the subject of astonishment to the stupid,--are the ornaments of a\nfamily. But the beauty of a household consists in the conjunction of man\nand wife who are united to each other by destiny, are consociated to the\ngods who preside over nuptials, births, and houses; and who accord,\nindeed, with each other, and have all things in common as far as to\ntheir bodies, or rather their souls themselves;--who exercise a becoming\nauthority over their house and servants, are properly solicitous about\nthe education of their children and pay an attention to the necessaries\nof life, which is neither expensive nor negligent, but moderate and\nappropriate. For what can be better and more excellent, as the most\nadmirable Homer says,\n\n  'Than when at home the husband and the wife\n  Unanimously live.'\"\n\n\n  THE GOBLET.\n\n  I drank delights from every cup,\n  Arts, institutions, I drank up;\n  Athirst, I quaffed life's flowing bowls,\n  And sipped the flavors of all souls.\n\n  A sparkling cup remained for me,\n  The brimming fount of Family;\n  This I am still drinking,\n  Since, to my thinking,\n  Good wine beads here,\n  Flagons of cheer,\n  Nor laps the soul\n  In Lethe's bowl.\n\n  Wine of immortal power\n  Into my chalice now doth pour;\n  Prevailing wine,\n  Juice of the Nine,\n  Flavored of sods,\n  Vintage of gods;\n  Joyance benign\n  This wondrous wine\n    Ever at call;--\n  Wine maddening none,\n  Wine saddening none,\n    Wine gladdening all,\n  Makes love's cup ruddier glow,\n  Genius and grace its overflow.\n\n  I drained the drops of every cup,\n  Times, institutions I drank up:\n  Still Beauty pours the enlivening wine,\n  Fills high her glass to me and mine;\n  Her cup of sparkling youth,\n  Of love first found, and loyal truth:\n  I know, again I know,\n  Her fill of life and overflow.\n\nWhen I find my friends are not of the same age as when I first knew\nthem, I may conclude myself, not them, to be decaying and losing flavor.\nStill youth and innocency are the sole solvents of all doubts and\ninfidelities; the faiths of women and children in friendship, ever fresh\ndemonstrations of life's sufficiency and imperishableness. Families\nnever die, since they trace their pedigree to Adam the First, who is of\nimmortal ancestry. First suckled at our mother's breast our faiths\nsurvive all subsequent modifications; embrace the friendships we form,\nand color the whole of life. Our intellectual creed may change;\ntemperament, calling, social position, fortune, sect, may phrase\ndifferently the delightful lay she sang to us--its tone still lingers in\nthe memory of our affections, holding the heart loyal, and if trusted to\nthe end takes us triumphantly through life. \"Ever the feminine leadeth\nus on.\" Every prospect the mother gains is soon commanded by her\nchildren: our comforts and satisfactions life-long having the voice and\ncountenance of woman.\n\n\nIV.--CHILDREN.\n\n  \"Heaven lies about us in our infancy.\"\n\nOur notion of the perfect society embraces the family as its centre and\nornament. Nor is there a paradise planted till the children appear in\nthe foreground to animate and complete the picture. Without these, the\nworld were a solitude, houses desolate, hearts homeless; there were\nneither perspectives, nor prospects; ourselves were not ourselves, nor\nwere there a future for us:\n\n  In their good gifts we hopeful see\n  The fairer selves we fain would be.\n\nSocrates comprised all objects of his search in\n\n  \"Whate'er of good or ill can man befall\n  In his own house,\"\n\nrightly conceiving this to be the seminary of the virtues and foundation\nof states. There it stands, the ornament of the landscape, and for the\nhuman hospitalities: we cannot render it too attractive. Let it be the\nhome of beauty, the haunt of affection, of ideas. Let its chambers open\neastward admitting the sunshine for our own and children's sake. Do they\nnot covet the clear sky, delighting in the blue they left so lately, nay\ncannot wholly leave in coming into nature, whereof they are ever asking\nnews? These gay enthusiasts must run eagerly, and never have enough of\nit. How soon the clouds clear away from their faces! How sufficient they\nare to the day, and the joy it brings them! Their poise and plenitude\nrebuke us.\n\n    \"Happy those early days when I\n    Shined in my angel infancy;\n    Before I taught my soul to wound\n    My conscience with a sinful sound,\n    Or taught my soul to fancy aught\n    But a white celestial thought,\n    Or had the black art to dispense\n    A several sin to every sense,\n    But felt through all this fleshly dress\n    Bright shoots of everlastingness.\"\n\nCharming pictures these bright boys, confiding girls, as full of promise\nto themselves as we were at their age; are still, if faithful to the\nbeautiful vision. Why else should the flame pale as we come up into\nlife, we pleasing ourselves nor others more, perhaps despair of\nmaintaining the virtues we espoused so eagerly in our youth? Must we\n\n  \"When we've enjoyed our ends then lose them,\n  And all our appetites be but as dreams\n  To laugh at in our ages?\"\n\nIf this fresh score of years did not deceive us, shall a life of\nthreescore, with its deeper glances into the mystery, lead us to doubt\nthe longevity of a sentiment of whose imperishableness that life itself\nis the best evidence we need ask? Are we to be left orphans when taken\nfrom nature's arms, robbed of all that made life desirable before?\nNature cared for us; Persons failed us, and all unawares we lapsed out\nof our paradise, its gates barred against us.\n\n  \"I cannot reach it; and my striving eye\n  Dazzles at it, as at eternity.\n  Were now that chronicle alive,\n  Those white designs which children drive,\n  And the thoughts of each harmless hour,\n  With their content too in my power,\n  Quickly would I make my path even,\n  And by mere playing go to heaven.\n\n  Dear harmless age, the short, swift span\n  Where weeping virtue parts with man;\n  Where love without lust dwells, and bends\n  What way we please, without self-ends:\n  An age of mysteries! which he\n  Must live twice that would God's face see;\n  Where angels guard, and with it play,\n  Angels, which foul men drive away.\"\n\n'Tis sad to consider how long time is consumed in wiping away the stains\nwhich had been insinuated into the breast during these earlier years and\nup to coming manhood,--to what we call the maturity of our powers. Life\nis too much for most. So much of age, so little youth; living for the\nmost part in the moment, and dating existence by the memory of its\nburdens. Men think they once were not, and fear the like fate may\novertake them, as if time were older than their minds. 'Tis because we\nalways were that we cannot trace our beginnings to the atheism of\nno-being and resolve ourselves into nothing. Children save us. Rather\nare we saved by remaining children, as Christ said.\n\nHave we forgotten how things looked to us when we were young; how the\ndull world the old people lived in seemed to us? 'Twas not ours, nor\ntheir dry theism; and our fresh hearts whispered reverently:\n\n\"Is not your paradise an Inferno? Please never name it. While in Heaven\nI speak not of it: I hum that song to myself. Will you spoil my paradise\ntoo? Come with me, come, and I will show you Elysium; I know all about\nit; I am not deceived. I feel it to be solid, safe. It makes good its\npledges always. I have a home of all delights--am admitted when I\nplease, while you seem vagabonds and woebegones, bereft of friends, the\nFriend of friends. Am I to quit my present satisfactions for your\npromised joys. Unkind! this taking me from my paradise, unless you\nconduct me to a happier.\"\n\n\n\n\nV.\n\nCULTURE.\n\n\n     \"O for the coming of that glorious time,\n     When, prizing knowledge as their noblest wealth\n     And best protection, liberal states shall own\n     An obligation on their part to teach\n     Them, who are born to serve her and obey;\n     Binding themselves by statute to secure\n     For all the children whom their soil maintains\n     The rudiments of letters; and to inform\n     The mind with moral and religious truth\n     Both understood and practised--so that none\n     However destitute, be left to drop\n     By timely culture unsustained, or run\n     Into a wild disorder; or be forced\n     To drudge through life without the aid\n     Of intellectual implements and tools;\n     A savage horde among the civilized,\n     A servile band among the lordly free.\"\n                  WORDSWORTH.\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration: Decorative banner of thistle blooms and leaves]\n\n\n\n\nCULTURE.\n\n\nI.--MODERN TEACHING.\n\nSaxon Alfred decreed that every man who had so much as two hides of\nland, should bring up his children to learning till they were fifteen\nyears of age at least, that they might be religious and live happily;\nelse, he said, they were but beasts and sots, dangerous to themselves\nand the state. And the state's true glory lies in its calling forth into\nfullest exercise and giving scope and right direction to the gifts of\nits children; seeking out especially and fostering the best born as they\nrise, and training these for educators of the coming generations. The\nParent of parents, the guardian of all gifts born into it, society\nshould neglect none, sequester none from places and honors to which they\nare entitled by birthright of genius or acquirement. Every child, the\ngifted by divine right, is sent to cherish and redeem the race; whom to\nneglect or divert from its aim were base oversight and abuse of the race\nitself. Far too noble, too precious be any to be used for ends merely\nsecondary, secular, and thus spoiled for their own and God's intents.\n\nYet simple as this duty seems, society with all its aims and appliances,\nhas not as yet attained the refinement of culture needful to the\nreceiving of a child into its bosom, and of educating it to the full\ndemands of its endowments. With the child comes the seed of states; the\nfamily being the nursery of the citizen, the measure of a people's\ncivilization. As the homes, so the state; as the parents, so the\nchildren. Nor has society fathered its functions till all children,\nbefriended from the first, are fashioned into the image each is capable\nof attaining. Other goods are but aids to this end; all are necessary\nfor educating the human being, since the child is the summary of all\ngifts, and the most precious of all trusts committed to the state for\ntrial and training.\n\nYet still the decease of gifts follows fast on their birth, and parents\nare oftener called beside the bier of these children of the sun than to\ntheir nuptials or coronation. They hold their jubilees in weeds rather;\nand the untimeliness of genius is the tragedy of life as of letters.\nAmidst the sickliness and wane of things, neither poet nor saint\nsurvives his laurel for more than a day. Far from treating the human\nbeing with anything like the subtlety and skill displayed by the ancient\nmasters, we wait for the first hint of an institution for training youth\ninto the fulness of their powers, by the genial touch of sensibility,\nthe magnetism of thought. Left instead to the superficial culture of the\nsects, the traditions of the elders, the guidance of worldlings, they\nslide soon into vague conjectures, run adrift on the sea of doubt, the\nshoals of expediency, bereft of faith in themselves as in things unseen\nand ideal.\n\n  \"See gifted youths rush out to feed on whims;\n  Fashion craves their hours, low hopes their aim,\n  To win not noble women for their brides,\n  But titled slaves, heirs to some teasing caste,\n  For beauty without culture seems mere show;\n  As if great nature laid not on her tints\n  With more contrivance than the brush of art;\n  Or schools where grammars hide the place of sense,\n  And shallow stammering drowns the native voice.\"\n\nNot letters but life chiefly educate if we are educatable. But\nexperience follows oftenest too late for most and too distant from the\nwork to help us directly without an interpreter to assist in making\ntimely use of it. Fortunate will it be, if by instinct and mother wit we\ntake life at first hand, converting it forthwith into thought and habit.\nCharacter comes of temperament far more than of acquirement. And the\nmost that culture performs is the drawing forth, fashioning and\npolishing the natural gifts. But we cannot create what is not inborn. A\nfine brain is a spiritual endowment, as from the head of Jove sprang\nMinerva. Centuries of culture pass into pure power; piety and genius are\nparents of piety and genius. But less discriminating than were the\nancient carvers in wood and ivory, who, when they had an order for a\nhead of Hermes, or any ordinary god even, searched carefully for\nsubstances adapted to receive the proper form, states attempt to fashion\nsaints and rulers out of any materials that chance brings to hand.\nOmitting mind, or overriding it in our haste to come at immediate and\nsuperficial results, we ignore ideas and principles altogether. Aiming\nat little we attain little. For while our country opens the freest scope\nfor the exercise of the higher gifts of genius and character, we cherish\nthese but feebly in our public or private training. The highest prizes\nheld forth to youth are not only beneath the aims of a noble ambition,\nbut the stimulus for their attainment is wanting. Even in New England,\nculture is external, provincial; neglectful of the better parts of body\nand mind; behind the old countries, that of the ancient states. We cram\nthe memory with the lore of foreign tongues, the understanding with a\nmedley of learning, leaving fancy, imagination, the moral sentiment,\nmainly to shift for themselves--the forming of the manners, motives,\naims and aspirations. Then what substitutes have we, for the falconry,\narchery, the hunting, fishing, of earlier and what we deem barbarous\ntimes? Yet these were sports, heroic and wholesome, giving a national\ncoloring and strength of character: the wrestling too, throwing the\nquoit, and other manly games, horsemanship, boating, swimming, were a\nnatural gymnastic for body and mind. War also had its advantages. So the\nplays and games were schools of genius and valor: the people were\nrefined by contact with the refinements of the best citizens, the\nguardians of public taste and honor providing hereby a polite and manly\nculture suited to the needs of the state. Education extended into the\nage of ripe maturity. Nor was the disciple committed to himself till he\nbecame the master. And through life he was prompted by incentives of\nvirtue and fame. The state was venerable, ennobled as it was by the\ngenius and services of great men; great men earning honorably their\nrenown by teaching.\n\n  'Tis noble minds who noble men create,\n  And they who have great manners form mankind.\n\nHappy the man who wins the confidence of the rising youth of his time.\nHe becomes priest and professor elect without degrees of synods or\nuniversities. He shapes the future of the next generation as of the\nsucceeding. A noble artist he cherishes visions of excellence not easily\nimpersonated or spoken. His life and teachings are studies for high\nideals.\n\n\nII.--SOCRATIC DIALECTIC.\n\nThe highest end of instruction is to discipline and liberalize mind and\ncharacter by familiarizing the thoughts with those of the learned and\nwise. Character is inspired by admiration of character, intellect by\nparticipating in intellect. The masters form masters. And had I the\nchoice of my class, I would put Plato's works at once into its hands.\nAnd, for a beginning,--say the Alcibiades of the earlier Dialogues. I\nknow of no discipline under the care of a thoughtful instructor so\nfitting for educating the reason, quickening the moral sense, refining\nthe sensibilities, fashioning the manners, ennobling the character, as\nexercises in the Socratic dialectic: opening the whole armory of gifts,\nit sharpens and polishes these for the victories of life. The youth who\nmasters Plato wins fairly his degree alike in humanity and divinity. He\nhas the key to the mysteries, ancient and modern.[C]\n\n     [Footnote C: \"It might be thought serious trifling,\" says\n     the accomplished Bishop Berkeley, \"to tell my readers that\n     the greatest of men had ever a high esteem of Plato, whose\n     writings are the touchstone of a hasty and shallow mind,\n     whose philosophy has been the admiration of ages; which\n     supplied patriots, magistrates and lawgivers to the most\n     flourishing states, as well as fathers of the church and\n     doctors of the schools. Albeit, in these days, the depths of\n     that old learning are rarely fathomed. And yet it were happy\n     for these lands if our young nobility and gentry, instead of\n     modern maxims would imbibe the notions of the great men of\n     antiquity. But in these loose times many an empty head is\n     shook at Aristotle and Plato, as well as the Holy\n     Scriptures. Certainly, where a people are well educated, the\n     art of piloting a state is best learned from the writings of\n     Plato.\"]\n\nTake the following as an example of the pure dialectic method as of\nmetaphysic;\n\n     \"In what way, asks Socrates, may we attain to know the soul\n     itself with the greatest clearness? for when we know this,\n     it seems we shall know ourselves. Now, in the name of the\n     gods, whether are we not ignorant of the right meanings of\n     that Delphic inscription just now mentioned, 'Know\n     thyself?'\"\n\n     _Alcibiades._ What meaning? what have you in your thoughts,\n     Socrates, when you ask the question?\n\n     _Socrates._ I will tell you what I suspect this inscription\n     means, and what particular thing it advises us to do. For a\n     just resemblance of it is, I think, not to be found wherever\n     one pleases, but in only one thing, the sight.\n\n     _Alcibiades._ How do you mean?\n\n     _Socrates._ Consider it jointly with me. Were a man to\n     address himself to the outward human eye, as it were some\n     other man; and were he to give it this counsel, \"See\n     yourself,\" what particular thing should we suppose that he\n     advises the eye to do? Should we not suppose that it was to\n     look at such a thing as that the eye by looking at it, might\n     see itself?\n\n     _Alcibiades._ Certainly we should.\n\n     _Socrates._ What kind of thing then do we think of by\n     looking at which we see things at which we look, and at the\n     same time see ourselves?\n\n     _Alcibiades._ 'Tis evident, Socrates, that for this purpose\n     we must look at mirrors and other things of like kind.\n\n     _Socrates._ You are right. And has not the eye itself, with\n     which we see, something of the same kind belonging to it?\n\n     _Alcibiades._ Most certainly it has.\n\n     _Socrates._ You have observed then, that the face of the\n     person who looks in the eye of another person, appears\n     visible to himself in the eye of the person opposite to him,\n     as in a mirror. And we therefore call this the pupil,\n     because it exhibits the image of that person who examines\n     it.\n\n     _Alcibiades._ What you say is true.\n\n     _Socrates._ The eye beholding an eye and looking in the most\n     excellent part of it in that which it sees, may thus see\n     itself?\n\n     _Alcibiades._ Apparently so.\n\n     _Socrates._ But if the eye look at any other part of the\n     man, or at anything whatever, except what this part of the\n     eye happens to be like, it will not see itself.\n\n     _Alcibiades._ It is true.\n\n     _Socrates._ If therefore the eye would see itself, it must\n     look in an eye, and in that place of the eye, too, where the\n     virtue of the eye is naturally seated; and the virtue of the\n     eye is sight.\n\n     _Alcibiades._ I am aware that it is so.\n\n     _Socrates._ Whether then is it not true, my friend\n     Alcibiades, that the soul if she know herself, must look at\n     soul, and especially at that place in the soul in which\n     wisdom, the virtue of the soul, is ingenerated, and also at\n     whatsoever else this virtue of the soul resembles?\n\n     _Alcibiades._ To me, Socrates, it seems true.\n\n     _Socrates._ Do we know of any place in the soul more divine\n     than that which is the seat of knowledge and intelligence?\n\n     _Alcibiades._ We do not.\n\n     _Socrates._ This, therefore, in the soul resembles the\n     divine nature. And a man, looking at this, and realizing all\n     that which is divine and God and wisdom, would gain the most\n     knowledge of himself.\n\n     _Alcibiades._ It is apparent.\n\n     _Socrates._ And to know one's self we acknowledge to be\n     wisdom.\n\n     _Alcibiades._ By all means.\n\n     _Socrates._ Shall we not say, therefore, that as mirrors are\n     clearer, purer, and more splendid than that which is most\n     analogous to a mirror in the eye, in like manner, God is\n     purer and more splendid than that which is best in our soul?\n\n     _Alcibiades._ It is likely, Socrates.\n\n     _Socrates._ Looking therefore at God, we should make use of\n     him as the most beautiful mirror, and among human concerns\n     we should look at the virtue of the soul, and thus by so\n     doing shall we especially see and know our very self.\n\n     _Alcibiades._ Yes.\n\nAnd yet knowing the fascinations that beset gifted young men, one might\nsay to them at parting, as Socrates did to the accomplished Alcibiades,\nwhen the latter intimated that he would begin thenceforward to cultivate\nthe science of justice:\n\n     \"I wish you may persevere. But I am terribly afraid for you;\n     not that I in the least distrust the goodness of your\n     disposition; but perceiving the torrent of the times, I fear\n     you may be borne away with it, in spite of your own\n     resistance and all my endeavors in your aid.\"\n\n\nIII.--PYTHAGOREAN DISCIPLINE.\n\nLet us see, too, how wisely the great master Pythagoras went to his\nwork.\n\n\"He prepared his disciples for learning by many trials; for he did not\nreceive into the number of his associates any who came to him till he\nhad subjected them to various examinations. In the first place, he\ninquired after what manner they associated with their parents and\nrelations generally; next, he surveyed their unreasonable laughter,\ntheir silence, their speaking when it was not proper; and farther,\nstill, what were their desires, their intimacies with their companions,\ntheir conversation; how they employed their leisure time, and what were\nthe subjects of their joy and grief. He likewise surveyed their form,\ntheir gait, gestures and whole motion of their body, their voice,\ncomplexion and physiognomy, considering all these natural indications to\nbe the manifest signs of the unapparent manners of the soul.\n\nHaving thus subjected them to this scrutiny, he next suffered them to\npass a good while seemingly unobserved by him, that he might the better\njudge of each one how he was disposed towards stability and a love of\nlearning, and whether he was sufficiently fortified against the\nflatteries of popularity and false honor and glory. After this, he\nadvised such to maintain a long silence, that he might observe how far\nthey were disposed towards continence in speech, and that most difficult\nof all victories--the victory over the tongue. Thus practically he made\ntrial of their aptitudes to be educated, for he was as anxious that they\nshould be modest and discreet, as that they should not speak\nunadvisedly. He likewise directed his attention to every other\nparticular, such as whether they were astonished at the outbreaks of\nimmoderate passion and desire. Nor did he superficially consider how\nthey were affected by these; or whether they were contentious or\nambitious, or how they were disposed as to friendship and strife. And if\non his surveying all these particulars accurately, they appeared to him\nendued with worthy manners, he next directed his attention to their\nfacility in learning and memory; first whether they were able to follow\nwhat was said with rapidity and perspicuity; and in the next place,\nwhether a certain love and temperance attracted them to the disciplines\nby which they were taught; whether they loved to learn and to be\ngoverned; also how they were disposed as to gentleness, which he called\nelegance of manners; conceiving all ferocity of temper as hostile to his\nmode of education. For impudence, shamelessness, intemperance,\nslothfulness, slowness of learning, unrestrained licentiousness,\ndisgrace and the like, are attendants of savage manners, but the\ncontrary of these are gentleness and mildness.\n\nOf food he held that whatsoever obstructs divination should be shunned.\nAnd that the juvenile age should make trial of temperance--this being\nalone of all the virtues alike adapted to youths and maidens, and\ncomprehends the good both of body and mind, and also the desire for the\nmost excellent studies and pursuits. Boys he thought were especially\ndear to divinity, and he exhorted women to use words of good omen\nthrough the whole of life, and to endeavor that others may predict good\nthings of them. He paid great attention to the health of body and mind,\nusing unction and the bath often, wrestling, leaping with weights in the\nhands, also pantomimes with a view to strengthening the body, selecting\nfor this purpose opposite exercises.\n\nMusic he thought contributed greatly to health, as well as to purifying\nthe heart and manners, and he called it a medicine when he so used it,\nconceiving that each faculty had its particular melody. He placed in the\nmiddle a player on the lyre, and seated around him were those who were\nable to sing. And when the person struck the lyre, they sang certain\npaeans, through which they were sure to be delighted, and to become\norderly and graceful, and he had melodies devised as remedies against\nthe passions, as anger, despondency, complaint, inordinate desire and\nthe rest, which afforded the greatest relief to these distempers of the\nsoul. He likewise used dancing, walking and conversation.\n\nRulers, who received their country from the multitude of citizens as a\ncommon deposit, were to transmit it faithfully to their posterity as a\nhereditary possession; their language was to be such as to render them\nworthy of belief without an oath. And as parents, they were so to manage\ntheir domestic affairs as to make the government of them the object of\ndeliberate choice, being kindly disposed towards their offspring, as\nthey were the only animals that were susceptible of moral obedience. And\nthey were to associate with their wives as companions for life, being\nmindful that other compacts were engraved on tablets and pillars, but\nthose with wives were inserted in children, and that they should\nendeavor to be beloved by them, not through nature alone, of which they\nwere not the causes, but through choice; for this was voluntary\nbeneficence; they remembering, also, that they received their wives from\nthe vestal hearth with libations, and brought them home as if they were\nsuppliants of the gods themselves.\n\nBy orderly conduct and temperance, they were to be examples both to\ntheir families and the city in which they lived, revering beautiful and\nworthy manners, expelling sluggishness from all their actions,\nopportunity being the chief good in all. Separation of parents and\nchildren from one another was the greatest of injuries both to\nthemselves and the State. Youths and virgins were to be educated in\nlabor and exercises conducing to health, using food convenient thereto,\nand in a temperate and tolerant life. Of things in human life, there\nwere many in which to be late conversant was best. A boy was to be so\neducated and fed, as not to have the desires awakened till the nuptial\nhour. Parents benefited their children prior to their birth, and were\nthe causes of their good conduct afterwards. Hence the children owed\nthem as many thanks as a dead man would owe to him who should be able to\nrestore him back to life. And they were to associate with one another in\nsuch a manner as not be in a state of hostility, and be easily\nreconciled after any disputes, exhibiting a modesty of behavior to their\nelders, benevolent dispositions towards parents and love and regard to\nall deserving these. All who aspired after true glory, were to be such\nin reality as they wished to appear to be to others. The most pure and\nunadulterated character was that of him who gave himself to the\ncontemplation and practice of the most beautiful things, and was a lover\nas well as student of wisdom.\n\nIt was by disciplines and inventions like these that he sought to heal\nand purify the soul, to revive and save its divine part, and thus\nconduct to the intelligible One its divine Eye, which is better worth\nsaving than ten thousand corporeal eyes: since by its sight alone when\nthus strengthened and clarified, the truth pertaining to all beings is\nclearly perceived.\"\n\n\nIV.--MOTHER TONGUE.\n\n  \"Let foreign nations of their language boast\n    What fine variety each tongue affords,\n  I like our language as our men and coast,\n    Who cannot dress it well want wit not words.\"\n\n\"Great, verily,\" says Camden, \"was the glory of our tongue before the\nNorman conquest, in this, that the old English could express most aptly\nall the conceptions of the mind in their own speech without borrowing\nfrom any.\"\n\nWe still draw from the same wells of meaning as did Chaucer and Camden;\nthe language, by additions from foreign sources, as by native growth,\nhaving now become the most composite of any; it is the one we speak, and\naffect to teach. If we have few masters, it is because we yet cultivate\nother tongues at its cost. Scholars praise the exceeding richness and\nbeauty of the best writers of the age of Elizabeth, but fail to inform\nus by what happy chances, whether by force of genius altogether, or more\nnatural methods of study, the language and literature came to its prime\nin that period. Meanwhile it were not amiss for us to listen to the\ngreat authors and teachers of those golden days when our tongue had the\nsweep and splendor, the force, depth, accuracy, the grace and\nflexibility proper to its genius and idiom, if we may learn from these\nauthorities by what method they attained to their proficiency in its\nuse; instructors of Princes, as they were, and inspirers of those who\nmade the literature.\n\nRoger Ascham--Queen Elizabeth's school-master--proposed after teaching\nthe common rudiments of grammar to begin a course of double translation,\nfirst from Latin into English, and shortly after from English into\nLatin, correcting the mistakes of the student and leading to the\nformation of a classical style, by pointing out the differences between\nthe re-translation and the original, and explaining their reasons. \"His\nwhole system is built upon the principle of dispensing as much as\npossible with the details of grammar, and he supports his theory by a\ntriumphant reference to its practical effects, especially as displayed\nin the case of Queen Elizabeth, whose well known proficiency in Latin,\nhe declares to have been obtained without grammatical rules, after the\nvery simplest had been mastered.\"\n\nSir Philip Sidney, whose opinions are of the highest importance in these\nmatters, speaking in his \"Defence of Poesie,\" says:\n\n\"Another will say that English wanteth grammar. Nay, truly, it hath that\npraise that it wants not grammar; for grammar it might have, but needs\nnot, being so easie in itselfe and so void of those cumbersome\ndifferencies of cases, genders, moods and tenses, which I think was a\npiece of the tower of Babylon's curse, that a man should be put to\nschoole to learn his mother tongue. But for the uttering sweetly and\nproperly the conceit of the minde which is the end of speech, that it\nhath equally with any other tongue in the world.\"[D]\n\n     [Footnote D: \"We learn languages,\" says Luther, \"much better\n     by way of mouth at home, in the street, than out of books.\n     Letters are dead words; the utterances of the mouth, are\n     living words, which in writing can never stand forth so\n     distinct and excellent, as the soul of man bodies them forth\n     through the mouth. Tell me where was there ever a language,\n     which men could learn to speak with correctness and\n     propriety by the rules of grammar. Yet let none think or\n     conclude from all this, that I would reject the grammars\n     altogether.\"]\n\nMilton, to whom, next to Shakespeare our tongue owes most, and who spent\nmuch time in compiling an English Dictionary, writes in one of his\nItalian Letters:\n\n\"Whoever in a state, knows how to form wisely the manners and men and to\nrule them at home and in war, by excellent institutions, him in the\nfirst place above all others I should esteem worthy of honor. But next\nto him, the man who strives in maxims and rules the method and habit of\nspeaking and writing derived from a good age of the nation, and as it\nwere to fortify the same round with a kind of wall, the daring to\noverleap which a law only short of that of Romulus should be used to\nprevent. Should we choose to compare the two in respect to utility, it\nis the former alone that can make the social existence of the citizens\njust and holy, but it is the latter that makes it splendid and\nbeautiful, which is the next thing to be desired. The one, as I believe,\nsupplies a noble courage and intrepid counsels against an enemy invading\nthe territory; the other takes to himself the task of extirpating and\ndefeating by means of a learned detective police of ears, and a\nlight-infantry of good authors, that barbarism which makes large inroads\nupon the minds of men and is a destructive intestine enemy to genius.\nNor is it to be considered of small importance what language, pure or\ncorrupt, a people has, or what is their customary degree of propriety in\nspeaking it--a matter which oftener than once was the salvation of\nAthens. Nay, as it is Plato's opinion, that, by a change in the manner\nand habit of dress, serious commotions and mutations are portended in a\ncommonwealth, I, for my part, would rather believe that the fall of that\ncity, and low and obscure condition, followed on the general vitiation\nof its usage in the matter of speech. For let the words of a country be\nin part unhandsome and offensive in themselves, in part debased by wear,\nand wrongly uttered, and what do they declare but by no light\nindication, that the inhabitants of that country are an indolent,\nidly-yawning race, with minds already prepared for any amount of\nservility? On the other hand, we have never heard that any empire, any\nstate, did not flourish in at least a middling degree as long as its\nliking and care for its language lasted.\"\n\nDevotees of grammatical studies have not been distinguished for any very\nremarkable felicities of expression. If we consult our experience we\nshall find that we owe much to the home dialect, the school, the books\nwe read, the letters we write; to our fellowships, the practice of such\nliving speakers and writers as chance threw in our way, our habits of\nthinking, observations of life and things, the cultivation of the\nsensibilities, imagination, the common sense, more than all else\nbesides. A man's speech is the measure of his culture; a graceful\nutterance the first born of the arts.\n\nNature is the armory of genius. Cities serve it poorly; books and\ncolleges at second hand; the eye craves the spectacle of the horizon, of\nmountain, ocean, river and plain, the clouds and stars: actual contact\nwith the elements, sympathy with the seasons as these rise and roll. And\nwhoever will strike bold strokes for institutions and literature, must\nbe often afoot with nature and thought in his eye for grasping the\nselect rhetoric for his theme.\n\n[Illustration: Small decoration of a mask]\n\n\n\n\nVI.\n\nBOOKS.\n\n\n                     \"As great a store\n     Have we of books as bees of herbs, or more,\n     And the great task to try them, know the good,\n     To discern weeds and judge of wholesome food,\n     Is a rare scant performance.\"\n                             DANIEL.\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration: Decorative banner of a bee among flowers and leaves]\n\n\n\n\nBOOKS.\n\n\nGood books, like good friends, are few and chosen; the more select the\nmore enjoyable; and like these are approached with diffidence, nor\nsought too familiarly nor too often, having the precedence only when\nfriends tire. The most mannerly of companions, accessible at all times,\nin all moods, they frankly declare the author's mind, without giving\noffence. Like living friends they too have their voice and\nphysiognomies, and their company is prized as old acquaintances. We seek\nthem in our need of counsel or of amusement, without impertinence or\napology, sure of having our claims allowed. A good book justifies our\ntheory of personal supremacy, keeping this fresh in the memory and\nperennial. What were days without such fellowship? We were alone in the\nworld without it. Nor does our faith falter though the secret we search\nfor and do not find in them will not commit itself to literature, still\nwe take up the new issue with the old expectation, and again and again,\nas we try our friends after many failures at conversation, believing\nthis visit will be the favored hour and all will be told us. Nor do I\nknow what book I can well spare, certainly none that has admitted me,\nthough it be but for the moment and by the most oblique glimpse, into\nthe mind and personality of its author; though few there are that prefer\nsuch friendly claim to one's regard, and satisfy expectation as he turns\ntheir leaves. Our favorites are few; since only what rises from the\nheart reaches it, being caught and carried on the tongues of men\nwheresoever love and letters journey.\n\nNor need we wonder at their scarcity or the value we set upon them;\nlife, the essence of good letters as of friendship, being its own best\nbiographer, the artist that portrays the persons and thoughts we are,\nand are becoming. And the most that even he can do, is but a chance\nstroke or two at this fine essence housed in the handsome dust, but too\nfugitive and coy to be caught and held fast for longer than the passing\nglance; the master touching ever and retouching the picture he leaves\nunfinished.\n\n  \"My life has been the poem I would have writ,\n  But I could not both live and utter it.\"\n\nI find books like persons more attractive as they are the more\nsuggestive, more mythical and difficult to render at once to the senses,\nand enjoy them the more for this blending of nature with mind,--the text\nsparkling with the author's personality. What is thus implied is more\ngracefully delivered than if written literally; it piques then the fancy\nmore and calls the higher gifts into play; and an author best serves me\nwho, speaking alike to imagination and reason, arms with figures apt for\noccasions, thus pluming the genius for discourse. And the like may be\nsaid of the dictionaries: opened at hazard in lively moods, the columns\nbecome charged with thought, as if each word were blood-wise and fleshed\nwith meaning. Again, books professing system and completeness are wont\nto be dry and unprofitable save for their facts and inferences; truth\nthe flowing essence of things, the substance of being, accosting the\nmind most gracefully as a flowing form, fixed for the moment of passing\nonly in the mind's eye, and is studied to best advantage rather in books\nof biography and poetry than of history or science, wherein the\npersonality is oftenest lost in abstractions of fact. Reading, like\nconversation, is an idealism most profitable as it calls imagination\ninto play, and thus leads forth all other gifts.\n\nBooks of table-talk have this advantage over most others; being the best\ncompanions for the moment, they can be taken up and laid down without\nloss, and when sensible are best whetstones for the wits. With the\nessayists, the poets, books of letters and lives, one's library were\nalways alive and inviting. Good for moments these are always good: we\nmay open by chance, dip anywhere, read in any order, begin at the last\nparagraph and read backward as well; obvious consecutiveness being of\nless consequence. Nor do I find the logic the worse when thus seemingly\nbroken and obscure, since each paragraph is a unit standing apart yet\nall related in the perspective which the reader commands. We could not\nspare from our galaxy the great essayists and moralists, Pliny,\nPlutarch, Xenophon, Plato, Epictetus, Seneca, Marcus Aurelius,\nMontaigne, Bacon, Sir Thomas Browne Cowley, Coleridge, and the rest;\neach delineating in his proper way that antique faith in man and the\nworld, which being one and universal in essence, unites all mankind. We\nknow the history of these pieces of life, these experiences recorded for\nus by their inspired authors, as if themselves were scribes of the\nspirit and committed it to letters for our especial benefit.\n\nAny library is an attraction. And there is an indescribable delight--who\nhas not felt it that deserves the name of scholar--in mousing at choice\namong the alcoves of antique book-shops especially, and finding the\noldest of these sometimes newest of the new, fresher, more suggestive\nthan the book just published and praised in the reviews. Nor is the\npleasure scarcely less of cutting the leaves of the new volume, opening\nby preference at the end rather than title-page, and seizing the\nauthor's conclusions at a glance. Very few books repay the reading in\ncourse. Nor can we excuse an author if his page does not tempt us to\ncopy passages into our common places, for quotation, proverbs,\nmeditation, or other uses. A good book is fruitful of other books; it\nperpetuates its fame from age to age, and makes eras in the lives of its\nreaders.\n\nOne must be rich in thought and character to owe nothing to books,\nthough preparation is necessary to profitable reading; and the less\nreading is better than more;--book-struck men are of all readers least\nwise, however knowing or learned.\n\n          \"Books cannot make the mind,\n    Which we must bring apt to be set aright,\n  Yet do they rectify it in that kind\n    And touch it so as that they turn that way\n  Where judgment lies. And though we may not find\n    The certain place of truth, yet do they stay\n  And entertain us near about the same,\n    And give the soul the best delight that may\n  Encheer it most, and make our spirits enflame\n    To thoughts of glory and to worthy deeds.\"\n\nMoreover for gifts, what so gracefully bestowed as fitting books\nconveying what no words of the giver could convey? Were the history of\nthe few books of the heart published, what more enduring compliment\nwould this confer on their authors! Perhaps the finest books have least\nfame and find but a few choice readers. 'Tis high praise bestowed on an\nauthor that his book is taken up with love and expectation, we coming to\nhis page again and again without disappointment. To be enjoyable a book\nmust be wholesome like nature, and flavored with the religion of wisdom.\n\nBooks of letters bring the reader nearest to the life and personality of\nthe writer:\n\n  \"For more than kisses letters mingle souls,\n  For then friends absent meet.\"\n\nWritten with this advantage of perspective, the epistle is oftentimes\nmore acceptable than were the interview, more discreet and opportune,\nsince committing ourselves to the writing with a kind of reserved\nabandonment, if I may thus characterize our mood, which in conversation\nwe might naturally overleap, we give that only in which another may\nmodestly sympathize and share--so shading our egotism as to tell all\nabout ourselves with the delicacy of self-respect without wounding that\nof others. Epistolary correspondence is the most difficult and delicate\nof all composition. And this perhaps accounts for the few books of the\nkind in our or any language; and the best of these mostly written by\nwomen who give themselves heartily to sentiment. One may think himself\nfortunate if the gift be his, and his experience find expression in his\ncorrespondence. Perhaps the diary has this advantage over letters; we\nmake it our confidant committing to its leaves what we would not to\nanother; sure of the sacred trust being kept for us. And the most\ninteresting biographies are composed largely of these. The more\nautobiographical the more attractive. The keeping of a journal is an\neducation. Let every one try his hand at one and begin young. If it get\nthe best of his hours and an autobiography out of him, neither his time\nhas been misspent nor has he lived in vain. A life worth living is worth\nrecording. To what end lives any, if he fail of getting apparent order\nat least into it; living in a manner worthy of celebrity? Life were poor\nenough that does not organize the chaos and bring the joy of creation,\npronouncing it and all things good, excellence ever falling naturally\ninto order and melody. Let one value above all literary fame the gift of\nseizing and portraying his privatest thought,--the homely furnitures and\nprimogenitures,--and if but partially successful consider himself as\nhaving attained the fairest laurels the muse has to bestow. As the best\nfruits of the season fall latest and keep the longest, so those of a\nlifetime; and fortunate is he whose genius thus gathers his choicest\nsamples housed carefully in a book for any who may relish their flavor.\n\nOne cannot be well read unless well seasoned in thought and experience.\nLife makes the man. And he must have lived in all his gifts and become\nacclimated herein to profit by his readings. Living at the breadth of\nShakspeare, the depth of Plato, the height of Christ, gives the mastery,\nor if not that, a worthy discipleship. Life alone divines life. We read\nas we live; the book being for us the deeper or the shallower as we are.\nIf read from the reason, it answers to the reason, but fails of finding\nimagination, the moral sentiment, the affections, fails of making valid\nits claims upon the deepest instincts of the heart,--those critics of\ninspiration and interpreters,--all books owing their credibility to the\nfact of being written from, and addressed to these, as eye-witnesses and\nsponsors. Mothers of our mothers we are ever at their teats. Most owe\nmore to tradition than to culture or literature; the best of literature\nas of nurture, being still largely tinctured with tradition. Our debt to\nthe Hebrew scriptures has been greater doubtless than to any literature\nhitherto accessible to us of the Saxon stock; greater than to all\nforeign literatures besides. And now the instincts prompt thoughtful\nminds as never before to explore the prime sources and drink freely at\nthe fountains.\n\n  \"Are mouldy records now the living springs,\n  Whose healing waters slake the thirst within?\n        Oh! never yet hath mortal drank\n        A draught restorative\n  That well'd not from the depths of his own soul.\"\n\nVery desirable it were since the gates of the East are now opening wide\nand giving the free commerce of mind with mind, to collect and compare\nthe Bibles of the races for general circulation and careful reading. For\nstill out of the Theban night rays the light of our day and blends with\nall our thinking and doing--China, Egypt, Assyria, Persia, Palestine,\nGreece, Rome, Britain--the christendom and world of to-day.\n\n  Why nibbling always where\n  Ye nothing fresh can find\n    Upon those rocks?\n\n  Lo! meadows green and fair!\n  Come pasture here your mind,\n    Ye bleating flocks.\n\n\n\n\nVII.\n\nCOUNSELS.\n\n\n     \"Counsel is not so sacred a thing as praise, since the\n     former is only useful among men, but the latter is for the\n     most part reserved for the gods.\"--PYTHAGORAS.\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration: Decorative banner of a butterfly among leaves]\n\n\n\n\nCOUNSELS.\n\n\nI.--RELIGIOUS.\n\n  \"Who shapes his Godhead out of flesh or stone,\n  Knows not a God; but he who lives like one.\"\n\nKnow, that seeing you, I divine your gods also. Why name them then one\nby one so sentimentally and so often? Being yours individually, so\nunmistakably in your image, surely none needs question or desire them. A\nthousand thanks if you will lisp never a syllable more about them. As I\ntreat them civilly by my silence, why persist thus pertinaciously in\nthrusting their claims upon my attention and then questioning my piety\nfor not christening them? O! rare respecting silence, deep is the\nreligion that fathoms thine; speaking most reverently when deepest, and\ndivining mysteries that none names devoutly. What if the sacred name\nwere the silent syllable in the saint's devotions, and he\n\n  \"One of the few, who in his town\n  Honors all preachers, is his own?\n  Sermons ne'er hears, or not so many\n  As leaves no time to practise any?--\n  Hears, ponders reverently, and then\n  His practice preaches o'er again.\n  His parlor sermons rather are\n  Those to the eye than to the ear;\n  His prayers taking price and strength\n  Not from their loudness nor their length:\n  His murmurs have their music too,\n  Ye mighty pipes, as well as you;\n    Nor yields the noblest nest\n  Of warbling seraphim to the ears of love\n  A choicer lesson, than the joyful breast\n    Of some poor panting turtle dove.\"\n\nOne sometimes thinks silence for a century were most worshipful since\nspeech babbles so badly. Has not harlequin in bands and book played out\nhis part the world over?--the drawl of sacred names been heard till\nsacred names seem profane, and it were devout to fall into silence about\nthem more eloquent than any speeches about sanctity? If infidelity,\nindifference, scepticism, sweep secretly the breadth and depths of\nChristendom, 'tis but the binding spell of these superstitions about the\nname of One whom the love and admiration of all good men hold precious\nand will not let perish from love and remembrance.\n\n  What were Christ Jesus' life and gospel sweet,\n  If not in loving hearts he fix his holy seat?\n\nIf one's life is not worshipful, no one cares for his professions. Piety\nis a sentiment: the more natural it is, the wholesomer. Nor is there\npiety where charity is wanting. \"If one love not his brother whom he\nhath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen.\" None are deceived\nas to the spirit of their acquaintances: the instinct of every village,\nevery home, intimates true character. We recognize goodness wherever we\nfind it. 'Tis the same helpful influence, beautifying the meanest as the\ngreatest service by its manners, doing most when least conscious, as if\nit did it not.\n\n    \"A man's best things are nearest him,\n        Lie at his feet;\n    It is the distant and the dim\n        That we are sick to greet.\"\n\nLet us have unspoken creeds and these quick and operative. I wish mine\nto be so, for though it embosoms doctrines fit to shine in words, it\nseems most becoming to publish truths thus vital by example rather,\nsentiments so private shrinking from the frost of distrust, the heat of\ncontroversy. Personal in their traits and colored with individual hues,\nthey court the confidences of silence, and are unspeakable.\n\nOne needs but brighten his eyes to look deep into the depths of his\nheart and settle all disputes. Enlarge by a thought our view, exalt it\nby a sentiment, we find all men of our creed; or, far better, superior\nto party or creed. The uprise of an idea, perception of a principle,\nmakes many one and inseparable. The liberal mind is of no sect; it shows\nto sects their departures from the ideal standard, and thus maintains\npure religion in the world. But there are those whose minds, like the\npupil of the eye, contract as the light increases. 'Tis a poor egotism\nthat sees only its own image reflected in its vision. \"Only as thou\nbeest it thou seest it.\" How differently the different sects interpret\nthe scriptures, each according to its light and training! I imagine our\nBible is more loosely read, least understood of any book in the English\ntongue: conceive a fresh generation coming to its perusal as to a volume\njust issued in modern type from a popular bookstore and reviewed in the\njournals. How better acquit ourselves to the Bibles of the world than by\nfairly measuring our private convictions with their spirit and\nteachings? Let us first acquaint ourselves with these Records of\nRevelation before we claim for ours the merit of being the only inspired\nvolume; ourselves the favored people--as if the Truth were a\ngeographical resident dwelling in our neighborhood only.\n\n    When thou approachest to The One,\n      Self from thyself thou first must free,\n    Thy cloak duplicity cast clean aside,\n      And in the Being's Being Be.\n\nOne does not like to disturb the faith of his neighbors, yet cannot\nspeak truly on religious themes without touching the sensibilities of\nthe weak, and sometimes wounding where he sought sympathy and support.\nIt takes a good man to speak tenderly of matters of faith and practice\nin which good people have been bred, their hearts being prompt to feel\nand act without questioning the head. Precious souls, if not overwise,\nor strong for reform; the weak saints being as formidable impediments as\nthe strong sinners, both blocking the ways to amendment. But\ntemperament, inborn tendencies, predispositions, determine one's cast of\nthinking or no-thinking, and go far to shape his religious opinions. Our\ninstincts, faithfully drawn out and cherished by purity of life, lead to\nTheism as their flower and fruit. If swayed by the senses we are natural\nPantheists, at best idolaters and unbelievers in the Personal Mind. The\npassions prevailing, incline us to Atheism, or some superstition ending\nin scepticism, and indifference to all religious considerations.\n\n  \"Some whom we call virtuous, are not so\n  In their whole substance, but their virtues grow\n  But in their humors, and at seasons show.\n\n  For when through tasteless, flat humility,\n  In dough-baked men some harmlessness we see,\n  'Tis but his phlegm that's virtuous and not he.\n\n  So is the blood sometimes: whoever ran\n  To danger unimportuned, he was then\n  No better than a sanguine, virtuous man.\n\n  So cloistered men, who, on pretence of fear\n  All contributions to this world forbear,\n  Have virtue in melancholy, and only there.\n\n  Spiritual, choleric critics, who in all\n  Religions find fault, and forgive no fall,\n  Have through their zeal virtue but in their gall.\n\n  We're thus but parcel gilt, to gold we're grown\n  When virtue is our soul's complexion--\n  Who knows his virtue's name or place has none.\"\n\n\nII.--PERSONAL.\n\nPersist in being yourself, and against fate and yourself. Faith and\npersistency are life's architects, while doubt and despair bury all\nunder the ruins of any endeavor. You may pull all your paradises about\nyour ears save your earliest; that is to be yours sometime. Strive and\nhave; still striving till striving is having. We mount to heaven mostly\non the ruins of our cherished schemes, finding our failures were\nsuccesses. Nor need we turn sour if we fail to draw the prizes in life's\nlottery. It were the speck in the fruit, the falling of our manliness\ninto decay. These blanks were all prizes had we the equanimity to take\nthem without whimpering or discontent. The calamities we suffer arise\nnot from circumstances chiefly, but from ourselves. If the dose is\nnauseous or bitter, 'tis because we are, else it were not drank off with\nthe disgust we manifest. Sweet, bitter or sour,--we taste one thing in\neverything tasted, and that is ourselves. Could each once be clean\ndelivered of himself how salutary were all things and sufficing. \"'Tis\nin morals as in dietetics, one cannot see his fault till he has got rid\nof it.\"\n\nOnly virtue is fame; nor is it forward in sounding its own praises,\nbeing sure that merit never sleeps untold, nor dies without honors. It\ncannot: once lived and whispered ever so faintly in private places, it\npublishes itself in spite of every concealment and sometime blazes its\nfame abroad by myriads of trumpets. The light trembling in the socket of\nbashfulness, or hidden under the bushel of misapprehension, or\ninopportunity, flames forth at fitting moment, irradiates the world\nthereafter forever, streaks the dawn, as a visitation of the day-spring\nfrom on high.\n\nIt is as ignoble to go begging conditions as to go begging bread. If too\nfeeble, too proud or unapt to create these, one may make up his mind to\ndispense with any advantage that power on that side of life confers. Not\na circumstance, like the animal whose place in nature is determined, but\na creator of circumstances, man brings to his help freedom, opportunity,\nart, to build a world out of the world in harmony with his wants. If his\noccupation is spoiling him 'tis the dictate of virtue as of prudence, to\nquit it for one that in maintaining shall enrich him also. He must be a\nbad economist who squanders himself on his maintenance; wasting both his\ndays and himself. His gifts are too costly for such cheap improvidence.\nOne's character is the task allotted him to form, his faculties the\nimplements, his genius the workman, life the engagement, and with these\ngifts of nature and of God, shall he fail to quarry forth from his\nopportunities a man for his heavenly task-master? \"The wise man does not\nsubmit to employments which he may undertake, but accommodates and lends\nhimself to them only.\"\n\nNor is any man greatest standing apart in his individualism; his\nstrength and dignity come by sympathy with the aims of the best men of\nthe community of which he is a member. Yet whoever seeks the crowd,\ncraving popularity for propping repute, forfeits his claim to reverence\nand expires in the incense he inhales. The truly great stand upright as\ncolumns of the temple whose dome covers all, against whose pillared\nsides multitudes lean; at whose base they kneel in times of trouble.\nStand fast by your convictions and there maintain yourself against every\nodds. One with yourself, you are one with Almighty God, and a majority\nagainst all the world:\n\n     Vox priva, vox Dei.\n\n\nIII.--POLITICAL.\n\n  \"To God, thy country, and thyself be true,\n   If priest and people change, keep thou thy guard.\"\n\nBoth conformity and nonconformity are alike impracticable. When the\nconformist can stay clean in his conformity, the nonconformist come\nclean out of his nonconformity, it will be time to plead\nself-consistency. Nor let any stay to make proselytes. I have never\nknown the followers of either to come clean out of themselves even, but\ncasting their tributes to expediency or authority, surrender\nunreservedly to party or sect and sink the man. Born free into free\ninstitutions, it behooves all to preserve that freedom unimpaired,\nneither intimidated nor bribed by persons or parties: see that these\ntake nothing of theirs with consent, least of all that which gives\nconsent its dignity and worth,--one's integrity. Good men should not\nobey bad laws too well, lest bad men taking courage from the precedent,\ndisobey good ones.\n\n  \"Know there's on earth a yet auguster thing,\n  Veiled though it be, than President or King.\"\n\nThe honorable man prefers his privilege of standing uncommitted to\nparties when these fail to represent the whole of honor and justice for\nthe state. But when politics become attractive by being principled,\nsenates and cabinets the legislators and executives of justice and\ncommon rights, servants of the High Laws, then, as an honorable man and\nfaithful citizen, he is won to the polls to cast a pious and patriotic\nsuffrage for having affairs administered through the best men, whom best\nmen promote to offices to which their virtues give dignity and\ndistinction. There are times nevertheless in one's history when\nabstinence from this first privilege of a freeman and republican, seems\na duty best performed in its non-performance, the true means of\npreserving self-respect, by standing magnanimously as a protest for the\nright against the wrong--a vote less on the wrong side of a mixed issue,\nbeing as two cast on the right side, the silent significance of a name\nknown as the representative of honor and justice, showing where lies the\nwrong and the shame--the blush of a defeat on the cheek of an ill-gotten\nvictory. Of no party properly, a good man votes by his virtues for\nmankind, too just to be claimed by any unless to save it from dishonor.\n\nAt best the state's polity is deliberative, ruling the right as far as\nis practicable under the circumstances. Of mixed elements, it contents\nitself with mixed results,--the best permitted under the mixed\nconditions. But the statesman may not compromise principle for the sake\nof accommodating legislation to suit the interests of party. If he ride\nthat horse too fearlessly, he is sure to be overthrown. General\nintelligence interposes the effective check upon political ambition and\ncarries forward state affairs. But if, unequal to self-government, the\npeople have attained to that sense of freedom and no more, which renders\nliberty a snare, then the state stumbles towards a despotism, call the\nrule by any fine name you please. No greater calamity can befall a\npeople than that of deliberating long on issues imperilling liberty; any\nimpotency of indecision betraying a lapse into slavery from which the\ngravest deliberative wisdom cannot rescue them. Knowingly to put on the\nyoke and wear it restively meanwhile, were a servitude that only slavery\nitself can cure.\n\n          Where sleep the gods\n  There mob-rule sways the state,\n  Treason hath plots and fell debate,\n  Brother doth brother darkly brand,\n  Few faithful midst sedition's storm do stand,\n  The whole of virtue theirs to stay the reeling land.\n\n\"States are destroyed, not so much from want of courage as for want of\nvirtue, and the most pernicious of all ignorance is, when men do not\nlove what they approve; written laws being but images of, or substitutes\nfor those true laws which ought to be present in every human soul\nthrough a perfect insight into good.\"\n\n\n  THE SOUL'S ERRAND.\n\n  \"Go, Soul, the Body's guest,\n    Upon a thankless errand;\n  Fear not to touch the best,\n    The truth shall be thy warrant;\n      Go, since all else must die,\n      And give all else the lie.\n\n  Go tell the Court it glows\n    And shines like rotten wood;\n  Go tell the Church it shows\n    What's good, but does not good:\n      If Court and Church reply,\n      Give Court and Church the lie.\n\n  Tell Potentates they live\n    Acting, but base their actions;\n  Not loved, unless they give,\n    Nor strong, save by their factions:\n      If Potentates reply,\n      Give Potentates the lie.\n\n  Tell men of high condition,\n    That rule affairs of state,\n  Their purpose is ambition,\n    Their practice chiefly hate:\n      And if they do reply,\n      Then give them all the lie.\n\n  Tell those that brave it most,\n    They beg for more by spending;\n  Who, in their greatest cost,\n    Seek nothing but commending:\n      And if they make reply,\n      Spare not to give the lie.\n\n  Tell Zeal it lacks devotion;\n    Tell Love it is but lust;\n  Tell Time it is but motion;\n    Tell Help it is but dust:\n      And wish them no reply,\n      For thou must give the lie.\n\n  Tell Age it daily wasteth;\n    Tell Honor how it alters;\n  Tell Beauty that it blasteth;\n    Tell Favor that she falters:\n      And as they do reply,\n      Give every one the lie.\n\n  Tell Wit how much she wrangles\n    In fickle points of niceness;\n  Tell Wisdom she entangles\n    Herself in over niceness;\n      And if they do reply\n      Then give them both the lie.\n\n  Tell Physic of her boldness;\n    Tell Skill it is pretension;\n  Tell Charity of coldness;\n    Tell Law it is contention;\n      And if they yield reply,\n      Then give them all the lie.\n\n  Tell Fortune of her blindness;\n    Tell Nature of decay;\n  Tell Friendship of unkindness;\n    Tell Justice of delay;\n      And if they do reply,\n      Then give them still the lie.\n\n  Tell Arts they have no soundness,\n    But vary by esteeming;\n  Tell Schools they lack profoundness\n    And stand too much on seeming:\n      If Arts and Schools reply,\n      Give Arts and Schools the lie.\n\n  Tell Faith it's fled the city;\n    Tell how the country erreth;\n  Tell manhood, shakes off pity,\n    Tell Virtue least preferreth;\n      And if they do reply,\n      Spare not to give the lie.\n\n  So when thou hast, as I\n    Commanded thee, done blabbing;\n  Although to give the lie\n    Deserves no less than stabbing;\n      Yet stab at thee who will,\n      No stab the soul can kill.\"\n\n[Illustration: Small triangular decoration of two stylized fish]\n\n\n\n\nBOOK II\n\nSPECULATIVE\n\n\n     \"Philosophy is one of the richest presents that man ever\n     received from heaven, being that which raises the mind into\n     the contemplation of eternal things, and is the science\n     which of all others affords the most agreeable\n     entertainment.\"--EVELYN.\n\n\n\n\nI.\n\nINSTRUMENTALITIES.\n\n\n     \"The age, the present times, are not\n     To snudge in, and embrace a cot;\n     Action and blood now get the game,\n     Disdain treads on the peaceful name:\n     Who sits at home, too, bears a load\n     Greater than those that gad abroad.\"\n                             HENRY VAUGHAN.\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration: Decorative banner of two mythical animals among leaves]\n\n\n\n\nINSTRUMENTALITIES.\n\n\nI.--TENDENCIES.\n\nOur time is revolutionary. It drifts strong and fast into unitarianism\nand the empire of ideas. All things are undergoing reform and\nreconstruction; the fellowship of all souls intent on laying broad and\ndeep the foundations of the new institutions. The firm of Globe Brothers\n& Co., prospers in both hemispheres, every citizen being a partner in\nthe concern. The nations are leagued together on the basis of mutual\nassistance, finding the old alliances founded on force and fear to be\ninsecure; the people seeing it best to be friends and copartners in\nconducting the world's affairs;--trade the natural knot tying them\nby the coarser wants only; world-politics their bond of union and\nprosperity. No longer playing independent parts safely, they co-operate\nand conspire for the common welfare, interposing such checks as\neach individually requires for his security. Ruling is conducted\nnot by legislation nor diplomacy, but by social and commercial\ninter-communication; every man opening out for himself the sphere suited\nto his gifts, and taking his thinking and doing into head and hands as a\nloyal man and citizen. Power is stealing with a speed and momentum\nunprecedented from the few to the many; is played out on a theatre\nworld-wide, whole populations taking part in affairs; the distance once\nseparating extremes being bridged; middle men with human sympathies and\nbroad common-sense taking the lead and setting the old pretensions\naside. A daring realism overleaping the old barriers gives government\ninto the hands of the whole people, rulers being their servants, not\nmasters; presidents and kings the representatives of ideas and paying\nloyal homage to these crowned heads; the old virtues of reverence for\nman, fidelity to principle, so venerable and sacred in private stations,\nseeking reappearance in public life.\n\nIf once the great, the wise, were in the minority, and none dreamed of\nreason becoming popular, reason is fast becoming republicanized; from\nbeing the exclusive property of the few is diffusing itself universally\nas the common possession of the multitude.\n\n  Imperial thought now holds her powerful sway,\n  And drives the peoples on their prosperous way.\n\nThe freshest, best thoughts of the best minds of all times are claimed\nby the community; itself the awakened critic and prompter of the best;\nall thirsting for information,--world-wisdom,--and drinking off eagerly\nthe lore of centuries. Knowledge everywhere diffused is accessible to\nall, rolls with the globe, dashes against the shores of every sea,\ndelves the caverns, climbs the hill-tops with sun and moon, for the\ncommon benefit. If Hesiod wrote for his times that\n\n    \"Riches are the soul of feeble men,\"\n\nour time is fast translating his line practically:\n\n    Riches are the hand of able men;\n\nCapitalists holding kings and presidents in check while playing the\nbetter game of civilization, equalizing indirectly by legislative\nphilanthropies the extremes--every man's needs being taken as drafts\ndrawn by Providence on opulence, to be honored at sight:\n\n    \"Stewards of the gods alone\n    Are we; have nothing of our own\n    Save what to us the gods commit,\n    And take away when they see fit.\"\n\nOnce all crimes were capital and punished with death. Now this Draconian\ncode has been so meliorated and softened by the diffusion of mercy and\nhumanity as to take life for life only; is pleading powerfully for the\nabolition of the death-penalty altogether.\n\nThe sects are losing their monopoly in the heavenly luminary, closing no\nlonger their brazen cope of darkening doctrines on the religious horizon\nto vitiate the social and political morals of mankind. The faiths of the\ncultivated nations are being revised, Christendom itself drifting with\nirresistible speed and momentum into a world-religion, commensurate with\nthe advancing thought of advancing minds everywhere. As the Greeks\nreceived their Gods from Egypt and Phoenicia, Rome hers from Greece, and\nwe ours from Rome, Judea and Britain, by the law of interfusion we are\nripening into a cosmopolitan faith, with its Pantheon for all races.\n\n\nII.--METHOD.\n\nOurs were a trivial time if busied in building solely from the senses in\nfacts of understanding, having nothing ideal to enshrine. Without\nsymbols, peoples perish. Things must be exalted into some fair image of\nmind, the senses and gifts magnetized to body forth thoughts; the eye\nbeholding these in what the hands fashion. Ideas supplement and\nsymbolize facts: the field of realities lying behind unseen; the paddock\nof the common sense being but an enclosure within the immeasurable\nspaces of which thought is royal ranger,--owner of domains far larger\nand richer than these confine or survey, ideal estates which only mind\ncan claim; quarries out of which nature itself is hewn, eye and hand are\nshapen. Head and hand should go abreast with thought. If the age of iron\nand bronze has been welding chains and fetters about the forehead and\nlimbs, here, too, is the Promethean thought, using the new agencies let\nloose by the Daedalus of mechanic invention in the service of soul as of\nthe senses. Having recovered the omnipotence in nature, the\nomnipresence, graded space, tunnelled the abyss, joined ocean and land\nby living wires, stolen the chemistry of the solar ray, made light our\npainter, the lightning our runner, discovered the polar axis, set matter\non fire, thought is pushing its inquiries into the hitherto unexplored\nregions of man's personality, for whose survey and service every modern\ninstrumentality lends the outfit and means--facilities ample,\nunprecedented--new instruments for the new discoveries--new eyes for the\nnew spectacles. Using no longer contentedly the fumbling fingers of the\nold circuitous logic, the genius takes the track of the creative\nthought,--intuitively, cosmically, ontologically. A subtler analysis is\nfinely discriminated, a broader synthesis generalized from the materials\naccumulated in the mind during the centuries, the globe's contents being\ngathered in from all quarters, the Book of Creation illustrated anew,\nand posted to date. The new calculus is ours. An organon alike\nserviceable to metaphysician and naturalist--whereby things answer to\nthought, facts are resolved into truths, images into ideas, matter into\nmind, power into personality, man into God; the One soul in all souls\nrevealed as the Creative Spirit pulsating in all breasts, immanent in\nall atoms, prompting all wills, and personally embosoming all persons in\none unbroken synthesis of Being.[E]\n\n     [Footnote E: \"Truth can be known by the thinking reason. It\n     has been known by speculative thinkers scattered through the\n     ages. Their systems exist and may be mastered. Their\n     differences are not radical, but lie rather in the mode of\n     exposition--the point of departure, the various obstacles\n     overcome, and the character of the _technique_ used. Their\n     agreement is central and pervading. The method of\n     speculative cognition is to be distinguished from that of\n     sensuous certitude, and from the reflection of the\n     understanding by the exhaustive nature of its procedure. It\n     considers its subject in a universal manner and its steps\n     are void of all arbitrariness.\n\n     In order to detect a speculative system, ask the following\n     questions of it: 1. \"Is the highest principle regarded as a\n     fixed, abstract, and rigid one, or as a concrete and\n     self-moving one?\" 2. \"Is the starting point of the system\n     regarded as the highest principle, and the onward movement\n     of the same merely a result deduced analytically; or is the\n     beginning treated as the most abstract and deficient, while\n     the final result is the basis of all?\" In other words, \"Is\n     the system a descent from a first principle or an ascent to\n     one?\" This will detect a defect of the method, while the\n     former question, (1,) will detect defects in the content or\n     subject matter of the system.\"--WILLIAM T. HARRIS.]\n\n\"It has hitherto, unhappily, been the misfortune of the mere\nmaterialist, in his mania for matter on the one hand and dread of ideas\non the other, to invert this creative order, and thus hang the world's\npicture as a man with his heels upwards\"--a process conducting of\nnecessity to conclusions as derogatory to himself as to Nature's author.\nAssuming matter as his basis of investigation, force as father of\nthought, he confounds faculties with organs, life with brute substance,\npiles his atom atop of atom, cements cell on cell, in constructing his\ncolumn, sconce mounting sconce aspiringly as it rises, till his shaft of\ngifts crown itself surreptitiously with the ape's glorified effigy, as\nNature's frontispiece and head--life's atomy with life omitted\naltogether, man wanting. Contrarywise reads the ideal naturalist the\nbook of lives. Opening at Spirit, and thence proceeding to ideas, he\nfinds their types in matter, life unfolds itself naturally in organs,\nfaculties begetting forces, mind moulding things substantially, its\nconnections and interpendencies appear in series and degrees as he\ntraces the leaves, thought the key to originals, man connexus,\narchetype, and classifier of things; he, straightway, leading forth\nabreast of himself the animated creation from the chaos,--the primeval\nAdam naming his mates, himself their ancestor, contemporary and\nsurvivor.[F]\n\n     [Footnote F: \"There are four modes of knowledge which we are\n     able to acquire in the present life:\n\n     1. The first of these results from opinion, by which we\n     learn that a thing is, without knowing the why; and this\n     constitutes that part of knowledge which was called by\n     Aristotle and Plato, erudition; and which consists in moral\n     instructions for the purpose of purifying ourselves from\n     immoderate desires.\n\n     2. But the second is produced by the sciences, which from\n     establishing certain principles as hypotheses, conduct to\n     necessary conclusions whereby we arrive at the knowledge of\n     the why, as in the mathematical sciences, but at the same\n     time are ignorant with respect to the principles of these\n     conclusions, because they are merely hypothetical.\n\n     3. The third species of knowledge is that which results from\n     Plato's dialectic; in which by a progression through ideas,\n     we arrive at the first principles of things, and at that\n     which is no longer hypothetical, and thus dividing some\n     things and analyzing others, by producing many things from\n     one, and one from many.\n\n     4. But the fourth species is still more simple than this;\n     because it no longer uses analyses or compositions, but\n     whole things themselves by intuition, and becomes one with\n     the object of its perception; and this energy is the Divine\n     Reason, which Plato speaks of, and which far transcends\n     other modes of knowledge.\"--THOMAS TAYLOR.]\n\n\nIII.--MAN.\n\n  \"Imago Dei in animo; mundi, in corpore.\"\n\nMan is a soul, informed by divine ideas, and bodying forth their image.\nHis mind is the unit and measure of things visible and invisible. In him\nstir the creatures potentially, and through his personal volitions are\nconceived and brought forth in matter whatsoever he sees, touches, and\ntreads under foot, the planet he spins.\n\n    He omnipresent is,\n    All round himself he lies,\n    Osiris spread abroad,\n    Upstaring in all eyes:\n    Nature his globed thought,\n    Without him she were not,\n    Cosmos from chaos were not spoken,\n    And God bereft of visible token.\n\nA theometer--an instrument of instruments--he gathers in himself all\nforces, partakes in his plenitude of omniscience, being the Spirit's\nacme, and culmination in nature. A quickening spirit and mediator\nbetween mind and matter, he conspires with all souls, with the Soul of\nsouls, in generating the substance in which he immerses his form, and\nwherein he embosoms his essence. Not elemental, but fundamental,\nessential, he generates elements and forces, perpetually replenishing\nhis waste;--the final conflagration a current fact of his existence.\nDoes the assertion seem incredible, absurd? But science, grown luminous\nand transcendent, boldly declares that life to the senses is a blaze\nrefeeding steadily its flame from the atmosphere it kindles into life,\nits embers the spent remains from which rises perpetually the new-born\nPhoenix into regions where flame is lost in itself, and light is its\nresolvent emblem.[G]\n\n     [Footnote G: \"Man feeds upon air, the plant collecting the\n     materials from the atmosphere and compounding them for his\n     food. Even life itself, as we know it, is but a process of\n     combustion, of which decomposition is the final conclusion.\n     Through this combustion all the constituents return back\n     into air, a few ashes remaining to the earth from whence\n     they came. But from these embers, slowly invisible flames\n     arise into regions where our science has no longer any\n     value.\"--SCHLEIDEN.]\n\n  \"Thee, eye of heaven, the great soul envies not,\n  By thy male force is all we have, begot.\"\n\n\"This kindles the fire which exists in every thing, is received by every\nthing. While it sheds a full light, it is itself hidden. Its presence is\nunknown, unless some material be given to induce the exertion of its\npower. It is invisible, as well as unquenchable; and it has the faculty\nof transforming into itself every thing it touches. It renovates every\nthing by its vital heat, it illumines every thing by its flashing beams;\nit can neither be confined nor intermingled; it divides and yet is\nimmutable. It always ascends, it is constantly in motion; it moves by\nits own will and power, and sets in motion every thing around it. It has\nthe power of seizing, but cannot itself be grasped. It needs no aid. It\nincreases silently and breaks forth in majesty upon all. It generates,\nit is powerful, invisible, and omnipotent. If neglected, its existence\nmight be forgotten, but on friction being applied, it flashes out again\nlike the sword from its scabbard, shines resplendently by its own\nnatural properties, and soars into the air. Many other powers may yet be\nnoticed as belonging to it. For this reason theologians have asserted\nthat all substances being formed of fire, are thus created as nearly as\npossible in the image of God.\"\n\n[Illustration: Small decoration of a flower and leaves]\n\n\n\n\nII.\n\nMIND.\n\n\n     \"But all the Gods we have are in The Mind,\n     By whose proportions only we redeem\n     Our thoughts from out confusion, and do find\n     The measure of ourselves and of our powers,\n     And that all happiness remains confined\n     Within the kingdom of this breast of ours,\n     Without whose bounds all that we look on lies\n     In others' jurisdiction, others' powers,\n     Out of the circuit of our liberties.\"\n                             DANIEL.\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration: Decorative banner of a grasshopper among greenery]\n\n\n\n\nMIND.\n\n\nI.--IDEAS.\n\nThe Ancients had a happy conception of mind in their Pantheon of its\nPowers. They fabled these as gods celestial, mundane, infernal,\naccording to their several prerogatives and uses. It appears their ideal\nmetaphysic has not as yet been surpassed or superseded altogether, as\nthe classic mythology still holds its high place in modern thought and\nthe schools as a discipline and culture. And for the reason that thought\nis an Olympian, and man a native of the cloudlands, whatever his\nmetaphysical pretensions. It is only as we sit aloft that we oversee the\nworld below and comprehend aright its drift and revolutions. Ixion\nfalling out of the mist, which he illicitly embraced, is the visionary\nmistaking images for ideas, and thus paying the cost in his downfall.\nPlumage, wings or none, imagination or understanding, the fledged idea\nor the footed fact, the fleet reason or slow--these distribute mankind\ninto thinkers or observers. Only genius combines the double gifts in\nharmonious proportions and interplay, possessing the mind entire, and is\na denizen of both hemispheres. The idealist is the true realist,\ngrasping the substance and not its shadow. The man of sense is the\nvisionary or illusionist, fancying things as permanencies, and thoughts\nas fleeting phantoms. A Ptolemaist in theory, and earth-bound, he fears\nto venture above his terra firma into the real firmament whereinto mind\nis fashioned to spring, and command the wide prospect around.\n\n  \"Things divine are not attained by mortals who understand body merely,\n  But only those who are lightly armed arrive at the summit.\"\n\nThought is the Mercury; and things are caught on the wing, and by the\nflying spectator only. Nature is thought in solution. Like a river whose\ncurrent is flowing steadily, drop displacing drop, particle following\nparticle of the passing stream, nothing abides but the spectacle. So the\nflowing world is fashioned in the idealist's vision, and is the reality\nwhich to slower wits seems fixed in space and apart from thought,\nsubsisting in itself. But thought works in the changing and becoming,\nnot in the changed and become; all things sliding by imperceptible\ngradations into their contraries, the cosmos rising out of the chaos by\nits agency. Nothing abides; all is image and expression out of our\nthought.\n\nSo Speech represents the flowing essence as sensitive, transitive; the\nword signifying what we make it at the moment of using, but needing\nlife's rounded experiences to unfold its manifold senses and shades of\nmeaning.[H] Definitions, however precise, fail to translate the sense.\nThey confine in defining; good for the occasion, but leaps in the dark;\nat best, guesses at the meanings we seek; parapets built in the air, the\nlighter the safer; mere ladders of sound, whose rounds crumble as we\ntread. We write as we speak. The silence bars away the sense, closing\nshape and significance from us. Here is the mind facing its image the\nworld, and wishing to see the reflection at a glance, a trope. No. The\nworld is but the symbol of mind, and speech a mythology woven of both.\nEach thing suggests the thought imperfectly, and thought is translatable\nonly by thought. Our standards are ideas, those things of the mind and\noriginals of words.\n\n     [Footnote H: CATEGORIES OF SPEECH,\n\n                  BEING:\n     _Flowing_,                           _Fixed_,\n     Subjective.                        Objective.\n\n        I.             III.                 II.\n\n     _Actions_,    _Participles_,       _Things_,\n      Verbs.                              Nouns.\n\n                       IV.\n                  _Qualities_,\n              Adverbs, Adjectives.\n\n                        V.\n                   _Relations_,\n         Prepositions, Conjunctions, Pronouns.]\n\n    Thought's winged hand,\n    Marshals in trope and tone\n    The ideal band.\n    Genius alone\n    Holds fast in eye\n    The fleeing God--\n    Brings Beauty nigh--\n    Senses descry\n    Footsteps he trod,\n    Figures he drew,\n    Shapes old and new,\n    The fair, the true,\n    In soul and sod.\n\nNature is thought immersed in matter, and seen differently as viewed\nfrom the one or the other. To the laborer it is a thing of mere uses; to\nthe scholar a symbol and a muse. The same landscape is not the same as\nseen by poet and plowman. It stands for material benefit to the one,\nimmaterial to the other. The artist's point of view is one of uses seen\nas means of beauty, that being the complement of uses. His faculties\nhandle his organs; the hands, like somnambulists, playing their under\nparts to ideas; these, again, serving uses still higher. The poet,\nawakened from the sleep of things, beholds beauty in essence and form,\nbeing thus admitted to the secret of causes, the laws of pure Being.\n\nThe like of Persons. Every one's glass reflects his bias. If the thinker\nviews men as troglodytes--like Plato's groundlings, unconscious of the\nsun shining overhead; men of the senses, and mere makeweights--they in\nturn pronounce him the dreamer, sitting aloof from human concerns, an\nunproductive citizen and waste power in the world. Still, thought makes\nthe world and sustains it; atom and idea alike being its constituents.\nNor can thought, from its nature, at once become popular. It is the\nproperty and delight of the few fitted by genius and culture for\ndiscriminating truth from adhering falsehood, and of setting it forth in\nits simplicity and truth to the understandings of the less favored.\nApart by pursuit from the mass of mankind, or at most taking a separate\nand subordinate part in affairs that engage their sole attention, the\nthinker seems useless to all save those who can apprehend and avail\nthemselves of his immediate labors; and the less is he known and\nappreciated as his studies are of lasting importance to his race. Yet\ntime is just, and brings all men to the side of thought as they become\nfamiliar with its practical benefits, else the victory were not gained\nfor philosophy, and wisdom justified in him of her chosen children.\n\nIdeas alone supplement nature and complement mind. Our senses neither\nsatisfy our sensibility nor intellect. The mind's objects are mind\nitself; imagination the mind's eye, memory the ear, ideas of the one\nimaging the other, and the mind thus rounding its history. And hence the\npleasurable perspective experienced in surveying our personality from\nobverse sides in the landscape of existence--culture, in its inclusive\nsense, making the tour of our gifts, and acquainting us with ourselves\nand the world we live in. All men gain a residence in the senses and the\nfamily of natural things; few come into possession of their better\ninheritance and home in the mind--the Palace of Power and Personality.\nSons of earth rather by preference, and chiefly emulous for their little\nwhile of its occupancy, its honors, emoluments, they here pitch their\ntents, here plant fast their hopes, and roll through life they know not\nwhither.\n\n\nII.--THE GIFTS.\n\nInstinct is the fountain of Personal power, and mother of the Gifts.\nWith instinct there may be an embryo, but sense must be superinduced to\nconstitute an animal--memory, moral sentiment, reason, imagination,\npersonality, to constitute the man. The mind is the man, not the outward\nshape: all is in the Will. The animal may mount to fancy in the grade of\ngifts; but reason, imagination, conscience, choice--the mediating,\ncreative, ruling powers--the personality--belong to man alone. But not\nto all men, save in essence and possibility. Man properly traverses the\nhierarchy of Powers--spiritual, intellectual, moral, natural,\nanimal--their full possession and interplay enabling him to hold free\ncolloquy with all, giving the whole mind voice in the dialogue. Thus:\n\n  Asking for\n  The Who?        Will          responds,   The Person.\n  The Ought?      Conscience        \"       The Right.\n  The How?        Imagination       \"       The Idea.\n  The Why?        Reason            \"       The Truth.\n  The Thus?       Fancy             \"       The Image.\n  The Where?      Understanding     \"       The Fact.\n  The When?       Memory            \"       The Event.\n  The Which?      Sense             \"       The Thing.\n  The What?       Instinct          \"       The Life.\n\nIn accordance with this gradation of gifts, man and animals may be\nclassified as to their measures of intelligence respectively; instinct\nbeing taken as the initial gift and prompter of the rest in their order\nof genesis, growth and adaptability: man alone, when fully unfolded in\nharmony, being capable of ranging throughout the entire scale.[I]\n\n     [Footnote I: \"One would think nothing were easier for us\n     than to know our own mind, discern what was our main scope\n     and drift, and what we proposed to ourselves as our end in\n     the several occurrences of our lives. But our thoughts have\n     such an obscure, implicit language, that it is the hardest\n     thing in the world to make them speak out distinctly; and\n     for this reason the right method is to give them voice and\n     accent. And this, in our default, is what the philosophers\n     endeavor to do to our hand, when, holding out a kind of\n     vocal looking-glass, they draw sound out of our breast, and\n     instruct us to personate ourselves in the plainest\n     manner.\"--LORD SHAFTESBURY.]\n\nThus:\n\n[Illustration: Sketch of human head marked with Instinct, Sense, Memory,\nUnderstanding, Fancy, Reason, Imagination, Conscience, Personality]\n\n  CLASS\n  I.    Instinct, Sense, Memory, Understanding, Fancy, Reason,\n          Imagination, Conscience, Personality.\n  II.   Instinct, Sense, Memory, Understanding, Fancy, Reason,\n          Imagination, Conscience.\n  III.  Instinct, Sense, Memory, Understanding, Fancy, Reason,\n          Imagination.\n  IV.   Instinct, Sense, Memory, Understanding, Fancy, Reason.\n  V.    Instinct, Sense, Memory, Understanding, Fancy.\n  VI.   Instinct, Sense, Memory, Understanding.\n  VII.  Instinct, Sense, Memory.\n  VIII. Instinct, Sense.\n\n  MAN IS\n  Spiritual as he experiences, Personality, Thought\n  Moral               \"        Choice, Conscience.\n  Intellectual        \"        Imagination, Reason.\n  Natural             \"        Fancy, Understanding.\n  Brute               \"        Memory, Sense.\n  Demonic             \"        Appetite, Passion.\n\nNature does not contain the Personal man. He is the mind with the brute\nomitted, or, conversely, the animal transfigured and divinized by the\nSpirit. It is a slow process; long for the individual, longeval for the\nrace. Centuries, millenniads elapse, mind meanwhile travailing with man,\nthe birth arrested for the most part, or premature, the translation from\ngerm to genius being supernatural, thought hardly delivered from spine\nand occiput into face and forehead, the mind uplifted and crowned in\npersonality.\n\n    Pure mind alone is face,\n      Brute matter surface all;\n    As souls immersed in space,\n      Ideal rise, or idol fall.\n\n\nIII.--PERSON.\n\nThe lapsed Personality, or deuce human and divine, has played the prime\npart in metaphysical theology of times past, as it does still. But\nrarely has thought freed itself from the notion of duplicity,\ntriplicity, and grounded its faith in the Idea of the One Personal\nSpirit, as a pure theism, and planted therein a faith and cultus. If we\nclaim this for the Hebrew thought, as it rose to an intuition in the\nmind of its inspired thinker, it passed away with him; since Christendom\nthroughout mythologizes, rather than thinks about his attributes; is\ndivided, subdivided into sects, schools of doctrine; each immersed so\ndeeply in its special individualism as to be unable to rise to the\ncomprehension of the Personal One. Nor, considering the demands mind\nmakes upon the senses,--these inclining always to idolatry,--is it\nsurprising that this spiritual theism, seeking its symbols in pure\nthought, without image graven or conceived, should find any considerable\nnumber of followers. Yet a faith less supersensuous and ideal, any\nschool of thought, code of doctrine, creed founded on substance, force,\nlaw, tradition, authority, miracle, is a covert superstition, ending\nlogically in atheism, necessity, nihilism, disowning alike personality,\nfree agency. Nature is sufficient for the creature, but person alone for\nman, without whose immanency and inspirations, man were heartless and\nworshipless. The Person wanting all is wanting. For where God is\ndisembosomed, spectres rule the chaos within and without.[J]\n\n     [Footnote J: \"The first principle of all things is Living\n     Goodness, armed with Wisdom and all-powerful Love. But if a\n     man's soul be once sunk by evil fate or desert, from the\n     sense of this high and heavenly truth into the cold conceit\n     that the original of all lies either in shuffling chance or\n     in the stark root of unknowing nature and brute necessity,\n     all the subtle cords of reason, without the timely recovery\n     of that divine torch within the hidden spirit of his heart,\n     will never be able to draw him out of that abhorred pit of\n     atheism and infidelity. So much better is innocency and\n     piety than subtle argument, and sincere devotion than\n     curious dispute. But contemplations concerning the dry\n     essence of the Godhead have for the most part been most\n     confusing and unsatisfactory. Far better is it to drink of\n     the blood of the grape than to bite the root of the grape,\n     to smell the rose than to chew the stalk. And blessed be\n     God, the meanest of men are capable of the former, very few\n     successful in the latter; and the less, because the reports\n     of those that have busied themselves that way have not only\n     seemed strange to most men, but even repugnant to one\n     another. But we should in charity refer this to the nature\n     of the _pigeon's neck_ than to mistake and contradiction.\n     One and the same object in nature affords many different\n     aspects. And God is infinitely various and simple; like a\n     circle, indifferent whether you suppose it of one uniform\n     line, or an infinite number of angles. Wherefore it is more\n     safe to admit all possible perfections of God than rashly to\n     deny what appears not to us from our particular\n     posture.\"--HENRY MORE.]\n\n  \"Make us a god,\" said man:\n    Power first the voice obeyed,\n  And soon a monstrous form\n    Its worshippers dismayed;\n  Uncouth and huge, by nations rude adored,\n  With savage rites and sacrifice abhorred.\n\n  \"Make us a god,\" said man:\n    Art next the voice obeyed,\n  Lovely, serene, and grand,\n    Uprose the Athenian maid:\n  The perfect statue, Greece with wreathed brows,\n  Adores in festal rites and lyric vows.\n\n  \"Make us a god,\" said man:\n    Religion followed art,\n  And answered, \"Look within;\n    Find God in thine own heart--\n  His noblest image there, and holiest shrine,\n  Silent revere--and be thyself divine.\"\n\n\nIV.--CHOICE.\n\n      Heaven hell's pit copes:\n  Nor fathoms any sin's abyss, or clambers out,\n  Save by the steps his choice hath delved.\n\nThe gods descend in the likeness of men, and ascending transfigure the\nman into their Personal likeness. Descending below himself he debases\nand disfigures this image; as by choice he leaps upwards, so by choice\nhe lapses downwards. Yet, while free to choose, he sinks himself never\nbeneath himself absolutely, his _beneath_ subsisting by his election\nonly. His choices free or fetter, elevate or debase, deify or demonize\nhis humanity. Superior to all forces is the Spirit within, doing or\ndefying his determinations, ever holding him fast to the consequences.\nObeying its dictates or disobeying, frees or binds. It has golden chains\nfor the good, for others iron. Love is its soft, yet mighty curb;\nfreedom its easy yoke; fate its fetter.\n\n  Nor man in evil willingly doth rest,\n  Nor God in good unwillingly is blest.\n\nThere is no appeal from the decisions of this High Court of Duty in the\nbreast. The Ought is the Must and the Inevitable. One may misinterpret\nthe voice, may deliberate, disobey the commandment, but cannot escape\nthe consequences of his election. The deed decides. Nor is the\nConscience appeased till sooner or later our deserts are pronounced--The\nwelcome \"well done,\" or the dread \"depart.\"\n\n  \"'Tis vain to flee till gentle mercy show\n  Her better eye. The further off we go\n  The swing of justice deals the mightier blow.\"\n\nOnly the repenting consciousness of freedom abused restores the lost\nholiness, redeems from the guilty lapse--the sin that in separating us\nfrom the One, revealed the fearful Doubleness within, opening the\nyawning pit down which we stumbled, to become the prey of the undying\nworm.\n\n  \"Meek love alone doth wash our ills away.\"\n\nAnd with love enough, knowledge were useless. It comes in defect of\nlove. Exhaustless in its sources, love supersedes knowledge, being the\nproper intellect of spirit and spring of intuition--God being very God,\nbecause his love absorbs all knowledge and contains his Godhead. Knowing\nwithout loving is decease from love, and lapse from pure intellect into\nsense. Knowledge is not enough. The more knowledge, the deeper the\ndepths left unsounded, the more exacting our faith in the certainty of\nknowing. Our faith feels after its objects, if haply by groping in the\ndarkness of our ignorance we may fathom its depths, and find ourselves\nin Him who is ever seeking us. \"Although no man knoweth the spirit of a\nman save The Spirit within him, yet is there something in him that not\neven man's spirit knoweth.\"\n\n  \"WHO placed thee here, did something then infuse\n  Which now can tell thee news.\"\n\n[Illustration: Small decoration of a flower and leaves]\n\n\n\n\nIII.\n\nGENESIS.\n\n\n     \"Had man withstood the trial, his descendants would have\n     been born one from another in the same way that Adam--i. e.,\n     mankind--was, namely, in the image of God; for that which\n     proceeds from the Eternal has eternal manner of\n     birth.\"--BEHMEN.\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration: Decorative banner of a beetle among flowers and leaves]\n\n\n\n\nGENESIS.\n\n\nI.--VESTIGES.\n\nBoehme, the subtilest thinker on Genesis since Moses, conceives that\nnature fell from its original oneness by fault of Lucifer before man\nrose physically from its ruins; and moreover, that his present\nexistence, being the struggle to recover from nature's lapse, is\nembarrassed with double difficulties by defection from rectitude on his\npart. We think it needs no Lucifer other than mankind collectively\nconspiring, to account for nature's mishaps, or man's, since, assuming\nman to be nature's ancestor, and nature man's ruins rather, himself were\nthe impediment he seeks to remove; nature being the child of his\nchoices, corresponding in large--or macrocosmically--to his intents.\nEldest of creatures, the progenitor of all below him, personally one and\nimperishable in essence, if debased forms appear in nature, these are\nconsequent on man's degeneracy prior to their genesis. And it is only as\nhe lapses out of his integrity, by debasing his essence, that he impairs\nhis original likeness, and drags it into the prone shapes of the animal\nkingdom--these being the effigies and vestiges of his individualized and\nshattered personality. Behold these upstarts of his loins, everywhere\nthe mimics jeering at him saucily, or gaily parodying their fallen lord.\n\n  \"Most happy he who hath fit place assigned\n  To his beasts, and disafforested his mind;\n  Can use his horse, goat, wolf, and every beast,\n  And is not ape himself to all the rest.\"\n\nIt is man alone who conceives and brings forth the beast in him that\nswerves and dies. Perversion of will by mis-choice precipitates him into\nserpentine form, duplicated in sex,\n\n  \"Parts of that Part which once was all.\"\n\n'Tis but one and the same soul in him, entertaining a dialogue with\nhimself, that is symbolized in the Serpent, Adam, and the woman; nor\nneeds there fabulous \"Paradises Lost or Regained,\" for setting in relief\nthis serpent symbol of temptation, this Lord or Lucifer in our spiritual\nEden:\n\n  \"First state of human kind,\n  Which one remains while man doth find\n  Joy in his partner's company;\n  When two, alas! adulterate joined,\n  The serpent made the three.\"\n\n\nII.--SERPENT SYMBOL.\n\nBetter is he who is above temptation, than he who, being tempted,\novercomes, since the latter but suppresses the evil inclination stirring\nin his breast which the former has not. Whoever is tempted has so far\nsinned as to entertain the tempting lust within, betraying his lapse\nfrom singleness or holiness. The virtuous choose, are virtuous by\nchoice; the holy, being one, deliberate not--their volitions answering\nspontaneously to their desires. It is the cleft personality, or _other_\nwithin, which seduces the Will, and is the Adversary and Deuce we become\nindividually, and impersonate in the Snake.\n\n  Chaste love's a maid,\n  Though shapen as a man.\n\nBut one were an OEdipus to expound this serpent mythology; whereby is\nsymbolized the mysteries of genesis, and of The One rejoining man's\nparted personality, and thus recreating mankind. Coeval with flesh, the\nsymbol appears wherever traces of civilization exist; a remnant of it in\nthe ancient Phallus worship having come to us disguised in our Mayday\ndance. Nor was it confined to carnal knowledge merely. The serpent\nsymbolized divine wisdom, also; and it was under this acceptation that\nit became associated with those \"traditionary teachers of mankind whose\ngenial wisdom entitled them to divine honors.\" An early Christian sect,\ncalled Ophites, worshipped it as the personation of natural knowledge.\nSo the injunction, \"Be ye wise as serpents and harmless as doves,\"\nbecomes the more significant when we learn that _seraph_ in the original\nmeans a serpent; _cherub_, a dove. And these again symbolize facts in\nosteological science as connected with the latest theories of the\nvertebrated cranium,[K] which view Nature as ophiomorphous--a series of\nspines, crowned, winged, webbed, finned, footed in structure--set erect,\nprone, trailing, as charged with life in higher potency or lower; man,\nholding the sceptre of dominion as he maintains his inborn rectitude, or\nlosing his prerogative as lapsed from his integrity--hereby debasing his\nform and parcelling his gifts away in the prone shapes distributed\nthroughout nature's kingdoms. Or, again as aspiring for lost supremacy,\nhe uplift and crown his fallen form with forehead, countenance,\nspeech,--thus liberating the genius from the slime of its prone periods,\nand restoring it to rectitude, religion, science, fellowship, the ideal\narts.\n\n     [Footnote K: \"Spix, in his 'Cephalogenesis,' aids Oken's\n     theory of the spinal cranium in endowing the artist's symbol\n     of the cherub with all that it seemed to want before that\n     discovery; namely: with a thorax, abdomen and pelvis, arms,\n     legs, hands and feet.\"--OWEN.]\n\n  \"Unless above himself he can\n  Erect himself, how poor a thing is man.\"\n\n\nIII.--EMBRYONS.\n\n     \"The form is in the archetype before it appears in the work,\n     in the divine mind before it exists in the creature.\"\n\nAs the male impregnates the female, so mind charges matter with form and\nfecundity; the spermatic world being life in transmission and body in\nembryo; the egg a genesis and seminary of forms, the kingdoms of\nanimated nature sleeping coiled in its yolk, and awaiting the quickening\nmagnetism that ushers them into light. Herein the human embryon unfolds\nin series the lineaments of all forms in the living hierarchy, to be\nfixed at last in its microcosm, unreeling therefrom its faculties into\nfilamental organs, spinning so minutely the threads, \"that were it\nphysically possible to dissolve away all other members of the body,\nthere would still remain the full and perfect figure of a man. And it is\nthis perfect cerebro-spinal axis, this statue-like tissue of filaments,\nthat, physically speaking, is the man.\"[L] The mind contains him\nspiritually, and reveals him physically to himself and his kind. Every\ncreature assists in its own formation, souls being essentially creative\nand craving form.\n\n     [Footnote L: \"Thou hast possessed my reins, thou hast\n     covered me in my mother's womb. My substance was not hid\n     from thee when I was made in a secret place, and there\n     curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth: there\n     thine eyes did see my substance yet being imperfect: and in\n     thy Book were all my members written, which in continuance\n     were fashioned when as yet there was none of them.\"--PSALM\n     cxxxix: 13, 15, 16.]\n\n  \"The creature ever delights in the image of the Creator;\n  And the soul of man will in a manner clasp God to herself;\n  Having nothing mortal, she is wholly inebriated of God;\n  For she glories in the harmony under which the human body exists.\"\n\nThroughout the domain of spirit desire creates substance wherein all\ncreatures seek conjunction, lodging and nurture. Nor is there anything\nin nature save desire holding substances together, all things being\ndissolvable and recombinable in this spiritual menstruum.\n\n  \"'Tis the blossom whence there blows\n  Everything that lives and grows;\n  It doth make the heavens to move\n  And the sun to burn in love:\n  The strong to weak it seeks to yoke,\n  And makes the ivy climb the oak,\n  Under whose shadows lions wild,\n  Softened thereby grow tame and mild.\n  It all medicine doth appease,\n  It burns the fishes in the seas,\n  Not all the skill its wounds can stanch,\n  Not all the sea its thirst can quench:\n  It did make the bloody spear\n  Once a leafy coat to wear,\n  While in his leaves there shrouded lay\n  Sweet birds for love that sing and play;\n  And of all the joyful flame,\n  Bud and blossom this we name.\"\n\n\nIV.--TEMPERAMENT.\n\nTemperament is a fate, oftentimes, from whose jurisdiction its victims\nhardly escape, but do its bidding herein, be it murder or martyrdom.\nVirtues and crimes are mixed in one's cup of nativity, with the lesser\nor larger margin of choice. Unless of chaste extraction, his\nregeneration shall be wrought with difficulty through the struggling\nkingdom of evil into the peaceful realm of good. Blood is a destiny.\nOne's genius descends in the stream from long lines of ancestry, from\nfountains whence rose Adam the first and his Eve. The oldest and most\npersistent of forces, if once ennobled by virtue and refined by culture,\nit resists base mixtures long, preserving its purity and power for\ngenerations. All gifts descend in the torrent; all are mingled in the\necstasy, as purity or passion prevail; genius being the fruit of chaste\nconjunctions, brute force of adulterous--the virgin complexions or the\nmixed.[M]\n\n     [Footnote M: Boehme thus classifies and describes the\n     temperaments:\n\n     \"Lapsing out of her innocency, man's soul enters into a\n     strange inn or lodging, wherein he is held sometime captive\n     as in a dungeon, wherein are four chambers or stories, in\n     one of which she is fated to remain, though not without\n     instincts of the upper wards (if her place be the lowest)\n     and hope of finding the keys by which she may ascend into\n     these also. These chambers are the elements of his\n     constitution, and characterized as the four temperaments or\n     complexions, namely:\n\n       I. The melancholic or earthy.\n       II. The phlegmatic oraqueous.\n       III. The choleric or fiery.\n       IV. The sanguine or ethereal.\n\n     I. The splenetic or melancholic partakes of the properties\n     of the earth, being cold, dark, and hungry for the light. It\n     is timid, incredulous, empty, consuming itself in corrosive\n     cares, anxieties and sorrows, being sad when the sun shines,\n     and needs perpetual encouragement. Its color is dark.\n\n     II. The phlegmatic being nourished from the earth's\n     moisture, is inclined to heaviness; is gross, effeminate,\n     dull of apprehension, careless, indifferent. It has but\n     faint glimpses of the light, and needs much inculcation from\n     without. Its color is brown.\n\n     III. The choleric is of the fiery temper, inclined to\n     violence, wrath, obstinacy, irreverence, ambition. It is\n     impulsive, contentious, aspires for power, and authority. It\n     is greedy of the sun, and glories in its blazing beams. Its\n     color is florid.\n\n     IV. The sanguine, being tempered of ether, and the least\n     imprisoned, is cheerful, gentle, genial, versatile,\n     naturally chaste, insinuating, searching into the secret of\n     things natural and spiritual, and capable of divining the\n     deepest mysteries. It loves the light, and aspires toward\n     the sun. Its complexion is fair.\"]\n\n    \"Our generation moulds our state,\n    Its virtues, vices, fix our fate;\n    Nor otherwise experience proves,\n    The unseen hands make all the moves,\n    If some are great, and some are small,\n  Some climb to good, some from good fortune fall,--\n  Not figures these of speech,--forefathers sway us all.\n\n    Me from the womb the midnight muse did take,\n    She clothed me, nourished, and mine head\n    With her own hands she fashioned;\n    She did a cov'nant with me make,\n  And circumcised my tender soul, and thus she spake:\n  'Thou of my church shalt be,\n    Hate and renounce (said she)\n  Wealth, honour, pleasure, all the world for me.\n  Thou neither great at court, nor in the war,\n  Nor at th' exchange shalt be, nor at the wrangling bar,\n  Content thyself with the small barren praise,\n    That neglected verse does raise.'\n\n  She spake, and all my years to come\n    Took their determined doom:\n  Their several ways of life, let others choose,\n    Their several pleasures let them use,\n  But I was born for love and for a muse.\n\n    With fate what boots it to contend?\n  Such I began, such am, and so shall end:\n    The star that did my being frame\n    Was but a lambent flame;\n    Some light indeed it did dispense,\n    But less of heat and influence.\n\n    No matter, poet, let proud fortune see\n  That thou canst her despise no less than she does thee;\n    Why grieve thyself or blush to be\n    As all the inspired tuneful seers,\n  And all thy great forefathers were from Shakspeare to thy peers.\"\n\nYet, biassed by temperament as we may be, whether for good or for evil,\nsuch measure of freedom is ours, nevertheless, as enables us to free\nourselves from its tendencies and temptations. In the breast of each is\na liberating angel, at whose touch, when we will it persistently, the\ndoors of our dungeon fly open and loose their prisoner.\n\n\n\n\nIV.\n\nMETAMORPHOSES.\n\n\n     \"Generation is not a creation of life, but a production of\n     things to sense, and making them manifest. Neither is change\n     death, but a hiding of that which was.\"--HERMES TRISMEGISTUS.\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration: Decorative banner of two birds among leaves and flowers]\n\n\n\n\nMETAMORPHOSES.\n\n\nI.--SLEEP.\n\nLife is a current of spiritual forces. In perpetual tides, the stream\ntraverses its vessels to vary its pulsations and perspectives of things,\nreceding from forehead and face into cerebellum and spine, to be\nreplenished night by night from these springs of vigor. The Genius trims\nour lamps while we sleep. It plumbs us by day and levels us by night.\nHere recumbent as at nature's navel, her energies flood the spirits with\npuissance, restoring tone and tension for the coming day's occupations.\nThen what varying scenes rise to fancy's eye, while the mind lapses out\nof the globe of thought, the house of the senses, into the palaces of\nmemory through the gate of dreams! Under the sway of occult forces we\npartake of preternatural insights, having access to sources of\ninformation unopened to us in our wakeful hours. Vast systems of\nsympathies, antedating and extending beyond our mundane experiences,\nabsorb us within their sphere, relating us to other worlds of life and\nlight; as if stirred by the nocturnal impulse we climbed the empyrean,\nstill crediting the superstition of our affinities with the starry\norbs--\n\n  \"Eternal fathers of whate'er exists below.\"\n\nOr, pursuing our peregrinations, we plunge suddenly into the abyss of\norigins, transformed for the moment into slumbering umbilici, skirting\nthe shores of our nativity; or, ascending spine-wise, traverse the\nhierarchy of gifts. How we grope strangely! Seeking the One amidst the\nmany, we lose ourselves in finding the One we lost. We enter bodies of\nour bodies, souls of our soul, successively; each organ our prisoner, we\nin turn the prisoner of each, till by chance the bewildered occupant\nrecover the key to the wards of his apartments, and forth issues into\nthe haunts of his consciousness, the world of natural things. For never\nis the sleep so profound, the dream so distracting, as to obliterate all\nsense of the personality,--despite these vagaries of the night, these\nopiates of the senses, memory sometime dispels the oblivious slumber,\nand recovers for the mind recollections of its descent and destiny. Some\nreliques of the ancient consciousness survive, recalling our previous\nhistory and experiences.[N]\n\n     [Footnote N: \"'Tis well known that according to the sense of\n     antiquity, these two considerations were always included in\n     that one opinion of the soul's immortality--namely; its\n     pre-existence as well as its post existence. Neither were\n     there ever any of the ancients before christianity, that\n     held the soul's future permanency after death, who did not\n     likewise assert its pre-existence,--they clearly perceiving\n     that if it was once granted that the soul was generated, it\n     could never be proved but that it might be also corrupted.\n     And therefore the asserters of its immortality commonly\n     began here--first, to prove its pre-existence, proceeding\n     thence afterwards to establish its permanency after\n     death.\"--CUDWORTH.]\n\n\nII.--REMINISCENCE.\n\n  \"Heaven's exile straying from the orb of light.\"\n\nAnd but for our surface and distracted lives,--lived here for the most\npart in the senses,--we should have never lost the consciousness of our\ndescent into mortality, nor have questioned our resurrection and\nlongevity. But as in descending, all drink of oblivion--some more, some\nless--it happens that while all are conscious of life, by defect of\nmemory, our recollections are various concerning it; those discerning\nmost vividly who have drank least of oblivion, they more easily\nrecalling the memory of their past existence. Ancients of days, we\nhardly are persuaded to believe that our souls are no older than our\nbodies, and to date our nativity from our family registers, as if time\nand space could chronicle the periods of the immortal mind by its advent\ninto the flesh and decease out of it.\n\n  \"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;\n  The soul that rises with us, our life's star,\n      Hath had elsewhere its setting,\n      And cometh from afar;\n      Not in entire forgetfulness,\n      Nor yet in utter nakedness,\n  But trailing clouds of glory do we come\n  From God who is our home.\"\n\nNone of us remember when we did not remember, when memory was nought,\nand ourselves were unborn. Memory is the premise of our sensations, it\ndates our immortality. Nestling ever in the twilight of our earliest\nrecollections, it cradles our nativity, canopies our hopes, and bears us\nbabes, out of our bodies as into them; opening vistas alike into our\npast and coming existence. The thread of our experiences, it cannot be\nsevered by any accidents of our mortality; time and space, earliest\nfound and last to leave us, fading and falling away as we pass into\nrecollections which these can neither date nor confine--the smiles that\nwelcomed, the tears that dismiss us, being of no age, nor place nor\ntime.\n\n  \"O love! thou makest all things even\n    In earth and heaven:\n  Finding thy way through prison bars\n    Up to the stars:\n  That out of dust created man,\n  Thou lookest in a grave, to see\n    Thine immortality.\"\n\n\nIII.--IMMORTALITY.\n\nIf immortality inhere in objects known by us, these surely are persons;\nthe ties of kindred being the liveliest, most abiding of any; our faith\nin the impossibility of being sundered forever, remaining unshaken to\nthe last, and surviving all changes that our bodies may undergo.\n\n  \"Deep love, the godlike in us, still believes\n  Its objects are immortal as itself.\"\n\n'Tis not our bodies that contain us but our souls. None beholds with\nbodily eyes the apparition of his person, sees and survives the ghost he\nprovokes. The perturbed spirits alone linger about the tombs--dead\nbefore they die, dead burying their dead--comfortless because these are\nbereft of bodies, flesh being all of them they ever knew.[O]\n\n     [Footnote O: Let us remember that immortality signifies a\n     negative, or not having of mortality, and that a positive\n     term is required by which to express a change, since nature\n     teaches that whatever is, will abide with the being it is,\n     unless forced out of it by something positive. And as it\n     appears that man's soul has these grounds in her which make\n     all visible things to be perishable, it is obvious that his\n     soul is immortal and the cause of mortality itself.--SIR\n     KENELM DIGBY.]\n\nMoreover, the insatiableness of our desires asserts our personal\nimperishableness. Yearning for full satisfactions while balked of these\nperpetually, we still prosecute our search for them, our faith in their\nattainment remaining unshaken under every disappointment. Our hope is\neternal as ourselves--a never ending, still beginning quest of our\ndivinity. Infinite in essence, we crave it in potence. The boundlessness\nand elasticity of the mind, its power of self-recovery, uprise from\ntemporary obstructions self-imposed, or from temperament, are assurances\nmade doubly sure of our soul's infinitude and longevity. So the lives of\nempires, of men of genius and sanctity, are grand illustrations of its\nheroic strife for the largest freedom, the widest sway,--of instincts\nstriving within, which these pent confines of time and space can neither\nsubjugate nor appease.\n\n  \"Take this, my child,\" the father said,\n  \"This globe I give thy mind for bread;\"\n  Eager we seize the proffered store,\n  The bait devour--then ask for more.\n\n\"Everything aspires to its own perfection and is restless till it attain\nit, as the trembling needle till it find its beloved north. And the\nknowledge of this is innate as is the desire, else the last had been a\ntorment and needless importunity. Nature shoots not at rovers. Even\ninanimate things, while ignorant of their perfection, are carried\ntowards it by a blind impulse. But that which conducts them knows. The\nnext order of beings have some sight of it, and man most perfectly till\nhe touch the apple.\" Our delights suckle us life long, our desires being\nmemories of past satisfactions, and we here but sip pleasures once\ntasted to satiety. The more exquisite our enjoyments, the more\ntransient; the more eagerly sought, the more elusive. We cannot come out\nof our paradise, nor stay in it contentedly, the gates of bliss closing\non opening.\n\n  \"E'en as the amorous needle joys to bend\n    To her magnetic friend,\n  Or as the greedy lover's eyeballs fly\n    At his fair mistress' eye,\n  Eager we kindle life's illumined stuff,\n  Can tire, nor tease, nor kindle it enough.\"\n\nStill heaven is, our hearts affirm against every disappointment; and\nwhether behind or before us, as memory or as hope, 'tis to be ours,--our\nport and resting place sometime in the stream of ages.\n\n  \"All before us lies the way;\n    Give the past unto the wind;\n  All before us is the day,\n    Night and darkness are behind.\n\n  Eden with its angels bold,\n    Love and flowers and coolest sea,\n  Is less an ancient story told\n    Than a glowing prophecy.\n\n  In the spirit's perfect air,\n    In the passions tame and kind,\n  Innocence from selfish care,\n    The real Eden we shall find.\n\n  When the soul to sin hath died,\n    True and beautiful and sound,\n  Then all earth is sanctified,\n    Upsprings paradise around.\n\n  From the spirit-land, afar\n    All disturbing force shall flee;\n  Stir, nor toil, nor hope shall mar\n    Its immortal unity.\"\n\n\n\n\n_Messrs. Roberts Brothers' Publications._\n\nTHE LAYMAN'S BREVIARY. A Selection for Every Day in the Year. Translated\nfrom the German of LEOPOLD SCHEFER, by Charles T. Brooks. In one square\n16mo. volume, bevelled cloth, gilt edges. Price, $2.50. A cheaper\nedition. Price, $1.50.\n\n     \"The 'Layman's Breviary' will adorn drawing-room\n     centre-tables, boudoirs, library nooks; it will be a\n     favorite travelling companion, and be carried on summer\n     excursions to read under trees and on verandas. For every\n     day of the year there are thoughts, counsels,\n     aspirations--many of them Oriental in tone, or patriarchal\n     in spirit; there are delineations of nature, pure utterances\n     of faith; each page contains fresh and earnest expressions\n     of a poetic, believing, humane soul--often clad in exquisite\n     language. It is eminently a household book, and one to be\n     taken up and enjoyed at intervals.\"--_Boston Transcript._\n\n     \"Each poem is in itself a sermon; not of dry, theological\n     dogmas, but the love and care of the Infinite, the yearning\n     and outreaching of the human to grasp the divine. It is a\n     book not to be lightly read and carelessly tossed aside, but\n     to be studied daily until the lessons it conveys are\n     learned, and its comforting words written on every heart. Of\n     the author's religious opinions we know nothing; what creed\n     he subscribes to we cannot tell; but we do know that he is a\n     true worshipper of God, and lover of his fellow-men. This\n     book should be on every table; all households should possess\n     it; we cannot too highly recommend it to the notice of all.\n     It has been truly said, that 'these blooming pictures of\n     Nature, praising the love, the goodness, the wisdom of the\n     Creator and His work, form in truth a poetical book of\n     devotion for the layman whom the dogma does not satisfy--a\n     _breviary_ for man.'\"--_The Wide World._\n\n\nMY PRISONS. Memoirs of SILVIO PELLICO. With an Introduction by Epes\nSargent, and embellished with fifty Illustrations from drawings by\nBillings. One square 12mo. volume, bevelled cloth, gilt edges. Price,\n$3.50. A cheaper edition. Price, $2.00.\n\n     \"Some thirty-five years ago the publication of \"My Prisons,\n     Memoirs of Silvio Pellico,\" first appealed to the sympathies\n     of the Italian people. The history of a martyr to freedom is\n     always entertaining, and the pathos and beauty which\n     surround the narrative in question have always kept alive\n     the interest of all intelligent nations. It ranks,\n     therefore, deservedly high in biographical literature. The\n     present edition is a very superior one, and is introduced by\n     Epes Sargent, who vigorously reviews the despotism of\n     Austria in the incarceration of Pellico, and the changes\n     which have since occurred in European politics.\"--_Chicago\n     Evening Journal._\n\n     \"The story is simply told, for adventures like those of the\n     author need no graces of style or highly wrought figures.\n     The book has a charm which few novels possess; indeed, one\n     can hardly believe that it is true, and that so few years\n     have passed since men of noble birth and fine culture were\n     condemned to suffer for years in prison on account of their\n     political opinions.\"--_Boston Transcript._\n\n_Mailed, post paid, to any address, on receipt of the price, by the\nPublishers._\n\n\n\n\n      *      *      *      *      *      *\n\n\n\n\nTranscriber's note:\n\nDescriptions of illustrations were added for the convenience of readers.\n\nIn the Table of Contents, section titles are in Arabic numbers, while in\nthe text of the book, Roman numerals are used. Each is retained as\nprinted.\n\nFootnotes are indented and placed following the paragraph to which they\npertain.\n\nAlternate and obsolete spelling was retained.\n\nOther changes:\n\n  Added hyphen to self-respect, for consistency with remaining text.\n    ... without loss of self-respect....\n  \"falcony\" changed to \"falconry\"\n    ... for the falconry, archery, the hunting,...\n  \"educuated\" changed to \"educated\"\n    ... A boy was to be so educated and fed ...\n  \"T'is\" changed to \"'Tis\"\n    ... 'Tis but one and the same soul ...\n  Added close quote mark to end of Footnote M.\n  Footnote N, \"acccording\" changed to \"according\"\n    ... according to the sense of antiquity,...\n\n\n\n<pre id=\"pg-footer\">","title":"Tablets","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":36680}