CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS

BYJULIAN HAWTHORNE

CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER

 I. A PRELIMINARY CONFESSION II. NOVELS AND AGNOSTICISM III. AMERICANISM IN FICTION IV. LITERATURE FOR CHILDREN V. THE MORAL AIM IN FICTION VI. THE MAKER OF MANY BOOKS VII. MR. MALLOCK'S MISSING SCIENCEVIII. THEODORE WINTHROP'S WRITINGS IX. EMERSON AS AN AMERICAN X. MODERN MAGIC XI. AMERICAN WILD ANIMALS IN ART

CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 

CHAPTER I. 

A PRELIMINARY CONFESSION. 

In 1869, when I was about twenty-three years old, I sent a couple ofsonnets to the revived _Putnam's Magazine_. At that period I had nointention of becoming a professional writer: I was studying civilengineering at the Polytechnic School in Dresden, Saxony. Years before, Ihad received parental warnings--unnecessary, as I thought--against writingfor a living. During the next two years, however, when I was acting ashydrographic engineer in the New York Dock Department, I amused myself bywriting a short story, called "Love and Counter-Love, " which was publishedin _Harper's Weekly_, and for which I was paid fifty dollars. "If fiftydollars can be so easily earned, " I thought, "why not go on adding to myincome in this way from time to time?" I was aided and abetted in the ideaby the late Robert Carter, editor of _Appletons' Journal_; and the latterperiodical and _Harper's Magazine_ had the burden, and I the benefit, ofthe result. When, in 1872, I was abruptly relieved from my duties in theDock Department, I had the alternative of either taking my family down toCentral America to watch me dig a canal, or of attempting to live by mypen. I bought twelve reams of large letter-paper, and began my firstwork, --"Bressant. " I finished it in three weeks; but prudent counsellorsadvised me that it was too immoral to publish, except in French: so Irecast it, as the phrase is, and, in its chastened state, sent it throughthe post to a Boston publisher. It was lost on the way, and has not yetbeen found. I was rather pleased than otherwise at this catastrophe; for Ihad in those days a strange delight in rewriting my productions: it was, perhaps, a more sensible practice than to print them. Accordingly, Irewrote and enlarged "Bressant" in Dresden (whither I returned with myfamily in 1872); but--immorality aside--I think the first version was thebest of the three. On my way to Germany I passed through London, and theremade the acquaintance of Henry S. King, the publisher, a charming butimprudent man, for he paid me one hundred pounds for the English copyrightof my novel: and the moderate edition he printed is, I believe, stillunexhausted. The book was received in a kindly manner by the press; butboth in this country and in England some surprise and indignation wereexpressed that the son of his father should presume to be a novelist. Thissentiment, whatever its bearing upon me, has undoubtedly been of serviceto my critics: it gives them something to write about. A disquisition uponthe mantle of Nathaniel Hawthorne, and an analysis of the differences andsimilarities between him and his successor, generally fill so much of anotice as to enable the reviewer to dismiss the book itself very briefly. I often used to wish, when, years afterwards, I was myself a reviewer forthe London _Spectator_, that I could light upon some son of his father whomight similarly lighten my labors. Meanwhile, I was agreeably astonishedat what I chose to consider the success of "Bressant, " and set to work tosurpass it in another romance, called (for some reason I have forgotten)"Idolatry. " This unknown book was actually rewritten, in whole or in part, no less than seven times. _Non sum qualis eram_. For seven or eight yearspast I have seldom rewritten one of the many pages which circumstanceshave compelled me to inflict upon the world. But the discipline of"Idolatry" probably taught me how to clothe an idea in words. 

By the time "Idolatry" was published, the year 1874 had come, and I wasliving in London. From my note-books and recollections I compiled a seriesof papers on life in Dresden, under the general title of "Saxon Studies. "Alexander Strahan, then editor of the _Contemporary Review_, printed themin that periodical as fast as I wrote them, and they were reproduced incertain eclectic magazines in this country, --until I asserted my Americancopyright. Their publication in book form was followed by the collapse ofboth the English and the American firm engaging in that enterprise. I drawno deductions from that fact: I simply state it. The circulation of the"Studies" was naturally small; but one copy fell into the hands of aDresden critic, and the manner in which he wrote of it and its authorrepaid me for the labor of composition and satisfied me that I had notdone amiss. 

After "Saxon Studies" I began another novel, "Garth, " instalments of whichappeared from month to month in _Harper's Magazine_. When it had run for ayear or more, with no signs of abatement, the publishers felt obliged tointimate that unless I put an end to their misery they would. Accordingly, I promptly gave Garth his quietus. The truth is, I was tired of himmyself. With all his qualities and virtues, he could not help being aprig. He found some friends, however, and still shows signs of vitality. Iwrote no other novel for nearly two years, but contributed some sketchesof English life to _Appletons' Journal_, and produced a couple ofnovelettes, --"Mrs. Gainsborough's Diamonds" and "Archibald Malmaison, "--which, by reason of their light draught, went rather farther than usual. Other short tales, which I hardly care to recall, belong to this period. Ihad already ceased to take pleasure in writing for its own sake, --partly, no doubt, because I was obliged to write for the sake of something else. Only those who have no reverence for literature should venture to meddlewith the making of it, --unless, at all events, they can supply the demandsof the butcher and baker from an independent source. 

In 1879, "Sebastian Strome" was published as a serial in _All the YearRound_. Charley Dickens, the son of the great novelist, and editor of themagazine, used to say to me while the story was in progress, "Keep thatred-haired girl up to the mark, and the story will do. " I took a fancy toMary Dene myself. But I uniformly prefer my heroines to my heroes; perhapsbecause I invent the former out of whole cloth, whereas the latter areoften formed of shreds and patches of men I have met. And I never raised acharacter to the position of hero without recognizing in him, before I haddone with him, an egregious ass. Differ as they may in other respects, they are all brethren in that; and yet I am by no means disposed to take aCarlylese view of my actual fellow-creatures. 

I did some hard work at this time: I remember once writing for twenty-sixconsecutive hours without pausing or rising from my chair; and when, lately, I re-read the story then produced, it seemed quite as good as theaverage of my work in that kind. I hasten to add that it has never beenprinted in this country: for that matter, not more than half my shorttales have found an American publisher. "Archibald Malmaison" was offeredseven years ago to all the leading publishers in New York and Boston, andwas promptly refused by all. Since its recent appearance here, however, ithas had a circulation larger perhaps than that of all my other storiescombined. But that is one of the accidents that neither author norpublisher can foresee. It was the horror of "Archibald Malmaison, " not anyliterary merit, that gave it vogue, --its horror, its strangeness, and itsbrevity. 

On Guy Fawkes's day, 1880, I began "Fortune's Fool, "--or "Luck, " as it wasfirst called, --and wrote the first ten of the twelve numbers in threemonths. I used to sit down to my table at eight o'clock in the evening andwrite till sunrise. But the two remaining instalments were not written andpublished until 1883, and this delay and its circumstances spoiled thebook. In the interval between beginning and finishing it another longnovel--"Dust"--was written and published. I returned to America in 1882, after an absence in Europe far longer than I had anticipated or desired. Itrust I may never leave my native land again for any other on this planet. 

"Beatrix Randolph, " "Noble Blood, " and "Love--or a Name, " are the novelswhich I have written since my return; and I also published a biography, "Nathaniel Hawthorne and his Wife. " I cannot conscientiously say that Ihave found the literary profession--in and for itself--entirely agreeable. Almost everything that I have written has been written from necessity; andthere is very little of it that I shall not be glad to see forgotten. Thetrue rewards of literature, for men of limited calibre, are the incidentalones, --the valuable friendships and the charming associations which itbrings about. For the sake of these I would willingly endure again manypassages of a life that has not been all roses; not that I would appear tobelittle my own work: it does not need it. But the present generation (inAmerica at least) does not strike me as containing much literary genius. The number of undersized persons is large and active, and we hardlybelieve in the possibility of heroic stature. I cannot sufficiently admirethe pains we are at to make our work--embodying the aims it does--immaculate in form. Form without idea is nothing, and we have no ideas. Ifone of us were to get an idea, it would create its own form, as easily asdoes a flower or a planet. I think we take ourselves too seriously: ourposterity will not be nearly so grave over us. For my part, I do not writebetter than I do, because I have no ideas worth better clothes than theycan pick up for themselves. "Whatever is worth doing at all is worth doingwith your best pains, " is a saying which has injured our literature morethan any other single thing. How many a lumber-closet since the worldbegan has been filled by the results of this purblind and delusive theory!But this is not autobiographical, --save that to have written it shows howlittle prudence my life has taught me. 

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I remember wondering, in 1871, how anybody could write novels. I hadproduced two or three short stories; but to expand such a thing until itshould cover two or three hundred pages seemed an enterprise far beyond mycapacity. Since then, I have accomplished the feat only too often; but Idoubt whether I have a much clearer idea than before of the way it isdone; and I am certain of never having done it twice in the same way. Themanner in which the plant arrives at maturity varies according to thecircumstances in which the seed is planted and cultivated; and thecultivator, in this instance at least, is content to adapt his action towhatever conditions happen to exist. 

While, therefore, it might be easy to formulate a cut-and-dried method ofprocedure, which should be calculated to produce the best results by themost efficient means, no such formula would truly represent the presentwriter's actual practice. If I ever attempted to map out my successivesteps beforehand, I never adhered to the forecast or reached theanticipated goal. The characters develop unexpected traits, and thesetraits become the parents of incidents that had not been contemplated. Thecharacters themselves, on the other hand, cannot be kept to anypreconceived characteristics; they are, in their turn, modified by theexigencies of the plot. 

In two or three cases I have tried to make portraits of real persons whomI have known; but these persons have always been more lifeless than theothers, and most lifeless in precisely those features that most nearlyreproduced life. The best results in this direction are realized by thosecharacters that come to their birth simultaneously with the general schemeof the proposed events; though I remember that one of the most lifelike ofmy personages (Madge, in the novel "Garth") was not even thought of untilthe story of which she is the heroine had been for some time underconsideration. 

Speaking generally, I should suppose that the best novels are apt to bethose that have been longest in the novelist's mind before being committedto paper; and the best materials to use, in the way of character andscenery, are those that were studied not less than seven or eight yearsprevious to their reproduction. Thereby is attained that quality in astory known as atmosphere or tone, perhaps the most valuable and tellingquality of all. Occasionally, however, in the rare case of a story thatsuddenly seizes upon the writer's imagination and despotically "possesses"him, the atmosphere is created by the very strength of the "possession. "In the former instance, the writer is thoroughly master of his subject; inthe latter, the subject thoroughly masters him; and both amountessentially to the same thing, harmony between subject and writer. 

With respect to style, there is little to be said. Without a good style, no writer can do much; but it is impossible really to create a good style. A writer's style was born at the same time and under the same conditionsthat he himself was. The only rule that can be given him is, to say whathe has to say in the clearest and most direct way, using the most fittingand expressive words. But often, of course, this advice is like that ofthe doctor who counsels his patient to free his mind from all care andworry, to live luxuriously on the fat of the land, and to make a voyageround the world in a private yacht. The patient has not the means offollowing the prescription. A writer may improve a native talent forstyle; but the talent itself he must either have by nature, or forever gowithout. And the style that rises to the height of genius is like thePhoenix; there is hardly ever more than one example of it in an age. 

Upon the whole, I conceive that the best way of telling how a novel may bewritten will be to trace the steps by which some one novel of mine cameinto existence, and let the reader draw his own conclusions from therecord. For this purpose I will select one of the longest of myproductions, "Fortune's Fool. "

It is so long that, rather than be compelled to read it over again, Iwould write another of equal length; though I hasten to add that neithercontingency is in the least probable. In very few men is found the powerof sustained conception necessary to the successful composition of soprolix a tale; and certainly I have never betrayed the ownership of such aqualification. The tale, nevertheless, is an irrevocable fact; and mypresent business it is to be its biographer. 

When, in the winter of 1879, the opportunity came to write it, the centralidea of it had been for over a year cooking in my mind. It was originallyderived from a dream. I saw a man who, upon some occasion, caught aglimpse of a woman's face. This face was, in his memory, the ideal ofbeauty, purity, and goodness. Through many years and vicissitudes hesought it; it was his religion, a human incarnation of divine qualities. 

At certain momentous epochs of his career, he had glimpses of it again;and the effect was always to turn him away from the wrong path and intothe right. At last, near the end of his life, he has, for the first time, an opportunity of speaking to this mortal angel and knowing her; and thenhe discovers that she is mortal indeed, and chargeable with the worstfrailties of mortality. The moral was that any substitute for a purelyspiritual religion is fatal, and, sooner or later, reveals its rottenness. 

This seemed good enough for a beginning; but, when I woke up, I was notlong in perceiving that it would require various modifications beforebeing suitable for a novel; and the first modifications must be in the wayof rendering the plot plausible. What sort of a man, for example, must thehero be to fall into and remain in such an error regarding the characterof the heroine? He must, I concluded, be a person of great simplicity andhonesty of character, with a strong tinge of ideality and imagination, andwith little or no education. 

These considerations indicated a person destitute of known parentage, andgrowing up more or less apart from civilization, but possessing by naturean artistic or poetic temperament. Fore-glimpses of the furtherdevelopment of the story led me to make him the child of a wealthy Englishnobleman, but born in a remote New England village. His artisticproclivities must be inherited from his father, who was, therefore, endowed with a talent for amateur sketching in oils; which talent, again, led him, during his minority, to travel on the continent for purposes ofartistic study. While in Paris, this man, Floyd Vivian, meets a youngFrenchwoman, whom he secretly marries, and with whom he elopes to America. Then Vivian receives news of his father's death, compelling him to returnto England; and he leaves his wife behind him. 

A child (Jack, the hero of the story) is born during his absence, and themother dies. Vivian, now Lord Castleman, finds reason to believe that hiswife is dead, but knows nothing of the boy; and he marries again. The boy, therefore, is left to grow up in the Maine woods, ignorant of hisparentage, but with one or two chances of finding it out hereafter. Sofar, so good. 

But now it was necessary to invent a heroine for this hero. In order tomake the construction compact, I made her Jack's cousin, the daughter, ofLord Vivian's younger brother, who came into being for that purpose. Thisbrother (Murdock) was a black sheep; and his daughter, Madeleine, wasadopted by Lord Vivian, because I now perceived that Lord Vivian'sconscience was going to trouble him with regard to his dead wife and herpossible child, and that he would make a pilgrimage to New England tosettle his doubts, taking Madeleine with him; intending, if no child bythe first marriage were forthcoming, to make Madeleine his heir; for hehad no issue by his second marriage. This journey would enable Jack andMadeleine to meet as children. But it was necessary that they should haveno suspicion of their cousinship. Consequently, Lord Vivian, who alonecould acquaint them with this fact, must die in the very act of learningit himself. And what should be the manner of his death?

At first, I thought he should be murdered by his younger brother; but Iafterwards hit upon another plan, that seemed less hackneyed and providedmore interesting issues. Murdock should arrive at the Maine village at thesame time as Lord Vivian, and upon the same errand, to get hold of LordVivian's son, of whose existence he had heard, and whom he wished to getout of the way, in order that his own daughter, Madeleine, might inheritthe property. Murdock should find Jack, and Jack, a mere boy, should killhim, though not, of course, intentionally, or even consciously (for whichpurpose the machinery of the Witch's Head was introduced). 

With Murdock's death, the papers that he carried, proving Jack'sparentage, should disappear, to be recovered long afterward, when theywere needed. Lord Vivian should quietly expire at the same time, of heartdisease (to which he was forthwith made subject), and Madeleine should beleft temporarily to her own devices. Thus was brought about her meetingwith Jack in the cave. It was their first meeting; and Jack must rememberher face, so as to recognize her when they meet, years later, in England. But, as it was beyond belief that the girl's face should resemble thewoman's enough to make such a recognition possible, I devised theminiature portrait of her mother, which Madeleine gave to Jack for akeepsake, and which was the image of what Madeleine herself shouldafterward become. 

Something more was needed, however, to complete the situation; and to meetthis exigency, I created M. Jacques Malgré, the grandfather of Jack, whohad followed his daughter to America, in the belief that she had beenseduced by Vivian; who had brought up Jack, hating him for his father'ssake, and loving him for his mother's sake; and who dwelt year after yearin the Maine village, hoping some day to wreak his vengeance upon theseducer. But when M. Malgré and Vivian at last meet, this revenge isbalked by the removal of its supposed motive; Vivian having actuallymarried Malgré's daughter, and being prepared to make Jack heir ofCastlemere. Moral: "'Vengeance is mine, ' saith the Lord, 'I will repay. '"

The groundwork of the story was now sufficiently denned. Madeleine andJack were born and accounted for. They had met and made friends with eachother without either knowing who the other was; they were rival claimantsfor the same property, and would hereafter contend for it; still, withoutidentifying each other as the little boy and girl that had met by chancein the cave so long ago. In the meanwhile, there might be personalmeetings, in which they should recognize each other as persons though notby name; and should thus be cementing their friendship as man and woman, while, as Jack Vivian and Madeleine, they were at open war in the courtsof law. 

This arrangement would need careful handling to render it plausible; butit could be done. I am now of opinion, however, that I should have donewell to have given up the whole fundamental idea of the story, assuggested by the dream. The dream had done its office when it had providedme with characters and materials for a more probable and less abstruse anddifficult plot. All further dependence upon it should then have beenrelinquished, and the story allowed to work out its own natural andunforced conclusion. But it is easy to be wise after the event; and theevent, at this time, was still in the future. 

As Madeleine was to be the opposite of the sinless, ideal woman that Jackwas to imagine her to be, it was necessary to subject her to some evilinfluence; and this influence was embodied in the form of Bryan Sinclair, who, though an afterthought, came to be the most powerful figure in thestory. But, before he would bring himself to bear upon her, she must havereached womanhood; and I also perceived that Jack must become a man beforethe action of the story, as between him and Madeleine, could continue. Aninterval of ten or fifteen years must therefore occur; and this wasarranged by sending Jack into the western wilderness of California, andfixing the period as just preceding the date of the California gold feverof '49. 

Jack and Bryan were to be rivals for Madeleine; but artisticconsiderations seemed to require that they should first meet and becomefriends much in the same way that Jack and Madeleine had done. So I sentBryan to California, and made him the original discoverer of the preciousmetal there; brought him and Jack together; and finally sent them toEngland in each other's company. Jack, of course, as yet knows nothing ofhis origin, and appears in London society merely as a natural genius and asculptor of wild animals. 

By this time, I had begun to make Madeleine's acquaintance, and, inconsequence, to doubt the possibility of her becoming wholly evil, evenunder the influence of Bryan Sinclair. There would be a constant strugglebetween them; she would love him, but would not yield to him, though herlife and happiness would be compromised by his means. He, on the otherhand, would love her, and he would make some effort to be worthy of her;but his other crimes would weigh him down, until, at the moment when thebattle cost her her life, he should be destroyed by the incarnation of hisown wickedness, in the shape of Tom Berne. 

This was not the issue that I had originally designed, and, whether betteror worse than that, did not harmonize with what had gone before. The storylacked wholeness and continuous vitality. As a work of art, it was afailure. But I did not realize this fact until it was too late, andprobably should not have known how to mend matters had it been otherwise. One of the dangers against which a writer has especially to guard is thatof losing his sense of proportion in the conduct of a story. An episodethat has little relative importance may be allowed undue weight, becauseit seems interesting intrinsically, or because he has expended specialpains upon it. It is only long afterward, when he has become cool andimpartial, if not indifferent or disgusted, that he can see clearly wherethe faults of construction lie. 

I need not go further into the details of the story. Enough has been saidto give a clew to what might remain to say. I began to write it in thewinter of 1879-80, in London; and, in order to avoid noise andinterruption, it was my custom to begin writing at eight in the evening, and continue at work until six or seven o'clock the next morning. In threemonths I had written as far as the 393d page, in the American edition. Theremaining seventy pages were not completed, in their published form, untilabout three years later, an extraordinary delay, which did not escapecensure at the time, and into the causes of which I will not enter here. 

The title of the story also underwent various vicissitudes. The one firstchosen was "Happy Jack"; but that was objected to as suggesting, to anEnglish ear at least, a species of cheap Jack or rambling peddler. Thenext title fixed upon was "Luck"; but before this could be copyrighted, somebody published a story called "Luck, and What Came of It, " and therebyinvalidated my briefer version. For several weeks, I was at a loss what tocall it; but one evening, at a representation of "Romeo and Juliet, " Iheard the exclamation of _Romeo_, "Oh, I am fortune's fool!" andimmediately appropriated it to my own needs. It suited the book wellenough, in more ways than one. 

CHAPTER II

NOVELS AND AGNOSTICISM. 

The novel of our times is susceptible of many definitions. The Americanpublishers of Railway libraries think that it is forty or fifty double-column pages of pirated English fiction. Readers of the "New York Ledger"suppose it to be a romance of angelic virtue at last triumphant oversatanic villany. The aristocracy of culture describe it as a philosophicanalysis of human character and motives, with an agnostic bias on theanalyst's part. Schoolboys are under the impression that it is a tale ofWestern chivalry and Indian outrage--price, ten cents. Most of us agree inthe belief that it should contain a brace or two of lovers, a suspense, and a solution. 

To investigate the nature of the novel in the abstract would involve goingback to the very origin of things. It would imply the recognition of acertain faculty of the mind, known as imagination; and of a certain factin history, called art. Art and imagination are correlatives, --one impliesthe other. Together, they may be said to constitute the characteristicbadge and vindication of human nature; imagination is the badge, and artis the vindication. Reason, which gets so much vulgar glorification, is, after all, a secondary quality. It is posterior to imagination, --it is oneof the means by which imagination seeks to realize its ends. Some animalsreason, or seem to do so: but the most cultivated ape or donkey has notyet composed a sonnet, or a symphony, or "an arrangement in green andyellow. " Man still retains a few prerogatives, although, like Aesop'sstag, which despised the legs that bore it away from the hounds, andextolled the antlers that entangled it in the thicket, --so man oftenmagnifies those elements of his nature that least deserve it. 

But, before celebrating art and imagination, we should have a clear ideawhat those handsome terms mean. In the broadest sense, imagination is thecause of the effect we call progress. It marks all forms of human efforttowards a better state of things. It embraces a perception of existingshortcomings, and an aspiration towards a loftier ideal. It is, in fact, atruly divine force in man, reminding him of his heavenly origin, andstimulating him to rise again to the level whence he fell. For it hasglimpses of the divine Image within or behind the material veil; and itsconstant impulse is to tear aside the veil and grasp the image. The world, let us say, is a gross and finite translation of an infinite and perfectWord; and imagination is the intuition of that perfection, born in thehuman heart, and destined forever to draw mankind into closer harmony withit. 

In common speech, however, imagination is deprived of this broadersignificance, and is restricted to its relations with art. Art is notprogress, though progress implies art. It differs from progress chiefly indisclaiming the practical element. You cannot apply a poem, a picture, ora strain of music, to material necessities; they are not food, clothing, or shelter. Only after these physical wants are assuaged, does artsupervene. Its sphere is exclusively mental and moral. But this definitionis not adequate; a further distinction is needed. For such things asmathematics, moral philosophy, and political economy also belong to themental sphere, and yet they are not art. But these, though not actuallyexisting on the plane of material necessities, yet do exist solely inorder to relieve such necessities. Unlike beauty, they are not their ownexcuse for being. Their embodiment is utilitarian, that of art isaesthetic. Political economy, for example, shows me how to buy two drinksfor the same price I used to pay for one; while art inspires me totransmute a pewter mug into a Cellini goblet. My physical nature, perhaps, prefers two drinks to one; but, if my taste be educated, and I be not toothirsty, I would rather drink once from the Cellini goblet than twice fromthe mug. Political economy gravitates towards the material level; artseeks incarnation only in order to stimulate anew the same spiritualfaculties that generated it. Art is the production, by means ofappearances, of the illusion of a loftier reality; and imagination is thefaculty which holds that loftier reality up for imitation. 

The disposition of these preliminaries brings us once more in sight of thegoal of our pilgrimage. The novel, despite its name, is no new thing, butan old friend in a modern dress. Ever since the time of Cadmus, --eversince language began to express thought as well as emotion, --men havebetrayed the impulse to utter in forms of literary art, --in poetry andstory, --their conceptions of the world around them. According to manyphilologists, poetry was the original form of human speech. Be that as itmay, whatever flows into the mind, from the spectacle of nature and ofmankind, that influx the mind tends instinctively to reproduce, in a shapeaccordant with its peculiar bias and genius. And those minds in whichimagination is predominant, impart to their reproductions a balance andbeauty which stamp them as art. Art--and literary art especially--is theonly evidence we have that this universal frame of things has relation toour minds, and is a universe and not a poliverse. Outside revelation, itis our best assurance of an intelligent purpose in creation. 

Novels, then, instead of being (as some persons have supposed) a wilfuland corrupt conspiracy on the part of the evilly disposed, against thepeace and prosperity of the realm, may claim a most ancient andindefeasible right to existence. They, with their ancestors and nearrelatives, constitute Literature, --without which the human race would belittle better than savages. For the effect of pure literature upon areceptive mind is something more than can be definitely stated. Likesunshine upon a landscape, it is a kind of miracle. It demands from itsdisciple almost as much as it gives him, and is never revealed save to thedisinterested and loving eye. In our best moments, it touches us mostdeeply; and when the sentiment of human brotherhood kindles most warmlywithin us, we discover in literature an exquisite answering ardor. Wheneverything that can be, has been said about a true work of art, its finestcharm remains, --the charm derived from a source beyond the conscious reacheven of the artist. 

The novel, then, must be pure literature; as much so as the poem. Butpoetry--now that the day of the broad Homeric epic is past, or temporarilyeclipsed--appeals to a taste too exclusive and abstracted for the demandsof modern readers. Its most accommodating metre fails to house our endlessvariety of mood and movement; it exacts from the student an exaltationabove the customary level of thought and sentiment greater than he canreadily afford. The poet of old used to clothe in the garb of verse hisevery observation on life and nature; but to-day he reserves for it onlyhis most ideal and abstract conceptions. The merit of Cervantes is not somuch that he laughed Spain's chivalry away, as that he heralded the modernnovel of character and manners. It is the latest, most pliable, mostcatholic solution of the old problem, --how to unfold man to himself. Itimproves on the old methods, while missing little of their excellence. Noone can read a great novel without feeling that, from its outwardlyprosaic pages, strains of genuine poetry have ever and anon reached hisears. It does not obtrude itself; it is not there for him who has notskill to listen for it: but for him who has ears, it is like the music ofa bird, denning itself amidst the innumerable murmurs of the forest. 

So, the ideal novel, conforming in every part to the behests of theimagination, should produce, by means of literary art, the illusion of aloftier reality. This excludes the photographic method of novel-writing. "That is a false effort in art, " says Goethe, towards the close of hislong and splendid career, "which, in giving reality to the appearance, goes so far as to leave in it nothing but the common, every-day actual. "It is neither the actual, nor Chinese copies of the actual, that we demandof art. Were art merely the purveyor of such things, she might yield hercrown to the camera and the stenographer; and divine imagination woulddegenerate into vulgar inventiveness. Imagination is incompatible withinventiveness, or imitation. Imitation is death, imagination is life. Imitation is servitude, imagination is royalty. He who claims the name ofartist must rise to that vision of a loftier reality--a more true becausea more beautiful world--which only imagination can reveal. A truer world, --for the world of facts is not and cannot be true. It is barren, incoherent, misleading. But behind every fact there is a truth: and thesetruths are enlightening, unifying, creative. Fasten your hold upon them, and facts will become your servants instead of your tyrants. No charm ofdetail will be lost, no homely picturesque circumstance, no touch of humanpathos or humor; but all hardness, rigidity, and finality will disappear, and your story will be not yours alone, but that of every one who feelsand thinks. Spirit gives universality and meaning; but alas! for this newgospel of the auctioneer's catalogue, and the crackling of thorns under apot. He who deals with facts only, deprives his work of gradation anddistinction. One fact, considered in itself, has no less importance thanany other; a lump of charcoal is as valuable as a diamond. But that is thephilosophy of brute beasts and Digger Indians. A child, digging on thebeach, may shape a heap of sand into a similitude of Vesuvius; but is itnothing that Vesuvius towers above the clouds, and overwhelms Pompeii?

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In proceeding from the general to the particular, --to the novel as itactually exists in England and America, --attention will be confinedstrictly to the contemporary outlook. The new generation of novelists (bywhich is intended not those merely living in this age, but those whoactively belong to it) differ in at least one fundamental respect from thelater representatives of the generation preceding them. Thackeray andDickens did not deliberately concern themselves about a philosophy oflife. With more or less complacency, more or less cynicism, they acceptedthe religious and social canons which had grown to be the commonplace ofthe first half of this century. They pictured men and women, not asaffected by questions, but as affected by one another. The morality andimmorality of their personages were of the old familiar Church-of-Englandsort; there was no speculation as to whether what had been supposed to bewrong was really right, and _vice versa_. Such speculations, in variousforms and degrees of energy, appear in the world periodically; but thepublic conscience during the last thirty or forty years had been graduallymaking itself comfortable after the disturbances consequent upon theFrench Revolution; the theoretical rights of man had been settled for themoment; and interest was directed no longer to the assertion and supportof these rights, but to the social condition and character which weretheir outcome. Good people were those who climbed through reverses andsorrows towards the conventional heaven; bad people were those who, inspite of worldly and temporary successes and triumphs, gravitated towardsthe conventional hell. Novels designed on this basis in so far filled thebill, as the phrase is: their greater or less excellence depended solelyon the veracity with which the aspect, the temperament, and the conduct ofthe _dramatis personae_ were reported, and upon the amount of ingenuitywherewith the web of events and circumstances was woven, and theconclusion reached. Nothing more was expected, and, in general, little ornothing more was attempted. Little more, certainly, will be found in thewritings of Thackeray or of Balzac, who, it is commonly admitted, approachnearest to perfection of any novelists of their time. There was nothinggenuine or commanding in the metaphysical dilettanteism of Bulwer: thephilosophical speculations of Georges Sand are the least permanentlyinteresting feature of her writings; and the same might in some measure beaffirmed of George Eliot, whose gloomy wisdom finally confesses itsinability to do more than advise us rather to bear those ills we have thanfly to others that we know not of. As to Nathaniel Hawthorne, he cannotproperly be instanced in this connection; for he analyzed chiefly thoseparts of human nature which remain substantially unaltered in the face ofwhatever changes of opinion, civilization, and religion. The truth that hebrings to light is not the sensational fact of a fashion or a period, buta verity of the human heart, which may foretell, but can never be affectedby, anything which that heart may conceive. In other words, Hawthornebelonged neither to this nor to any other generation of writers furtherthan that his productions may be used as a test of the inner veracity ofall the rest. 

But of late years a new order of things has been coming into vogue, andthe new novelists have been among the first to reflect it; and of thesethe Americans have shown themselves among the most susceptible. Science, or the investigation of the phenomena of existence (in opposition tophilosophy, the investigation of the phenomena of being), has provednature to be so orderly and self-sufficient, and inquiry as to the originof the primordial atom so unproductive and quixotic, as to make itconvenient and indeed reasonable to accept nature as a self-existing fact, and to let all the rest--if rest there be--go. From this point of view, God and a future life retire into the background; not as finallydisproved, --because denial, like affirmation, must, in order to be final, be logically supported; and spirit is, if not illogical, at any rateoutside the domain of logic, --but as being a hopelessly vague anduntrustworthy hypothesis. The Bible is a human book; Christ was agentleman, related to the Buddha and Plato families; Joseph was an ill-used man; death, so far as we have any reason to believe, is annihilationof personal existence; life is--the predicament of the body previous todeath; morality is the enlightened selfishness of the greatest number;civilization is the compromises men make with one another in order to getthe most they can out of the world; wisdom is acknowledgment of thesepropositions; folly is to hanker after what may lie beyond the sphere ofsense. The supporter of these doctrines by no means permits himself to beregarded as a rampant and dogmatic atheist; he is simply the modest andhumble doubter of what he cannot prove. He even recognizes the persistenceof the religious instinct in man, and caters to it by a new religionsuited to the times--the Religion of Humanity. Thus he is secure at allpoints: for if the religion of the Bible turn out to be true, hisdisappointment will be an agreeable one; and if it turns out false, hewill not be disappointed at all. He is an agnostic--a person bound to becomplacent whatever happens. He may indulge a gentle regret, a musingsadness, a smiling pensiveness; but he will never refuse a comfortabledinner, and always wear something soft next his skin, nor can healtogether avoid the consciousness of his intellectual superiority. 

Agnosticism, which reaches forward into nihilism on one side, and extendsback into liberal Christianity on the other, marks, at all events, adefinite turning-point from what has been to what is to come. The humanmind, in the course of its long journey, is passing through a dark place, and is, as it were, whistling to keep up its courage. It is a period ofdoubt: what it will result in remains to be seen; but analogy leads us toinfer that this doubt, like all others, will be succeeded by acomparatively definite belief in something--no matter what. It is atransient state--the interval between one creed and another. The agnosticno longer holds to what is behind him, nor knows what lies before, so hecontents himself with feeling the ground beneath his feet. That, at least, though the heavens fall, is likely to remain; meanwhile, let the heavenstake care of themselves. It may be the part of valor to champion divinerevelation, but the better part of valor is discretion, and if divinerevelation prove true, discretion will be none the worse off. On the otherhand, to champion a myth is to make one's self ridiculous, and of beingridiculous the agnostic has a consuming fear. From the superhumandisinterestedness of the theory of the Religion of Humanity, before whichangels might quail, he flinches not, but when it comes to the risk ofbeing laughed at by certain sagacious persons he confesses that braveryhas its limits. He dares do all that may become an agnostic, --who dares domore is none. 

But, however open to criticism this phase of thought may be, it is agenuine phase, and the proof is the alarm and the shifts that it hasbrought about in the opposite camp. "Established" religion finds thefoundation of her establishment undermined, and, like the lady in Hamlet'splay, she doth protest too much. In another place, all manner of oddsuperstitions and quasi-miracles are cropping up and gaining credence, asif, since the immortality of the soul cannot be proved by logic, it shouldbe smuggled into belief by fraud and violence--that is, by the testimonyof the bodily senses themselves. Taking a comprehensive view of the wholefield, therefore, it seems to be divided between discreet and superciliousskepticism on one side, and, on the other, the clamorous jugglery ofcharlatanism. The case is not really so bad as that: nihilists are notdiscreet and even the Bishop of Rome is not necessarily a charlatan. Nevertheless, the outlook may fairly be described as confused and theissue uncertain. And--to come without further preface to the subject ofthis paper--it is with this material that the modern novelist, so far ashe is a modern and not a future novelist, or a novelist _temporis acti_, has to work. Unless a man have the gift to forecast the years, or, atleast, to catch the first ray of the coming light, he can hardly do betterthan attend to what is under his nose. He may hesitate to identify himselfwith agnosticism, but he can scarcely avoid discussing it, either initself or in its effects. He must entertain its problems; and thepersonages of his story, if they do not directly advocate or opposeagnostic views, must show in their lives either confirmation or disproofof agnostic principles. It is impossible, save at the cost of affectationor of ignorance, to escape from the spirit of the age. It is in the air webreathe, and, whether we are fully conscious thereof or not, our lives andthoughts must needs be tinctured by it. 

Now, art is creative; but Mephistopheles, the spirit that denies, isdestructive. A negative attitude of mind is not favorable for theproduction of works of art. The best periods of art have also been periodsof spiritual or philosophical convictions. The more a man doubts, the morehe disintegrates and the less he constructs. He has in him no centralinitial certainty round which all other matters of knowledge orinvestigation may group themselves in symmetrical relation. He may analyzeto his heart's content, but must be wary of organizing. If creation is notof God, if nature is not the expression of the contact between an infiniteand a finite being, then the universe and everything in it are accidents, which might have been otherwise or might have not been at all; there is nodesign in them nor purpose, no divine and eternal significance. This beingconceded, what meaning would there be in designing works of art? If arthas not its prototype in creation, if all that we see and do is chance, uninspired by a controlling and forming intelligence behind or within it, then to construct a work of art would be to make something arbitrary andgrotesque, something unreal and fugitive, something out of accord with thegeneral sense (or nonsense) of things, something with no further basis orwarrant than is supplied by the maker's idle and irresponsible fancy. Butsince no man cares to expend the trained energies of his mind upon themanufacture of toys, it will come to pass (upon the accidental hypothesisof creation) that artists will become shy of justifying their own title. They will adopt the scientific method of merely collecting and describingphenomena; but the phenomena will no longer be arranged as parts ordevelopments of a central controlling idea, because such an arrangementwould no longer seem to be founded on the truth: the gratification whichit gives to the mind would be deemed illusory, the result of tradition andprejudice; or, in other words, what is true being found no longerconsistent with what we have been accustomed to call beauty, the latterwould cease to be an object of desire, though something widely alien to itmight usurp its name. If beauty be devoid of independent right to be, anddefinable only as an attribute of truth, then undoubtedly the cynosure to-day may be the scarecrow of to-morrow, and _vice versâ_, according to ourvarying conception of what truth is. 

And, as a matter of fact, art already shows the effects of the agnosticinfluence. Artists have begun to doubt whether their old conceptions ofbeauty be not fanciful and silly. They betray a tendency to eschew theloftier flights of the imagination, and confine themselves to what theycall facts. Critics deprecate idealism as something fit only for children, and extol the courage of seeing and representing things as they are. Sculpture is either a stern student of modern trousers and coat-tails or avapid imitator of classic prototypes. Painters try all manner ofexperiments, and shrink from painting beneath the surface of their canvas. Much of recent effort in the different branches of art comes to us in theform of "studies, " but the complete work still delays to be born. We wouldnot so much mind having our old idols and criterions done away with weresomething new and better, or as good, substituted for them. But apparentlynothing definite has yet been decided on. Doubt still reigns, and, oncemore, doubt is not creative. One of two things must presently happen. Thetime will come when we must stop saying that we do not know whether or notGod, and all that God implies, exists, and affirm definitely and finallyeither that he does not exist or that he does. That settled, we shall soonsee what will become of art. If there is a God, he will be understood andworshipped, not superstitiously and literally as heretofore, but in a newand enlightened spirit; and an art will arise commensurate with this newand loftier revelation. If there is no God, it is difficult to see how artcan have the face to show herself any more. There is no place for her inthe Religion of Humanity; to be true and living she can be nothing whichit has thus far entered into the heart of man to call beautiful; and shecould only serve to remind us of certain vague longings and aspirationsnow proved to be as false as they were vain. Art is not an orchid: itcannot grow in the air. Unless its root can be traced as deep down asYggdrasil, it will wither and vanish, and be forgotten as it ought to be;and as for the cowslip by the river's brim, a yellow cowslip it shall be, and nothing more; and the light that never was on sea or land shall bepermanently extinguished, in the interests of common sense and economy, and (what is least inviting of all to the unregenerate mind) we shallspeedily get rid of the notion that we have lost anything worthpreserving. 

This, however, is only what may be, and our concern at present is withthings as they are. It has been observed that American writers have shownthemselves more susceptible of the new influences than most others, partlyno doubt from a natural sensitiveness of organization, but in some measurealso because there are with us no ruts and fetters of old tradition fromwhich we must emancipate ourselves before adopting anything new. We haveno past, in the European sense, and so are ready for whatever the presentor the future may have to suggest. Nevertheless, the novelist who, in alarger degree than any other, seems to be the literary parent of our ownbest men of fiction, is himself not an American, nor even an Englishman, but a Russian--Turguénieff. His series of extraordinary novels, translatedinto English and French, is altogether the most important fact in theliterature of fiction of the last twelve years. To read his books youwould scarcely imagine that their author could have had any knowledge ofthe work of his predecessors in the same field. Originality is a termindiscriminately applied, and generally of trifling significance, but sofar as any writer may be original, Turguénieff is so. He is no lessoriginal in the general scheme and treatment of his stories than in theirdetails. Whatever he produces has the air of being the outcome of hispersonal experience and observation. He even describes his characters, their aspect, features, and ruling traits, in a novel and memorablemanner. He seizes on them from a new point of vantage, and uses scarcelyany of the hackneyed and conventional devices for bringing his portraitsbefore our minds; yet no writer, not even Carlyle, has been more vivid, graphic, and illuminating than he. Here are eyes that owe nothing to othereyes, but examine and record for themselves. Having once taken up acharacter he never loses his grasp on it: on the contrary, he masters itmore and more, and only lets go of it when the last recesses of itsorganism have been explored. In the quality and conduct of his plots he isequally unprecedented. His scenes are modern, and embody characteristicevents and problems in the recent history of Russia. There is in theirarrangement no attempt at symmetry, nor poetic justice. Temperament andcircumstances are made to rule, and against their merciless fiat no appealis allowed. Evil does evil to the end; weakness never gathers strength;even goodness never varies from its level: it suffers, but is notcorrupted; it is the goodness of instinct, not of struggle and aspiration;it happens to belong to this or that person, just as his hair happens tobe black or brown. Everything in the surroundings and the action is to thelast degree matter-of-fact, commonplace, inevitable; there are nopicturesque coincidences, no providential interferences, no desperatevictories over fate; the tale, like the world of the materialist, movesonward from a predetermined beginning to a helpless and tragic close. Andyet few books have been written of deeper and more permanent fascinationthan these. Their grim veracity; the creative sympathy and steadydispassionateness of their portrayal of mankind; their constancy ofmotive, and their sombre earnestness, have been surpassed by none. Thisearnestness is worth dwelling upon for a moment. It bears no likeness tothe dogmatism of the bigot or the fanaticism of the enthusiast. It is theconcentration of a broadly gifted masculine mind, devoting its unstintedenergies to depicting certain aspects of society and civilization, whichare powerfully representative of the tendencies of the day. "Here is theunvarnished fact--give heed to it!" is the unwritten motto. The authoravoids betraying, either explicitly or implicitly, the tendency of his ownsympathies; not because he fears to have them known, but because he holdsit to be his office simply to portray, and to leave judgment thereuponwhere, in any case, it must ultimately rest--with the world of hisreaders. He tells us what is; it is for us to consider whether it alsomust be and shall be. Turguénieff is an artist by nature, yet his booksare not intentionally works of art; they are fragments of history, differing from real life only in presenting such persons and events as arecommandingly and exhaustively typical, and excluding all others. Thisfaculty of selection is one of the highest artistic faculties, and itappears as much in the minor as in the major features of the narrative. Itindicates that Turguénieff might, if he chose, produce a story asfaultlessly symmetrical as was ever framed. Why, then, does he not sochoose? The reason can only be that he deems the truth-seeming of hisnarrative would thereby be impaired. "He is only telling a story, " thereader would say, "and he shapes the events and persons so as to fit theplot. " But is this reason reasonable? To those who believe that God has nohand in the ordering of human affairs, it undoubtedly is reasonable. Tothose who believe the contrary, however, it appears as if the story of nohuman life or complex of lives could be otherwise than a rounded andperfect work of art--provided only that the spectator takes note, notmerely of the superficial accidents and appearances, but also of theunderlying divine purpose and significance. The absence of thisrecognition in Turguénieff's novels is the explanation of them: holdingthe creed their author does, he could not have written them otherwise;and, on the other hand, had his creed been different, he very likely wouldnot have written novels at all. 

The pioneer, in whatever field of thought or activity, is apt to be alsothe most distinguished figure therein. The consciousness of being thefirst augments the keenness of his impressions, and a mind that can seeand report in advance of others a new order of things may claim a finerorganization than the ordinary. The vitality of nature animates him whohas insight to discern her at first hand, whereas his followers miss thefreshness of the morning, because, instead of discovering, they must becontent to illustrate and refine. Those of our writers who betrayTurguénieff's influence are possibly his superiors in finish and culture, but their faculty of convincing and presenting is less. Their interest intheir own work seems less serious than his; they may entertain us more, but they do not move and magnetize so much. The persons and events oftheir stories are conscientiously studied, and are nothing if not natural;but they lack distinction. In an epitome of life so concise as the longestnovel must needs be, to use any but types is waste of time and space. Atypical character is one who combines the traits or beliefs of a certainclass to which he is affiliated--who is, practically, all of them andhimself besides; and, when we know him, there is nothing left worthknowing about the others. In Shakespeare's Hamlet and Enobarbus, inFielding's Squire Western, in Walter Scott's Edie Ochiltree and MegMerrilies, in Balzac's Père Goriot and Madame Marneff, in Thackeray'sColonel Newcome and Becky Sharp, in Turguénieff's Bazarof and DimitriRoudine, we meet persons who exhaust for us the groups to which theyseverally belong. Bazarof, the nihilist, for instance, reveals to us themotives and influences that have made nihilism, so that we feel thatnothing essential on that score remains to be learnt. 

The ability to recognize and select types is a test of a novelist's talentand experience. It implies energy to rise above the blind walls of one'sprivate circle of acquaintance; the power to perceive what phases ofthought and existence are to be represented as well as who representsthem; the sagacity to analyze the age or the moment and reproduce itsdominant features. The feat is difficult, and, when done, by no meansblows its own trumpet. On the contrary, the reader must open his eyes tobe aware of it. He finds the story clear and easy of comprehension; thecharacters come home to him familiarly and remain distinctly in hismemory; he understands something which was, till now, vague to him: but heis as likely to ascribe this to an exceptional lucidity in his own mentalcondition as to any special merit in the author. Indeed, it often happensthat the author who puts out-of-the-way personages into his stories--characters that represent nothing but themselves, or possibly someeccentricity of invention on their author's part, will gain the latter areputation for cleverness higher than his fellow's who portrays mankind inits masses as well as in its details. But the finest imagination is notthat which evolves strange images, but that which explains seemingcontradictions, and reveals the unity within the difference and theharmony beneath the discord. 

Were we to compare our fictitious literature, as a whole, with that ofEngland, the balance must be immeasurably on the English side. Evenconfining ourselves to to-day, and to the prospect of to-morrow, it mustbe conceded that, in settled method, in guiding tradition, in training andassociations both personal and inherited, the average English novelist isbetter circumstanced than the American. Nevertheless, the English novelistis not at present writing better novels than the American. The reasonseems to be that he uses no material which has not been in use forhundreds of years; and to say that such material begins to lose itsfreshness is not putting the case too strongly. He has not been able todetach himself from the paralyzing background of English conventionality. The vein was rich, but it is worn out; and the half-dozen pioneers had allthe luck. 

There is no commanding individual imagination in England--nor, to say thetruth, does there seem to be any in America. But we have what they havenot--a national imaginative tendency. There are no fetters upon our fancy;and, however deeply our real estate may be mortgaged, there is freedom forour ideas. England has not yet appreciated the true inwardness of afavorite phrase of ours, --a new deal. And yet she is tired to death of herown stale stories; and when, by chance, any one of her writers happens tochirp out a note a shade different from the prevailing key, the wholenation pounces down upon him, with a shriek of half-incredulous joy, andbuys him up, at the rate of a million copies a year. Our own best writersare more read in England, or, at any rate, more talked about, than theirnative crop; not so much, perhaps, because they are different as becausetheir difference is felt to be of a significant and typical kind. It hasin it a gleam of the new day. They are realistic; but realism, so far asit involves a faithful study of nature, is useful. The illusion of aloftier reality, at which we should aim, must be evolved from adequateknowledge of reality itself. The spontaneous and assured faith, which isthe mainspring of sane imagination, must be preceded by the doubt andrejection of what is lifeless and insincere. We desire no resurrection ofthe Ann Radclyffe type of romance: but the true alternative to this is notsuch a mixture of the police gazette and the medical reporter as EmileZola offers us. So far as Zola is conscientious, let him live; but, in sofar as he is revolting, let him die. Many things in the world seem uglyand purposeless; but to a deeper intelligence than ours, they are a partof beauty and design. What is ugly and irrelevant, can never enter, assuch, into a work of art; because the artist is bound, by a sacredobligation, to show us the complete curve only, --never the undevelopedfragments. 

But were the firmament of England still illuminated with her Dickenses, her Thackerays, and her Brontës, I should still hold our state to befuller of promise than hers. It may be admitted that almost everything wasagainst our producing anything good in literature. Our men, in the firstplace, had to write for nothing; because the publisher, who can steal areadable English novel, will not pay for an American novel, for the merepatriotic gratification of enabling its American author to write it. Inthe second place, they had nothing to write about, for the national lifewas too crude and heterogeneous for ordinary artistic purposes. Thirdly, they had no one to write for: because, although, in one sense, there mightbe readers enough, in a higher sense there were scarcely any, --that is tosay, there was no organized critical body of literary opinion, from whichan author could confidently look to receive his just meed of encouragementand praise. Yet, in spite of all this, and not to mention honored namesthat have ceased or are ceasing to cast their living weight into thescale, we are contributing much that is fresh and original, and something, it may be, that is of permanent value, to literature. We have accepted thesituation; and, since no straw has been vouchsafed us to make our brickswith, we are trying manfully to make them without. 

It will not be necessary, however, to call the roll of all the able andpopular gentlemen who are contending in the forlorn hope againstdisheartening odds; and as for the ladies who have honored our literatureby their contributions, it will perhaps be well to adopt regarding them acourse analogous to that which Napoleon is said to have pursued with theletters sent to him while in Italy. He left them unread until a certaintime had elapsed, and then found that most of them no longer neededattention. We are thus brought face to face with the two men with whomevery critic of American novelists has to reckon; who represent what iscarefullest and newest in American fiction; and it remains to inquire howfar their work has been moulded by the skeptical or radical spirit ofwhich Turguénieff is the chief exemplar. 

The author of "Daisy Miller" had been writing for several years before thebearings of his course could be confidently calculated. Some of hisearlier tales, --as, for example, "The Madonna of the Future, "--whilekeeping near reality on one side, are on the other eminently fanciful andideal. He seemed to feel the attraction of fairyland, but to lackresolution to swallow it whole; so, instead of idealizing both persons andplot, as Hawthorne had ventured to do, he tried to persuade real personsto work out an ideal destiny. But the tact, delicacy, and reticence withwhich these attempts were made did not blind him to the essentialincongruity; either realism or idealism had to go, and step by step hedismissed the latter, until at length Turguénieff's current caught him. Bythis time, however, his culture had become too wide, and his independentviews too confirmed, to admit of his yielding unconditionally to the greatRussian. Especially his critical familiarity with French literatureoperated to broaden, if at the same time to render less trenchant, hismethod and expression. His characters are drawn with fastidious care, andclosely follow the tones and fashions of real life. Each utterance is soexactly like what it ought to be that the reader feels the same sort ofpleased surprise as is afforded by a phonograph which repeats, with allthe accidental pauses and inflections, the speech spoken into it. Yet thewords come through a medium; they are not quite spontaneous; these figureshave not the sad, human inevitableness of Turguénieff's people. The reasonseems to be (leaving the difference between the genius of the two writersout of account) that the American, unlike the Russian, recognizes notragic importance in the situation. To the latter, the vision of life isso ominous that his voice waxes sonorous and terrible; his eyes, made keenby foreboding, see the leading elements of the conflict, and them only; heis no idle singer of an empty day, but he speaks because speech springsout of him. To his mind, the foundations of human welfare are in jeopardy, and it is full time to decide what means may avert the danger. But theAmerican does not think any cataclysm is impending, or if any there be, nobody can help it. The subjects that best repay attention are the minorones of civilization, culture, behavior; how to avoid certain vulgaritiesand follies, how to inculcate certain principles: and to illustrate thesepoints heroic types are not needed. In other words, the situation beingunheroic, so must the actors be; for, apart from the inspirations ofcircumstances, Napoleon no more than John Smith is recognizable as a hero. 

Now, in adopting this view, a writer places himself under several manifestdisadvantages. If you are to be an agnostic, it is better (for novel-writing purposes) not to be a complacent or resigned one. Otherwise yourcharacters will find it difficult to show what is in them. A man revealsand classifies himself in proportion to the severity of the condition oraction required of him, hence the American novelist's people are inconsiderable straits to make themselves adequately known to us. Theycannot lay bare their inmost soul over a cup of tea or a picture by Corôt;so, in order to explain themselves, they must not only submit todissection at the author's hands, but must also devote no little time andingenuity to dissecting themselves and one another. But dissection is onething, and the living word rank from the heart and absolutely reeking ofthe human creature that uttered it--the word that Turguénieff's people areconstantly uttering--is another. Moreover, in the dearth of commandingtraits and stirring events, there is a continual temptation to magnifythose which are petty and insignificant. Instead of a telescope to sweepthe heavens, we are furnished with a microscope to detect infusoria. Wewant a description of a mountain; and, instead of receiving an outline, naked and severe, perhaps, but true and impressive, we are introduced to atiny field on its immeasurable side, and we go botanizing and insect-hunting there. This is realism; but it is the realism of texture, not ofform and relation. It encourages our glance to be near-sighted instead ofcomprehensive. Above all, there is a misgiving that we do not touch thewriter's true quality, and that these scenes of his, so elaborately andconscientiously prepared, have cost him much thought and pains, but notone throb of the heart or throe of the spirit. The experiences that hedepicts have not, one fancies, marked wrinkles on his forehead or turnedhis hair gray. There are two kinds of reserve--the reserve which feelsthat its message is too mighty for it, and the reserve which feels that itis too mighty for its message. Our new school of writers is reserved, butits reserve does not strike one as being of the former kind. It cannot besaid of any one of Mr. James's stories, "This is his best, " or "This ishis worst, " because no one of them is all one way. They have their phasesof strength and veracity, and, also, phases that are neither veracious norstrong. The cause may either lie in a lack of experience in a certaindirection on the writer's part; or else in his reluctance to write up tothe experience he has. The experience in question is not of the ways ofthe world, --concerning which Mr. James has every sign of being politelyfamiliar, --nor of men and women in their every-day aspect; still less ofliterary ways and means, for of these, in his own line, he is a master. The experience referred to is experience of passion. If Mr. James be notincapable of describing passion, at all events he has still to show thathe is capable of it. He has introduced us to many characters that seem tohave in them capacity for the highest passion, --as witness ChristinaLight, --and yet he has never allowed them an opportunity to develop it. Heseems to evade the situation; but the evasion is managed with so muchplausibility that, although we may be disappointed, or even irritated, andfeel, more or less vaguely, that we have been unfairly dealt with, we areunable to show exactly where or how the unfairness comes in. Thus hisnovels might be compared to a beautiful face, full of culture and goodbreeding, but lacking that fire of the eye and fashion of the lip thatbetray a living human soul. 

The other one of the two writers whose names are so often mentionedtogether, seems to have taken up the subject of our domestic and socialpathology; and the minute care and conscientious veracity which he hasbrought to bear upon his work has not been surpassed, even by Shakespeare. But, if I could venture a criticism upon his productions, it would be tothe effect that there is not enough fiction in them. They are elaborateand amiable reports of what we see around us. They are not exactlyimaginative, --in the sense in which I have attempted to define the word. There are two ways of warning a man against unwholesome life--one is, toshow him a picture of disease; the other is, to show him a picture ofhealth. The former is the negative, the latter the positive treatment. Both have their merits; but the latter is, perhaps, the better adapted tonovels, the former to essays. A novelist should not only know what he hasgot; he should also know what he wants. His mind should have an active, ortheorizing, as well as a passive, or contemplative, side. He should haveenergy to discount the people he personally knows; the power to perceivewhat phases of thought are to be represented, as well as to describe thepersons who happen to be their least inadequate representatives; thesagacity to analyze the age or the moment, and to reveal its tendency andmeaning. Mr. Howells has produced a great deal of finely wrought tapestry;but does not seem, as yet, to have found a hall fit to adorn it with. 

And yet Mr. James and Mr. Howells have done more than all the rest of usto make our literature respectable during the last ten years. If texturebe the object, they have brought texture to a fineness never surpassedanywhere. They have discovered charm and grace in much that was only blankbefore. They have detected and described points of human nature hithertounnoticed, which, if not intrinsically important, will one day be madeauxiliary to the production of pictures of broader as well as minuterveracity than have heretofore been produced. All that seems wanting thusfar is a direction, an aim, a belief. Agnosticism has brought about apause for a while, and no doubt a pause is preferable to some kinds ofactivity. It may enable us, when the time comes to set forward again, todo so with better equipment and more intelligent purpose. It will not doto be always at a prophetic heat of enthusiasm, sympathy, denunciation:the coolly critical mood is also useful to prune extravagance and promotea sense of responsibility. The novels of Mr. James and of Mr. Howells havetaught us that men and women are creatures of infinitely complicatedstructure, and that even the least of these complications, if it isportrayed at all, is worth portraying truthfully. But we cannot forget, onthe other hand, that honest emotion and hearty action are necessary to thewholesomeness of society, because in their absence society is afflictedwith a lamentable sameness and triviality; the old primitive impulsesremain, but the food on which they are compelled to feed is insipid andunsustaining; our eyes are turned inward instead of outward, and each oneof us becomes himself the Rome towards which all his roads lead. Suchbooks as these authors have written are not the Great American Novel, because they take life and humanity not in their loftier, but in theirlesser manifestations. They are the side scenes and the background of astory that has yet to be written. That story will have the interest notonly of the collision of private passions and efforts, but of the greatideas and principles which characterize and animate a nation. It willdiscriminate between what is accidental and what is permanent, betweenwhat is realistic and what is real, between what is sentimental and whatis sentiment. It will show us not only what we are, but what we are to be;not only what to avoid, but what to do. It will rest neither in the tragicgloom of Turguénieff, nor in the critical composure of James, nor in thegentle deprecation of Howells, but will demonstrate that the weakness ofman is the motive and condition of his strength. It will not shrink fromromance, nor from ideality, nor from artistic completeness, because itwill know at what depths and heights of life these elements are trulyoperative. It will be American, not because its scene is laid or itscharacters born in the United States, but because its burden will bereaction against old tyrannies and exposure of new hypocrisies; arefutation of respectable falsehoods, and a proclamation ofunsophisticated truths. Indeed, let us take heed and diligently improveour native talent, lest a day come when the Great American Novel make itsappearance, but written in a foreign language, and by some author who--however purely American at heart--never set foot on the shores of theRepublic. 

CHAPTER III. 

AMERICANISM IN FICTION. 

Contemporary criticism will have it that, in order to create an AmericanLiterature, we must use American materials. The term "Literature" has, nodoubt, come to be employed in a loose sense. The London _Saturday Review_has (or used to have until lately) a monthly two-column article devoted towhat it called "American Literature, " three-fourths of which were devotedto an examination of volumes of State Histories, Statistical Digests, Records of the Census, and other such works as were never, before orsince, suspected of being literature; while the remaining fourth mentionedthe titles (occasionally with a line of comment) of whatever productionswere at hand in the way of essays, novels, and poetry. This would seem toindicate that we may have--nay, are already possessed of--an AmericanLiterature, composed of American materials, provided only that we consentto adopt the _Saturday Review's_ conception of what literature is. 

Many of us believe, however, that the essays, the novels, and the poetry, as well as the statistical digests, ought to go to the making up of anational literature. It has been discovered, however, that the existenceof the former does not depend, to the same extent as that of the latter, upon the employment of exclusively American material. A book about thecensus, if it be not American, is nothing; but a poem or a romance, thoughwritten by a native-born American, who, perhaps, has never crossed theAtlantic, not only may, but frequently does, have nothing in it that canbe called essentially American, except its English and, occasionally, itsideas. And the question arises whether such productions can justly be heldto form component parts of what shall hereafter be recognized as theliterature of America. 

How was it with the makers of English literature? Beginning with Chaucer, his "Canterbury Pilgrims" is English, both in scene and character; it iseven mentioned of the Abbess that "Frenche of Paris was to her unknowe";but his "Legende of Goode Women" might, so far as its subject-matter isconcerned, have been written by a French, a Spanish, or an ItalianChaucer, just as well as by the British Daniel. Spenser's "Faërie Queene"numbers St. George and King Arthur among its heroes; but its scene is laidin Faërie Lande, if it be laid anywhere, and it is a barefaced moralallegory throughout. Shakespeare wrote thirty-seven plays, the eliminationof which from English literature would undeniably be a serious loss to it;yet, of these plays twenty-three have entirely foreign scenes andcharacters. Milton, as a political writer, was English; but his "ParadiseLost and Regained, " his "Samson, " his "Ode on the Nativity, " his "Comus, "bear no reference to the land of his birth. Dryden's best-known work to-day is his "Alexander's Feast. " Pope has come down to us as the translatorof Homer. Richardson, Fielding, Smollett, and Sterne are the great quartetof English novelists of the last century; but Smollett, in his preface to"Roderick Random, " after an admiring allusion to the "Gil Blas" of LeSage, goes on to say: "The following sheets I have modelled on his plan";and Sterne was always talking and thinking about Cervantes, and comparinghimself to the great Spaniard: "I think there is more laughable humor, with an equal degree of Cervantic satire, if not more, than in the last, "he writes of one of his chapters, to "my witty widow, Mrs. F. " Many evenof Walter Scott's romances are un-English in their elements; and the fameof Shelley, Keats, and Byron rests entirely upon their "foreign" work. Coleridge's poetry and philosophy bear no technical stamp of nationality;and, to come down to later times, Carlyle was profoundly imbued withGermanism, while the "Romola" of George Eliot and the "Cloister and theHearth" of Charles Reade are by many considered to be the best of theirworks. In the above enumeration innumerable instances in point are, ofcourse, omitted; but enough have been given, perhaps, to show thatimaginative writers have not generally been disowned by their country onthe ground that they have availed themselves, in their writings, of otherscenes and characters than those of their own immediate neighborhoods. 

The statistics of the work of the foremost American writers could easilybe shown to be much more strongly imbued with the specific flavor of theirenvironment. Benjamin Franklin, though he was an author before the UnitedStates existed, was American to the marrow. The "Leather-Stocking Tales"of Cooper are the American epic. Irving's "Knickerbocker" and his"Woolfert's Roost" will long outlast his other productions. Poe's mostpopular tale, "The Gold-Bug, " is American in its scene, and so is "TheMystery of Marie Roget, " in spite of its French nomenclature; and all thathe wrote is strongly tinged with the native hue of his strange genius. Longfellow's "Evangeline" and "Hiawatha" and "Miles Standish, " and suchpoems as "The Skeleton in Armor" and "The Building of the Ship, " crowd outof sight his graceful translations and adaptations. Emerson is theveritable American eagle of our literature, so that to be Emersonian is tobe American. Whittier and Holmes have never looked beyond their nativeboundaries, and Hawthorne has brought the stern gloom of the Puritanperiod and the uneasy theorizings of the present day into harmony with theuniversal and permanent elements of human nature. There was certainlynothing European visible in the crude but vigorous stories of TheodoreWinthrop; and Bret Harte, the most brilliant figure among our later men, is not only American, but Californian, --as is, likewise, the Poet of theSierras. It is not necessary to go any further. Mr. Henry James, havingenjoyed early and singular opportunities of studying the effects of therecent annual influx of Americans, cultured and otherwise, into Englandand the Continent, has very sensibly and effectively, and with exquisitegrace of style and pleasantness of thought, made the phenomenon the themeof a remarkable series of stories. Hereupon the cry of an "InternationalSchool" has been raised, and critics profess to be seriously alarmed lestwe should ignore the signal advantages for _mise-en-scène_ presented bythis Western half of the planet, and should enter into vain andunpatriotic competition with foreign writers on their own ground. Thetruth is, meanwhile, that it would have been a much surer sign ofaffectation in us to have abstained from literary comment upon the patentand notable fact of this international _rapprochement_, --which is just ascharacteristic an American trait as the episode of the Argonauts of 1849, --and we have every reason to be grateful to Mr. Henry James, and to hisschool, if he has any, for having rescued us from the opprobrium of sofoolish a piece of know-nothingism. The phase is, of course, merelytemporary; its interest and significance will presently be exhausted; but, because we are American, are we to import no French cakes and English ale?As a matter of fact, we are too timid and self-conscious; and theseinfirmities imply a much more serious obstacle to the formation of acharacteristic literature than does any amount of gadding abroad. 

That must be a very shallow literature which depends for its nationalflavor and character upon its topography and its dialect; and thecriticism which can conceive of no deeper Americanism than this isshallower still. What is an American book? It is a book written by anAmerican, and by one who writes as an American; that is, unaffectedly. Soan English book is a book written by an unaffected Englishman. Whatdifference can it make what the subject of the writing is? Mr. Henry Jameslately brought out a volume of essays on "French Poets and Novelists. " Mr. E. C. Stedman recently published a series of monographs on "The VictorianPoets. " Are these books French and English, or are they nondescript, orare they American? Not only are they American, but they are moreessentially American than if they had been disquisitions upon Americanliterature. And the reason is, of course, that they subject the things ofthe old world to the tests of the new, and thereby vindicate andillustrate the characteristic mission of America to mankind. We are hereto hold up European conventionalisms and prejudices in the light of thenew day, and thus afford everybody the opportunity, never heretoforeenjoyed, of judging them by other standards, and in other surroundingsthan those amidst which they came into existence. In the same way, Emerson's "English Traits" is an American thing, and it gives categoricalreasons why American things should be. And what is an American novelexcept a novel treating of persons, places, and ideas from an Americanpoint of view? The point of view is _the_ point, not the thing seen fromit. 

But it is said that "the great American novel, " in order fully to deserveits name, ought to have American scenery. Some thousands of years ago, theGreeks had a novelist--Homer--who evolved the great novel of that epoch;but the scenery of that novel was Trojan, not Greek. The story is acriticism, from a Greek standpoint, of foreign affairs, illustrated withpractical examples; and, as regards treatment, quite as much care isbestowed upon the delineation of Hector, Priam, and Paris, as uponAgamemnon, Menelaus, and Achilles. The same story, told by a Trojan Homer, would doubtless have been very different; but it is by no means certainthat it would have been any better told. It embodies, whether symbolicallyor literally matters not, the triumph of Greek ideas and civilization. But, even so, the sympathies of the reader are not always, or perhapsuniformly, on the conquering side. Homer was doubtless a patriot, but heshows no signs of having been a bigot. He described that greatinternational episode with singular impartiality; what chiefly interestedhim was the play of human nature. Nevertheless, there is no evidence thatthe Greeks were backward in admitting his claims as their national poet;and we may legitimately conclude that were an American Homer--whether inprose or poetry--to appear among us, he might pitch his scene where heliked--in Patagonia, or on the banks of the Zambezi--and we should acceptthe situation with perfect equanimity. Only let him be a native of NewYork, or Boston, or San Francisco, or Mullenville, and be inspired withthe American idea, and we ask no more. Whatever he writes will belong toour literature, and add lustre to it. 

One hears many complaints about the snobbishness of running after thingsEuropean. Go West, young man, these moralists say, or go down FifthAvenue, and investigate Chatham Street, and learn that all the elements ofromance, to him who has the seeing eye, lie around your own front doorstepand back yard. But let not these persons forget that he who fears Europeis a less respectable snob than he who studies it. Let us welcome Europein our books as freely as we do at Castle Garden; we may do so safely. Ifour digestion be not strong enough to assimilate her, and work up whateveris valuable in her into our own bone and sinew, then America is not thething we took her for. For what is America? Is it simply a reproduction ofone of these Eastern nationalities, which we are so fond of alluding to aseffete? Surely not. It is a new departure in history; it is a new dooropened to the development of the human race, or, as I should prefer tosay, of humanity. We are misled by the chatter of politicians and thebombast of Congress. In the course of ages, the time has at last arrivedwhen man, all over this planet, is entering upon a new career of moral, intellectual, and political emancipation; and America is the concreteexpression and theatre of that great fact, as all spiritual truths findtheir fitting and representative physical incarnation. But what would thishuge western continent be, if America--the real America of the mind--hadno existence? It would be a body without a soul, and would better, therefore, not be at all. If America is to be a repetition of Europe on alarger scale, it is not worth the pain of governing it. Europe has shownwhat European ideas can accomplish; and whatever fresh thought or impulsecomes to birth in it can be nothing else than an American thought andimpulse, and must sooner or later find its way here, and becomenaturalized with its brethren. Buds and blossoms of America are sproutingforth all over the Old World, and we gather in the fruit. They do not findthemselves at home there, but they know where their home is. The oldcountry feels them like thorns in her old flesh, and is gladly rid ofthem; but such prickings are the only wholesome and hopeful symptoms shepresents; if they ceased to trouble her, she would be dead indeed. She hasan uneasy experience before her, for a time; but the time will come whenshe, too, will understand that her ease is her disease, and then CastleGarden may close its doors, for America will be everywhere. 

If, then, America is something vastly more than has hitherto beenunderstood by the word nation, it is proper that we attach to that otherword, patriotism, a significance broader and loftier than has beenconceived till now. By so much as the idea that we represent is great, byso much are we, in comparison with it, inevitably chargeable withlittleness and short-comings. For we are of the same flesh and blood asour neighbors; it is only our opportunities and our responsibilities thatare fairer and weightier than theirs. Circumstances afford every excuse tothem, but none to us. "_E Pluribus Unum_" is a frivolous motto; our trueone should be, "_Noblesse oblige_. " But, with a strange perversity, in allmatters of comparison between ourselves and others, we display what we arepleased to call our patriotism by an absurd touchiness as to pointswherein Europe, with its settled and polished civilization, must needs beour superior; and are quite indifferent about those things by which ourreal strength is constituted. Can we not be content to learn from Europethe graces, the refinements, the amenities of life, so long as we are ableto teach her life itself? For my part, I never saw in England anyappurtenance of civilization, calculated to add to the convenience andcommodiousness of existence, that did not seem to me to surpass anythingof the kind that we have in this country. Notwithstanding which--and I amfar, indeed, from having any pretensions to asceticism--I would have beenfairly stifled at the idea of having to spend my life there. No Americancan live in Europe, unless he means to return home, or unless, at anyrate, he returns here in mind, in hope, in belief. For an American toaccept England, or any other country, as both a mental and physicalfinality, would, it seems to me, be tantamount to renouncing his verylife. To enjoy English comforts at the cost of adopting English opinions, would be about as pleasant as to have the privilege of retaining one'sbody on condition of surrendering one's soul, and would, indeed, amount tojust about the same thing. 

I fail, therefore, to feel any apprehension as to our literature becomingEuropeanized, because whatever is American in it must lie deeper thananything European can penetrate. More than that, I believe and hope thatour novelists will deal with Europe a great deal more, and a great dealmore intelligently, than they have done yet. It is a true and healthyartistic instinct that leads them to do so. Hawthorne--and no Americanwriter had a better right than he to contradict his own argument--says, inthe preface to the "Marble Faun, " in a passage that has been often quoted, but will bear repetition:--

 "Italy, as the site of a romance, was chiefly valuable to him as < affording a sort of poetic or fairy precinct, where actualities would not be so terribly insisted on as they are, and must needs be, in America. No author, without a trial, can conceive of the difficulty of writing a romance about a country where there is no shadow, no antiquity, n mystery, no picturesque and gloomy wrong, nor anything but a commonplace prosperity, in broad and simple daylight, as is happily the case with my dear native land. It will be very long, I trust, before romance writers may find congenial and easily handled themes, either in the annals of our stalwart Republic, or in any characteristic and probable events of our individual lives. Romance and poetry, ivy, lichens, and wall-flowers, need ruin to make them grow. "

Now, what is to be understood from this passage? It assumes, in the firstplace, that a work of art, in order to be effective, must contain profoundcontrasts of light and shadow; and then it points out that the shadow, atleast, is found ready to the hand in Europe. There is no hint of patrioticscruples as to availing one's self of such a "picturesque and gloomy"background; if it is to be had, then let it be taken; the main object tobe considered is the work of art. Europe, in short, afforded an excellentquarry, from which, in Hawthorne's opinion, the American novelist mightobtain materials which are conspicuously deficient in his own country, andwhich that country is all the better for not possessing. In the "MarbleFaun" the author had conceived a certain idea, and he considered that hehad been not unsuccessful in realizing it. The subject was new, and fullof especial attractions to his genius, and it would manifestly have beenimpossible to adapt it to an American setting. There was one drawbackconnected with it, and this Hawthorne did not fail to recognize. Heremarks in the preface that he had "lived too long abroad not to be awarethat a foreigner seldom acquires that knowledge of a country at onceflexible and profound, which may justify him in endeavoring to idealizeits traits. " But he was careful not to attempt "a portraiture of Italianmanners and character. " He made use of the Italian scenery and atmospherejust so far as was essential to the development of his idea, andconsistent with the extent of his Italian knowledge; and, for the rest, fell back upon American characters and principles. The result has beenlong enough before the world to have met with a proper appreciation. Ihave heard regret expressed that the power employed by the author inworking out this story had not been applied to a romance dealing with apurely American subject. But to analyze this objection is to dispose ofit. A man of genius is not, commonly, enfeebled by his own productions;and, physical accidents aside, Hawthorne was just as capable of writinganother "Scarlet Letter" after the "Marble Faun" was published, as he hadbeen before. Meanwhile, few will deny that our literature would be a loserhad the "Marble Faun" never been written. 

The drawback above alluded to is, however, not to be underrated. It mayoperate in two ways. In the first place, the American's Europeanobservations may be inaccurate. As a child, looking at a sphere, mightsuppose it to be a flat disc, shaded at one side and lighted at the other, so a sightseer in Europe may ascribe to what he beholds qualities and acharacter quite at variance with what a more fundamental knowledge wouldhave enabled him to perceive. In the second place, the stranger in astrange land, be he as accurate as he may, will always tend to look atwhat is around him objectively, instead of allowing it subjectively--or, as it were, unconsciously--to color his narrative. He will be more aptdirectly to describe what he sees, than to convey the feeling or aroma ofit without description. It would doubtless, for instance, be possible forMr. Henry James to write an "English" or even a "French" novel withoutfalling into a single technical error; but it is no less certain that anative writer, of equal ability, would treat the same subject in a verydifferent manner. Mr. James's version might contain a great deal more ofdefinite information; but the native work would insinuate an impressionwhich both comes from and goes to a greater depth of apprehension. 

But, on the other hand, it is not contended that any American should writean "English" or anything but an "American" novel. The contention is, simply, that he should not refrain from using foreign material, when ithappens to suit his exigencies, merely because it is foreign. Objectivewriting may be quite as good reading as subjective writing, in its properplace and function. In fiction, no more than elsewhere, may a writerpretend to be what he is not, or to know what he knows not. When he findshimself abroad, he must frankly admit his situation; and more will notthen be required of him than he is fairly competent to afford. It willseldom happen, as Hawthorne intimates, that he can successfully reproducethe inner workings and philosophy of European social and political customsand peculiarities; but he can give a picture of the scenery as vivid ascan the aborigine, or more so; he can make an accurate study of personalnative character; and, finally, and most important of all, he can make useof the conditions of European civilization in events, incidents, andsituations which would be impossible on this side of the water. Therestrictions, the traditions, the law, and the license of those oldcountries are full of suggestions to the student of character andcircumstances, and supply him with colors and effects that he would elsesearch for in vain. For the truth may as well be admitted; we are at adistinct disadvantage, in America, in respect of the materials of romance. Not that vigorous, pathetic, striking stories may not be constructed here;and there is humor enough, the humor of dialect, of incongruity ofcharacter; but, so far as the story depends for its effect, not uponpsychical and personal, but upon physical and general events andsituations, we soon feel the limit of our resources. An analysis of thehuman soul, such as may be found in the "House of the Seven Gables, " forinstance, is absolute in its interest, apart from outward conditions. Butsuch an analysis cannot be carried on, so to say, _in vacuo_. You musthave solid ground to stand on; you must have fitting circumstances, background, and perspective. The ruin of a soul, the tragedy of a heart, demand, as a necessity of harmony and picturesque effect, a correspondingand conspiring environment and stage--just as, in music, the air in thetreble is supported and reverberated by the bass accompaniment. Theimmediate, contemporary act or predicament loses more than half itsmeaning and impressiveness if it be re-echoed from no sounding-board inthe past--its notes, however sweetly and truly touched, fall flatly on theear. The deeper we attempt to pitch the key of an American story, therefore, the more difficulty shall we find in providing a congruoussetting for it; and it is interesting to note how the masters of the crafthave met the difficulty. In the "Seven Gables"--and I take leave to saythat if I draw illustrations from this particular writer, it is for noother reason than that he presents, more forcibly than most, a method ofdealing with the special problem we are considering--Hawthorne, with theintuitive skill of genius, evolves a background, and produces areverberation, from materials which he may be said to have created almostas much as discovered. The idea of a house, founded two hundred years agoupon a crime, remaining ever since in possession of its original owners, and becoming the theatre, at last, of the judgment upon that crime, is athoroughly picturesque idea, but it is thoroughly un-American. Such athing might conceivably occur, but nothing in this country could well bemore unlikely. No one before Hawthorne had ever thought of attempting sucha thing; at all events, no one else, before or since, has accomplished it. The preface to the romance in question reveals the principle upon whichits author worked, and incidentally gives a new definition of the term"romance, "--a definition of which, thus far, no one but its propounder hasknown how to avail himself. It amounts, in fact, to an acknowledgment thatit is impossible to write a "novel" of American life that shall be at onceartistic, realistic, and profound. A novel, he says, aims at a "veryminute fidelity, not merely to the possible, but to the probable andordinary course of man's experience. " A romance, on the other hand, "while, as a work of art, it must rigidly subject itself to laws, andwhile it sins unpardonably so far as it may swerve aside from the truth ofthe human heart, has fairly a right to present that truth undercircumstances, to a great extent, of the writer's own choosing orcreation. If he think fit, also, he may so manage his atmospherical mediumas to bring out and mellow the lights, and deepen and enrich the shadows, of the picture. " This is good advice, no doubt, but not easy to follow. Wecan all understand, however, that the difficulties would be greatlylessened could we but command backgrounds of the European order. Thackeray, the Brontës, George Eliot, and others have written greatstories, which did not have to be romances, because the literal conditionsof life in England have a picturesqueness and a depth which correspondwell enough with whatever moral and mental scenery we may project uponthem. Hawthorne was forced to use the scenery and capabilities of hisnative town of Salem. He saw that he could not present these in arealistic light, and his artistic instinct showed him that he must modifyor veil the realism of his figures in the same degree and manner as thatof his accessories. No doubt, his peculiar genius and temperamenteminently qualified him to produce this magical change; it was aremarkable instance of the spontaneous marriage, so to speak, of the meansto the end; and even when, in Italy, he had an opportunity to write astory which should be accurate in fact, as well as faithful to "the truthof the human heart, " he still preferred a subject which bore to theItalian environment the same relation that the "House of the Seven Gables"and the "Scarlet Letter" do to the American one; in other words, theconception of Donatello is removed as much further than Clifford or HesterPrynne from literal realism as the inherent romance of the Italian settingis above that of New England. The whole thing is advanced a step furthertowards pure idealism, the relative proportions being maintained. 

"The Blithedale Romance" is only another instance in point, and here, asbefore, we find the principle admirably stated in the preface. "In the oldcountries, " says Hawthorne, "a novelist's work is not put exactly side byside with nature; and he is allowed a license with regard to everydayprobability, in view of the improved effects he is bound to producethereby. Among ourselves, on the contrary, there is as yet no Faëry Land, so like the real world that, in a suitable remoteness, we cannot well tellthe difference, but with an atmosphere of strange enchantment, beheldthrough which the inhabitants have a propriety of their own. Thisatmosphere is what the American romancer needs. In its absence, the beingsof his imagination are compelled to show themselves in the same categoryas actually living mortals; a necessity that renders the paint andpasteboard of their composition but too painfully discernible. "Accordingly, Hawthorne selects the Brook Farm episode (or a reflection ofit) as affording his drama "a theatre, a little removed from the highwayof ordinary travel, where the creatures of his brain may play theirphantasmagorical antics, without exposing them to too close a comparisonwith the actual events of real lives. " In this case, therefore, anexceptional circumstance is made to answer the same purpose that wasattained by different means in the other romances. 

But in what manner have our other writers of fiction treated thedifficulties that were thus dealt with by Hawthorne?--Herman Melvillecannot be instanced here; for his only novel or romance, whichever it be, was also the most impossible of all his books, and really a terribleexample of the enormities which a man of genius may perpetrate whenworking in a direction unsuited to him. I refer, of course, to "Pierre, orthe Ambiguities. " Oliver Wendell Holmes's two delightful stories are asfavorable examples of what can be done, in the way of an American novel, by a wise, witty, and learned gentleman, as we are likely to see. Nevertheless, one cannot avoid the feeling that they are the work of a manwho has achieved success and found recognition in other ways than bystories, or even poems and essays. The interest, in either book, centresround one of those physiological phenomena which impinge so strangely uponthe domain of the soul; for the rest, they are simply accurate andhumorous portraitures of local dialects and peculiarities, and thus affordlittle assistance in the search for a universally applicable rule ofguidance. Doctor Holmes, I believe, objects to having the term "medicated"applied to his tales; but surely the adjective is not reproachful; itindicates one of the most charming and also, alas! inimitable features ofhis work. 

Bret Harte is probably as valuable a witness as could be summoned in thiscase. His touch is realistic, and yet his imagination is poetic andromantic. He has discovered something. He has done something both new andgood. Within the space of some fifty pages, he has painted a series ofpictures which will last as long as anything in the fifty thousand pagesof Dickens. Taking "The Outcasts of Poker Flat" as perhaps the most nearlyperfect of the tales, as well as the most truly representative of thewriter's powers, let us try to guess its secret. In the first place, it isvery short, --a single episode, succinctly and eloquently told. Thedescriptions of scenery and persons are masterly and memorable. Thecharacters of these persons, their actions, and the circumstances of theirlives, are as rugged, as grotesque, as terrible, and also as beautiful, asthe scenery. Thus an artistic harmony is established, --the thing which islacking in so much of our literature. The story moves swiftly on, throughhumor, pathos, and tragedy, to its dramatic close. It is given withperfect literary taste, and naught in its phases of human nature is eitherextenuated or set down in malice. The little narrative can be read in afew minutes, and can never be forgotten. But it is only an episode; and itis an episode of an episode, --that of the Californian gold-fever. Thestory of the Argonauts is only one story, after all, and these tales ofHarte's are but so many facets of the same gem. They are not, however, like chapters in a romance; there is no such vital connection between themas develops a cumulative force. We are no more impressed after readinghalf a dozen of them than after the first; they are variations of the sametheme. They discover to us no new truth about human nature; they only showus certain human beings so placed as to act out their naked selves, --to beneither influenced nor protected by the rewards and screens ofconventional civilization. The affectation and insincerity of our dailylife make such a spectacle fresh and pleasing to us. But we enjoy itbecause of its unexpectedness, its separateness, its unlikeness to theordinary course of existence. It is like a huge, strange, gorgeous flower, an exaggeration and intensification of such flowers as we know; but aflower without roots, unique, never to be reproduced. It is fitting thatits portrait should be painted; but, once done, it is done with; we cannotfill our picture-gallery with it. Carlyle wrote the History of the FrenchRevolution, and Bret Harte has written the History of the Argonauts; butit is absurd to suppose that a national literature could be founded oneither episode. 

But though Mr. Harte has not left his fellow-craftsmen anything to gatherfrom the lode which he opened and exhausted, we may still learn somethingfrom his method. He took things as he found them, and he found themdisinclined to weave themselves into an elaborate and balanced narrative. He recognized the deficiency of historical perspective, but he saw thatwhat was lost in slowly growing, culminating power was gained in vivid, instant force. The deeds of his character could not be represented as thefinal result of long-inherited proclivities; but they could appear betweentheir motive and their consequence, like the draw--aim--fire! of theWestern desperado, --as short, sharp, and conclusive. In other words, theconditions of American life, as he saw it, justified a short story, or anynumber of them, but not a novel; and the fact that he did afterwardsattempt a novel only served to confirm his original position. I think thatthe limitation that he discovered is of much wider application than we areprone to realize. American life has been, as yet, nothing but a series ofepisodes, of experiments. There has been no such thing as a fixed andsettled condition of society, not subject to change itself, and thereforeaffording a foundation and contrast to minor or individual vicissitudes. We cannot write American-grown novels, because a novel is not an episode, nor an aggregation of episodes; we cannot write romances in the Hawthornesense, because, as yet, we do not seem to be clever enough. Severalcourses are, however, open to us, and we are pursuing them all. First, weare writing "short stories, " accounts of episodes needing no historicalperspective, and not caring for any; and, so far as one may judge, wewrite the best short stories in the world. Secondly, we may spin out ourshort stories into long-short stories, just as we may imagine a baby sixfeet high; it takes up more room, but is just as much a baby as one oftwelve inches. Thirdly, we may graft our flower of romance on a Europeanstem, and enjoy ourselves as much as the European novelists do, and withas clear a conscience. We are stealing that which enriches us and does notimpoverish them. It is silly and childish to make the boundaries of theAmerica of the mind coincide with those of the United States. We need notdispute about free trade and protection here; literature is not commerce, nor is it politics. America is not a petty nationality, like France, England, and Germany; but whatever in such nationalities tends towardenlightenment and freedom is American. Let us not, therefore, confirmourselves in a false and ignoble conception of our meaning and mission inthe world. Let us not carry into the temple of the Muse the jealousies, the prejudice, the ignorance, the selfishness of our "Senate" and"Representatives, " strangely so called! Let us not refuse to breathe theair of Heaven, lest there be something European or Asian in it. If wecannot have a national literature in the narrow, geographical sense of thephrase, it is because our inheritance transcends all geographicaldefinitions. The great American novel may not be written this year, oreven in this century. Meanwhile, let us not fear to ride, and ride todeath, whatever species of Pegasus we can catch. It can do us no harm, andit may help us to acquire a firmer seat against the time when our own, ourvery own winged steed makes his appearance. 

CHAPTER IV. 

LITERATURE FOR CHILDREN. 

Literature is that quality in books which affords delight and nourishmentto the soul. But this is a scientific and skeptical age, insomuch that onehardly ventures to take for granted that every reader will know what hissoul is. It is not the intellect, though it gives the intellect light; northe emotions, though they receive their warmth from it. It is the mostcatholic and constant element of human nature, yet it bears no direct partin the practical affairs of life; it does not struggle, it does not evensuffer; but merely emerges or retires, glows or congeals, according to thecompany in which it finds itself. We might say that the soul is a name forman's innate sympathy with goodness and truth in the abstract; for no mancan have a bad soul, though his heart may be evil, or his mind depraved, because the soul's access to the mind or heart has been so obstructed asto leave the moral consciousness cold and dark. The soul, in other words, is the only conservative and peacemaker; it affords the only unalterableground upon which all men can always meet; it unselfishly identifies orunites us with our fellows, in contradistinction to the selfish intellect, which individualizes us and sets each man against every other. Doubtless, then, the soul is an amiable and desirable possession, and it would be apity to deprive it of so much encouragement as may be compatible with dueattention to the serious business of life. For there are moments, even inthe most active careers, when it seems agreeable to forget competition, rivalry, jealousy; when it is a rest to think of one's self as a manrather than a person;--moments when time and place appear impertinent, andthat most profitable which affords least palpable profit. At such seasons, a man looks inward, or, as the American poet puts it, he loafs and inviteshis soul, and then he is at a disadvantage if his soul, in consequence oftoo persistent previous neglect, declines to respond to the invitation, and remains immured in that secret place which, as years pass by, becomesless and less accessible to so many of us. 

When I say that literature nourishes the soul, I implicitly refuse thetitle of literature to anything in books that either directly orindirectly promotes any worldly or practical use. Of course, what isliterature to one man may be anything but literature to another, or to thesame man under different circumstances; Virgil to the schoolboy, forinstance, is a very different thing from the Virgil of the scholar. Butwhatever you read with the design of improving yourself in someprofession, or of acquiring information likely to be of advantage to youin any pursuit or contingency, or of enabling yourself to hold your ownwith other readers, or even of rendering yourself that enviablenondescript, a person of culture, --whatever, in short, is read with anyassignable purpose whatever, is in so far not literature. The Bible may beliterature to Mr. Matthew Arnold, because he reads it for fun; but toLuther, Calvin, or the pupils of a Sunday-school, it is essentiallysomething else. Literature is the written communications of the soul ofmankind with itself; it is liable to appear in the most unexpected places, and in the oddest company; it vanishes when we would grasp it, and appearswhen we look not for it. Chairs of literature are established in the greatuniversities, and it is literature, no doubt, that the professordiscourses; but it ceases to be literature before it reaches the student'sear; though, again, when the same students stumble across it in therecesses of their memory ten or twenty years later, it may have becomeliterature once more. Finally, literature may, upon occasion, avail a manmore than the most thorough technical information; but it will not bebecause it supplements or supplants that information, but because it hasso tempered and exalted his general faculty that whatever he may do isdone more clearly and comprehensively than might otherwise be the case. 

Having thus, in some measure, considered what is literature and what thesoul, let us note, further, that the literature proper to manhood is notproper to childhood, though the reverse is not--or, at least, never oughtto be--true. In childhood, the soul and the mind act in harmony; the mindhas not become preoccupied or sophisticated by so-called useful knowledge;it responds obediently to the soul's impulses and intuitions. Childrenhave no morality; they have not yet descended to the level where moralitysuggests itself to them. For morality is the outcome of spiritual pride, the most stubborn and insidious of all sins; the pride which prompts eachof us to declare himself holier than his fellows, and to support thatclaim by parading his docility to the Decalogue. Docility to any set ofrules, no matter of how divine authority, so long as it is inspired byhope of future good or present advantage, is rather worse than useless:except our righteousness exceed that of the Scribes and Pharisees, --thatis, except it be spontaneous righteousness or morality, and, therefore, not morality, but unconscious goodness, --we shall in no wise havebenefited either ourselves or others. Children, when left to themselves, artlessly and innocently act out the nature that is common to saint andsinner alike; they are selfish, angry, and foolish, because their state ishuman; and they are loving, truthful, and sincere, because their origin isdivine. All that pleases or agrees with them is good; all that opposes oroffends them is evil, and this, without any reference whatever to themoral code in vogue among their elders. But, on the other hand, childrencannot be tempted as we are, because they suppose that everything is freeand possible, and because they are as yet uncontaminated by the artificialcravings which the artificial prohibitions incident to our civilizationcreate. Life is to them a constantly widening circle of things to be hadand enjoyed; nor does it ever occur to them that their desires canconflict with those of others, or with the laws of the universe. Theycannot consciously do wrong, nor understand that any one else can do so;untoward accidents may happen, but inanimate nature is just as liable tobe objectionable in this respect as human beings: the stone that tripsthem up, the thorn that scratches them, the snow that makes their fleshtingle, is an object of their resentment in just the same kind and degreeas are the men and women who thwart or injure them. But of duty--thatdreary device to secure future reward by present suffering; ofconscientiousness--that fear of present good for the sake of futurepunishment; of remorse--that disavowal of past pleasure for fear of thesting in its tail; of ambition--that begrudging of all honorable resultsthat are not effected by one's self; of these, and all similar politic andarbitrary masks of self-love and pusillanimity, these poor children knowand suspect nothing. Yet their eyes are much keener than ours, for theysee through the surface of nature and perceive its symbolism; they see theliving reality, of which nature is the veil, and are continually at faultbecause this veil is not, after all, the reality, --because it is fixed andunplastic. The "deep mind of dauntless infancy" is, in fact, the onlyrevelation we have, except divine revelation itself, of that pure andnatural life of man which we dream of, and liken to heaven; but we, nevertheless, in our penny-wise, pound-foolish way, insist upon regardingit as ignorance, and do our best, from the earliest possible moment, todisenchant and dispel it. We call the outrage education, understandingthereby the process of exterminating in the child the higher order offaculties and the intuitions, and substituting for them the externalmemory, timidity, self-esteem, and all that armament of petty weapons anddefences which may enable us to get the better of our fellow-creatures inthis world, and receive the reward of our sagacity in the next. Thesuccess of our efforts is pitiably complete; for though the child, iffairly engaged in single combat, might make a formidable resistanceagainst the infliction of "lessons, " it cannot long withstand our craftydevice of sending it to a place where it sees a score or a hundred oflittle victims like itself, all being driven to the same Siberia. Thespirit of emulation is aroused, and lo! away they all scamper, eachstraining its utmost to reach the barren goal ahead of all competitors. Sodo we make the most ignoble passions of our children our allies in theunholy task of divesting them of their childhood. And yet, who is notaware that the best men the world has seen have been those who, throughouttheir lives, retained the aroma of childlike simplicity which they broughtwith them into existence? Learning--the acquisition of specific facts--isnot wisdom; it is almost incompatible with wisdom; indeed, unless the mindbe powerful enough not only to fuse its facts, but to vaporize them, --tosublimate them into an impalpable atmosphere, --they will stand in wisdom'sway. Wisdom comes from the pondering and the application to life ofcertain truths quite above the sphere of facts, and of infinitely moremoment and less complexity, --truths which are often found to be inaccordance with the spiritual instinct called intuition, which childrenpossess more fully than grown persons. The wisdom of our children wouldoften astonish us, if we would only forbear the attempt to make themknowing, and submissively accept instruction from them. Through all theimperfection of their inherited infirmity, we shall ever and anon beconscious of the radiance of a beautiful, unconscious intelligence, worthmore than the smartness of schools and the cleverness of colleges. But no;we abhor the very notion of it, and generally succeed in extinguishing itlong before the Three R's are done with. 

And yet, by wisely directing the child's use of the first of the Three, much of the ill effects of the trio and their offspring might becounteracted. If we believed--if the great mass of people known as thecivilized world did actually and livingly believe--that there was reallyanything beyond or above the physical order of nature, our children'sliterature, wrongly so called, would not be what it is. We believe what wecan see and touch; we teach them to believe the same, and, not satisfiedwith that, we sedulously warn them not to believe anything else. Thechild, let us suppose, has heard from some unauthorized person that thereare fairies--little magical creatures an inch high, up to all manner ofdelightful feats. He comprehends the whole matter at half a word, feelsthat he had known it already, and half thinks that he sees one or two onhis way home. He runs up to his mother and tells her about it; and has sheever seen fairies? Alas! His mother tells him that the existence of such abeing as a fairy is impossible. In old times, when the world was veryignorant and superstitious, they used to ascribe everything that happenedto supernatural agency; even the trifling daily accidents of one's life, such as tumbling down stairs, or putting the right shoe on the left foot, were thought or fancied to be the work of some mysterious power; and sinceignorant people are very apt to imagine they see what they believe[proceeds this mother] instead of only believing what they see; and since, furthermore, ignorance disposes to exaggeration and thus to untruth, thesepeople ended by asserting that they saw fairies. "Now, my child, "continues the parent, "it would grieve me to see you the victim of suchfolly. Do not read fairy stories. They are not true to life; they fillyour mind with idle notions; they cannot form your understanding, or aidyou to do your work in the world. If you should happen to fall in withsuch fables, be careful as you read to bear in mind that they are pureinventions--pretty, sometimes, perhaps, but essentially frivolous, if notimmoral. You have, however, thanks to the enlightened enterprise ofwriters and publishers, an endless assortment of juvenile books andperiodicals which combine legitimate amusement with sound and trustworthyinstruction. Here are stories about little children, just like yourself, who talk and act just as you do, and to whom nothing supernatural oroutlandish ever happens; and whose adventures, when you have read them, convey to you some salutary moral lesson. What more can you want? Yes, very likely 'Grimm's Tales' and 'The Arabian Nights' may seem moreattractive; but in this world many harmful things put on an invitingguise, which deceives the inexperienced eye. May my child remember thatall is not gold that glitters, and desire, not what is diverting merely, but what is useful and . .. And conventional!"

Let us admit that, things being as they are, it is necessary to developthe practical side of the child's nature, to ground him in moralprinciples, and to make him comprehend and fear--nominally God, butreally--society. But why, in addition to doing this, should we stranglethe unpractical side of his nature, --the ideal, imaginative, spiritualside, --the side which alone can determine his value or worthlessness ineternity? If our minds were visible as our bodies are, we should behold onevery side of us, and in our own private looking-glasses, such abortions, cripples, and monstrosities as all the slums of Europe and the East couldnot parallel. We pretend to make little men and women out of our children, and we make little dwarfs and hobgoblins out of them. Moreover, we shouldnot diminish even the practical efficiency of the coming generation byrejecting their unpractical side. Whether this boy's worldly destinationbe to clean a stable or to represent his country at a foreign court, hewill do his work all the better, instead of worse, for having been allowedfreedom of expansion on the ideal plane. He will do it comprehensively, oras from above downward, instead of blindly, or as from below upward. To acertain extent, this position is very generally admitted by instructorsnowadays; but the admission bears little or no fruit. The ideality andimagination which they have in mind are but a partial and feeble imitationof what is really signified by those terms. Ideality and imagination arethemselves merely the symptom or expression of the faculty and habit ofspiritual or subjective intuition--a faculty of paramount value in life, though of late years, in the rush of rational knowledge and discovery, ithas fallen into neglect. But it is by means of this faculty alone that thegreat religion of India was constructed--the most elaborate and seductiveof all systems; and although as a faith Buddhism is also the mosttreacherous and dangerous attack ever made upon the immortal welfare ofmankind, that circumstance certainly does not discredit or invalidate theclaim to importance of spiritual intuition itself. It may be objected thatspiritual intuition is a vague term. It undoubtedly belongs to an abstruseregion of psychology; but its meaning for our present purpose is simplythe act of testing questions of the moral consciousness by an inwardtouchstone of truth, instead of by external experience or information. That the existence of such a touchstone should be ridiculed by those whoare accustomed to depend for their belief upon palpable or logicalevidence, goes without saying; but, on the other hand, there need be nocollision or argument on the point, since no question with which intuitionis concerned can ever present itself to persons who pin their faith to theother sort of demonstration. The reverse of this statement is by no meanstrue; but it would lead us out of our present path to discuss the matter. 

Assuming, however, that intuition is possible, it is evident that itshould exist in children in an extremely pure, if not in its most potentstate; and to deny it opportunity of development might fairly be called abarbarity. It will hardly be disputed that children are an importantelement in society. Without them we should lose the memory of our youth, and all opportunity for the exercise of unselfish and disinterestedaffection. Life would become arid and mechanical to a degree now scarcelyconceivable; chastity and all the human virtues would cease to exist;marriage would be an aimless and absurd transaction; and the brotherhoodof man, even in the nominal sense that it now exists, would speedily beabjured. Political economy and sociology neglect to make children anelement in their arguments and deductions, and no small part of theirerror is attributable to that circumstance. But although children stillare born, and all the world acknowledges their paramount moral and socialvalue, the general tendency of what we are forced to call education at thepresent day is to shorten as much as possible the period of childhood. InAmerica and Germany especially--but more in America than in Germany--children are urged and stimulated to "grow up" almost before they havebeen short-coated. That conceptions of order and discipline should beearly instilled into them is proper enough; but no other order anddiscipline seems to be contemplated by educators than the forcing them tostand and be stuffed full of indigestible and incongruous knowledge, thanwhich proceeding nothing more disorderly could be devised. It looks as ifwe felt the innocence and naturalness of our children to be a rebuke tous, and wished to do away with it in short order. There is something inthe New Testament about offending the little ones, and the preferredalternative thereto; and really we are outraging not only the objectivechild, but the subjective one also--that in ourselves, namely, which isinnocent and pure, and without which we had better not be at all. Now I donot mean to say that the only medicine that can cure this malady islegitimate children's literature; wise parents are also very useful, though not perhaps so generally available. My present contention is thatthe right sort of literature is an agent of great efficiency, and may bevery easily come by. Children derive more genuine enjoyment and profitfrom a good book than most grown people are susceptible of: they see whatis described, and themselves enact and perfect the characters of the storyas it goes along. 

Nor is it indispensable that literature of the kind required shouldforthwith be produced; a great deal, of admirable quality, is already onhand. There are a few great poems----Spenser's "Faërie Queene" is one--which no well regulated child should be without; but poetry in general isnot exactly what we want. Children--healthy children--never have thepoetic genius; but they are born mystics, and they have the sense ofhumor. The best way to speak to them is in prose, and the best kind ofprose is the symbolic. The hermetic philosophers of the Middle Ages areprobably the authors of some of the best children's stories extant. Inthese tales, disguised beneath what is apparently the simplest and mostartless flow of narrative, profound truths are discussed and explained. The child reads the narrative, and certainly cannot be accused ofcomprehending the hidden philosophical problem; yet that also has itsshare in charming him. The reason is partly that true symbolic orfigurative writing is the simplest form known to literature. The simplest, that is to say, in outward form, --it may be indefinitely abstruse as toits inward contents. Indeed, the very cause of its formal simplicity isits interior profundity. The principle of hermetic writing was, as weknow, to disguise philosophical propositions and results under a form ofwords which should ostensibly signify some very ordinary and trivialthing. It was a secret language, in the vocabulary of which material factsare used to represent spiritual truths. But it differed from ordinarysecret language in this, that not only were the truths represented in thesymbols, but the philosophical development of the truth, in itsramifications, was completely evolved under the cover of a logicallyconsistent tale. This, evidently, is a far higher achievement of ingenuitythan merely to string together a series of unrelated parts of speech, which, on being tested by the "key, " shall discover the message orinformation really intended. It is, in fact, a practical application ofthe philosophical discovery, made by or communicated to the hermeticphilosophers, that every material object in nature answers to orcorresponds with a certain one or group of philosophical truths. Viewed inthis light, the science of symbols or of correspondences ceases to be anarbitrary device, susceptible of alteration according to fancy, andavouches itself an essential and consistent relation between the things ofthe mind and the things of the senses. There is a complete mentalcreation, answering to the material creation, not continuously evolvedfrom it, but on a different or detached plane. The sun, --to take anexample, --the source of light and heat, and thereby of physical nature, isin these fables always the symbol of God, of love and wisdom, by which thespirit of man is created. Light, then, answers to wisdom, and heat tolove. And since all physical substances are the result of the combinedaction of light and heat, we may easily perceive how these hermetic sageswere enabled to use every physical object as a cloak of its correspondingphilosophical truth, --with no other liability to error than might resultfrom the imperfect condition of their knowledge of physical laws. 

To return, however, to the children, I need scarcely remark that the causeof children's taking so kindly to hermetic writing is that it is actuallya living writing; it is alive in precisely the same way that nature, orman himself, is alive. Matter is dead; life organizes and animates it. Andall writing is essentially dead which is a mere transcript of fact, and isnot inwardly organized and vivified by a spiritual significance. Childrendo not know what it is that makes a human being smile, move, and talk; butthey know that such a phenomenon is infinitely more interesting than adoll; and they prove it by themselves supplying the doll with speech andmotions out of their own minds, so as to make it as much like a realperson as possible. In the same way, they do not perceive thephilosophical truth which is the cause of existence of the hermetic fable;but they find that fable far more juicy and substantial than the ordinarynarrative of every-day facts, because, however fine the surface of thelatter may be, it has, after all, nothing but its surface to recommend it. It has no soul; it is not alive; and, though they cannot explain why, theyfeel the difference between that thin, fixed grimace and the changingsmile of the living countenance. 

It would scarcely be practicable, however, to confine the children'sreading to hermetic literature; for not much of it is extant in its purestate. But it is hardly too much to say that all fairy stories, andderivations from these, trace their descent from an hermetic ancestry. They are often unaware of their genealogy; but the sparks of that primalvitality are in them. The fairy is itself a symbol for the expression of amore complex and abstract idea; but, once having come into existence, andbeing, not a pure symbol, but a hybrid between the symbol and that forwhich it stands, it presently began an independent career of its own. Themediaeval imagination went to work with it, found it singularly anddelightfully plastic to its touch and requirements, and soon made it thecentre of a new and charming world, in which a whole army of graceful andromantic fancies, which are always in quest of an arena in which todisport themselves before the mind, found abundant accommodation andnourishment. The fairy land of mediaeval Christianity seems to us the mostsatisfactory of all fairy lands, probably because it is more in accordwith our genius and prejudices than those of the East; and it fitted in soaptly with the popular mediaeval ignorance on the subject of naturalphenomena, that it became actually an article of belief with the mass ofmen, who trembled at it while they invented it, in the most deliciousimaginable state of enchanted alarm. All this is prime reading forchildren; because, though it does not carry an orderly spiritual meaningwithin it, it is more spiritual than material, and is constructed entirelyaccording to the dictates of an exuberant and richly colored, but, nevertheless, in its own sphere, legitimate imagination. Indeed, fairyland, though as it were accidentally created, has the same permanent rightto be that Beauty has; it agrees with a genuine aspect of human nature, albeit one much discountenanced just at present. The sequel to it, inwhich romantic human personages are accredited with fairy-like attributes, as in the "Faërie Queene, " already alluded to, is a step in the wrongdirection, but not a step long enough to carry us altogether outside ofthe charmed circle. The child's instinct of selection being vast andcordial, --he will make a grain of true imagination suffuse and glorify awhole acre of twaddle, ---we may with security leave him in that fantasticsociety. Moreover, some children being less imaginative than others, andall children being less imaginative in some moods and conditions than atother seasons, the elaborate compositions of Tasso, Cervantes, and theothers, though on the boundary line between what is meat for babes and theother sort of meat, have also their abiding use. 

The "Arabian Nights" introduced us to the domain of the Orientalimagination, and has done more than all the books of travel in the East tomake us acquainted with the Asiatic character and its differences from ourown. From what has already been said on the subject of spiritual intuitionin relation to these races, one is prepared to find that all the Easternliterature that has any value is hermetic writing, and therefore, in sofar, proper for children. But the incorrigible subtlety of the Orientalintellect has vitiated much of their symbology, and the sentiment of sheerwonder is stimulated rather than that of orderly imagination. To read the"Arabian Nights" or the "Bhagavad-Gita" is a sort of dissipation; upon theunhackneyed mind of the child it leaves a reactionary sense of depression. The life which it embodies is distorted, over-colored, and exciting; ithas not the serene and balanced power of the Western productions. Moreover, these books were not written with the grave philosophic purposethat animated our own hermetic school; it is rather a sort of jugglerypractised with the subject---an exercise of ingenuity and invention fortheir own sake. It indicates a lack of the feeling of responsibility onthe writers' part, --a result, doubtless, of the prevailing fatalism thatunderlies all their thought. It is not essentially wholesome, in short;but it is immeasurably superior to the best of the productions calledforth by our modern notions of what should be given to children to read. 

But I can do no more than touch upon this branch of the subject; nor willit be possible to linger long over the department of our own literaturewhich came into being with "Robinson Crusoe. " No theory as to children'sbooks would be worth much attention which found itself obliged to excludethat memorable work. Although it submits in a certain measure toclassification, it is almost _sui generis_; no book of its kind, approaching it in merit, has ever been written. In what, then, does itsfascination consist? There is certainly nothing hermetic about it; it isthe simplest and most studiously matter-of-fact narrative of events, comprehensible without the slightest effort, and having no meaning that isnot apparent on the face of it. And yet children, and grown people also, read it again and again, and cannot find it uninteresting. I think thephenomenon may largely be due to the nature of the subject, which isreally of primary and universal interest to mankind. It is the story ofthe struggle of man with wild and hostile nature, --in the larger sense anelementary theme, --his shifts, his failures, his perils, his fears, hishopes, his successes. The character of Robinson is so artfully generalizedor universalized, and sympathy for him is so powerfully aroused andmaintained, that the reader, especially the child reader, inevitablyidentifies himself with him, and feels his emotions and struggles as hisown. The ingredient of suspense is never absent from the story, and theabsence of any plot prevents us from perceiving its artificiality. It is, in fact, a type of the history of the human race, not on the higher plane, but on the physical one; the history of man's contest with and finalvictory over physical nature. The very simplicity and obviousness of thedetails give them grandeur and comprehensiveness: no part of man'scharacter which his contact with nature can affect or develop is leftuntried in Robinson. He manifests in little all historical earthlyexperiences of the race; such is the scheme of the book; and itspermanence in literature is due to the sobriety and veracity with whichthat scheme is carried out. To speak succinctly, it does for the body whatthe hermetic and cognate literature does for the soul; and for the healthyman, the body is not less important than the soul in its own place anddegree. It is not the work of the Creator, but it is contingent uponcreation. 

But poor Robinson has been most unfortunate in his progeny, which at thisday overrun the whole earth, and render it a worse wilderness than everwas the immortal Crusoe Island. Miss Edgeworth, indeed, might fairly poseas the most persistently malignant of all sources of error in the designof children's literature; but it is to be feared that it was Defoe whofirst made her aware of the availability of her own venom. She foisted herprim and narrow moral code upon the commonplace adventures of a priggishlittle boy and his companions; and straightway the whole dreary anddisastrous army of sectarians and dogmatists took up the cry, and havebeen ringing the lugubrious changes on it ever since. There is really noestimating the mortal wrong that has been done to childhood by MariaEdgeworth's "Frank" and "The Parent's Assistant"; and, for my part, Iderive a melancholy joy in availing myself of this opportunity to expressmy sense of my personal share in the injury. I believe that my affectionfor the human race is as genuine as the average; but I am sure it wouldhave been greater had Miss Edgeworth never been born; and were I to comeacross any philosophical system whereby I could persuade myself that shebelonged to some other order of beings than the human, I should bestrongly tempted to embrace that system on that ground alone. 

After what has been advanced in the preceding pages, it does not need thatI should state how earnestly I deprecate the kind of literary food whichwe are now furnishing to the coming generation in such sinister abundance. I am sure it is written and published with good and honorable motives; butat the very best it can only do no harm. Moreover, however wellintentioned, it is bad as literature; it is poorly conceived and written, and, what is worse, it is saturated with affectation. For an impressionprevails that one needs to talk down to children;--to keep them constantlyreminded that they are innocent, ignorant little things, whose consumingwish it is to be good and go to Sunday-school, and who will be allgratitude and docility to whomsoever provides them with the latest fashionof moral sugarplums; whereas, so far as my experience and informationgoes, children are the most formidable literary critics in the world. Matthew Arnold himself has not so sure an instinct for what is sound andgood in a book as any intelligent little boy or girl of eight years old. They judge absolutely; they are hampered by no comparisons or relativeconsiderations. They cannot give chapter and verse for their opinion; butabout the opinion itself there is no doubt. They have no theories; theyjudge in a white light. They have no prejudices nor traditions; they comestraight from the simple source of life. But, on the other hand, they arereadily hocussed and made morbid by improper drugs, and presently, nodoubt, lose their appetite for what is wholesome. Now, we cannot hope thatan army of hermetic philosophers or Mother-Gooses will arise at need andremedy all abuses; but at least we might refrain from moralizing andinstruction, and, if we can do nothing more, confine ourselves to plainstories of adventure, say, with no ulterior object whatever. There stillremains the genuine literature of the past to draw upon; but let usbeware, as we would of forgery and perjury, of serving it up, as has beendone too often, medicated and modified to suit the foolish dogmatism ofthe moment. Hans Christian Andersen was the last writer of children'sstories, properly so called; though, considering how well married to hismuse he was, it is a wonder as well as a calamity that he left nodescendants. 

CHAPTER V. 

THE MORAL AIM IN FICTION. 

The producers of modern fiction, who have acquiesced more or lesscompletely in the theory of art for art's sake, are not, perhaps, awarethat a large class of persons still exist who hold fiction to beunjustifiable, save in so far as the author has it at heart not only (orchiefly) to adorn the tale, but also (and first of all) to point themoral. The novelist, in other words, should so mould the characters andshape the plot of his imaginary drama as to vindicate the wisdom andintegrity of the Decalogue: if he fail to do this, or if he do theopposite of this, he deserves not the countenance of virtuous and God-fearing persons. 

Doubtless it should be evident to every sane and impartial mind, whetherorthodox or agnostic, that an art which runs counter to the designs of Godtoward the human race, or to the growth of the sentiment of universalhuman brotherhood, must sooner or later topple down from its fantastic andhollow foundation. "Hitch your wagon to a star, " says Emerson; "do not lieand steal: no god will help. " And although, for the sake of his ownprivate interests of the moment, a man will occasionally violate the morallaw, yet, with mankind at large, the necessity of vindicating the superioradvantages of right over wrong is acknowledged not only in the interestsof civilized society, but because we feel that, however hostile "goodness"may seem to be to my or your personal and temporary aims, it still remainsthe only wholesome and handsome choice for the race at large: andtherefore do we, as a race, refuse to tolerate--on no matter how plausiblean artistic plea--any view of human life which either professesindifference to this universal sentiment, or perversely challenges it. 

The true ground of dispute, then, does not lie here. The art which canstoop to be "procuress to the lords of hell, " is art no longer. But, onthe other hand, it would be difficult to point to any great work of art, generally acknowledged to be such, which explicitly concerns itself withthe vindication of any specific moral doctrine. The story in which thevirtuous are rewarded for their virtue, and the evil punished for theirwickedness, fails, somehow, to enlist our full sympathy; it falls flatlyon the ear of the mind; it does not stimulate thought. It does notsatisfy; we fancy that something still remains to be said, or, if this beall, then it was hardly worth saying. The real record of life--its terror, its beauty, its pathos, its depth--seems to have been missed. We may admitthat the tale is in harmony with what we have been taught ought to happen;but the lessons of our private experience have not authenticated our moralformulas; we have seen the evil exalted and the good brought low; and weinevitably desire that our "fiction" shall tell us, not what ought tohappen, but what, as a matter of fact, does happen. To put this a littledifferently: we feel that the God of the orthodox moralist is not the Godof human nature. He is nothing but the moralist himself in a highlysublimated state, but betraying, in spite of that sublimation, a fatalsavor of human personality. The conviction that any man--GeorgeWashington, let us say--is a morally unexceptionable man, does not in theleast reconcile us to the idea of God being an indefinitely exaltedcounterpart of Washington. Such a God would be "most tolerable, and not tobe endured"; and the more exalted he was, the less endurable would he be. In short, man instinctively refuses to regard the literal inculcation ofthe Decalogue as the final word of God to the human race, and much less tothe individuals of that race; and when he finds a story-teller proceedingupon the contrary assumption, he is apt to put that story-teller down aseither an ass or a humbug. 

As for art--if the reader happen to be competent to form an opinion onthat phase of the matter--he will generally find that the art dwindles indirect proportion as the moralized deity expatiates; in fact, that theyare incompatible. And he will also confess (if he have the courage of hisopinions) that, as between moralized deity and true art, his choice isheartily and unreservedly for the latter. 

I do not apprehend that the above remarks, fairly interpreted, willencounter serious opposition from either party to the discussion; and yet, so far as I am aware, neither party has as yet availed himself of thelight which the conclusion throws upon the nature of art itself. It shouldbe obvious, however, that upon a true definition of art the whole argumentmust ultimately hinge: for we can neither deny that art exists, nor affirmthat it can exist inconsistently with a recognition of a divinelybeneficent purpose in creation. It must, therefore, in some way be anexpression or reflection of that purpose. But in what does the purpose inquestion essentially consist?

Broadly speaking--for it would be impossible within the present limits toattempt a full analysis of the subject--it may be considered as a gradualand progressive Purification, not of this or that particular individual incontradistinction to his fellows, but of human nature as an entirety. Theevil into which all men are born, and of which the Decalogue, orconscience, makes us aware, is not an evil voluntarily contracted on ourpart, but is inevitable to us as the creation of a truly infinite love andwisdom. It is, in fact, our characteristic nature as animals: and it isonly because we are not only animal, but also and above all human, that weare enabled to recognize it as evil instead of good. We absolve the cat, the dog, the wolf, and the lion from any moral responsibility for theirdeeds, because we feel them to be deficient in conscience, which, is ourown divinely bestowed gift and privilege, and which has been defined asthe spirit of God in the created nature, seeking to become the creature'sown spirit. Now, the power to correct this evil does not abide in us asindividuals, nor will a literal adherence to the moral law avail to purifyany mother's son of us. Conscience always says "Do not, "--never "Do"; andobedience to it neither can give us a personal claim on God's favor norwas it intended to do so: its true function is to keep us innocent, sothat we may not individually obstruct the accomplishment of the divineends toward us as a race. Our nature not being the private possession ofany one of us, but the impersonal substratum of us all, it follows that itcannot be redeemed piecemeal, but only as a whole; and, manifestly, theonly Being capable of effecting such redemption is not Peter, or Paul, orGeorge Washington, or any other atomic exponent of that nature, be he whohe may; but He alone whose infinitude is the complement of our finiteness, and whose gradual descent into human nature (figured in Scripture underthe symbol of the Incarnation) is even now being accomplished--as any onemay perceive who reads aright the progressive enlightenment of conscienceand intellect which history, through many vicissitudes, displays. We find, therefore, that art is, essentially, the imaginative expression of adivine life in man. Art depends for its worth and veracity, not upon itsadherence to literal fact, but upon its perception and portrayal of theunderlying truth, of which fact is but the phenomenal and imperfectshadow. And it can have nothing to do with personal vice or virtue, in theway either of condemning the one or vindicating the other; it can onlytreat them as elements in its picture--as factors in human destiny. Forthe notion commonly entertained that the practice of virtue gives us aclaim upon the Divine Exchequer (so to speak), and the habit of actingvirtuously for the sake of maintaining our credit in society, and ensuringour prosperity in the next world, --in so thinking and acting wemisapprehend the true inwardness of the matter. To cultivate virtuebecause its pays, no matter what the sort of coin in which payment islooked for, is to be the victims of a lamentable delusion. For such virtuemakes each man jealous of his neighbor; whereas the aim of Providence isto bring about the broadest human fellowship. A man's physical bodyseparates him from other men; and this fact disposes him to the error thathis nature is also a separate possession, and that he can only be "good"by denying himself. But the only goodness that is really good is aspontaneous and impersonal evolution, and this occurs, not where self-denial has been practised, but only where a man feels himself to beabsolutely on the same level of desert or non-desert as are the mass ofhis fellow-creatures. There is no use in obeying the commandments, unlessit be done, not to make one's self more deserving than another of God'sapprobation, but out of love for goodness and truth in themselves, apartfrom any personal considerations. The difference between true religion andformal religion is that the first leads us to abandon all personal claimsto salvation, and to care only for the salvation of humanity as a whole;whereas the latter stimulates is to practise outward self-denial, in orderthat our real self may be exalted. Such self-denial results not inhumility, but in spiritual pride. 

In no other way than this, it seems to me, can art and morality be broughtinto harmony. Art bears witness to the presence in us of something purerand loftier than anything of which we can be individually conscious. Itscomplete expression we call inspiration; and he who is the subject of theinspiration can account no better than any one else for the result whichart accomplishes through him. The perfect poem is found, not made; themind which utters it did not invent it. Art takes all nature and allknowledge for her province; but she does not leave it as she found it; bythe divine necessity that is upon her, she breathes a soul into hermaterials, and organizes chaos into form. But never, under anycircumstances, does she deign to minister to our selfish personal hope orgreed. She shows us how to love our neighbor, never ourselves. Shakspeare, Homer, Phidias, Raphael, were no Pharisees--at least in so far as theywere artists; nor did any one ever find in their works any countenance forthat inhuman assumption--"I am holier than thou!" In the world's darkesthours, art has sometimes stood as the sole witness of the nobler life thatwas in eclipse. Civilizations arise and vanish; forms of religion holdsway and are forgotten; learning and science advance and gather strength;but true art was as great and as beautiful three thousand years ago as itis to-day. We are prone to confound the man with the artist, and tosuppose that he is artistic by possession and inheritance, instead ofexclusively by dint of what he does. No artist worthy the name ever dreamsof putting himself into his work, but only what is infinitely distinctfrom and other than himself. It is not the poet who brings forth the poem, but the poem that begets the poet; it makes him, educates him, creates inhim the poetic faculty. Those whom we call great men, the heroes ofhistory, are but the organs of great crises and opportunities: as Emersonhas said, they are the most indebted men. In themselves they are notgreat; there is no ratio between their achievements and them. Our judgmentis misled; we do not discriminate between the divine purpose and the humaninstrument. When we listen to Napoleon fretting his soul away at Elba, orto Carlyle wrangling with his wife at Chelsea, we are shocked at thediscrepancy between the lofty public performance and the petty domesticshortcoming. Yet we do wrong to blame them; the nature of which they areexamples is the same nature that is shared also by the publican and thesinner. 

Instead, therefore, of saying that art should be moral, we should rathersay that all true morality is art--that art is the test of morality. Toattempt to make this heavenly Pegasus draw the sordid plough of ourselfish moralistic prejudices is a grotesque subversion of true order. Whyshould the novelist make believe that the wicked are punished and the goodare rewarded in this world? Does he not know, on the contrary, thatwhatsoever is basest in our common life tends irresistibly to the highestplaces, and that the selfish element in our nature is on the side ofpublic order? Evil is at present a more efficient instrument of order(because an interested one) than good; and the novelist who makes thisappear will do a far greater and more lasting benefit to humanity than hewho follows the cut-and-dried artificial programme of bestowing crowns onthe saint and whips of scorpions on the sinner. 

As a matter of fact, I repeat, the best influences of the best literaturehave never been didactic, and there is no reason to believe they ever willbe. The only semblance of didacticism which can enter into literature isthat which conveys such lessons as may be learned from sea and sky, mountain and valley, wood and stream, bird and beast; and from the broadhuman life of races, nations, and firesides; a lesson that is not obviousand superficial, but so profoundly hidden in the creative depths as toemerge only to an apprehension equally profound. For the chatter andaffectation of sense disturb and offend that inward spiritual ear which, in the silent recesses of meditation, hears the prophetic murmur of thevast ocean of human nature that flows within us and around us all. 

CHAPTER VI. 

THE MAKER OF MANY BOOKS. 

During the winter of 1879, when I was in London, it was my fortune toattend, a social meeting of literary men at the rooms of a certain eminentpublisher. The rooms were full of tobacco-smoke and talk, amid which werediscernible, on all sides, the figures and faces of men more or lessrenowned in the world of books. Most noticeable among these personages wasa broad-shouldered, sturdy man, of middle height, with a ruddycountenance, and snow-white tempestuous beard and hair. He wore large, gold-rimmed spectacles, but his eyes were black and brilliant, and lookedat his interlocutor with a certain genial fury of inspection. He seemed tobe in a state of some excitement; he spoke volubly and almostboisterously, and his voice was full-toned and powerful, though pleasantto the ear. He turned himself, as he spoke, with a burly briskness, fromone side to another, addressing himself first to this auditor and then tothat, his words bursting forth from beneath his white moustache with suchan impetus of hearty breath that it seemed as if all opposing argumentsmust be blown quite away. Meanwhile he flourished in the air an ebonywalking-stick, with much vigor of gesticulation, and narrowly missing, asit appeared, the pates of his listeners. He was clad in evening dress, though the rest of the company was, for the most part, in mufti; and hewas an exceedingly fine-looking old gentleman. At the first glance, youwould have taken him to be some civilized and modernized Squire Western, nourished with beef and ale, and roughly hewn out of the most robust andleast refined variety of human clay. Looking at him more narrowly, however, you would have reconsidered this judgment. Though his generalcontour and aspect were massive and sturdy, the lines of his features weredelicately cut; his complexion was remarkably pure and fine, and his facewas susceptible of very subtle and sensitive changes of expression. Herewas a man of abundant physical strength and vigor, no doubt, but carryingwithin him a nature more than commonly alert and impressible. Hisorganization, though thoroughly healthy, was both complex and high-wrought; his character was simple and straightforward to a fault, but hewas abnormally conscientious, and keenly alive to others' opinionconcerning him. It might be thought that he was overburdened with self-esteem, and unduly opinionated; but, in fact, he was but overanxious tosecure the good-will and agreement of all with whom he came in contact. There was some peculiarity in him--some element or bias in his compositionthat made him different from other men; but, on the other hand, there wasan ardent solicitude to annul or reconcile this difference, and to provehimself to be, in fact, of absolutely the same cut and quality as all therest of the world. Hence he was in a demonstrative, expository, orargumentative mood; he could not sit quiet in the face of a divergencebetween himself and his associates; he was incorrigibly strenuous toobliterate or harmonize the irreconcilable points between him and others;and since these points remained irreconcilable, he remained in a constantstate of storm and stress on the subject. 

It was impossible to help liking such a man at first sight; and I believethat no man in London society was more generally liked than AnthonyTrollope. There was something pathetic in his attitude as above indicated;and a fresh and boyish quality always invested him. His artlessness wasboyish, and so were his acuteness and his transparent but somewhat belatedgood-sense. He was one of those rare persons who not only have noreserves, but who can afford to dispense with them. After he had shown youall he had in him, you would have seen nothing that was not gentlemanly, honest, and clean. He was a quick-tempered man, and the ardor and hurry ofhis temperament made him seem more so than he really was; but he was nevermore angry than he was forgiving and generous. He was hurt by littlethings, and little things pleased him; he was suspicious and perverse, butin a manner that rather endeared him to you than otherwise. Altogether, toa casual acquaintance, who knew nothing of his personal history, he wassomething of a paradox--an entertaining contradiction. The publication ofhis autobiography explained many things in his character that were open tospeculation; and, indeed, the book is not only the most interesting andamusing that its author has ever written, but it places its subject beforethe reader more completely and comprehensively than most autobiographiesdo. This, however, is due much less to any direct effort or intention onthe writer's part, than to the unconscious self-revelation which meets thereader on every page. No narrative could be simpler, less artificial; andyet, everywhere, we read between the lines, and, so to speak, discoverAnthony Trollope in spite of his efforts to discover himself to us. 

The truth appears to be that the youthful Trollope, like a more famousfellow-novelist, began the world with more kicks than half-pence. Hisboyhood, he affirms, was as unhappy as that of a young gentleman couldwell be, owing to a mixture of poverty and gentle standing on his father'spart, and, on his own, to "an utter lack of juvenile manhood"--whateverthat may be. His father was a lawyer, who frightened away all his clientsby his outrageous temper, and who encountered one mischance after anotheruntil he landed himself and his family in open bankruptcy; from which theywere rescued, partly by death, which carried away four of them (includingthe old gentleman), and partly by Mrs. Trollope, who, at fifty years ofage, brought out her famous book on America, and continued to make a fairincome by literature (as she called it) until 1856, when, being seventy-six years old, and having produced one hundred and fourteen volumes, shepermitted herself to retire. This extraordinary lady, in her youth, cherished what her son calls "an emotional dislike to tyrants"; but whenher American experience had made her acquainted with some of the seamyaspects of democracy, and especially after the aristocracy of her owncountry had begun to patronize her, she confessed the error of her earlyway, "and thought that archduchesses were sweet. " But she was certainly avaliant and indefatigable woman, --"of all the people I have ever known, "says her son, "the most joyous, or, at any rate, the most capable of joy";and he adds that her best novels were written in 1834-35, when her husbandand four of her six children were dying upstairs of consumption, and shehad to divide her time between nursing them and writing. Assuredly, no sonof hers need apprehend the reproach--"_Tydides melior matre_"; thoughAnthony, and his brother Thomas Adolphus, must, together, have run herpretty hard. The former remarks, with that terrible complacency in anawful fact which is one of his most noticeable and astounding traits, thatthe three of them "wrote more books than were probably ever beforeproduced by a single family. " The existence of a few more such familiescould be consistent only with a generous enlargement of the BritishMuseum. 

The elder Trollope was a scholar, and to make scholars of his sons was oneof his ruling ideas. Poor little Anthony endured no less than twelvemortal years of schooling--from the time he was seven until he wasnineteen--and declares that, in all that time, he does not remember thathe ever knew a lesson. "I have been flogged, " he says, "oftener than anyother human being. " Nay, his troubles began before his school-days; forhis father used to make him recite his infantile tasks to him while he wasshaving, and obliged him to sit with his head inclined in such a manner"that he could pull my hair without stopping his razor or dropping hisshaving-brush. " This is a depressing picture; and there are plenty morelike it. Dr. Butler, the master of Harrow, meeting the poor littledraggletail urchin in the yard, desired to know, in awful accents, how sodirty a boy dared to show himself near the school! "He must have known me, had he seen me as he was wont to see me, for he was in the habit offlogging me constantly. Perhaps, " adds his victim, "he did not recognizeme by my face!" But it is comforting to learn, in another place, thatjustice overtook the oppressor. "Dr. Butler only lived to be Dean ofPeterborough; but his successor (Dr. Longley) became Archbishop ofCanterbury. " There is a great deal of Trollopian morality in the fate ofthese two men, the latter of whom "could not have said anything ill-natured if he had tried. "

Black care, however, continued to sit behind the horseman with harrowingpersistence. A certain Dr. Drury (another schoolmaster) punished him onsuspicion of "some nameless horror, " of which the unfortunate youngsterhappened to be innocent. When, afterward, the latter fact began to beobvious, "he whispered to me half a word that perhaps he had been wrong. But, with a boy's stupid slowness, I said nothing, and he had not thecourage to carry reparation farther. " The poverty of Anthony's fatherdeprived the boy of all the external advantages that might have enabledhim to take rank with his fellows: and his native awkwardness andsensitiveness widened the breach. "I had no friend to whom I could pourout my sorrows. I was big, awkward and ugly, and, I have no doubt, skulkedabout in a most unattractive manner. Something of the disgrace of myschool-days has clung to me all through life. When I have been claimed asschool-fellow by some of those many hundreds who were with me either atHarrow or at Winchester, I have felt that I had no right to talk of thingsfrom most of which I was kept in estrangement. I was never a coward, butto make a stand against three hundred tyrants required a moral couragewhich I did not possess. " Once, however, they pushed him too far, and hewas driven to rebellion. "And then came a great fight--at the end of whichmy opponent had to be taken home to be cured. " And then he utters thecharacteristic wish that some one, of the many who witnessed this combat, may still be left alive "who will be able to say that, in claiming thissolitary glory of my school-days, I am making no false boast. " The lonely, lugubrious little champion! One would almost have been willing to havereceived from him a black eye and a bloody nose, only to comfort his sadheart. It is delightful to imagine the terrific earnestness of thatsolitary victory: and I would like to know what boy it was (if any) wholent the unpopular warrior a knee and wiped his face. 

After he got through his school-days, his family being then abroad, he hadan offer of a commission in an Austrian cavalry regiment; and he mighthave been a major-general or field-marshal at this day had his schoolingmade him acquainted with the French and German languages. Being, however, entirely ignorant of these, he was obliged to study them in order to hisadmission; and while he was thus employed, he received news of a vacantclerkship in the General Post-Office, with the dazzling salary of £90 ayear. Needless to say that he jumped at such an opening, seeing before hima vision of a splendid civil and social career, at something over twentypounds a quarter. But London, even fifty years ago, was a more expensiveplace than Anthony imagined. Moreover, the boy was alone in the wildernessof the city, with no one to advise or guide him. The consequence was thatthese latter days of his youth were as bad or worse than the beginning. Inreviewing his plight at this period, he observes: "I had passed my lifewhere I had seen gay things, but had never enjoyed them. There was nohouse in which I could habitually see a lady's face or hear a lady'svoice. At the Post-Office I got credit for nothing, and was reckless. Ihated my work, and, more than all, I hated my idleness. Borrowings ofmoney, sometimes absolute want, and almost constant misery, followed as amatter of course. I Had a full conviction that my life was taking me downto the lowest pits--a feeling that I had been looked upon as an evil, anencumbrance, a useless thing, a creature of whom those connected with mehad to be ashamed. Even my few friends were half-ashamed of me. Iacknowledge the weakness of a great desire to be loved--a strong wish tobe popular. No one had ever been less so. " Under these circumstances, heremarks that, although, no doubt, if the mind be strong enough, thetemptation will not prevail, yet he is fain to admit that the temptationprevailed with him. He did not sit at home, after his return from theoffice, in the evening, to drink tea and read, but tramped out in thestreets, and tried to see life and be jolly on £90 a year. He borrowedfour pounds of a money-lender, to augment his resources, and found, aftera few years, that he had paid him two hundred pounds for theaccommodation. He met with every variety of absurd and disastrousadventure. The mother of a young woman with whom he had had an innocentflirtation in the country appeared one day at his desk in the office, andcalled out before all the clerks, "Anthony Trollope, when are you going tomarry my daughter?" On another occasion a sum of money was missing fromthe table of the director. Anthony was summoned. The director informed himof the loss--"and, by G--!" he continued, thundering his fist down on thetable, "no one has been in the room but you and I. " "Then, by G--!" criedAnthony, thundering _his_ fist down upon something, "you have taken it!"This was very well; but the thing which Anthony had thumped happened tobe, not a table, but a movable desk with an inkstand on it, and the inkflew up and deluged the face and shirt-front of the enraged director. Still another adventure was that of the Queen of Saxony and the Half-Crown; but the reader must investigate these matters for himself. 

So far there has been nothing looking toward the novel-writer. But now welearn that from the age of fifteen to twenty-six Anthony kept a journal, which, he says, "convicted me of folly, ignorance, indiscretion, idleness, and conceit, but habituated me to the rapid use of pen and ink, and taughtme how to express myself with facility. " In addition to this, and more tothe purpose, he had formed an odd habit. Living, as he was forced to do, so much to himself, if not by himself, he had to play, not with otherboys, but with himself; and his favorite play was to conceive a tale, orseries of fictitious events, and to carry it on, day after day, for monthstogether, in his mind. "Nothing impossible was ever introduced, orviolently improbable. I was my own hero, but I never became a king or aduke, still less an Antinoüs, or six feet high. But I was a very cleverperson, and beautiful young women used to be very fond of me. I learned inthis way to live in a world outside the world of my own material life. "This is pointedly, even touchingly, characteristic. Never, to the day ofhis death, did Mr. Trollope either see or imagine anything impossible, orviolently improbable, in the world. This mortal plane of things neverdissolved before his gaze and revealed the mysteries of absolute Being;his heavens were never rolled up as a scroll, and his earth had no bubblesas the water hath. He took things as he found them; and he never foundthem out. But if the light that never was on sea or land does notilluminate the writings of Mr. Trollope, there is generally plenty of thatother kind of light with which, after all, the average reader is morefamiliar, and which not a few, perhaps, prefer to the transcendentallustre. There is no modern novelist who has more clearly than Trollopedefined to his own apprehension his own literary capabilities andlimitations. He is thoroughly acquainted with both his fortes and hisfoibles; and so sound is his good sense, that he is seldom beguiled intotoiling with futile ambition after effects that are beyond him. His properdomain is a sufficiently wide one; he is inimitably at home here; and whenhe invites us there to visit him, we may be sure of getting good andwholesome entertainment. The writer's familiarity with his characterscommunicates itself imperceptibly to the reader; there are no difficult orawkward introductions; the toning of the picture (to use the painter'sphrase) is unexceptionable; and if it be rather tinted than colored, thetints are handled in a workmanlike manner. Again, few English novelistsseem to possess so sane a comprehension of the modes of life and thoughtof the British aristocracy as Trollope. He has not only made a study ofthem from the observer's point of view, but he has reasoned them outintellectually. The figures are not vividly defined; the realism isapplied to events rather than to personages: we have the scene describedfor us but we do not look upon it. We should not recognize his charactersif we saw them; but if we were told who they were, we should know, fromtheir author's testimony, what were their characteristic traits and howthey would act under given circumstances. The logical sequence of eventsis carefully maintained; nothing happens, either for good or for evil, other than might befall under the dispensations of a Providence no moreunjust, and no more far-sighted, than Trollope himself. There is a gooddeal of the _a priori_ principle in his method; he has made up his mind asto certain fundamental data, and thence develops or explains whatevercomplication comes up for settlement. But to range about unhampered by anytheories, concerned only to examine all phenomena, and to reportthereupon, careless of any considerations save those of artisticpropriety, would have been vanity and striving after wind to Trollope, andderivatively so, doubtless, to his readers. 

Considered in the abstract, it is a curious question what makes his novelsinteresting. The reader knows, in a sense, just what is in store for him, --or, rather, what is not. There will be no astonishment, no curdlinghorror, no consuming suspense. There may be, perhaps, as many murders, forgeries, foundlings, abductions, and missing wills, in Trollope's novelsas in any others; but they are not told about in a manner to alarm us; weaccept them philosophically; there are paragraphs in our morning paperthat excite us more. And yet they are narrated with art, and with dramaticeffect. They are interesting, but not uncourteously--not exasperatinglyso; and the strangest part of it is that the introductory and intermediatepassages are no less interesting, under Trollope's treatment, than are themurders and forgeries. Not only does he never offend the modesty ofnature, --he encourages her to be prudish, and trains her to such evennessand severity of demeanor that we never know when we have had enough ofher. His touch is eminently civilizing; everything, from the episodes tothe sentences, moves without hitch or creak: we never have to read aparagraph twice, and we are seldom sorry to have read it once. 

Amusingly characteristic of Trollope is his treatment of his villains. Hisattitude toward them betrays no personal uncharitableness or animosity, but the villain has a bad time of it just the same. Trollope places uponhim a large, benevolent, but unyielding forefinger, and says to us:"Remark, if you please, how this inferior reptile squirms when pressure isapplied to him. I will now augment the pressure. You observe that thesquirmings increase in energy and complexity. Now, if you please, I willbear down yet a little harder. Do not be alarmed, madam; the reptileundoubtedly suffers, but the spectacle may do us some good, and you maytrust me not to let him do you any harm. There!--Yes, evisceration bymeans of pressure is beyond question painful; but every one must haveobserved the benevolence of my forefinger during the operation; and Ifancy even the subject of the experiment (were he in a condition toexpress his sentiments) would have admitted as much. Thank you, ladies andgentlemen. I shall have the pleasure of meeting you again very shortly. John, another reptile, please!" Upon the whole, it is much to Trollope'scredit that he wrote somewhere about fifty long novels; and to the creditof the English people that they paid him three hundred and fifty thousanddollars for these novels--and read them!

But his success as a man of letters was still many years in the future. After seven years in the London office, he went to Ireland as assistantsurveyor, and thenceforward he began to enjoy his business, and to get onin it. He was paid sixpence a mile, and he would ride forty miles a day. He rode to hounds, incidentally, whenever he got a chance, and he kept upthe practice, with enthusiasm, to within a few years of his death. "Itwill, I think, be accorded to me, " he says, "that I have ridden hard. Iknow very little about hunting; I am blind, very heavy, and I am now old;but I ride with a boy's energy, hating the roads, and despising young menwho ride them; and I feel that life cannot give me anything better thanwhen I have gone through a long run to the finish, keeping a place, not ofglory, but of credit, among my juniors. " Riding, working, having a jollytime, and gradually increasing his income, he lived until 1842, when hebecame engaged; and he was married on June 11, 1844. "I ought to name thathappy day, " he declares, "as the commencement of my better life. " It wasat about this date, also, that he began and finished, not without delayand procrastination, his first novel. Curiously enough, he affirms that hedid not doubt his own intellectual sufficiency to write a readable novel:"What I did doubt was my own industry, and the chances of a market. "Never, surely, was self-distrust more unfounded. As for the first novel, he sent it to his mother, to dispose of as best she could; and it neverbrought him anything, except a perception that it was considered by hisfriends to be "an unfortunate aggravation of the family disease. " Duringthe ensuing ten years, this view seemed to be not unreasonable, for, inall that time, though he worked hard, he earned by literature no more than£55. But, between 1857 and 1860, he received for various novels, from £100to £1000 each; and thereafter, £3000 or more was his regular price for astory in three volumes. As he maintained his connection with the post-office until 1867, he was in receipt of an income of £4500, "of which Ispent two-thirds and put by one. " We should be doing an injustice to Mr. Trollope to omit these details, which he gives so frankly; for, as heearly informs us, "my first object in taking to literature was to make anincome on which I and those belonging to me might live in comfort. " Norwill he let us forget that novel-writing, to him, was not so much an art, or even a profession, as a trade, in which all that can be asked of a manis that he shall be honest and punctual, turning out good average work, and the more the better. "The great secret consists in"--in what?--why, "in acknowledging myself to be bound to rules of labor similar to thosewhich an artisan or mechanic is forced to obey. " There may be, however, other incidental considerations. "I have ever thought of myself as apreacher of sermons, and my pulpit as one I could make both salutary andagreeable to my audience"; and he tells us that he has used some of hisnovels for the expression of his political and social convictions. Again--"The novelist must please, and he must teach; a good novel should be bothrealistic and sensational in the highest degree. " He says that he sees noreason why two or three good novels should not be written at the sametime; and that, for his own part, he was accustomed to write two hundredand fifty words every fifteen minutes, by the watch, during his workinghours. Nor does he mind letting us know that when he sits down to write anovel, he neither knows nor cares how it is to end. And finally, one is alittle startled to hear him say, epigrammatically, that a writer shouldnot have to tell a story, but should have a story to tell. Beyond a doubt, Anthony Trollope is something of a paradox. 

The world has long ago passed its judgment on his stories, but it isinteresting, all the same, to note his own opinion of them; and thoughnever arrogant, he is generally tolerant, if not genial. "A novel shouldbe a picture of common life, enlivened by humor and sweetened by pathos. Ihave never fancied myself to be a man of genius, " he says; but again, withstrange imperviousness, "A small daily task, if it be daily, will beat thelabors of a spasmodic Hercules. " Beat them, how? Why, in quantity. But howabout quality? Is the travail of a work of art the same thing as themaking of a pair of shoes? Emerson tells us that--

 "Ever the words of the gods resound, But the porches of man's ear Seldom, in this low life's round, Are unsealed, that he may hear. "

No one disputes, however, that you may hear the tapping of the cobbler'shammer at any time. 

To the view of the present writer, how much good soever Mr. Trollope mayhave done as a preacher and moralist, he has done great harm to Englishfictitious literature by his novels; and it need only be added, in thisconnection, that his methods and results in novel-writing seem best to beexplained by that peculiar mixture of separateness and commonplacenesswhich we began by remarking in him. The separateness has given him thestandpoint whence he has been able to observe and describe thecommonplaceness with which (in spite of his separateness) he is in vitalsympathy. 

But Trollope the man is the abundant and consoling compensation forTrollope the novelist; and one wishes that his books might have died, andhe lived on indefinitely. It is charming to read of his life in Londonafter his success in the _Cornhill Magazine_. "Up to that time I had livedvery little among men. It was a festival to me to dine at the 'Garrick. ' Ithink I became popular among those with whom I associated. I have everwished to be liked by those around me--a wish that during the first halfof my life was never gratified. " And, again, in summing up his life, hesays: "I have betrayed no woman. Wine has brought to me no sorrow. It hasbeen the companionship, rather than the habit of smoking that I loved. Ihave never desired to win money, and I have lost none. To enjoy theexcitement of pleasure, but to be free from its vices and ill-effects--tohave the sweet, and to leave the bitter untasted--that has been my study. I will not say that I have never scorched a finger; but I carry no uglywounds. "

A man who, at the end of his career, could make such a profession as this--who felt the need of no further self-vindication than this--such a man, whatever may have been his accountability to the muse of Fiction, is acredit to England and to human nature, and deserves to be numbered amongthe darlings of mankind. It was an honor to be called his friend; and whathis idea of friendship was, may be learned from the passage in which hespeaks of his friend Millais--with the quotation of which this paper mayfitly be concluded:--

"To see him has always been a pleasure; his voice has always been a sweetsound in my ears. Behind his back I have never heard him praised withoutjoining the eulogist; I have never heard a word spoken against him withoutopposing the censurer. These words, should he ever see them, will come tohim from the grave, and will tell him of my regard--as one living mannever tells another. "

CHAPTER VII. 

MR. MALLOCK'S MISSING SCIENCE. 

Before criticising Mr. Mallock's little essay, let us summarize itscontents. The author begins with an analysis of the aims, the principles, and the "pseudo-science" of modern Democracy. Having established the eviland destructive character of these things, he sets himself to show bylogical argument that the present state of social inequality, whichDemocrats wish to disturb, is a natural and wholesome state; that thecontinuance of civilization is dependent upon it; and that it could onlybe overturned by effecting a radical change--not in human institutions, but in human character. The desire for inequality is inherent in the humancharacter; and in order to prove this statement, Mr. Mallock proceeds toaffirm that there is such a thing as a science of human character; that ofthis science he is the discoverer; and that the application of thisscience to the question at issue will demonstrate the integrity of Mr. Mallock's views, and the infirmity of all others. In the ensuing chaptersthe application is made, and at the end the truth of the proposition isdeclared established. 

This is the outline; but let us note some of the details. Mr. Mallockasserts (Chap. I. ) that the aim of modern Democracy is to overturn "allthat has hitherto been connected with high-breeding or with personalculture"; and that "to call the Democrats a set of thieves andconfiscators is merely to apply names to them which they have no wish torepudiate. " He maintains (Chap. II. ) that the first and foremost of theDemocratic principles is "that the perfection of society involves socialequality"; and that "the luxury of one man means the deprivation ofanother. " He credits the Democrats with arguing that "the means ofproducing equality are a series of changes in existing institutions"; that"by changing the institutions of a society we are able to change itsstructure"; that "the cause of the distribution of wealth" is "laws andforms of government"; and that "the wealthy classes, as such, areconnected with wealth in no other way but as the accidental appropriatorsof it. " In his third chapter he tells us that "the entire theory of modernDemocracy . .. Depends on the doctrine that the cause of wealth is labor";that Democrats believe we "may count on a man to labor, just as surely aswe may count on a man to eat"; that "the man who does not labor issupported by the man who does"; and that the pseudo-science of modernDemocracy "starts with the conception of man as containing in himself anatural tendency to labor. " And here Mr. Mallock's statement of hisopponent's position ends. 

In the fourth chapter we are brought within sight of "The MissingSubstitute. " "A man's character, " we are told, "divides into his desireson the one hand, and his capacities on the other"; and it is observed that"various as are men's desires and capacities, yet if talent and ambitioncommanded no more than idleness and stupidity, all men practically wouldbe idle and stupid. " "Men's capacities, " we are reminded, "are practicallyunequal, because they develop their own potential inequalities; they dothis because they desire to place themselves in unequal externalcircumstances, --which result the condition of society renders possible. "

Coming now to the Science of Human Character itself, we find that it"asserts a permanent relationship to exist between human character andsocial inequality"; and the author then proceeds at some length to showhow near Herbert Spencer, Buckle, and other social and economicphilosophers, came to stumbling over his missing science, and yet avoideddoing so. Nevertheless, argues Mr. Mallock, "if there be such a thing as asocial science, or a science of history, there must be also a science ofbiography"; and this science, though it "cannot show us how any specialman will act in the future, " yet, if "any special action be given us, itcan show us that it was produced by a special motive; and conversely, thatif the special motive be wanting, the special action is sure to be wantingalso. " As an example how to distinguish between those traits of humancharacter which are available for scientific purposes, and those which arenot, Mr. Mallock instances a mob, which temporarily acts together for somegiven purpose: the individual differences of character then "cancel out, "and only points of agreement are left. Proceeding to the sixth chapter, heapplies himself to setting to rest the scruples of those who findsomething cynical in the idea that the desire for Inequality is compatiblewith a respectable form of human character. It is true, he says, that mandoes not live by bread alone; but he denies that he means to say "that allhuman activity is motived by the desire for inequality"; he would assertthat only "of all productive labor, except the lowest. " The only actionsindependent of the desire for inequality, however, are those performed inthe name of art, science, philanthropy, and religion; and even in thesecases, so far as the actions are not motived by a desire for inequality, they are not of productive use; and _vice versâ_. In the remainingchapters, which we must dismiss briefly, we meet with such statements as"labor has been produced by an artificial creation of want of food, and bythen supplying the want on certain conditions"; that "civilization hasalways been begun by an oppressive minority"; that "progress depends oncertain gifted individuals, " and therefore social equality would destroyprogress; that inequality influences production by existing as an objectof desire and as a means of pressure; that the evils of poverty are causedby want, not by inequality; and that, finally, equality is not the goal ofprogress, but of retrogression; that inequality is not an accidental evilof civilization, but the cause of its development; the distance of thepoor from the rich is not the cause of the former's poverty as distinctfrom riches, but of their civilized competence as distinct from barbarism;and that the apparent changes in the direction of equality recorded inhistory, have been, in reality, none other than "a more efficientarrangement of inequalities. "

 * * * * *

Now, let us inquire what all this ingenious prattle about Inequality andthe Science of Human Character amounts to. What does Mr. Mallock expect?His book has been out six months, and still Democracy exists. But does anysuch Democracy as he combats exist, or could it conceivably exist? Havehis investigations of the human character failed to inform him that one ofthe strongest natural instincts of man's nature is immovably opposed toanything like an equal distribution of existing wealth?--because whoeverowns anything, if it be only a coat, wishes to keep it; and that wishmakes him aware that his fellow-man will wish to keep, and will keep atall hazards, whatever things belong to him. What Democrats really desireis to enable all men to have an equal chance to obtain wealth, instead ofbeing, as is largely the case now, hampered and kept down by all manner oflegal and arbitrary restrictions. As for the "desire for Inequality, " itseems to exist chiefly in Mr. Mallock's imagination. Who does desire it?Does the man who "strikes" for higher wages desire it? Let us see. Astrike, to be successful, must be not an individual act, but the act of alarge body of men, all demanding the same thing--an increase in wages. Ifthey gain their end, no difference has taken place in their mutualposition; and their position in regard to their employers is altered onlyin that an approach has been made toward greater equality with the latter. And so in other departments of human effort: the aim, which the man whowishes to better his position sets before himself, is not to rise head andshoulders above his equals, but to equal his superiors. And as to theSocialist schemes for the reorganization of society, they imply, at most, a wish to see all men start fair in the race of life, the only advantagesallowed being not those of rank or station, but solely of innate capacity. And the reason the Socialist desires this is, because he believes, rightlyor wrongly, that many inefficient men are, at present, only artificiallyprotected from betraying their inefficiency; and that many efficient menare only artificially prevented from showing their efficiency; and thatthe fair start he proposes would not result in keeping all men on a deadlevel, but would simply put those in command who had a genuine right to bethere. 

 * * * * *

But this is taxing Mr. Mallock too seriously: he has not written inearnest. But, as his uncle, Mr. Froude, said, when reading "The NewRepublic, "--"The rogue is clever!" He has read a good deal, he has anactive mind, a smooth redundancy of expression, a talent for caricature, afondness for epigram and paradox, a useful shallowness, and an amusingimpudence. He has no practical knowledge of mankind, no experience oflife, no commanding point of view, and no depth of insight. He has noconception of the meaning and quality of the problems with whose exterioraspects he so prettily trifles. He has constructed a Science of HumanCharacter without for one moment being aware that, for instance, humancharacter and human nature are two distinct things; and that, furthermore, the one is everything that the other is not. As little is he conscious ofthe significance of the words "society" and "civilization"; nor can heexplain whether, or why, either of them is desirable or undesirable, goodor bad. He has never done, and (judging from his published works) we donot believe him capable of doing, any analytical or constructive thinking;at most, as in the present volume, he turns a few familiar objects upsidedown, and airily invites his audience to believe that he has therebyearned the name of Discoverer, if not of Creator. 

CHAPTER VIII. 

THEODORE WINTHROP'S WRITINGS. 

On an accessible book-shelf in my library, stand side by side four volumeswhose contents I once knew by heart, and which, after the lapse of twentyyears, are yet tolerably distinct in my memory. These are stoutly bound inpurple muslin, with a stamp, of Persian design apparently, on the centreof each cover. They are stained and worn, and the backs have faded to abrownish hue, from exposure to the light, and a leaf in one of the volumeshas been torn across; but the paper and the sewing and the clear bold typeare still as serviceable as ever. The books seem to have been made tolast, --to stand a great deal of reading. Contrasted with the aestheticallydesigned covers one sees nowadays, they would be considered inexcusablyugly, and the least popular novelist of our time would protest againsthaving his lucubrations presented to the public in such plain attire. Nevertheless, on turning to the title-pages, you may see imprinted, on thefirst, "Fourteenth Edition"; on the second, "Twelfth Edition"; and on theothers, indications somewhat less magnificent, but still evidence of veryexceptional circulation. The date they bear is that of the first years ofour civil war; and the first published of them is prefaced by abiographical memoir of the author, written by his friend George WilliamCurtis. This memoir was originally printed in the _Atlantic Monthly_, twoor three months after the death of its subject, Theodore Winthrop. 

For these books, --three novels, and one volume of records of travel, --camefrom his hand, though they did not see the light until after he had passedbeyond the sphere of authors and publishers. At that time, the country wasin an exalted and heroic mood, and the men who went to fight its battleswere regarded with a personal affection by no means restricted to theirpersonal acquaintances. Their names were on all lips, and those of themwho fell were mourned by multitudes instead of by individuals. Winthrop'shistoric name, and the influential position of some of his nearestfriends, would have sufficed to bring into unusual prominence his briefcareer and his fate as a soldier, even had his intrinsic qualities andcharacter been less honorable and winning than they were. But he was atype of a young American such as America is proud to own. He was high-minded, refined, gifted, handsome. I recollect a portrait of him publishedsoon after his death, --a photograph, I think, from a crayon drawing; aneloquent, sensitive, rather melancholy, but manly and courageous face, with grave eyes, the mouth veiled by a long moustache. It was the kind ofcountenance one would wish our young heroes to have. When, after thecatastrophe at Great Bethel, it became known that Winthrop had leftwritings behind him, it would have been strange indeed had not every onefelt a desire to read them. 

Moreover, he had already begun to be known as a writer. It was during1860, I believe, that a story of his, in two instalments, entitled "Loveon Skates, " appeared in the "Atlantic. " It was a brilliant and graphiccelebration of the art of skating, engrafted on a love-tale as full ofromance and movement as could be desired. Admirably told it was, as Irecollect it; crisp with the healthy vigor of American wintry atmosphere, with bright touches of humor, and, here and there, passages of sentiment, half tender, half playful. It was something new in our literature, andgave promise of valuable work to come. But the writer was not destined tofulfil the promise. In the next year, from the camp of his regiment, hewrote one or two admirable descriptive sketches, touching upon thecharacteristic points of the campaigning life which had just begun; but, before the last of these had become familiar to the "Atlantic's" readers, it was known that it would be the last. Theodore Winthrop had been killed. 

He was only in his thirty-third year. He was born in New Haven, and hadentered Yale College with the class of '48. The Delta Kappa EpsilonFraternity was, I believe, founded in the year of his admission, and hemust, therefore, have been among its earliest members. He wasdistinguished as a scholar, and the traces of his classic andphilosophical acquirements are everywhere visible in his books. During thefive or six years following his graduation, he travelled abroad, and inthe South and West; a wild frontier life had great attractions for him, ashe who reads "John Brent" and "The Canoe and the Saddle" need not be told. He tried his hand at various things, but could settle himself to noprofession, --an inability which would have excited no remark in England, which has had time to recognize the value of men of leisure, as such; butwhich seems to have perplexed some of his friends in this country. Be thatas it may, no one had reason to complain of lack of energy and promptnesson his part when patriotism revealed a path to Winthrop. He knew that thetime for him had come; but he had also known that the world is not yet solarge that all men, at all times, can lay their hands upon the work thatis suitable for them to do. 

Let us, however, return to the novels. They appear to have been writtenabout 1856 and 1857, when their author was twenty-eight or nine years old. Of the order in which they were composed I have no record; but, judgingfrom internal evidence, I should say that "Edwin Brothertoft" came first, then "Cecil Dreeme, " and then "John Brent. " The style, and the quality ofthought, in the latter is more mature than in the others, and its tone ismore fresh and wholesome. In the order of publication, "Cecil Dreeme" wasfirst, and seems also to have been most widely read; then "John Brent, "and then "Edwin Brothertoft, " the scene of which was laid in the lastcentury. I remember seeing, at the house of James T. Fields, theirpublisher, the manuscripts of these books, carefully bound and preserved. They were written on large ruled letter-paper, and the handwriting wasvery large, and had a considerable slope. There were scarcely anycorrections or erasures; but it is possible that Winthrop made cleancopies of his stories after composing them. Much of the dialogue, especially, bears evidence of having been revised, and of the author'shaving perhaps sacrificed ease and naturalness, here and there, to thecraving for conciseness which has been one of the chief stumbling-blocksin the way of our young writers. He wished to avoid heaviness and"padding, " and went to the other extreme. He wanted to cut loose from theold, stale traditions of composition, and to produce something whichshould be new, not only in character and significance, but in manner ofpresentation. He had the ambition of the young Hafiz, who professed alonging to "tear down this tiresome old sky. " But the old sky has goodreasons for being what and where it is, and young radicals finally come toperceive that, regarded from the proper point of view, and in the rightspirit, it is not so tiresome after all. Divine Revelation itself can beexpressed in very moderate and commonplace language; and if one's thoughtsare worth thinking, they are worth clothing in adequate and serene attire. 

But "culture, " and literature with it, have made such surprising advancesof late, that we are apt to forget how really primitive and unenlightenedthe generation was in which Winthrop wrote. Imagine a time when Mr. HenryJames, Jr. , and Mr. W. D. Howells had not been heard of; when Bret Hartewas still hidden below the horizon of the far West; when no one suspectedthat a poet named Aldrich would ever write a story called "Marjorie Daw";when, in England, "Adam Bede" and his successors were unborn;--a time ofantiquity so remote, in short, that the mere possibility of a discussionupon the relative merit of the ideal and the realistic methods of fictionwas undreamt of! What had an unfortunate novelist of those days to fallback upon? Unless he wished to expatriate himself, and follow submissivelyin the well worn steps of Dickens, Thackeray, and Trollope, the onlymodels he could look to were Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Foe, JamesFenimore Cooper, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. "Elsie Venner" had scarcely madeits appearance at that date. Irving and Cooper were, on the other hand, somewhat antiquated. Poe and Hawthorne were men of very peculiar genius, and, however deep the impression they have produced on our literature, they have never had, because they never can have, imitators. As for theauthor of "Uncle Tom's Cabin, " she was a woman in the first place, and, inthe second place, she sufficiently filled the field she had selected. Awould-be novelist, therefore, possessed of ambition, and conscious of notbeing his own father or grandfather, saw an untrodden space before him, into which he must plunge without support and without guide. No wonder if, at the outset, he was a trifle awkward and ill-at-ease, and, like a rawrecruit under fire, appeared affected from the very desire he felt to lookunconcerned. It is much to his credit that he essayed the venture at all;and it is plain to be seen that, with each forward step he took, his self-possession and simplicity increased. If time had been given him, there isno reason to doubt that he might have been standing at the head of ourchampions of fiction to-day. 

But time was not given him, and his work, like all other work, if it is tobe judged at all, must be judged on its merits. He excelled most inpassages descriptive of action; and the more vigorous and momentous theaction, the better, invariably, was the description; he rose to theoccasion, and was not defeated by it. Partly for this reason, "CecilDreeme, " the most popular of his books, seems to me the least meritoriousof them all. The story has little movement; it stagnates round ChrysalisCollege. The love intrigue is morbid and unwholesome, and the characters(which are seldom Winthrop's strong point) are more than usuallyartificial and unnatural. The _dramatis personae_ are, indeed, little morethan moral or immoral principles incarnate. There is no growth in them, nohuman variableness or complexity; it is "Every Man in his Humor" overagain, with the humor left out. Densdeth is an impossible rascal; Churm, ascarcely more possible Rhadamanthine saint. Cecil Dreeme herself neverfully recovers from the ambiguity forced upon her by her masculine attire;and Emma Denman could never have been both what we are told she was, andwhat she is described as being. As for Robert Byng, the supposed narratorof the tale, his name seems to have been given him in order wantonly toincrease the confusion caused by the contradictory traits with which he isaccredited. The whole atmosphere of the story is unreal, fantastic, obscure. An attempt is made to endow our poor, raw New York with somethingof the stormy and ominous mystery of the immemorial cities of Europe. Thebest feature of the book (morbidness aside) is the construction of theplot, which shows ingenuity and an artistic perception of the value ofmystery and moral compensation. It recalls, in some respects, the designof Hawthorne's "Blithedale Romance, "--that is, had the latter never beenwritten, the former would probably have been written differently. In spiteof its faults, it is an interesting book, and, to the critical eye, thereare in almost every chapter signs that indicate the possession of noordinary gifts on the author's part. But it may be doubted whether thespecial circumstances under which it was published had not something to dowith its wide popularity. I imagine "John Brent" to have been really muchmore popular, in the better sense; it was read and liked by a higher classof readers. It is young ladies and school-girls who swell the numbers ofan "edition, " and hence the difficulty in arguing from this as to theliterary merit of the book itself. 

"Edwin Brothertoft, " though somewhat disjointed in construction, and jerkyin style, is yet a picturesque and striking story; and the gallop of thehero across country and through the night to rescue from the burning housethe woman who had been false to him, is vigorously described, and gives ussome foretaste of the thrill of suspense and excitement we feel in readingthe story of the famous "Gallop of three" in "John Brent. " The writer'sacquaintance with the history of the period is adequate, and a romanticand chivalrous tone is preserved throughout the volume. It is worth notingthat, in all three of Winthrop's novels, a horse bears a part in thecrisis of the tale. In "Cecil Dreeme" it is Churm's pair of trotters thatconvey the party of rescuers to the private Insane Asylum in whichDensdeth had confined the heroine. In "Edwin Brothertoft, " it is one ofEdwin's renowned breed of white horses that carries him through almostinsuperable obstacles to his goal. In "John Brent, " the black stallion, Don Fulano, who is throughout the chief figure in the book, reaches hisapogee in the tremendous race across the plains and down the rocky gorgeof the mountains, to where the abductors of the heroine are just about topitch their camp at the end of their day's journey. The motive is fine andartistic, and, in each of the books, these incidents are as good as, orbetter then, anything else in the narrative. 

"John Brent" is, in fact, full enough of merit to more than redeem itsdefects. The self-consciousness of the writer is less noticeable than inthe other works, and the effort to be epigrammatic, short, sharp, and"telling" in style, is considerably modified. The interest is lively, continuous, and cumulative; and there is just enough tragedy in the storyto make the happy ending all the happier. It was a novel and adventurousidea to make a horse the hero of a tale, and the manner in which the ideais carried out more than justifies the hazard. Winthrop, as we know, wasan ideal horseman, and knows what he is writing about. He contrives torealize Don Fulano for us, in spite of the almost supernatural powers andintelligence that he ascribes to the gallant animal. One is willing tostretch a point of probability when such a dashing and inspiring end is inview. In the present day we are getting a little tired of being brought toaccount, at every turn, by Old Prob. , who tyrannizes over literature quiteas much as over the weather. Theodore Winthrop's inspiration, in thisinstance at least, was strong and genuine enough to enable him to feelwhat he was telling as the truth, and therefore it produces an effect oftruth upon the reader. How distinctly every incident of that ride remainsstamped on the memory, even after so long an interval as has elapsed sinceit was written! And I recollect that one of the youthful devourers of thisbook, who was of an artistic turn, was moved to paint three little water-color pictures of the Gallop; the first showing the three horses, --theWhite, the Gray, and the Black, scouring across the prairie, towards thebarrier of mountains behind which the sun was setting; the seconddepicting Don Fulano, with Dick Wade and John Brent on his back, plungingdown the gorge upon the abductors, one of whom had just pulled the triggerof his rifle; while the third gives the scene in which the heroic horsereceives his death-wound in carrying the fugitive across the creek awayfrom his pursuers. At this distance of time, I am unable to bear anytestimony as to the technical value of the little pictures; I am inclinedto fancy that they would have to be taken _cum grano amoris_, as theycertainly were executed _con amore_. But, however that may be, theinstance (which was doubtless only one of many analogous to it) shows thatWinthrop possessed the faculty of stimulating and electrifying theimagination of his readers, which all our recent improvements in the artand artifice of composition have not made too common, and for which, iffor nothing else, we might well feel indebted to him. 

CHAPTER IX. 

EMERSON AS AN AMERICAN. 

It is not with Americans as with other peoples. Our position is more vagueand difficult, because it is not primarily related to the senses. I caneasily find out where England or Prussia is, and recognize an Englishmanor German when we meet; but we Americans are not, to the same extent asthese, limited by geographical and physical boundaries. The origin ofAmerica was not like that of the European nations; the latter were bornafter the flesh, but we after the spirit. It is of the first consequenceto them that their frontiers should be defended, and their nationalitykept distinct. But, though I esteem highly all our innumerable squaremiles of East and West, North and South, and our Pacific and Atlanticcoasts, I cannot help deeming them quite a secondary consideration. IfAmerica is not a great deal more than these United States, then the UnitedStates are no better than a penal colony. It is convenient, no doubt, fora great idea to find a great embodiment--a suitable incarnation and stage;but the idea does not depend upon these things. It is an accidental--or, Iwould rather say, a Providential--matter that the Puritans came to NewEngland, or that Columbus discovered the continent in time for them; butit has always happened that when a soul is born it finds a body readyfitted to it. The body, however, is an instrument merely; it enables thespirit to take hold of its mortal life, just as the hilt enables us tograsp the sword. If the Puritans had not come to New England, still thespirit that animated them would have lived, and made itself a placesomehow. And, in fact, how many Puritans, for how many ages previous, hadbeen trying to find standing-room in the world, and failed! They calledthemselves by many names; their voices were heard in many countries; thetime had not yet come for them to be born--to touch their earthlyinheritance; but, meantime, the latent impetus was accumulating, and theMayflower was driven across the Atlantic by it at last. Nor is this all--the Mayflower is sailing still between the old world and the new. Everyday it brings new settlers, if not to our material harbors--to our BostonBay, our Castle Garden, our Golden Gate--at any rate, to our mental portsand wharves. We cannot take up a European newspaper without finding anAmerican idea in it. It is said that a great many of our countrymen takethe steamer to England every summer. But they come back again; and theybring with them many who come to stay. I do not refer specially to theoccupants of the steerage--the literal emigrants. One cannot say muchabout them--they may be Americans or not, as it turns out. But England andthe continent are full of Americans who were born there, and many of whomwill die there. Sometimes they are better Americans than the New Yorker orthe Bostonian who lives in Beacon Street or the Bowery and votes in theelections. They may be born and reside where they please, but they belongto us, and, in the better sense, they are among us. Broadway andWashington Street, Vermont and Colorado extend all over Europe. Russia iscovered with them; she tries to shove them away to Siberia, but in vain. We call mountains and prairies solid facts; but the geography of the mindis infinitely more stubborn. I dare say there are a great many oblique-eyed, pig-tailed New Englanders in the Celestial Empire. They may neverhave visited these shores, or even heard of them; but what of that? Theythink our thought--they have apprehended our idea, and, by and by, they ortheir heirs will cause it to prevail. 

It is useless for us to hide our heads in the grass and refuse to rise tothe height of our occasion. We are here as the realization of a truth--thefulfilment of a prophecy; we must attest a new departure in the moral andintellectual development of the human race; for whichever of us does not, must suffer annihilation. If I deny my birthright as an American, I shalldisappear and not be missed, for an American will take my place. It is notaltogether a luxurious position to find yourself in. You cannot sit stilland hold your hands. All manner of hard and unpleasant things are expectedof you, which you neglect at your peril. It is like the old fable of themermaid. She loved a mortal youth, and, in order that she might win hisaffection, she prayed that she might have the limbs and feet of a humanmaiden. Her prayer was answered, and she met her prince; but every stepshe took was as if she trod on razors. It is a fine thing to sit in yourchair and reflect on being an American; but when you have to rise up anddo an American's duty before the world--how sharp the razors are!

Of course, we do not always endure the test; the flesh and blood on thisside of the planet is not, so far as I have observed, of a qualityessentially different from that on the other. Possibly our population istoo many for us. Out of fifty million people it would be strange if hereand there one appeared who was not at all points a hero. Indeed, I amsometimes tempted to think that that little band of original MayflowerPilgrims has not greatly multiplied since their disembarkation. However itmay be with their bodily offspring, their spiritual progeny are notinvariably found in the chair of the Governor or on the floor of theSenate. What are these Irish fellow-creatures doing here? Well, Bridgetserves us in the kitchen; but Patrick is more helpful yet; he goes to thelegislature, and is the servant of the people at large. It is veryobliging of him; but turn and turn about is fair play; and it would be nomore than justice were we, once in a while, to take off our coat and servePatrick in the same way. 

When we get into a tight place we are apt to try to slip out of it undersome plea of a European precedent. But it used to be supposed that it wasprecisely European precedents that we came over here to avoid. I am notprofoundly versed in political economy, nor is this the time or place todiscuss its principles; but, as regards protection, for example, I canconceive that there may be arguments against it as well as for it. Emersonused to say that the way to conquer the foreign artisan was not to killhim but to beat his work. He also pointed out that the money we made outof the European wars, at the beginning of this century, had the result ofbringing the impoverished population of those countries down upon us inthe shape of emigrants. They shared our crops and went on the poor-rates, and so we did not gain so much after all. One cannot help wishing thatAmerica would assume the loftiest possible ground in her political andcommercial relations. With all due respect to the sagacity and ability ofour ruling demagogues, I should not wish them to be quoted as typicalAmericans. The domination of such persons has an effect which is by nomeans measurable by their personal acts. What they can do is ofinfinitesimal importance. But the mischief is that they incline every oneof us to believe, as Emerson puts it, in two gods. They make the moralityof Wall Street and the White House seem to be a different thing from thatof our parlors and nurseries. "He may be a little shady on 'change, " wesay, "but he is a capital fellow when you know him. " But if he is acapital fellow when I know him, then I shall never find much fault withhis professional operations, and shall end, perhaps, by allowing him tomake some investments for me. Why should not I be a capital fellow too--and a fellow of capital, to boot! I can endure public opprobrium withtolerable equanimity so long as it remains public. It is the private coldlooks that trouble me. 

In short, we may speak of America in two senses--either meaning theAmerica that actually meets us at the street corners and in thenewspapers, or the ideal America--America as it ought to be. They are notthe same thing; and, at present, there seems to be a good deal more of theformer than of the latter. And yet, there is a connection between them;the latter has made the former possible. We sometimes see a great crowddrawn together by proclamation, for some noble purpose--to decide upon arighteous war, or to pass a just decree. But the people on the outskirtsof the crowd, finding themselves unable to hear the orators, and theirtime hanging idle on their hands, take to throwing stones, knocking offhats, or, perhaps, picking pockets. They may have come to the meeting withas patriotic or virtuous intentions as the promoters themselves; nay, under more favorable circumstances, they might themselves have becomepromoters. Virtue and patriotism are not private property; at certaintimes any one may possess them. And, on the other hand, we have seenexamples enough, of late, of persons of the highest respectability andtrust turning out, all at once, to be very sorry scoundrels. A man changesaccording to the person with whom he converses; and though the outlook israther sordid to-day, we have not forgotten that during the Civil War theair seemed full of heroism. So that these two Americas--the real and theideal--far apart though they may be in one sense, may, in another sense, be as near together as our right hand to our left. In a greater or lessdegree, they exist side by side in each one of us. But civil wars do notcome every day; nor can we wish them to, even to show us once more that weare worthy of our destiny. We must find some less expensive and quietermethod of reminding ourselves of that. And of such methods, none, perhaps, is better than to review the lives of Americans who were truly great; toask what their country meant to them; what they wished her to become; whatvirtues and what vices they detected in her. Passion may be generous, butpassion cannot last; and when it is over, we are cold and indifferentagain. But reason and example reach us when we are calm and passive; andwhat they inculcate is more likely to abide. At least, it will be onlyevil passion that can cast it out. 

I have said that many a true American is doubtless born, and lives, abroad; but that does not prevent Emerson from having been born here. Sofar as the outward accidents of generation and descent go, he could nothave been more American than he was. Of course, one prefers that it shouldbe so. A rare gem should be fitly set. A noble poem should be printed withthe fairest type of the Riverside Press, and upon fine paper with widemargins. It helps us to believe in ourselves to be told that Emerson'sancestry was not only Puritan, but clerical; that the central and vitalthread of the idea that created us, ran through his heart. The nation, andeven New England, Massachusetts, Boston, have many traits that are notfound in him; but there is nothing in him that is not a refinement, asublimation and concentration of what is good in them; and the selectionand grouping of the elements are such that he is a typical figure. Indeed, he is all type; which is the same as saying that there is nobody like him. And, mentally, he produces the impression of being all force; in hiswritings, his mind seems to have acted immediately, without naturalimpediment or friction; as if a machine should be run that was nothindered by the contact of its parts. As he was physically lean and narrowof figure, and his face nothing but so many features welded together, sothere was no adipose tissue in his thought. It is pure, clear, andaccurate, and has the fault of dryness; but often moves in forms ofexquisite beauty. It is not adhesive; it sticks to nothing, nor anythingto it; after ranging through all the various philosophies of the world, itcomes out as clean and characteristic as ever. It has numberlessaffinities, but no adhesion; it does not even adhere to itself. There aremany separate statements in any one of his essays which present no logicalcontinuity; but although this fact has caused great anxiety to manydisciples of Emerson, it never troubled him. It was the inevitable resultof his method of thought. Wandering at will in the flower-garden ofreligious and moral philosophy, it was his part to pluck such blossoms ashe saw were beautiful; not to find out their botanical interconnection. Hewould afterward arrange them, for art or harmony's sake, according totheir color or their fragrance; but it was not his affair to go anyfarther in their classification. 

This intuitive method of his, however little it may satisfy those who wishto have all their thinking done for them, who desire not only to havegiven to them all the cities of the earth, but also to have straight roadsbuilt for them from one to the other, carries with it its ownjustification. "There is but one reason, " is Emerson's saying; and againand again does he prove without proving it. We confess, over and over, that the truth which he asserts is indeed a truth. Even his own variationsfrom the truth, when he is betrayed into them, serve to confirm the rule. For these are seldom or never intuitions at first hand--pure intuitions;but, as it were, intuitions from previous intuitions--deductions. The formof statement is the same, but the source is different; they are fromEmerson, instead of from the Absolute; tinted, not colorless. They show amental bias, very slight, but redeeming him back to humanity. We love himthe more for them, because they indicate that for him, too, there was achoice of ways, and that he must struggle and watch to choose the right. 

We are so much wedded to systems, and so accustomed to connect a systemwith a man, that the absence of system, either explicit or implicit, inEmerson, strikes us as a defect. And yet truth has no system, nor thehuman mind. This philosopher maintains one, that another thesis. Both aretrue essentially, and yet there seems a contradiction between them. Wecannot bear to be illogical, and so we enlist some under this banner, someunder that. By so doing we sacrifice to consistency at least the half oftruth. Thence we come to examine our intuitions, and ask them, not whetherthey are true in themselves, but what are their tendencies. If it turn outthat they will lead us to stultify some past conclusion to which we standcommitted, we drop them like hot coals. To Emerson, this behavior appearedthe nakedest personal vanity. Recognizing that he was finite, he could notdesire to be consistent. If he saw to-day that one thing was true, and to-morrow that its opposite was true, was it for him to elect which of thetwo truths should have his preference? No; to reject either would be toreject all; it belonged to God alone to reconcile these contradictious. Between infinite and finite can be no ratio; and the consistency of theCreator implies the inconsistency of the creature. 

Emerson's Americanism, therefore, was Americanism in its last and purestanalysis, which is giving him high praise, and to America great hope. ButI do not mean to pay him, who was so full of modesty and humility, theungrateful compliment of holding him up as the permanent American ideal. It is his tendencies, his quality, that are valuable, and only in a minor, incipient degree his actual results. All human results must be strictlylimited, and according to the epoch and outlook. Emerson does not solvefor all time the problem of the universe; he solves nothing; but he doeswhat is far more useful--he gives a direction and an impetus to loftyhuman endeavor. He does not anticipate the lessons and the discipline ofthe ages, but he shows us how to deal with circumstances in such a manneras to secure the good instead of the evil influence. New conditions, freshdiscoveries, unexpected horizons opening before us, will, no doubt, sooncarry us beyond the scope of Emerson's surmise; but we shall not so easilyimprove upon his aim and attitude. In the spaces beyond the stars theremay be marvels such as it has not entered into the mind of man toconceive; but there, as here, the right way to look will still be upward, and the right aspiration be still toward humbleness and charity. I havejust spoken of Emerson's absence of system; but his writings havenevertheless a singular coherence, by virtue of the single-hearted motivethat has inspired them. Many will, doubtless, have noticed, as I havedone, how the whole of Emerson illustrates every aspect of him. 

Whether your discourse be of his religion, of his ethics, of his relationto society, or what not, the picture that you draw will have gained colorand form from every page that he has written. He does not lie in strata;all that he is permeates all that he has done. His books cannot beindexed, unless you would refer every subject to each paragraph. And so hecannot treat, no matter what subject, without incorporating in hisstatement the germs at least of all that he has thought and believed. Inthis respect he is like light--the presence of the general at theparticular. And, to confess the truth, I find myself somewhat loath todiffract this pure ray to the arbitrary end of my special topic. Whyshould I speak of him as an American? That is not his definition. He wasan American because he was himself. America, however, gives lesslimitation than any other nationality to a generous and serenepersonality. 

I am sometimes disposed to think that Emerson's "English Traits" revealhis American traits more than anything else he has written. We aredescribed by our own criticisms of others, and especially by ourcriticisms of another nation; the exceptions we take are the mould of ourown figures. So we have valuable glimpses of Emerson's contours throughoutthis volume. And it is in all respects a fortunate work; as remarkable aone almost for him to write as a volume of his essays for any one else. Comparatively to his other books, it is as flesh and blood to spirit;Emersonian flesh and blood, it is true, and semi-translucent; but still itcompletes the man for us: he would have remained too problematical withoutit. Those who have never personally known him may finish and solidifytheir impressions of him here. He likes England and the English, too; andthat sympathy is beyond our expectation of the mind that evolved "Nature"and "The Over-Soul. " The grasp of his hand, I remember, was firm andstout, and we perceive those qualities in the descriptions and cordialityof "English Traits. " Then, it is an objective book; the eye looks outward, not inward; these pages afford a basis not elsewhere obtainable ofcomparing his general human faculty with that of other men. Here hedescends from the airy heights he treads so easily and, standing foot tofoot with his peers, measures himself against them. He intends only toreport their stature, and to leave himself out of the story; but theiranswers to his questions show what the questions were, and what thequestioner. And we cannot help suspecting, though he did not, that theEnglishmen were not a little put to it to keep pace with their clear-faced, penetrating, attentive visitor. 

He has never said of his own countrymen the comfortable things that hetells of the English; but we need not grumble at that. The father who issevere with his own children will freely admire those of others, for whomhe is not responsible. Emerson is stern toward what we are, and arduousindeed in his estimate of what we ought to be. He intimates that we arenot quite worthy of our continent; that we have not as yet lived up to ourblue china. "In America the geography is sublime, but the men are not. "And he adds that even our more presentable public acts are due to a money-making spirit: "The benefaction derived in Illinois and the great Westfrom railroads is inestimable, and vastly exceeding any intentionalphilanthropy on record. " He does not think very respectfully of thedesigns or the doings of the people who went to California in 1849, thoughhe admits that "California gets civilized in this immoral way, " and isfain to suppose that, "as there is use in the world for poisons, so theworld cannot move without rogues, " and that, in respect of America, "thehuge animals nourish huge parasites, and the rancor of the disease atteststhe strength of the constitution. " He ridicules our unsuspectingprovincialism: "Have you seen the dozen great men of New York and Boston?Then you may as well die!" He does not spare our tendency to spread-eagleism and declamation, and having quoted a shrewd foreigner as sayingof Americans that, "Whatever they say has a little the air of a speech, "he proceeds to speculate whether "the American forest has refreshed someweeds of old Pictish barbarism just ready to die out?" He finds the foibleespecially of American youth to be--pretension; and remarks, suggestively, that we talk much about the key of the age, but "the key to all ages isimbecility!" He cannot reconcile himself to the mania for going abroad. "There is a restlessness in our people that argues want of character. .. . Can we never extract this tapeworm of Europe from the brain of ourcountrymen?" He finds, however, this involuntary compensation in thepractice--that, practically "we go to Europe to be Americanized, " and hasfaith that "one day we shall cast out the passion for Europe by thepassion for America. " As to our political doings, he can never regard themwith complacency. "Politics is an afterword, " he declares--"a poorpatching. We shall one day learn to supersede politics by education. " Hesympathizes with Lovelace's theory as to iron bars and stone walls, andholds that freedom and slavery are inward, not outward conditions. Slaveryis not in circumstance, but in feeling; you cannot eradicate the irons byexternal restrictions; and the truest way to emancipate the slave would beto educate him to a comprehension of his inviolable dignity and freedom asa human being. Amelioration of outward circumstances will be the effect, but can never be the means of mental and moral improvement. "Nothing ismore disgusting, " he affirms, generalizing the theme, "than the crowingabout liberty by slaves, as most men are, and the flippant mistaking forfreedom of some paper preamble like a 'Declaration of Independence' or thestatute right to vote. " But, "Our America has a bad name forsuperficialness. Great men, great nations, have not been boasters andbuffoons, but perceivers of the terrors of life, and have nervedthemselves to face it. " He will not be deceived by the clamor of blatantreformers. "If an angry bigot assumes the bountiful cause of abolition, and comes to me with his last news from Barbadoes, why should I not sayto him: 'Go love thy infant; love thy wood-chopper; be good-natured andmodest; have that grace, and never varnish your hard, uncharitableambition with this incredible tenderness for black folk a thousand milesoff!'"

He does not shrink from questioning the validity of some of our petinstitutions, as, for instance, universal suffrage. He reminds us that inold Egypt the vote of a prophet was reckoned equal to one hundred hands, and records his opinion that it was much underestimated. "Shall we, then, "he asks, "judge a country by the majority or by the minority? By theminority, surely! 'Tis pedantry to estimate nations by the census, or bysquare miles of land, or other than by their importance to the mind of thetime. " The majority are unripe, and do not yet know their own opinion. Hewould not, however, counsel an organic alteration in this respect, believing that, with the progress of enlightenment, such coarseconstructions of human rights will adjust themselves. He concedes thesagacity of the Fultons and Watts of politics, who, noticing that theopinion of the million was the terror of the world, grouped it on a level, instead of piling it into a mountain, and so contrived to make of thisterror the most harmless and energetic form of a State. But, again, hewould not have us regard the State as a finality, or as relieving any manof his individual responsibility for his actions and purposes. We are toconfide in God--and not in our money, and in the State because it is guardof it. The Union itself has no basis but the good pleasure of the majorityto be united. The wise and just men impart strength to the State, notreceive it; and, if all went down, they and their like would soon combinein a new and better constitution. Yet he will not have us forget that onlyby the supernatural is a man strong; nothing so weak as an egotist. We aremighty only as vehicles of a truth before which State and individual arealike ephemeral. In this sense we, like other nations, shall have ourkings and nobles--the leading and inspiration of the best; and he whowould become a member of that nobility must obey his heart. 

Government, he observes, has been a fossil--it should be a plant; statutelaw should express, not impede, the mind of mankind. In tracing the courseof human political institutions, he finds feudalism succeeding monarchy, and this again followed by trade, the good and evil of which is that itwould put everything in the market, talent, beauty, virtue, and manhimself. By this means it has done its work; it has faults and will end asthe others. Its aristocracy need not be feared, for it can have nopermanence, it is not entailed. In the time to come, he hopes to see usless anxious to be governed, in the technical sense; each man shall governhimself in the interests of all; government without any governor will be, for the first time, adamantine. Is not every man sometimes a radical inpolitics? Men are conservatives when they are least vigorous, or when theyare most luxurious; conservatism stands on man's limitations, reform onhis infinitude. The age of the quadruped is to go out; the age of thebrain and the heart is to come in. We are too pettifogging and imitativein our legislative conceptions; the Legislature of this country shouldbecome more catholic and cosmopolitan than any other. Let us be brave andstrong enough to trust in humanity; strong natures are inevitablepatriots. The time, the age, what is that, but a few prominent persons anda few active persons who epitomize the times? There is a bribe possiblefor any finite will; but the pure sympathy with universal ends is aninfinite force, and cannot be bribed or bent. The world wants saviors andreligions; society is servile from want of will; but there is a Destiny bywhich the human race is guided, the race never dying, the individual neverspared; its law is, you shall have everything as a member, nothing toyourself. Referring to the communities of various kinds, which were somuch in vogue some years ago, he holds such to be valuable, not for whatthey have done, but for the indication they give of the revolution that ison the way. They place great faith in mutual support, but it is only as aman puts off from himself all external support and stands alone, that heis strong and will prevail. He is weaker by every recruit to his banner. Aman ought to compare advantageously with a river, an oak, or a mountain. He must not shun whatever comes to him in the way of duty; the only pathof escape is--performance. He must rely on Providence, but not in a timidor ecclesiastical spirit; it is no use to dress up that terrificbenefactor in a clean shirt and white neckcloth of a student of divinity. We shall come out well, whatever personal or political disasters mayintervene. For here in America is the home of man. After deducting ourpitiful politics--shall John or Jonathan sit in the chair and hold thepurse?--and making due allowance for our frivolities and insanities, therestill remains an organic simplicity and liberty, which, when it loses itsbalance, redresses itself presently, and which offers to the human mindopportunities not known elsewhere. 

Whenever he touches upon the fundamental elements of social and rationallife, it is always to enlarge and illuminate our conception of them. Weare not wont to question the propriety of the sentiment of patriotism, forinstance. We are to swear by our own _lares_ and _penates_, and stand upfor the American eagle, right or wrong. But Emerson instantly goes beneaththis interpretation and exposes its crudity. The true sense of patriotism, according to him, is almost the reverse of its popular sense. He has nosympathy with that boyish egotism, hoarse with cheering for our side, forour State, for our town; the right patriotism consists in the delightwhich springs from contributing our peculiar and legitimate advantages tothe benefit of humanity. Every foot of soil has its proper quality; thegrape on two sides of the fence has new flavors; and so every acre on theglobe, every family of men, every point of climate, has its distinguishingvirtues. This being admitted, however, Emerson will yield in patriotism tono one; his only concern is that the advantages we contribute shall be themost instead of the least possible. "This country, " he says, "does not liehere in the sun causeless, and though it may not be easy to define itsinfluence, men feel already its emancipating quality in the careless self-reliance of the manners, in the freedom of thought, in the direct roads bywhich grievances are reached and redressed, and even in the reckless andsinister politics, not less than in purer expressions. Bad as it is, thisfreedom leads onward and upward to a Columbia of thought and art, which isthe last and endless end of Columbus's adventure. " Nor is this poet ofvirtue and philosophy ever more truly patriotic, from his spiritualstandpoint, than when he throws scorn and indignation upon his country'ssins and frailties. "But who is he that prates of the culture of mankind, of better arts and life? Go, blind worm, go--behold the famous Statesharrying Mexico with rifle and with knife! Or who, with accent bolder, dare praise the freedom-loving mountaineer? I found by thee, O rushingContoocook! and in thy valleys, Agiochook! the jackals of the negro-holder. .. . What boots thy zeal, O glowing friend, that would indignantrend the northland from the South? Wherefore? To what good end? Boston Bayand Bunker Hill would serve things still--things are of the snake. Thehorseman serves the horse, the neat-herd serves the neat, the merchantserves the purse, the eater serves his meat; 'tis the day of the chattel, web to weave, and corn to grind; things are in the saddle, and ridemankind!"

But I must not begin to quote Emerson's poetry; only it is worth notingthat he, whose verse is uniformly so abstractly and intellectuallybeautiful, kindles to passion whenever his theme is of America. Theloftiest patriotism never found more ardent and eloquent expression thanin the hymn sung at the completion of the Concord monument, on the 19th ofApril, 1836. There is no rancor in it; no taunt of triumph; "the foe longsince in silence slept"; but throughout there resounds a note of pure anddeep rejoicing at the victory of justice over oppression, which Concordfight so aptly symbolized. In "Hamatreya" and "The Earth Song, " anotherchord is struck, of calm, laconic irony. Shall we too, he asks, we Yankeefarmers, descendants of the men who gave up all for freedom, go back tothe creed outworn of medieval feudalism and aristocracy, and say, of theland that yields us its produce, "'Tis mine, my children's, and myname's"? Earth laughs in flowers at our boyish boastfulness, and asks "Howam I theirs if they cannot hold me, but I hold them?" "When I heard 'TheEarth Song, ' I was no longer brave; my avarice cooled, like lust in thechild of the grave" Or read "Monadnoc, " and mark the insight and the powerwith which the significance and worth of the great facts of nature areinterpreted and stated. "Complement of human kind, having us at vantagestill, our sumptuous indigence, oh, barren mound, thy plenties fill! Wefool and prate; thou art silent and sedate. To myriad kinds and times onesense the constant mountain doth dispense; shedding on all its snows andleaves, one joy it joys, one grief it grieves. Thou seest, oh, watchmantall, our towns and races grow and fall, and imagest the stable good forwhich we all our lifetime grope; and though the substance us elude, we inthee the shadow find. " . .. "Thou dost supply the shortness of our days, and promise, on thy Founder's truth, long morrow to this mortal youth!" Ihave ignored the versified form in these extracts, in order to bring theminto more direct contrast with the writer's prose, and show that thepoetry is inherent. No other poet, with whom I am acquainted, has causedthe very spirit of a land, the mother of men, to express itself soadequately as Emerson has done in these pieces. Whitman falls short ofthem, it seems to me, though his effort is greater. 

Emerson is continually urging us to give heed to this grand voice of hillsand streams, and to mould ourselves upon its suggestions. The difficultyand the anomaly are that we are not native; that England is our mother, quite as much as Monadnoc; that we are heirs of memories and traditionsreaching far beyond the times and the confines of the Republic. We cannotassume the splendid childlikeness of the great primitive races, andexhibit the hairy strength and unconscious genius that the poet longs tofind in us. He remarks somewhere that the culminating period of good innature and the world is in just that moment of transition, when theswarthy juices still flow plentifully from nature, but their astringencyor acidity is got out by ethics and humanity. 

It was at such a period that Greece attained her apogee; but ourexperience, it seems to me, must needs be different. Our story is not ofbirth, but of regeneration, a far more subtle and less obvioustransaction. The Homeric California of which Bret Harte is the reporterdoes not seem to me in the closest sense American. It is a comparativelysuperficial matter--this savage freedom and raw poetry; it belongs to allpioneering life, where every man must stand for himself, and Judge Lynchstrings up the defaulter to the nearest tree. But we are only incidentallypioneers in this sense; and the characteristics thus impressed upon uswill leave no traces in the completed American. "A sturdy lad from NewHampshire or Vermont, " says Emerson, "who in turn tries all theprofessions--who teams it, farms it, peddles, keeps a school, preaches, edits a newspaper, goes to Congress, buys a township, and so forth, insuccessive years, and always, like a cat, falls on his feet--is worth ahundred of these city dolls. He walks abreast with his days, and feels noshame in not studying a 'profession, ' for he does not postpone his life, but lives already. " That is stirringly said: but, as a matter of fact, most of the Americans whom we recognize as great did not have such ahistory; nor, if they had it, would they be on that account more American. On the other hand, the careers of men like Jim Fiske and CommodoreVanderbilt might serve very well as illustrations of the above sketch. Ifwe must wait for our character until our geographical advantages and theabsence of social distinctions manufacture it for us, we are likely toremain a long while in suspense. When our foreign visitors begin to evincea more poignant interest in Concord and Fifth Avenue than in theMississippi and the Yellowstone, it may be an indication to us that we areassuming our proper position relative to our physical environment. "The_land_, " says Emerson, "is a sanative and Americanizing influence whichpromises to disclose new virtues for ages to come. " Well, when we arevirtuous, we may, perhaps, spare our own blushes by allowing ourtopography, symbolically, to celebrate us, and when our admirers wouldworship the purity of our intentions, refer them to Walden Pond; or toMount Shasta, when they would expatiate upon our lofty generosity. It is, perhaps, true, meanwhile, that the chances of a man's leading a decentlife are greater in a palace than in a pigsty. 

But this is holding our author too strictly to the letter of his message. And, at any rate, the Americanism of Emerson is better than anything thathe has said in vindication of it. He is the champion of this commonwealth;he is our future, living in our present, and showing the world, byanticipation, as it were, what sort of excellence we are capable ofattaining. A nation that has produced Emerson, and can recognize in himbone of her bone and flesh of her flesh--and, still more, spirit of herspirit--that nation may look toward the coming age with security. But hehas done more than thus to prophesy of his country; he is electric andstimulates us to fulfil our destiny. To use a phrase of his own, we"cannot hear of personal vigor of any kind, great power of performance, without fresh resolution. " Emerson, helps us most in provoking us to helpourselves. The pleasantest revenge is that which we can sometimes takeupon our great men in quoting of themselves what they have said of others. 

It is easy to be so revenged upon Emerson, because he, more than mostpersons of such eminence, has been generous and cordial in hisappreciation of all human worth. "If there should appear in the company, "he observes, "some gentle soul who knows little of persons and parties, ofCarolina or Cuba, but who announces a law that disposes these particulars, and so certifies me of the equity which checkmates every false player, bankrupts every self-seeker, and apprises me of my independence on anyconditions of country, or time, or human body, that man liberates me. .. . I am made immortal by apprehending my possession of incorruptible goods. "Who can state the mission and effect of Emerson more tersely and aptlythan those words do it?

But, once more, he does not desire eulogiums, and it seems half ungenerousto force them upon him now that he can no longer defend himself. I preferto conclude by repeating a passage characteristic of him both as a man andas an American, and which, perhaps, conveys a sounder and healthiercriticism, both for us and for him, than any mere abject and nervelessadmiration; for great men are great only in so far as they liberate us, and we undo their work in courting their tyranny. The passage runs thus:--

"Let me remind the reader that I am only an experimenter. Do not set theleast value on what I do, or the least discredit on what I do not, as if Ipretended to settle anything as true or false. I unsettle all things. Nofacts to me are sacred; none are profane. I simply experiment--an endlessseeker, with no Past at my back!"

CHAPTER X. 

MODERN MAGIC. 

Human nature enjoys nothing better than to wonder--to be mystified; and itthanks and remembers those who have the skill to gratify this craving. Themagicians of old knew that truth and conducted themselves accordingly. Butour modern wonder-workers fail of their due influence, because, notcontent to perform their marvels, they go on to explain them. Merlin andRoger Bacon were greater public benefactors than Morse and Edison. Man is--and he always has been and will be--something else besides a pureintelligence: and science, in order to become really popular, mustcontrive to touch man somewhere else besides on the purely intellectualside: it must remember that man is all heart, all hope, all fear, and allfoolishness, quite as much as he is all brains. Otherwise, science cannever expect to take the place of superstition, much less of religion, inmankind's affection. In order to be a really successful man of science, itis first of all indispensable to make one's self master of everything innature and in human nature that science is not. 

What must one do, in short, in order to become a magician? I use the term, here, in its weightiest sense. How to make myself visible and invisible atwill? How to present myself in two or more places at once? How answer yourquestion before you ask it, and describe to you your most secret thoughtsand actions? How shall I call spirits from the vasty deep, and make yousee and hear and feel them? How paralyze your strength with a look, healyour wound with a touch, or cause your bullet to rebound harmless from myunprotected flesh? How shall I walk on the air, sink through the earth, pass through stone walls, or walk, dry-shod, on the floor of the ocean?How shall I visit the other side of the moon, jump through the ring ofSaturn, and gather sunflowers in Sirius? There are persons now living whoprofess to do no less remarkable feats, and to regard them as incidentalmerely to achievements far more important. A school of hierophants oradepts is said to exist in Tibet, who, as a matter of daily routine, quitetranscend everything that we have been accustomed to consider naturalpossibility. What is the course of study, what are the ways and meanswhereby such persons accomplish such results?

The conventional attitude towards such matters is, of course, that ofunconditional scepticism. But it is pleasant, occasionally, to take anairing beyond the bounds of incredulity. For my own part, it is true, Imust confess my inability to believe in anything positively supernatural. The supernatural and the illusory are to my mind convertible terms: theycannot really exist or take place. Let us be sure, however, that we areagreed as to what supernatural means. If a magician, before my eyes, transformed an old man into a little girl, I should call thatsupernatural; and nothing should convince me that my senses had not beengrossly deceived. But were the magician to leave the room by passingthrough the solid wall, or "go out" like an exploding soap-bubble, --Imight think what I please, but I should not venture to dogmaticallypronounce the thing supernatural; because the phenomenon known as "matter"is scientifically unknown, and therefore no one can tell whatmodifications it may not be susceptible of:--no one, that is to say, except the person who, like the magician of our illustration, professes topossess, and (for aught I can affirm to the contrary) may actually possessa knowledge unshared by the bulk of mankind. The transformation of an oldman into a little girl, on the other hand, would be a transactioninvolving the immaterial soul as well as the material body; and if I donot know that that cannot take place, I am forever incapable of knowinganything. These are extreme examples, but they serve to emphasize animportant distinction. 

The whole domain of magic, in short, occupies that anomalous neutralground that intervenes between the facts of our senses and the truths ofour intuitions. Fact and truth are not convertible terms; they abide intwo distinct planes, like thought and speech, or soul and body; one mayimply or involve the other, but can never demonstrate it. Experience andintuition together comprehend the entire realm of actual and conceivableknowledge. Whatever contradicts both experience and intuition may, therefore, be pronounced illusion. But this neutral ground is the home ofphenomena which intuition does not deny, and which experience has notconfirmed. It is still a wide zone, though not so wide as it was a hundredyears ago, or fifty, or even ten. It narrows every day, as science, or theclassification of experience, expands. Are we, then, to look for a timewhen the zone shall have dwindled to a mathematical line, and magicconfess itself to have been nothing but the science of an advanced schoolof investigators? Will the human intellect acquire a power before whichall mysteries shall become transparent? Let us dwell upon this question alittle longer. 

A mystery that is a mystery can never, humanly speaking, become anythingelse. Instances of such mysteries can readily be adduced. The universeitself is built upon them and is the greatest of them. They lie before thethreshold and at the basis of all existence. For example:--here is a lumpof compact, whitish, cheese-like substance, about as much as would go intoa thimble. From this I profess to be able to produce a gigantic, intricatestructure, sixty feet in height and diameter, hard, solid, and enduring, which shall furthermore possess the power of extending and multiplyingitself until it covers the whole earth, and even all the earths in theuniverse, if it could reach them. Is such a profession as this credible?It is entirely credible, as soon as I paraphrase it by saying that Ipropose to plant an acorn. And yet all magic has no mystery which is sowonderful as this universal mystery of growth: and the only reason we arenot lost in amazement at it is that it goes quietly on all the time, andperfects itself under uniform conditions. But let me eliminate from thephenomenon the one element of time--which is logically the least essentialfactor in the product, unreal and arbitrary, based on the revolution ofthe earth, and conceivably variable to any extent--grant me this, and theworld would come to see me do the miracle. But, with time or without it, the mystery is just as mysterious. 

Natural mysteries, then, --the mysteries of life, death, creation, growth, --do not fall under our present consideration: they are beyond thelegitimate domain of magic: and no intellectual development to which wemay hereafter attain will bring us a step nearer their solution. But withthe problems proper to magic, the case is different. Magic isdistinctively not Divine, but human: a finite conundrum, not an Infiniteenigma. If there has ever been a magician since the world began, then allmankind may become magicians, if they will give the necessary time andtrouble. And yet, magic is not simply an advanced region of the path whichscience is pursuing. Science is concerned with results, --with materialphenomena; whereas magic is, primarily, the study of causes, or ofspiritual phenomena; or, to use another definition, --of phenomena whichthe senses perceive, not in themselves, but only in their results. So longas we restrict ourselves to results, our activity is confined to analysis;but when we begin to investigate causes, we are on the road not only tocomprehend results, but (within limits) to modify or produce them. 

Science, however, blocks our advance in this direction by denying, or atleast refusing to admit, the existence of the spiritual world, or world ofcauses: because, being spiritual, it is not sensible, or cognizable insense. Science admits only material causes, or the changes wrought inmatter by itself. If we ask what is the cause of a material cause, we areanswered that it is a supposed entity called Force, concerning which thereis nothing further to be known. 

At this point, then, argument (on the material plane) comes to an end, andspeculation or assumption begins. Science answers its own questions, butneither can nor will answer any others. And upon what pretence do we askany others? We ask them upon two grounds. The first is that some people, --we might even say, most people, --would be glad to believe in supersensuousexistence, and are always on the alert to examine any plausible hypothesispointing in that direction: and secondly, there exists a vast amount oftestimony (we need not call it evidence) tending to show that thesupersensuous world has been discovered, and that it endows itsdiscoverers with sundry notable advantages. Of course, we are not obligedto credit this testimony, unless we want to: and--for some reason, neverfully explained--a great many people who accept natural mysteries quiteamiably become indignant when requested to examine mysteries of a muchmilder order. But it is not my intention to discuss the limits of theprobable; but to swallow as much as possible first, and endeavor toaccount for it afterwards. 

There is, as every reader knows, a class of phenomena--such as hypnotism, trance, animal magnetism, and so forth--the occurrence of which sciencehas conceded, though failing as yet to offer any intelligent explanationof them. It is suggested that they are peculiar states of the brain andnerve-centres, physical in their nature and origin, though evading ourpresent physical tests. Be that as it may, they afford a capitalintroduction to the study of magic; if, indeed, they, and a few alliedphenomena, do not comprise the germs of the whole matter. Apropos of thissubject, a society has lately been organized in London, with branches onthe Continent and in this country, composed of scientific men, Fellows ofthe Royal Society, members of Parliament, professors, and literary men, calling themselves the "Psychical Research Society, " and making it theirbusiness to test and investigate these very marvels, under the moststringent scientific conditions. But the capacity to be deceived of thebodily senses is almost unlimited; in fact, we know that they areincapable of telling us the ultimate truth on any subject; and we are ableto get along with them only because we have found their misinformation tobe sufficiently uniform for most practical purposes. But once admit thatthe origin of these phenomena is not on the physical plane, and then, ifwe are to give any weight at all to them, it can be only from a spiritualstandpoint. In other words, unless we can approach such questions by an _apriori_ route, we might as well let them alone. We can reason from spiritto body--from mind to matter--but we can never reverse that process, andfrom matter evolve mind. The reason is that matter is not found to containmind, but is only acted upon by it, as inferior by superior; and we cannotget out of the bag more than has been put into it. The acorn (to use ourformer figure) can never explain the oak; but the oak readily accounts forthe acorn. It may be doubted, therefore, whether the Psychical ResearchSociety can succeed in doing more than to give a respectable endorsementto a perplexing possibility, --so long as they adhere to the inductivemethod. Should they, however, abandon the inductive method for thedeductive, they will forfeit the allegiance of all consistently scientificminds; and they may, perhaps, make some curious contributions tophilosophy. At present, they appear to be astride the fence betweenphilosophy and science, as if they hoped in some way to make the formersatisfy the latter's demands. But the difference between the evidence thatdemonstrates a fact and the evidence that confirms a truth is, once more, a difference less of degree than of kind. We can never obtain sensibleverification of a proposition that transcends sense. We must accept itwithout material proof, or not at all. We may believe, for instance, thatCreation is the work of an intelligent Divine Being; or we may disbelieveit; but we can never prove it. If we do believe it, innumerableconfirmations of it meet us at every turn: but no such confirmations, andno multiplication of them, can persuade a disbeliever. For belief is everincommunicable from without; it can be generated only from within. Theterm "belief" cannot be applied to our recognition of a physical fact: wedo not believe in that--we are only sensible of it. 

In this connection, a few words will be in order concerning what is calledSpiritism, --a subject which has of late years been exciting a good deal ofremark. Its disciples claim for it the dignity of a new and positiverevelation, --a revelation to sense of spiritual being. Now, the entireuniverse may be described as a revelation to sense of spiritual being--forthose who happen to believe _a priori_, or from spontaneous inwardconviction, in spiritual being. We may believe a man's body, for example, to be the effect of which his soul is the cause; but no one can reach thatconviction by the most refined dissection of the bodily tissues. How, then, does the spiritists' Positive Revelation help the matter? Theiranswer is that the physical universe is a permanent and orderly phenomenonwhich (setting aside the problem of its First Cause) fully accounts foritself; whereas the phenomena of Spiritism, such as rapping, table-tipping, materializing, and so forth, are, if not supernatural, at anyrate extra-natural. They occur in consequence of a conscious effort tobring them about; they cease when that effort is discontinued; they aboundin indications of being produced by independent intelligencies; they areinexplicable upon any recognized theory of physics; and, therefore, thereis nothing for it but to regard them as spiritual. And what then? Then, ofcourse, there must be spirits, and a life after the death of the body; andthe great question of Immortality is answered in the affirmative!

Let us, for the sake of argument, concede that the manifestations uponwhich the Spiritists found their claims are genuine: that they are or canbe produced without fraud; and let us then enquire in what respect ourmeans for the conversion of the sceptic are improved. In the first placewe find that all the manifestations--be their cause what it may--can occuronly on the physical plane. However much the origin of the phenomena mayperplex us, the phenomena themselves must be purely material, in so far asthey are perceptible at all. "Raps" are audible according to the same lawsof vibration as other sounds: the tilting table is simply a material bodydisplaced by an adequate agency; the materialized hand or face is nothingbut physical substance assuming form. Plainly, therefore, we have as muchright to ascribe a spiritual source to such phenomena as we have toascribe a spiritual source to the ordinary phenomena of nature, such as atree or a man's body, --just as much right--and no more! Consequently, weare no nearer converting our sceptic than we were at the outset. He admitsthe physical manifestation: there is no intrinsic novelty about that: butwhen we proceed to argue that the manifestations are wrought by spirits, he points out to us that this is sheer assumption on our part. "I have notseen a spirit, " he says: "I have not heard one; I have not felt one; noris it possible that my bodily senses should perceive anything that is notat least as physical as they are. I have witnessed certain transactionseffected by means unknown to me--possibly by the action of a natural lawnot yet fully expounded by science. If there was anything spiritual in theaffair, it has not been manifest to my apprehension: and I must decline tolend my countenance to any such pretensions. "

That would be the reply of the sceptic who was equal to the emergency. Butlet us suppose that he is not equal to it: that he is a weak-kneed, impressionable person, with a tendency to jump at conclusions; and that heis scared or mystified into believing that "spirits" may be at the bottomof it. What, then, will be the character of the faith which the PositiveRevelation has furnished him? He has discovered that existence continues, in some fashion, after the death of the body. He has learned that theremay be such a thing as--not immortality exactly, but--postmortemconsciousness. He has been saddled with the conviction that the otherworld is full of restless ghosts, who come shuddering back from their coldemptiness, and try to warm themselves in the borrowed flesh and blood, andwith the purblind selfishness and curiosity of us who still remain here. "Have faith: be not impatient: the conditions are unfavorable: but we areworking for you!"--such is the constant burden of the communications. But, if there be a God, why must our relations with him be complicated by theinterference of such forlorn prevaricators and amateur Paracletes asthese? we do not wish to be "worked for, "--to be carried heavenward onsome one else's shoulders: but to climb thither by God's help and our ownwill, or to stay where we are. Moreover, by what touchstone shall we testthe veracity of the self-appointed purveyors of this Positive Revelation?Are we to believe what they say, because they have lost their bodies? Iflife teaches us anything, it is that God does above all things respect thespiritual freedom of his creatures. He does not terrify and bully us intoacknowledging Him by ghostly juggleries in darkened rooms, and by vapidexhibitions addressed to our outward senses. He approaches each man in theinnermost sacred audience-chamber of his heart, and there shows him goodand evil, truth and falsehood, and bids him choose. And that choice, ifmade aright, becomes a genuine and undying belief, because it was made infreedom, unbiassed by external threats and cajoleries. 

Such belief is, itself, immortality, --something as distinct from post-mortem consciousness as wisdom is distinct from mere animal intelligence. On the whole, therefore, there seems to be little real worth in Spiritism, even accepting it at its own valuation. The nourishment it yields the soulis too meagre; and--save on that one bare point of life beyond the grave, which might just as easily prove an infinite curse as an infiniteblessing--it affords no trustworthy news whatever. 

But these objections do not apply to magic proper. Magic seems to consistmainly in the control which mind may exceptionally exercise over matter. In hypnotism, the subject abjectly believes and obeys the operator. If hebe told that he cannot step across a chalk mark on the floor, he cannotstep across it. He dissolves in tears or explodes with laughter, accordingas the operator tells him he has cause for merriment or tears: and if hebe assured that the water he drinks is Madeira wine or Java coffee, he hasno misgiving that such is not the case. 

To say that this state of things is brought about by the exercise of theoperator's will, is not to explain the phenomenon, but to put it indifferent terms. What is the will, and how does it produce such a result?Here is a man who believes, at the word of command, that the thing whichall the rest of the world calls a chair is a horse. How is suchmisapprehension on his part possible? our senses are our sole means ofknowing external objects: and this man's senses seem to confirm--at leastthey by no means correct--his persuasion that a given object is somethingvery different. Could we solve this puzzle, we should have done somethingtowards gaining an insight into the philosophy of magic. 

We observe, in the first place, that the _rationale_ of hypnotism, and oftrance in general, is distinct from that of memory and of imagination, andeven from that of dreams. It resembles these only in so far as it involvesa quasi-perception of something not actually present or existent. Butmemory and imagination never mislead us into mistaking their suggestionsfor realities: while in dreams, the dreamer's fancy alone is active; thebodily faculties are not in action. In trance, however, the subject mayappear to be, to all intents and purposes, awake. Yet this state, unlikethe others, is abnormal. The brain seems to be in a passive, or, at anyrate, in a detached condition; it cannot carry out or originate ideas, norcan it examine an idea as to its truth or falsehood. Furthermore, itcannot receive or interpret the reports of its own bodily senses. Inshort, its relations with the external world are suspended: and since thebody is a part of the external world, the brain can no longer control thebody's movements. 

Bodily movements are, however, to some extent, automatic. Given a certainstimulus in the brain or nerve-centres, and certain corresponding muscularcontractions follow: and this whether or not the stimulus be applied in anormal manner. Although, therefore, the entranced brain cannotspontaneously control the body, yet if we can apply an independentstimulus to it, the body will make a fitting and apparently intelligentresponse. The reader has doubtless seen those ingenious pieces ofmechanism which are set in motion by dropping into an orifice a coin orpellet. Now, could we drop into the passive brain of an entranced personthe idea that a chair is a horse, for instance, --the person would giveevery sensible indication of having adopted that figment as a fact. 

But how (since he can no longer communicate with the world by means of hissenses) is this idea to be insinuated? The man is magnetized--that is tosay, insulated; how can we have intercourse with him?

Experiments show that this can be effected only through the magnetizer. Asleep towards the rest of the world, towards him the entranced person isawake. Not awake, however, as to the bodily senses; neither the magnetizernor any one else can approach by that route. It is true that, if themagnetizer speaks to him, he knows what is said: but he does not hearphysically; because he perceives the unspoken thought just as readily. Butsince whatever does not belong to his body must belong to his soul (ormind, if that term be preferable), it follows that the magnetizer mustcommunicate with the magnetized on the mental or spiritual plane; that is, immediately, or without the intervention of the body. 

Let us review the position we have reached:--We have an entranced ormagnetized person, --a person whose mind, or spirit, has, by a certainprocess, been so far withdrawn from conscious communion with his ownbodily senses as to disable him from receiving through them any tidingsfrom the external world. He is not, however, wholly withdrawn from hisbody, for, in that case, the body would be dead; whereas, in fact, itsorganic or animal life continues almost unimpaired. He is thereforeneither out of the body nor in it, but in an anomalous region midwaybetween the two, --a state in which he can receive no sensuous impressionsfrom the physical world, nor be put in conscious communication with thespiritual world through any channel--save one. 

This one exception is, as we have seen, the person who magnetized him. Themagnetizer is, then, the one and only medium through which the personmagnetized can obtain impressions: and these impressions are conveyeddirectly from the mind, or spirit, of the magnetizer to that of themagnetized. Let us note, further, that the former is not, like the latter, in a semi-disembodied state, but is in the normal exercise of his bodilyfunctions and faculties. He possesses, consequently, his normal ability tooriginate ideas and to impart them: and whatever ideas he chooses toimpart to the magnetized person, the latter is fain passively andimplicitly to accept. And having so received them, they descend naturallyinto the automatic mechanism of the body, and are by it mechanicallyinterpreted or enacted. 

So far, the theory is good: but something seems amiss in the working. Wefind that a certain process frequently issues in a certain effect: but wedo not yet know why this should be the case. Some fundamental link iswanting; and this link is manifestly a knowledge of the true relationsbetween mind and matter: of the laws to which the mental or spiritualworld is subject: of what nature itself is: and of what Creation means. Let us cast a glance at these fundamental subjects; for they are the keywithout which the secrets of magic must remain locked and hidden. 

In common speech we call the realm of the material universe, Creation; butphilosophy denies its claim to that title. Man alone is Creation:everything else is appearance. The universe appears, because man exists:he implies the universe, but is not implied by it. We may assist ourmetaphysics, here, by a physical illustration. Take a glass prism and holdin the sunlight before a white surface. Let the prism represent man: thesun, man's Creator: and the seven-hued ray cast by the prism, nature, orthe material universe. Now, if we remove the light, the ray vanishes: itvanishes, also, if we take away the prism: but so long as the sun and theprism--God and man--remain in their mutual relation, so long must therainbow nature appear. Nature, in short, is not God; neither is it man;but it is the inevitable concomitant or expression of the creativeattitude of God towards man. It is the shadow of the elements of whichhumanity or human nature is composed: or, shall we say, it is theapparition in sense of the spiritual being of mankind, --not, be itobserved, of the being of any individual or of any aggregation ofindividuals; but of humanity as a whole. For this reason, also, is natureorderly, complete, and permanent, --that it is conditioned not upon ourfrail and faulty personalities, but upon our impersonal, universal humannature, in which is transacted the miracle of God's incarnation, andthrough which He forever shines. 

Besides Creator and creature, nothing else can be; and whatever else seemsto be, must be only a seeming. Nature, therefore, is the shadow of ashade, but it serves an indispensable use. For since there can be nodirect communication between finite and Infinite--God and man--a medium orcommon ground is needed, where they may meet; and nature, the shadow whichthe Infinite causes the finite to project, is just that medium. Man, looking upon this shadow, mistakes it for real substance, serving him forfoothold and background, and assisting him to attain self-consciousness. God, on the other hand, finds in nature the means of revealing Himself toHis creature without compromising the creature's freedom. Man supposes theuniverse to be a physical structure made by God in space and time, and insome region of which He resides, at a safe distance from us His creatures:whereas, in truth, God is distant from us only so far as we removeourselves from our own inmost intuitions of truth and good. 

But what is that substance or quality which underlies and giveshomogeneity to the varying forms of nature, so that they seem to us to owna common origin?--what is that logical abstraction upon which we havebestowed the name of matter? scientific analysis finds matter only asforms, never as itself: until, in despair, it invents an atomic theory, and lets it go at that. But if, discarding the scientific method, wequestion matter from the philosophical standpoint, we shall find it lessobdurate. 

Man, considered as a mind or spirit, consists of volition andintelligence; or, what is the same, of emotion or affection, and of thethoughts which are created by this affection. Nothing can be affirmed ofman as a spirit which does not fall under one or other of these two parts. Now, a creature consisting solely of affections and thoughts must, ofcourse, have something to love and to think about. Man's final destiny isno doubt to love and consider his Creator; but that can only be after areactionary or regenerative process has begun in him. Meanwhile, he mustlove and consider the only other available object--that is, himself. Manifestly, however, in order to bestow this attention upon himself, hemust first be made aware of his own existence. In order to effect this, something must be added to man as spirit, enabling him to discriminatebetween the subject thinking and loving, and the object loved and thoughtof. This additional something, again, in order to fulfill its purpose, must be so devised as not to appear an addition: it must seem even moretruly the man than the man himself. It must, therefore, perfectlyrepresent or correspond to the spiritual form and constitution; so thatthe thoughts and affections of the spirit may enter into it as into theirnatural home and continent. 

This continent or vehicle of the mind is the human body. The body has twoaspects, --substance and form, answering to the two aspects of the mind, --affection and thought: and affection finds its incarnation orcorrespondence in substance; and thought, in form. The mind, in short, realizes itself in terms of its reflection in the body, much as the bodyrealizes itself in terms of its reflection in the looking-glass: but itdoes more than this, for it identifies itself with this its image. And howis this identification made possible?

It is brought about by the deception of sense, which is the medium ofcommunication between the spiritual and the material man. Until thismiraculous medium is put in action, there can be no conscious relationbetween these two planes, admirably as they are adapted to each other. Sense is spiritual on one side and material on the other: but it is onlyon the material side that it gathers its reports: on the spiritual side itonly delivers them. Every one of the five messengers whereby we areapprised of external existence brings us an earthly message only. Andsince these messengers act spontaneously, and since the mind's only othersource of knowledge is intuition, which cannot be sensuously confirmed, --it is little wonder if man has inclined to the persuasion that what ishighest in him is but an attribute of what is lowest, and that when thebody dies, the soul must follow it into nothingness. 

Creative energy, being infinite, passes through the world of causes to theworld of effects--through the spiritual to the physical plane. Matter istherefore the symbol of the ultimate of creative activity; it is thenegative of God. As God is infinite, matter is finite; as He is life, itis death; as He is real, it is unreal; as He reveals, matter veils. And asthe relation of God to man's spirit is constant and eternal, so is thephysical quality of matter fixed and permanent. Now, in order to arrive ata comprehension of what matter is in itself, let us descend from thegeneral to the specific, and investigate the philosophical elements of apebble, for instance. A pebble is two things: it is a mineral: and it is aparticular concrete example of mineral. In its mineral aspect, it is outof space and time, and is--not a fact, but--a truth; a perception of themind. In so far as it is mineral, therefore, it has no relation to sense, but only to thought: and on the other hand, in so far as it is aparticular concrete pebble, it is cognizable by sense but not by thought;for what is in sense is out of thought: the one supersedes the other. Butif sense thus absorbs matter, so as to be philosophicallyindistinguishable from it, we are constrained to identify matter with oursensuous perception of it: and if our exemplary pebble had nothing but itsmaterial quality to depend upon, it would cease to exist not only tothought, but to sense likewise. Its metaphysical aspect, in short, is theonly reality appertaining to it. Matter, then, may be defined as theimpact upon sense of that prismatic ray which we have called nature. 

To apply this discussion to the subject in hand: Magic is a sort of parodyof reality. And when we recognize that Creation proceeds from withinoutwards, or endogenously; and that matter is not the objective but thesubjective side of the universe, we are in a position to perceive that inorder magically to control matter, we must apply our efforts not to matteritself, but to our own minds. The natural world affects us from withoutinwards: the magical world affects us from within outwards: instead ofobjects suggesting ideas, ideas are made to suggest objects. And as, inthe former case, when the object is removed the idea vanishes; so in thelatter case, when the idea is removed, the object vanishes. Both objectsare illusions; but the illusion in the first instance is the normalillusion of sense, whereas in the second instance it is the abnormalillusion of mind. 

The above argument can at best serve only as a hint to such as inclineseriously to investigate the subject, and perhaps as a touchstone fortesting the validity of a large and noisy mass of pretensions which engagethe student at the outset of his enquiry. Many of these pretensions arethe result of ignorance; many of deliberate intent to deceive; some, again, of erroneous philosophical theories. The Tibetan adepts seem tobelong either to the second or to the last of these categories, --or, perhaps, to an impartial mingling of all three. They import a cumbrousmachinery of auras, astral bodies, and elemental spirits; they divide maninto seven principles, nature into seven kingdoms; they regard spirit as arefined form of matter, and matter as the one absolute fact of theuniverse, --the alpha and omega of all things. They deny a supreme Deity, but hold out hopes of a practical deityship for the majority of the humanrace. In short, their philosophy appeals to the most evil instincts of thesoul, and has the air of being ex-post-facto; whenever they run foul of aprodigy, they invent arbitrarily a fanciful explanation of it. But it willbe found, I think, that the various phases of hypnotism, and asystematized use of spiritism, will amply account for every miracle theyactually bring to pass. 

Upon the whole, a certain vulgarity is inseparable from even the mostrespectable forms of magic, --an atmosphere of tinsel, of ostentation, ofbig cry and little wool. A child might have told us that matter is notalmighty, that minds are sometimes transparent to one another, that loveand faith can work wonders. And we also know that, in this mortal life, our means are exquisitely adapted to our ends; and that we can gain nosolid comfort or advantage by striving to elbow our way a few inchesfurther into the region of the occult and abnormal. Magic, howeverspecious its achievements, is only a mockery of the Creative power, andexposes its unlikeness to it. "It is the attribute of natural existence, "a profound writer has said, "to be a form of use to something higher thanitself, so that whatever does not, either potentially or actually, possesswithin it this soul of use, does not honestly belong to nature, but is asensational effect produced upon the individual intelligence. " [Footnote:Henry James, in "Society the Redeemed Form of Man. "]

No one can overstep the order and modesty of general existence withoutbringing himself into perilous proximity to subjects more profound andsacred than the occasion warrants. Life need not be barren of mystery andmiracle to any one of us; but they shall be such tender mysteries andinstructive miracles as the devotion of motherhood, and the blooming ofspring. We are too close to Infinite love and wisdom to play pranks beforeit, and provoke comparison between our paltry juggleries and itsomnipotence and majesty. 

CHAPTER XI. 

AMERICAN WILD ANIMALS IN ART. 

The hunter and the sportsman are two very different persons. The hunterpursues animals because he loves them and sympathizes with them, and killsthem as the champions of chivalry used to slay one another--courteously, fairly, and with admiration and respect. To stalk and shoot the elk andthe grizzly bear is to him what wooing and winning a beloved maiden wouldbe to another man. Far from being the foe or exterminator of the game hefollows, he, more than any one else, is their friend, vindicator, andconfidant. A strange mutual ardor and understanding unites him with hisquarry. He loves the mountain sheep and the antelope, because they canescape him; the panther and the bear, because they can destroy him. Hisrelations with them are clean, generous, and manly. And on the other hand, the wild animals whose wildness can never be tamed, whose inmost principleof existence it is to be apart and unapproachable, --those creatures whomay be said to cease to be when they cease to be intractable, --seem, afterthey have eluded their pursuer to the utmost, or fought him to the death, to yield themselves to him with a sort of wild contentment--as if theywere glad to admit the sovereignty of man, though death come with theadmission. The hunter, in short, asks for his happiness only to be alonewith what he hunts; the sportsman, after his day's sport, must needshasten home to publish the size of the "bag, " and to wring from hisfellow-men the glory and applause which he has not the strength andsimplicity to find in the game itself. 

But if the true hunter is rare, the union of the hunter and the artist israrer still. It demands not only the close familiarity, the lovingobservation, and the sympathy, but also the faculty of creation--the eyewhich selects what is constructive and beautiful, and passes over what issuperfluous and inharmonious, and the hand skilful to carry out what theimagination conceives. In the man whose work I am about to consider, thesequalities are developed in a remarkable degree, though it was not until hewas a man grown, and had fought with distinction through the civil war, that he himself became aware of the artistic power that was in him. Theevents of his life, could they be rehearsed here, would form a tale ofadventure and vicissitude more varied and stirring than is often found infiction. He has spent by himself days and weeks in the vast solitudes ofour western prairies and southern morasses. He has been the companion oftrappers and frontiersmen, the friend and comrade of Indians, sleepingside by side with them in their wigwams, running the rapids in theircanoes, and riding with them in the hunt. He has met and overcome thepanther and the grizzly single-handed, and has pursued the flying cimmaronto the snowy summits of the Rocky Mountains, and brought back its crescenthorns as a trophy. He has fought and slain the gray wolf with no otherweapons than his hands and teeth; and at night he has lain concealed bylonely tarns, where the wild coyote came to patter and bark and howl atthe midnight moon. His name and achievements are familiar to the dwellersin those savage regions, whose estimate of a man is based, not upon hissocial and financial advantages, but upon what he is and can do. Yet he isnot one who wears his merit outwardly. His appearance, indeed, isstriking; tall and athletic, broad-shouldered and stout-limbed, with thelong, elastic step of the moccasined Indian, and something of the Indian'sreticence and simplicity. But he can with difficulty be brought to alludeto his adventures, and is reserved almost to the point of ingenuity on allthat concerns himself or redounds to his credit. It is only in familiarconverse with friends that the humor, the cultivation, the knowledge, andthe social charm of the man appear, and his marvellous gift of vivid andpicturesque narration discloses itself. But, in addition to all this, orabove it all, he is the only great animal sculptor of his time, thesuccessor of the French Barye, and (as any one may satisfy himself whowill take the trouble to compare their works) the equal of that famousartist in scope and treatment of animal subjects, and his superior inknowledge and in truth and power of conception. It would be a poorcompliment to call Edward Kemeys the American Barye; but Barye is the onlyman whose animal sculptures can bear comparison with Mr. Kemeys's. 

Of Mr. Kemeys's productions, a few are to be seen at his studio, 133 WestFifty-third Street, New York city. These are the models, in clay orplaster, as they came fresh from the artist's hand. From this conditionthey can either be enlarged to life or colossal size, for parks or publicbuildings, or cast in bronze in their present dimensions for theenrichment of private houses. Though this collection includes scarce atithe of what the artist has produced, it forms a series of groups andfigures which, for truth to nature, artistic excellence, and originality, are actually unique. So unique are they, indeed, that the uneducated eyedoes not at first realize their really immense value. Nothing like thislittle sculpture gallery has been seen before, and it is very improbablethat there will ever again be a meeting of conditions and qualitiesadequate to reproducing such an exhibition. For we see here not merely, nor chiefly, the accurate representation of the animal's external aspect, but--what is vastly more difficult to seize and portray--the essentialanimal character or temperament which controls and actuates the animal'smovements and behavior. Each one of Mr. Kemeys's figures gives not onlythe form and proportions of the animal, according to the nicest anatomicalstudies and measurements, but it is the speaking embodiment of profoundinsight into that animal's nature and knowledge of its habits. Thespectator cannot long examine it without feeling that he has learned muchmore of its characteristics and genius than if he had been standing infront of the same animal's cage at the Zoological Gardens; for here is anartist who understands how to translate pose into meaning, and action intoutterance, and to select those poses and actions which convey the broadestand most comprehensive idea of the subject's prevailing traits. He notonly knows what posture or movement the anatomical structure of the animalrenders possible, but he knows precisely in what degree such posture ormovement is modified by the animal's physical needs and instincts. Inother words, he always respects the modesty of nature, and never yields tothe temptation to be dramatic and impressive at the expense of truth. Hereis none of Barye's exaggeration, or of Landseer's sentimental effort tohumanize animal nature. Mr. Kemeys has rightly perceived that animalnature is not a mere contraction of human nature; but that each animal, sofar as it owns any relation to man at all, represents the unimpededdevelopment of some particular element of man's nature. Accordingly, animals must be studied and portrayed solely upon their own basis andwithin their own limits; and he who approaches them with thisunderstanding will find, possibly to his surprise, that the theatre thusafforded is wide and varied enough for the exercise of his best ingenuityand capacities. At first, no doubt, the simple animal appears too simpleto be made artistically interesting, apart from this or that conventionalor imaginative addition. The lion must be presented, not as he is, but asvulgar anticipation expects him to be; not with the savageness and terrorwhich are native to him, but with the savageness and terror which thosewho have trembled and fled at the echo of his roar invest him with, --whichare quite another matter. Zoölogical gardens and museums have their uses, but they cannot introduce us to wild animals as they really are; and thereports of those who have caught terrified or ignorant glimpses of them intheir native regions will mislead us no less in another direction. Naturereveals her secrets only to those who have faithfully and rigorouslysubmitted to the initiation; but to them she shows herself marvellous andinexhaustible. The "simple animal" avouches his ability to transcend anyimaginative conception of him. The stern economy of his structure andcharacter, the sureness and sufficiency of his every manifestation, theinstinct and capacity which inform all his proceedings, --these are thingswhich are concealed from a hasty glance by the very perfection of theirstate. Once seen and comprehended, however, they work upon the mind of theobserver with an ever increasing power; they lead him into a new, strange, and fascinating world, and generously recompense him for any effort he mayhave made to penetrate thither. Of that strange and fascinating world Mr. Kemeys is the true and worthy interpreter, and, so far as appears, theonly one. Through difficulty and discouragement of all kinds, he has keptto the simple truth, and the truth has rewarded him. He has done a serviceof incalculable value to his country, not only in vindicating Americanart, but in preserving to us, in a permanent and beautiful form, the vividand veracious figures of a wild fauna which, in the inevitable progress ofcolonization and civilization, is destined within a few years to vanishaltogether. The American bear and bison, the cimmaron and the elk, thewolf and the 'coon--where will they be a generation hence? Nowhere, savein the possession of those persons who have to-day the opportunity and theintelligence to decorate their rooms and parks with Mr. Kemeys'sinimitable bronzes. The opportunity is great--much greater, I shouldthink, than the intelligence necessary for availing ourselves of it; andit is a unique opportunity. In other words, it lies within the power ofevery cultivated family in the United States to enrich itself with a workof art which is entirely American; which, as art, fulfils everyrequirement; which is of permanent and increasing interest and value froman ornamental point of view; and which is embodied in the most enduring ofartistic materials. 

The studio in which Mr. Kemeys works--a spacious apartment--is, inappearance, a cross between a barn-loft and a wigwam. Round the walls aresuspended the hides, the heads, and the horns of the animals which thehunter has shot; and below are groups, single figures, and busts, modelledby the artist, in plaster, terracotta, or clay. The colossal design of the"Still Hunt"--an American panther crouching before its spring--wasmodelled here, before being cast in bronze and removed to its present sitein Central Park. It is a monument of which New York and America may beproud; for no such powerful and veracious conception of a wild animal hasever before found artistic embodiment. The great cat crouches with headlow, extended throat, and ears erect. The shoulders are drawn far back, the fore paws huddled beneath the jaws. The long, lithe back rises in anarch in the middle, sinking thence to the haunches, while the angry tailmakes a strong curve along the ground to the right. The whole figure istense and compact with restrained and waiting power; the expression isstealthy, pitiless, and terrible; it at once fascinates and astounds thebeholder. While Mr. Kemeys was modelling this animal, an incident occurredwhich he has told me in something like the following words. The artistdoes not encourage the intrusion of idle persons while he is at work, though no one welcomes intelligent inspection and criticism more cordiallythan he. On this occasion he was alone in the studio with his Irishfactotum, Tom, and the outer door, owing to the heat of the weather, hadbeen left ajar. All of a sudden the artist was aware of the presence of astranger in the room. "He was a tall, hulking fellow, shabbily dressed, like a tramp, and looked as if he might make trouble if he had a mind to. However, he stood quite still in front of the statue, staring at it, andnot saying anything. So I let him alone for a while; I thought it would betime enough to attend to him when he began to beg or make a row. But aftersome time, as he still hadn't stirred, Tom came to the conclusion that ahint had better be given him to move on; so he took a broom and begansweeping the floor, and the dust went all over the fellow; but he didn'tpay the least attention. I began to think there would probably be a fight;but I thought I'd wait a little longer before doing anything. At last Isaid to him, 'Will you move aside, please? You're in my way. ' He steppedover a little to the right, but still didn't open his mouth, and kept hiseyes fixed on the panther. Presently I said to Tom, 'Well, Tom, the cheekof some people passes belief!' Tom replied with more clouds of dust; butthe stranger never made a sign. At last I got tired, so I stepped up tothe fellow and said to him: 'Look here, my friend, when I asked you tomove aside, I meant you should move the other side of the door. ' He rousedup then, and gave himself a shake, and took a last look at the panther, and said he, 'That's all right, boss; I know all about the door; but--whata spring she's going to make!' Then, " added Kemeys, self-reproachfully, "Icould have wept!"

But although this superb figure no longer dominates the studio, there isno lack of models as valuable and as interesting, though not of heroicsize. Most interesting of all to the general observer are, perhaps, thetwo figures of the grizzly bear. These were designed from a grizzly whichMr. Kemeys fought and killed in the autumn of 1881 in the Rocky Mountains, and the mounted head of which grins upon the wall overhead, a grislytrophy indeed. The impression of enormous strength, massive yet elastic, ponderous yet alert, impregnable for defence as irresistible in attack; astrength which knows no obstacles, and which never meets its match, --thisimpression is as fully conveyed in these figures, which are not over afoot in height, as if the animal were before us in its natural size. Yousee the vast limbs, crooked with power, bound about with huge ropes andplates of muscle, and clothed in shaggy depths of fur; the vast breadth ofthe head, with its thick, low ears, dull, small eyes, and long up-curvingsnout; the roll and lunge of the gait, like the motion of a vesselplunging forward before the wind; the rounded immensity of the trunk, andthe huge bluntness of the posteriors; and all these features are combinedwith such masterly unity of conception and plastic vigor, that thediminutive model insensibly grows mighty beneath your gaze, until yourealize the monster as if he stood stupendous and grim before you. In thefirst of the figures the bear has paused in his great stride to paw overand snuff at the horned head of a mountain sheep, half buried in the soil. The action of the right arm and shoulder, and the burly slouch of thearrested stride, are of themselves worth a gallery of pseudo-classicVenuses and Roman senators. The other bear is lolling back on hishaunches, with all four paws in the air, munching some grapes from a vinewhich he has torn from its support. The contrast between the savagecharacter of the beast and his absurdly peaceful employment gives a touchof terrific comedy to this design. After studying these figures, onecannot help thinking what a noble embellishment either of them would be, put in bronze, of colossal size, in the public grounds of one of our greatWestern cities. And inasmuch as the rich citizens of the West not onlyknow what a grizzly bear is, but are more fearless and independent, andtherefore often more correct in their artistic opinion than the somewhatsophisticated critics of the East, there is some cause for hoping thatthis thing may be brought to pass. 

Beside the grizzly stands the mountain sheep, or cimmaron, the mostdifficult to capture of all four-footed animals, whose gigantic curvedhorns are the best trophy of skill and enterprise that a hunter can bringhome with him. The sculptor has here caught him in one of his mostcharacteristic attitudes--just alighted from some dizzy leap on theheadlong slope of a rocky mountainside. On such a spot nothing but thecimmaron could retain its footing; yet there he stands, firm and secure asthe rock itself, his fore feet planted close together, the fore legs rigidand straight as the shaft of a lance, while the hind legs pose easily inattendance upon them. "The cimmaron always strikes plumb-centre, and henever makes a mistake, " is Mr. Kemeys's laconic comment; and we canrecognize the truth of the observation in this image. Perfectly at homeand comfortable on its almost impossible perch, the cimmaron curves itsgreat neck and turns its head upward, gazing aloft toward the heightwhence it has descended. "It's the golden eagle he hears, " says thesculptor; "they give him warning of danger. " It is a magnificent animal, amodel of tireless vigor in all its parts; a creature made to hurl itselfhead-foremost down appalling gulfs of space, and poise itself at thebottom as jauntily as if gravitation were but a bugbear of timidimaginations. I find myself unconsciously speaking about these plastermodels as if they were the living animals which they represent; but themore one studies Mr. Kemeys's works, the more instinct with redundant andbreathing life do they appear. 

It would be impossible even to catalogue the contents of this studio, thegreater part of which is as well worth describing as those examples whichhave already been touched upon; nor could a more graphic pen than mineconvey an adequate impression of their excellence. But there is here afigure of the 'coon, which, as it is the only one ever modelled, ought notto be passed over in silence. In appearance this animal is a curiousmedley of the fox, the wolf, and the bear, besides I-know-not-what (as thelady in "Punch" would say) that belongs to none of those beasts. As may beimagined, therefore, its right portrayal involves peculiar difficulties, and Mr. Kemeys's genius is nowhere better shown than in the manner inwhich these have been surmounted. Compact, plump, and active in figure, quick and subtle in its movements, the 'coon crouches in a flattenedposition along the limb of a tree, its broad, shallow head and pointedsnout a little lifted, as it gazes alertly outward and downward. Itsustains itself by the clutch of its slender-clawed toes on the branch, the fore legs being spread apart, while the left hind leg is withdrawninward, and enters smoothly into the contour of the furred side; thebushy, fox-like tail, ringed with dark and light bands, curving to theleft. Thus posed and modelled in high relief on a tile-shaped plaque, Mr. Kemeys's coon forms a most desirable ornament for some wise man'ssideboard or mantle-piece, where it may one day be pointed out as the onlysurviving representative of its species. 

The two most elaborate groups here have already attained some measure ofpublicity; the "Bison and Wolves" having been exhibited in the Paris Salonin 1878, and the "Deer and Panther" having been purchased in bronze by Mr. Winans during the sculptor's sojourn in England. Each group represents oneof those deadly combats between wild beasts which are among the mostterrific and at the same time most natural incidents of animal existence;and they are of especial interest as showing the artist's power ofconcentrated and graphic composition. A complicated story is told in boththese instances with a masterly economy of material and balance ofproportion; so that the spectator's eye takes in the whole subject at aglance, and yet finds inexhaustible interest in the examination ofdetails, all of which contribute to the central effect without distractingthe attention. A companion piece to the "Deer and Panther" shows the sameanimals as they have fallen, locked together in death after the combat isover. In the former group, the panther, in springing upon the deer, hadimpaled its neck on the deer's right antler, and had then swung roundunder the latter's body, burying the claws of its right fore foot in theruminant's throat. In order truthfully to represent the second stage ofthe encounter, therefore, it was necessary not merely to model a secondgroup, but to retain the elements and construction of the first groupunder totally changed conditions. This is a feat of such peculiardifficulty that I think few artists in any branch of art would venture toattempt it; nevertheless, Mr. Kemeys has accomplished it; and the more thetwo groups are studied in connection with each other, the more completewill his success be found to have been. The man who can do this may surelybe admitted a master, whose works are open only to affirmative criticism. For his works the most trying of all tests is their comparison with oneanother; and the result of such comparison is not merely to confirm theirmerit, but to illustrate and enhance it. 

For my own part, my introduction to Mr. Kemeys's studio was the opening tome of a new world, where it has been my good fortune to spend many days ofdelightful and enlightening study. How far the subject of this writing mayhave been already familiar to the readers of it, I have no means ofknowing; but I conceive it to be no less than my duty, as a countryman ofMr. Kemeys's and a lover of all that is true and original in art, to paythe tribute of my appreciation to what he has done. There is no danger ofhis getting more recognition than he deserves, and he is not one whomrecognition can injure. He reverences his art too highly to magnify hisown exposition of it; and when he reads what I have set down here, he willsmile and shake his head, and mutter that I have divined the perfect ideain the imperfect embodiment. Unless I greatly err, however, no one buthimself is competent to take that exception. The genuine artist is neversatisfied with his work; he perceives where it falls short of hisconception. But to others it will not be incomplete; for the achievementsof real art are always invested with an atmosphere and aroma--a spiritualquality perhaps--proceeding from the artist's mind and affecting that ofthe beholder. And thus it happens that the story or the poem, the pictureor the sculpture, receives even in its material form that last indefinablegrace, that magic light that never was on sea or land, which no pen orbrush or graving-tool has skill to seize. Matter can never rise to theheight of spirit; but spirit informs it when it has done its best, andennobles it with the charm that the artist sought and the world desired. 

*** Since the above was written, Mr. Kemeys has removed his studio toPerth Amboy, N. J.