THE RELATION OF LITERATURE TO LIFE

By Charles Dudley Warner

CONTENTS:

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH BY THOMAS R. LOUNSBURY. THE RELATION OF LITERATURE TO LIFE

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

The county of Franklin in Northwestern Massachusetts, if not rivaling incertain ways the adjoining Berkshire, has still a romantic beauty of itsown. In the former half of the nineteenth century its population waslargely given up to the pursuit of agriculture, though not underaltogether favorable conditions. Manufactures had not yet invaded theregion either to add to its wealth or to defile its streams. The villageswere small, the roads pretty generally wretched save in summer, and frommany of the fields the most abundant crop that could be gathered was thatof stones. 

The character of the people conformed in many ways to that of the soil. The houses which lined the opposite sides of the single street, of whichthe petty places largely consisted, as well as the dwellings which dottedthe country, were the homes of men who possessed in fullness many of thefeatures, good and bad, that characterized the Puritan stock to whichthey belonged. There was a good deal of religion in these ruralcommunities and occasionally some culture. Still, as a rule, it must beconfessed, there would be found in them much more of plain living than ofhigh thinking. Broad thinking could hardly be said to exist at all. Bythe dwellers in that region Easter had scarcely even been heard of;Christmas was tolerated after a fashion, but was nevertheless looked uponwith a good deal of suspicion as a Popish invention. In the beliefs ofthese men several sins not mentioned in the decalogue took really, ifunconsciously, precedence of those which chanced to be found in thatlist. Dancing was distinctly immoral; card-playing led directly togambling with all its attendant evils; theatre-going characterized theconduct of the more disreputable denizens of great cities. Fiction wasnot absolutely forbidden; but the most lenient regarded it as a greatwaste of time, and the boy who desired its solace on any large scale wasunder the frequent necessity of seeking the seclusion of the haymow. 

But however rigid and stern the beliefs of men might be, nature was therealways charming, not only in her summer beauty, but even in her wildestwinter moods. Narrow, too, as might be the views of the members of thesecommunities about the conduct of life, there was ever before the minds ofthe best of them an ideal of devotion to duty, an earnest all-pervadingmoral purpose which implanted the feeling that neither personal successnor pleasure of any sort could ever afford even remotely compensation forthe neglect of the least obligation which their situation imposed. It wasno misfortune for any one, who was later to be transported to a broaderhorizon and more genial air, to have struck the roots of his being in asoil where men felt the full sense of moral responsibility for everythingsaid or done, and where the conscience was almost as sensitive to thesuggestion of sin as to its actual accomplishment. 

It was amidst such surroundings that Charles Dudley Warner was born onthe 12th of September, 1829. His birthplace was the hill town ofPlainfield, over two thousand feet above the level of the sea. Hisfather, a farmer, was a man of cultivation, though not college-bred. Hedied when his eldest son had reached the age of five, leaving to hiswidow the care of two children. Three years longer the family continuedto remain on the farm. But however delightful the scenery of the countrymight be, its aesthetic attractions did not sufficiently counterbalanceits agricultural disadvantages. Furthermore, while the summers werebeautiful on this high table land, the winters were long and dreary inthe enforced solitude of a thinly settled region. In consequence, thefarm was sold after the death of the grandfather, and the home broken up. The mother with her two children, went to the neighboring village ofCharlemont on the banks of the Deerfield. There the elder son took up hisresidence with his guardian and relative, a man of position and influencein the community, who was the owner of a large farm. With him he stayeduntil he was twelve years old, enjoying all the pleasures and doing allthe miscellaneous jobs of the kind which fall to the lot of a boy broughtup in an agricultural community. 

The story of this particular period of his life was given by Warner in awork which was published about forty years later. It is the volumeentitled "Being a Boy. " Nowhere has there been drawn a truer or morevivid picture of rural New England. Nowhere else can there be found sucha portrayal of the sights and sounds, the pains and pleasures of life ona farm as seen from the point of view of a boy. Here we have them allgraphically represented: the daily "chores" that must be looked after;the driving of cows to and from the pasture; the clearing up of fieldswhere vegetation struggled with difficulty against the prevailing stones;the climbing of lofty trees and the swaying back and forth in the wind ontheir topmost boughs; the hunting of woodchucks; the nutting excursionsof November days, culminating in the glories of Thanksgiving; the romanceof school life, over which vacations, far from being welcomed withdelight, cast a gloom as involving extra work; the cold days of winterwith its deep or drifting snows, the mercury of the thermometer clingingwith fondness to zero, even when the sun was shining brilliantly; thelong chilling nights in which the frost carved fantastic structures onthe window-panes; the eager watching for the time when the sap wouldbegin to run in the sugar-maples; the evenings given up to reading, withthe inevitable inward discontent at being sent to bed too early; thelonging for the mild days of spring to come, when the heavy cowhide bootscould be discarded, and the boy could rejoice at last in the covering forhis feet which the Lord had provided. These and scores of similardescriptions fill up the picture of the life furnished here. It wasnature's own school wherein was to be gained the fullest intimacy withher spirit. While there was much which she could not teach, there wasalso much which she alone could teach. From his communion with her theboy learned lessons which the streets of crowded cities could never haveimparted. 

At the age of twelve this portion of his education came to an end. Thefamily then moved to Cazenovia in Madison county in Central New York, from which place Warner's mother had come, and where her immediaterelatives then resided. Until he went to college this was his home. Therehe attended a preparatory school under the direction of the MethodistEpiscopal Church, which was styled the Oneida Conference Seminary. It wasat this institution that he fitted mainly for college; for to college ithad been his father's dying wish that he should go, and the boy himselfdid not need the spur of this parting injunction. A college near his homewas the excellent one of Hamilton in the not distant town of Clinton inthe adjoining county of Oneida. Thither he repaired in 1848, and as hehad made the best use of his advantages, he was enabled to enter thesophomore class. He was graduated in 1851. 

But while fond of study he had all these years been doing somethingbesides studying. The means of the family were limited, and to secure theeducation he desired, not only was it necessary to husband the resourceshe possessed, but to increase them in every possible way. Warner had allthe American boy's willingness to undertake any occupation not in itselfdiscreditable. Hence to him fell a full share of those experiences whichhave diversified the early years of so many men who have achievedsuccess. He set up type in a printing office; he acted as an assistant ina bookstore; he served as clerk in a post-office. He was thus earlybrought into direct contact with persons of all classes and conditions oflife. 

The experience gave to his keenly observant mind an insight into thenature of men which was to be of special service to him in later years. Further, it imparted to him a familiarity with their opinions and hopesand aspirations which enabled him to understand and sympathize withfeelings in which he did not always share. 

During the years which immediately followed his departure from college, Warner led the somewhat desultory and apparently aimless life of manyAmerican graduates whose future depends upon their own exertions andwhose choice of a career is mainly determined by circumstances. From thevery earliest period of his life he had been fond of reading. It was aninherited taste. The few books he found in his childhood's home wouldhave been almost swept out of sight in the torrent, largely of trash, which pours now in a steady stream into the humblest household. But thebooks, though few, were of a high quality; and because they were few theywere read much, and their contents became an integral part of hisintellectual equipment. Furthermore, these works of the great masters, with which he became familiar, set for him a standard by which to testthe value of whatever he read, and saved him even in his earliest yearsfrom having his taste impaired and his judgment misled by the vogue ofmeretricious productions which every now and then gain popularity for thetime. They gave him also a distinct bent towards making literature hisprofession. But literature, however pleasant and occasionally profitableas an avocation, was not to be thought of as a vocation. Few there are atany period who have succeeded in finding it a substantial and permanentsupport; at that time and in this country such a prospect was practicallyhopeless for any one. It is no matter of surprise, therefore, thatWarner, though often deviating from the direct path, steadily gravitatedtoward the profession of law. 

Still, even in those early days his natural inclination manifesteditself. The Knickerbocker Magazine was then the chosen organ to which allyoung literary aspirants sent their productions. To it even in hiscollege days Warner contributed to some extent, though it would doubtlessbe possible now to gather out of this collection but few pieces which, lacking his own identification, could be assigned to him positively. At alater period he contributed articles to Putnam's Magazine, which beganits existence in 1853. Warner himself at one time, in that period ofstruggle and uncertainty, expected to become an editor of a monthly whichwas to be started in Detroit. But before the magazine was actually set onfoot the inability of the person who projected it to supply the necessarymeans for carrying it on prevented the failure which would inevitablyhave befallen a venture of that sort, undertaken at that time and in thatplace. Yet he showed in a way the native bent of his mind by bringing outtwo years after his graduation from college a volume of selections fromEnglish and American authors entitled "The Book of Eloquence. " This worka publisher many years afterward took advantage of his later reputationto reprint. 

This unsettled period of his life lasted for several years. He wasresident for a while in various places. Part of the time he seems to havebeen in Cazenovia; part of the time in New York; part of the time in theWest. One thing in particular there was which stood in the way of fixingdefinitely his choice of a profession. This was the precarious state ofhis health, far poorer then than it was in subsequent years. Warner, however, was never at any period of his life what is called robust. Itwas his exceeding temperance in all things which enabled him to ventureupon the assumption and succeed in the accomplishment of tasks which men, physically far stronger than he, would have shrunk from under-taking, even had they been possessed of the same abilities. But his condition, part of that time, was such that it led him to take a course of treatmentat the sanatorium in Clifton Springs. It became apparent, however, thatlife in the open air, for a while at least, was the one thing essential. Under the pressure of this necessity he secured a position as one of anengineering party engaged in the survey of a railway in Missouri. In thatoccupation he spent a large part of 1853 and 1854. He came back from thisexpedition restored to health. With that result accomplished, the duty ofsettling definitely upon what he was to do became more urgent. Amongother things he did, while living for a while with his uncle inBinghamton, N. Y. , he studied law in the office of Daniel S. Dickinson. 

In the Christmas season of 1854 he went with a friend on a visit toPhiladelphia and stayed at the house of Philip M. Price, a prominentcitizen of that place who was engaged, among other things, in theconveyancing of real estate. It will not be surprising to any one whoknew the charm of his society in later life to be told that he became atonce a favorite with the older man. The latter was advanced in years, hewas anxious to retire from active business. Acting under his advice, Warner was induced to come to Philadelphia in 1855 and join him, and toform subsequently a partnership in legal conveyancing with another youngman who had been employed in Mr. Price's office. Thus came into being thefirm of Barton and Warner. Their headquarters were first in Spring GardenStreet and later in Walnut Street. The future soon became sufficientlyassured to justify Warner in marriage, and in October, 1856, he waswedded to Susan Lee, daughter of William Elliott Lee of New York City. 

But though in a business allied to the law, Warner was not yet a lawyer. His occupation indeed was only in his eyes a temporary makeshift while hewas preparing himself for what was to be his real work in life. Therefore, while supporting himself by carrying on the business ofconveyancing, he attended the courses of study at the law department ofthe University of Pennsylvania, during the academic years of 1856-57 and1857-58. From that institution he received the degree of bachelor of lawin 1858--often misstated 1856--and was ready to begin the practice ofhis, profession. 

In those days every young man of ability and ambition was counseled to goWest and grow up with the country, and was not unfrequently disposed totake that course of his own accord. Warner felt the general impulse. Hehad contemplated entering, in fact had pretty definitely made up his mindto enter, into a law partnership with a friend in one of the smallerplaces in that region. But on a tour, somewhat of exploration, he stoppedat Chicago. There he met another friend, and after talking over thesituation with him he decided to take up his residence in that city. Soin 1858 the law-firm of Davenport and Warner came into being. It lasteduntil 1860. It was not exactly a favorable time for young men to enterupon the practice of this profession. The country was just beginning torecover from the depression which had followed the disastrous panic of1857; but confidence was as yet far from being restored. The new firm dida fairly good business; but while there was sufficient work to do, therewas but little money to pay for it. Still Warner would doubtless havecontinued in the profession had he not received an offer, the acceptanceof which determined his future and changed entirely his career. 

Hawley, now United States Senator from Connecticut, was Warner's seniorby a few years. He had preceded him as a student at the Oneida ConferenceSeminary and at Hamilton College. Practicing law in Hartford, he hadstarted in 1857, in conjunction with other leading citizens, a papercalled the Evening Press. It was devoted to the advocacy of theprinciples of the Republican party, which was at that time still in whatmay be called the formative state of its existence. This was a period inwhich for some years the dissolution had been going on of the two oldparties which had divided the country. Men were changing sides and werealigning themselves anew according to their views on questions which wereevery day assuming greater prominence in the minds of all. There wasreally but one great subject talked about or thought about. It split intoopposing sections the whole land over which was lowering the grim, thoughas yet unrecognizable, shadow of civil war. The Republican party had beenin existence but a very few years, but in that short time it hadattracted to its ranks the young and enthusiastic spirits of the North, just as to the other side were impelled the members of the same class inthe South. The intellectual contest which preceded the physical wasstirring the hearts of all men. Hawley, who was well aware of Warner'speculiar ability, was anxious to secure his co-operation and assistance. He urged him to come East and join him in the conduct of the newenterprise he had undertaken. 

Warner always considered that he derived great benefit from hiscomparatively limited study and practice of law; and that the little timehe had given up to it had been far from being misspent. But the openingwhich now presented itself introduced him to a field of activity muchmore suited to his talents and his tastes. He liked the study of lawbetter than its practice; for his early training had not been of a kindto reconcile him to standing up strongly for clients and causes that hehonestly believed to be in the wrong. Furthermore, his heart, as has beensaid, had always been in literature; and though journalism could hardlybe called much more than a half-sister, the one could provide the supportwhich the other could never promise with certainty. So in 1860 Warnerremoved to Hartford and joined his friend as associate editor of thenewspaper he had founded. The next year the war broke out. Hawley at onceentered the army and took part in the four years' struggle. His departureleft Warner in editorial charge of the paper, into the conduct of whichhe threw himself with all the earnestness and energy of his nature, andthe ability, both political and literary, displayed in its columns gaveit at once a high position which it never lost. 

At this point it may be well to give briefly the few further salientfacts of Warner's connection with journalism proper. In 1867 the ownersof the Press purchased the Courant, the well-known morning paper whichhad been founded more than a century before, and consolidated the Presswith it. Of this journal, Hawley and Warner, now in part proprietors, were the editorial writers. The former, who had been mustered out of thearmy with the rank of brevet Major-General, was soon diverted fromjournalism by other employments. He was elected Governor, he became amember of Congress, serving successively in both branches. The maineditorial responsibility for the conduct of the paper devolved inconsequence upon Warner, and to it he gave up for years nearly all histhought and attention. Once only during that early period was his laborinterrupted for any considerable length of time. In May, 1868, he set outon the first of his five trips across the Atlantic. He was absent nearlya year. Yet even then he cannot be said to have neglected his specialwork. Articles were sent weekly from the other side, describing what hesaw and experienced abroad. His active connection with the paper he nevergave up absolutely, nor did his interest in it ever cease. But after hebecame connected with the editorial staff of Harpers Magazine thecontributions he made to his journal were only occasional and what may becalled accidental. 

When 1870 came, forty years of Warner's life had gone by, and nearlytwenty years since he had left college. During the latter ten years ofthis period he had been a most effective and forcible leader-writer onpolitical and social questions, never more so than during the storm andstress of the Civil War. Outside of these topics he had devoted a greatdeal of attention to matters connected with literature and art. Hisvaried abilities were fully recognized by the readers of the journal heedited. 

But as yet there was little or no recognition outside. It is no easymatter to tell what are the influences, what the circumstances, whichdetermine the success of a particular writer or of a particular work. Hitherto Warner's repute was mainly confined to the inhabitants of aprovincial capital and its outlying and dependent towns. Howevercultivated the class to which his writings appealed--and as a class itwas distinctly cultivated--their number was necessarily not great. To thecountry at large what he did or what he was capable of doing was notknown at all. Some slight efforts he had occasionally put forth to securethe publication of matter he had prepared. He experienced the usual fateof authors who seek to introduce into the market literary wares of a newand better sort. His productions did not follow conventional lines. Publishers were ready to examine what he offered, and were just as readyto declare that these new wares were of a nature in which they were notinclined to deal. 

But during 1870 a series of humorous articles appeared in the HartfordCourant, detailing his experiences in the cultivation of a garden. Warnerhad become the owner of a small place then almost on the outskirts of thecity. With the dwelling-house went the possession of three acres of land. The opportunity thus presented itself of turning into a blessing theprimeval curse of tilling the soil, in this instance not with a hoe, butwith a pen. These articles detailing his experiences excited so muchamusement and so much admiration that a general desire was manifestedthat they should receive a more permanent life than that accorded toarticles appearing in the columns of newspapers, and should reach acircle larger than that to be found in the society of the Connecticutcapital. Warner's previous experience had not disposed him to try hisfortunes with the members of the publishing fraternity. In fact he didnot lay so much stress upon the articles as did his readers and friends. He always insisted that he had previously written other articles which inhis eyes certainly were just as good as they, if not better. 

It so chanced that about this time Henry Ward Beecher came to Hartford tovisit his sister, Harriet Beecher Stowe. Warner was invited to meet him. In the course of the conversation the articles just mentioned werereferred to by some one of those present. Beecher's curiosity was arousedand he expressed a desire to see them. To him they were accordingly sentfor perusal. No sooner had he run through them than he recognized in themthe presence of a rare and delicate humor which struck a distinctly newnote in American literature. It was something he felt which should not beconfined to the knowledge of any limited circle. He wrote at once to thepublisher James T. Fields, urging the production of these articles inbook form. Beecher's recommendation in those days was sufficient toinsure the acceptance of any book by any publisher. Mr. Fields agreed tobring out the work, provided the great preacher would prefix anintroduction. This he promised to do and did; though in place of thesomewhat more formal piece he was asked to write, he sent what he calledan introductory letter. 

The series of papers published under the title of "My Summer in a Garden"came out at the very end of 1870, with the date of 1871 on thetitle-page. The volume met with instantaneous success. It was the subjectof comment and conversation everywhere and passed rapidly through severaleditions. There was a general feeling that a new writer had suddenlyappeared, with a wit and wisdom peculiarly his own, precisely like whichnothing had previously existed in our literature. To the later editionsof the work was added an account of a cat which had been presented to theauthor by the Stowes. For that reason it was given from the Christianname of the husband of the novelist the title of Calvin. To this John wassometimes prefixed, as betokening from the purely animal point of view acertain resemblance to the imputed grimness and earnestness of the greatreformer. There was nothing in the least exaggerated in the account whichWarner gave of the character and conduct of this really remarkable memberof the feline race. No biography was ever truer; no appreciation was evermore sympathetic; and in the long line of cats none was ever more worthyto have his story truly and sympathetically told. All who had the fortuneto see Calvin in the flesh will recognize the accuracy with which hisportrait was drawn. All who read the account of him, though not havingseen him, will find it one of the most charming of descriptions. It hasthe fullest right to be termed a cat classic. 

With the publication of "My Summer in a Garden" Warner was launched upona career of authorship which lasted without cessation during the thirtyyears that remained of his life. It covered a wide field. His interestswere varied and his activity was unremitting. Literature, art, and thatvast diversity of topics which are loosely embraced under the generalname of social science--upon all these he had something fresh to say, andhe said it invariably with attractiveness and effect. It mattered littlewhat he set out to talk about, the talk was sure to be full both ofinstruction and entertainment. No sooner had the unequivocal success ofhis first published work brought his name before the public than he wasbesieged for contributions by conductors of periodicals of all sorts; andas he had ideas of his own upon all sorts of subjects, he was constantlyfurnishing matter of the most diverse kind for the most diverseaudiences. 

As a result, the volumes here gathered together represent but a limitedportion of the work he accomplished. All his life, indeed, Warner was notonly an omnivorous consumer of the writings of others, but a constantproducer. The manifestation of it took place in ways frequently known tobut few. It was not merely the fact that as an editor of a daily paper hewrote regularly articles on topics of current interest to which he neverexpected to pay any further attention; but after his name became widelyknown and his services were in request everywhere, he produced scores ofarticles, some long, some short, some signed, some unsigned, of which hemade no account whatever. One looking through the pages of contemporaryperiodical literature is apt at any moment to light upon pieces, andsometimes upon series of them, which the author never took the trouble tocollect. Many of those to which his name was not attached can no longerbe identified with any approach to certainty. About the preservation ofmuch that he did--and some of it belonged distinctly to his best and mostcharacteristic work--he was singularly careless, or it may be better tosay, singularly indifferent. 

If I may be permitted to indulge in the recital of a personal experience, there is one incident I recall which will bring out this trait in amarked manner. Once on a visit to him I accompanied him to the office ofhis paper. While waiting for him to discharge certain duties there, andemploying myself in looking over the exchanges, I chanced to light upon aleading article on the editorial page of one of the most prominent of theNew York dailies. It was devoted to the consideration of some recentutterances of a noted orator who, after the actual mission of his lifehad been accomplished, was employing the decline of it in theexploitation of every political and economic vagary which it had enteredinto the addled brains of men to evolve. The article struck me as one ofthe most brilliant and entertaining of its kind I had ever read; it wasnot long indeed before it appeared that the same view of it was taken bymany others throughout the country. The peculiar wit of the comment, thekeenness of the satire made so much of an impression upon me that Icalled Warner away from his work to look at it. At my request he hastilyglanced over it, but somewhat to my chagrin failed to evince anyenthusiasm about it. On our way home I again spoke of it and was a gooddeal nettled at the indifference towards it which he manifested. Itseemed to imply that my critical judgment was of little value; andhowever true might be his conclusion on that point, one does not enjoyhaving the fact thrust too forcibly upon the attention in the familiarityof conversation. Resenting therefore the tone he had assumed, I tookoccasion not only to reiterate my previously expressed opinion somewhatmore aggressively, but also went on to insinuate that he was himselfdistinctly lacking in any real appreciation of what was excellent. Hebore with me patiently for a while. "Well, sonny, " he said at last, "since you seem to take the matter so much to heart, I will tell you inconfidence that I wrote the piece myself. " I found that this was not onlytrue in the case just specified, but that while engaged in preparingarticles for his own paper he occasionally prepared them for otherjournals. No one besides himself and those immediately concerned, everknew anything about the matter. He never asserted any right to thesepieces, he never sought to collect them, though some of them exhibitedhis happiest vein of humor. Unclaimed, unidentified, they are swept intothat wallet of oblivion in which time stows the best as well as the worstof newspaper production. 

The next volume of Warner's writings that made its appearance wasentitled "Saunterings. " It was the first and, though good of its kind, was by no means the best of a class of productions in which he was toexhibit signal excellence. It will be observed that of the various workscomprised in this collective edition, no small number consist of what bya wide extension of the phrase may be termed books of travel. There aretwo or three which fall strictly under that designation. Most of them, however, can be more properly called records of personal experience andadventure in different places and regions, with the comments on life andcharacter to which they gave rise. 

Books of travel, if they are expected to live, are peculiarly hard towrite. If they come out at a period when curiosity about the regiondescribed is predominant, they are fairly certain, no matter howwretched, to achieve temporary success. But there is no kind of literaryproduction to which, by the very law of its being, it is more difficultto impart vitality. Paradoxical as it may seem, it is perfectly true thatthe greatest hinderance to their permanent interest is the informationthey furnish. The more full, specific and even accurate that is, the morerapidly does the work containing it lose its value. The fresher knowledgeconveyed by a new, and it may be much inferior book, crowds out ofcirculation those which have gone before. The changed or changingconditions in the region traversed renders the information previouslyfurnished out of date and even misleading. Hence the older works come intime to have only an antiquarian interest. Their pages are consulted onlyby that very limited number of persons who are anxious to learn what hasbeen and view with stolid indifference what actually is. Something ofthis transitory nature belongs to all sketches of travel. It is the onegreat reason why so very few of the countless number of such works, written, and sometimes written by men of highest ability, are hardlyheard of a few years after publication. Travels form a species ofliterary production in which great classics are exceedingly rare. 

From this fatal characteristic, threatening the enduring life of suchworks, most of Warner's writings of this sort were saved by the method ofprocedure he followed. He made it his main object not to give facts butimpressions. All details of exact information, everything calculated togratify the statistical mind or to quench the thirst of the seeker forpurely useful information, he was careful, whether consciously orunconsciously, to banish from those volumes of his in which he followedhis own bent and felt himself under no obligation to say anything butwhat he chose. Hence these books are mainly a record of views of men andmanners made by an acute observer on the spot, and put down at the momentwhen the impression created was most vivid, not deferred till familiarityhad dulled the sense of it or custom had caused it to be disregarded. Take as an illustration the little book entitled "Baddeck, " one of theslightest of his productions in this field. It purports to be and isnothing more than an account of a two weeks' tour made to a Cape Bretonlocality in company with the delightful companion to whom it wasdedicated. You take it up with the notion that you are going to acquireinformation about the whole country journeyed over, you are beguiled attimes with the fancy that you are getting it. In the best sense it may besaid that you do get it; for it is the general impression of the variousscenes through which the expedition leads the travelers that is left uponthe mind, not those accurate details of a single one of them which thelapse of a year might render inaccurate. It is to the credit of the worktherefore than one gains from it little specific knowledge. In its placeare the reflections both wise and witty upon life, upon the characters ofthe men that are met, upon the nature of the sights that are seen. 

This is what constitutes the enduring charm of the best of these picturesof travel which Warner produced. It is perhaps misleading to assert thatthey do not furnish a good deal of information. Still it is not the sortof information which the ordinary tourist gives and which the cultivatedreader resents and is careful not to remember. Their dominant note israther the quiet humor of a delightful story-teller, who cannot fail tosay something of interest because he has seen so much; and who out of hiswide and varied observation selects for recital certain sights he haswitnessed, certain experiences he has gone through, and so relates themthat the way the thing is told is even more interesting than the thingtold. The chief value of these works does not accordingly depend upon theaccidental, which passes. Inns change and become better or worse. Facilities for transportation increase or decrease. Scenery itself altersto some extent under the operation of agencies brought to bear upon itfor its own improvement or for the improvement of something else. Butman's nature remains a constant quantity. Traits seen here and now aresure to be met with somewhere else, and even in ages to come. Hence worksof this nature, embodying descriptions of men and manners, always retainsomething of the freshness which characterized them on the day of theirappearance. 

Of these productions in which the personal element predominates, andwhere the necessity of intruding information is not felt as a burden, those of Warner's works which deal with the Orient take the first rank. The two--"My Winter on the Nile" and "In the Levant"--constitute therecord of a visit to the East during the years 1875 and 1876. 

They would naturally have of themselves the most permanent value, inasmuch as the countries described have for most educated men an abidinginterest. The lifelike representation and graphic characterization whichWarner was apt to display in his traveling sketches were here seen attheir best, because nowhere else did he find the task of description morecongenial. Alike the gorgeousness and the squalor of the Orient appealedto his artistic sympathies. Egypt in particular had for him always aspecial fascination. Twice he visited it--at the time just mentioned andagain in the winter of 1881-82. He rejoiced in every effort made todispel the obscurity which hung over its early history. No one, outsideof the men most immediately concerned, took a deeper interest than he inthe work of the Egyptian Exploration Society, of which he was one of theAmerican vice-presidents. To promoting its success he gave no small shareof time and attention. Everything connected with either the past or thepresent of the country had for him an attraction. A civilization whichhad been flourishing for centuries, when the founder of Israel was awandering sheik on the Syrian plains or in the hill-country of Canaan;the slow unraveling of records of dynasties of forgotten kings; thememorials of Egypt's vanished greatness and the vision of her futureprosperity these and things similar to these made this country, sopeculiarly the gift of the Nile, of fascinating interest to the moderntraveler who saw the same sights which had met the eyes of Herodotusnearly twenty-five hundred years before. 

To the general public the volume which followed--"In the Levant"--wasperhaps of even deeper interest. At all events it dealt with scenes andmemories with which every reader, educated or uneducated, hadassociations. The region through which the founder of Christianitywandered, the places he visited, the words he said in them, the acts hedid, have never lost their hold over the hearts of men, not even duringthe periods when the precepts of Christianity have had the leastinfluence over the conduct of those who professed to it their allegiance. In the Levant, too, were seen the beginnings of commerce, of art, ofletters, in the forms in which the modern world best knows them. These, therefore, have always made the lands about the eastern Mediterranean anattraction to cultivated men and the interest of the subject accordinglyreinforced the skill of the writer. 

There are two or three of these works which can not be included in theclass just described. They were written for the specific purpose ofgiving exact information at the time. Of these the most noticeable arethe volumes entitled "South and West" and the account of SouthernCalifornia which goes under the name of "Our Italy. " They are the outcomeof journeys made expressly with the intent of investigating and reportingupon the actual situation and apparent prospects of the places andregions described. As they were written to serve an immediate purpose, much of the information contained in them tends to grow more and more outof date as time goes on; and though of value to the student of history, these volumes must necessarily become of steadily diminishing interest tothe ordinary reader. Yet it is to be said of them that while the pill ofuseful information is there, it has at least been sugar-coated. Nor canwe afford to lose sight of the fact that the widely-circulated articles, collected under the title of "South and West, " by the spirit pervadingthem as well as by the information they gave, had a marked effect inbringing the various sections of the country into a better understandingof one another, and in imparting to all a fuller sense of the communitythey possessed in profit and loss, in honor and dishonor. 

It is a somewhat singular fact that these sketches of travel led Warnerincidentally to enter into an entirely new field of literary exertion. This was novel-writing. Something of this nature he had attempted inconjunction with Mark Twain in the composition of "The Gilded Age, " whichappeared in 1873. The result, however, was unsatisfactory to both thecollaborators. Each had humor, but the humor of each was fundamentallydifferent. But the magazine with which Warner had become connected wasdesirous that he should prepare for it an account of some of theprincipal watering-places and summer resorts of the country. Each was tobe visited in turn and its salient features were to be described. It wasfinally suggested that this could be done most effectively by weavinginto a love story occurrences that might happen at a number of theseplaces which were made the subjects of description. The principalcharacters were to take their tours under the personal conduct of thenovelist. They were to go to the particular spots selected North andSouth, according to the varying seasons of the year. It was a somewhatnovel way of, visiting resorts of this nature; there are those to whom itwill seem altogether more agreeable than would be the visiting of them inperson. Hence appeared in 1886 the articles which were collected later inthe volume entitled "Their Pilgrimage. "

Warner executed the task which had been assigned him with his wontedskill. The completed work met with success--with so much success indeedthat he was led later to try his fortune further in the same field andbring out the trilogy of novels which go under the names respectively of"A Little Journey in the World, " "The Golden House, " and "That Fortune. "Each of these is complete in itself, each can be read by itself; but theeffect of each and of the whole series can be best secured by readingthem in succession. In the first it is the story of how a great fortunewas made in the stock market; in the second, how it was fraudulentlydiverted from the object for which it was intended; and in the third, howit was most beneficially and satisfactorily lost. The scene of the lastnovel was laid in part in Warner's early home in Charlemont. These workswere produced with considerable intervals of time between theirrespective appearances, the first coming out in 1889 and the third tenyears later. This detracted to some extent from the popularity which theywould have attained had the different members followed one anotherrapidly. Still, they met with distinct success, though it has always beena question whether this success was due so much to the story as to theshrewd observation and caustic wit which were brought to bear upon whatwas essentially a serious study of one side of American social life. 

The work with which Warner himself was least satisfied was his life ofCaptain John Smith, which came out in 18881. It was originally intendedto be one of a series of biographies of noted men, which were to give thefacts accurately but to treat them humorously. History and comedy, however, have never been blended successfully, though desperate attemptshave occasionally been made to achieve that result. Warner had not longbeen engaged in the task before he recognized its hopelessness. For itspreparation it required a special study of the man and the period, andthe more time he spent upon the preliminary work, the more the humorouselement tended to recede. Thus acted on by two impulses, one of a lightand one of a grave nature, he moved for a while in a sort of diagonalbetween the two to nowhere in particular; but finally ended in treatingthe subject seriously. 

In giving himself up to a biography in which he had no special interest, Warner felt conscious that he could not interest others. His forebodingswere realized. The work, though made from a careful study of originalsources, did not please him, nor did it attract the public. The attemptwas all the more unfortunate because the time and toil he spent upon itdiverted him from carrying out a scheme which had then taken fullpossession of his thoughts. This was the production of a series of essaysto be entitled "Conversations on Horseback. " Had it been worked up as hesketched it in his mind, it would have been the outdoor counterpart ofhis "Backlog Studies. " Though in a measure based upon a horseback ridewhich he took in Pennsylvania in 1880, the incidents of travel as heoutlined its intended treatment would have barely furnished the slightestof backgrounds. Captain John Smith, however, interfered with a projectspecially suited to his abilities and congenial to his tastes. That hedid so possibly led the author of his life to exhibit a somewhat hostileattitude towards his hero. When the biography was finished, otherengagements were pressing upon his attention. The opportunity of takingup and completing the projected series of essays never presented itself, though the subject lay in his mind for a long time and he himselfbelieved that it would have turned out one of the best pieces of work heever did. 

It was unfortunate. For to me--and very likely to many others if not tomost--Warner's strength lay above all in essay-writing. What heaccomplished in this line was almost invariably pervaded by that genialgrace which makes work of the kind attractive, and he exhibitedeverywhere in it the delicate but sure touch which preserves the justmean between saying too much and too little. The essay was in his nature, and his occupation as a journalist had developed the tendency towardsthis form of literary activity, as well as skill in its manipulation. Whether he wrote sketches of travel, or whether he wrote fiction, thescene depicted was from the point of view of the essayist rather thanfrom that of the tourist or of the novelist. It is this characteristicwhich gives to his work in the former field its enduring interest. Againin his novels, it was not so much the story that was in his thoughts asthe opportunity the varying scenes afforded for amusing observations uponmanners, for comments upon life, sometimes good-natured, sometimessevere, but always entertaining, and above all, for serious study of thesocial problems which present themselves on every side for examination. This is distinctly the province of the essayist, and in it Warner alwaysdisplayed his fullest strength. 

We have seen that his first purely humorous publication of this naturewas the one which made him known to the general public. It was speedilyfollowed, however, by one of a somewhat graver character, which became atthe time and has since remained a special favorite of cultivated readers. This is the volume entitled "Backlog Studies. " The attractiveness of thiswork is as much due to the suggestive social and literary discussionswith which it abounds as to the delicate and refined humor with which theideas are expressed. Something of the same characteristics was displayedin the two little volumes of short pieces dealing with social topics, which came out later under the respective titles of "As We Were Saying, "and "As We Go. " But there was a deeper and more serious side of hisnature which found utterance in several of his essays, particularly insome which were given in the form of addresses delivered at variousinstitutions of learning. They exhibit the charm which belongs to all hiswritings; but his feelings were too profoundly interested in the subjectsconsidered to allow him to give more than occasional play to his humor. Essays contained in such a volume, for instance, as "The Relation ofLiterature to Life" will not appeal to him whose main object in readingis amusement. Into them Warner put his deepest and most earnestconvictions. The subject from which the book just mentioned derived itstitle lay near to his heart. No one felt more strongly than he theimportance of art of all kinds, but especially of literary art, for theuplifting of a nation. No one saw more distinctly the absolute necessityof its fullest recognition in a moneymaking age and in a money-makingland, if the spread of the dry rot of moral deterioration were to beprevented. The ampler horizon it presented, the loftier ideals it set up, the counteracting agency it supplied to the sordidness of motive and actwhich, left unchecked, was certain to overwhelm the national spirit--allthese were enforced by him again and again with clearness andeffectiveness. His essays of this kind will never be popular in the sensein which are his other writings. But no thoughtful man will rise up fromreading them without having gained a vivid conception of the part whichliterature plays in the life of even the humblest, and without a deeperconviction of its necessity to any healthy development of the characterof a people. 

During the early part of his purely literary career a large proportion ofWarner's collected writings, which then appeared, were first published inthe Atlantic Monthly. But about fourteen years before his death he becameclosely connected with Harper's Magazine. From May, 1886, to March, 1892, he conducted the Editor's Drawer of that periodical. The month followingthis last date he succeeded William Dean Howells as the contributor ofthe Editor's Study. This position he held until July, 1898. The scope ofthis department was largely expanded after the death of George WilliamCurtis in the summer of 1892, and the consequent discontinuance of theEditor's Easy Chair. Comments upon other topics than those to which hisdepartment was originally devoted, especially upon social questions, weremade a distinct feature. His editorial connection with the magazinenaturally led to his contributing to it numerous articles besides thosewhich were demanded by the requirements of the position he held. Nearlyall these, as well as those which appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, areindicated in the bibliographical notes prefixed to the separate works. 

There were, however, other literary enterprises in which he wasconcerned; for the calls upon him were numerous, his own appetite forwork was insatiable, and his activity was indefatigable. In 1881 heassumed the editorship of the American Men of Letters series. This heopened with his own biography of Washington Irving, the resemblancebetween whom and himself has been made the subject of frequent remark. Later he became the editor-in-chief of the thirty odd volumes which makeup the collection entitled "The World's Best Literature. " To this hecontributed several articles of his own and carefully allotted andsupervised the preparation of a large number of others. The labor he putupon the editing of this collection occupied him a great deal of the timefrom 1895 to 1898. 

But literature, though in it lay his chief interest, was but one of thesubjects which employed his many-sided activity. He was constantly calledupon for the discharge of civic duties. The confidence felt by hisfellow-citizens in his judgment and taste was almost equal to theabsolute trust reposed in his integrity. The man who establishes areputation for the possession of these qualities can never escape frombearing the burdens which a good character always imposes. If any work ofart was ordered by the state, Warner was fairly certain to be chosen amember of the commission selected to decide upon the person who was to doit and upon the way it was to be done. By his fellow-townsmen he was madea member of the Park Commission. Such were some of the duties imposed;there were others voluntarily undertaken. During the latter years of hislife he became increasingly interested in social questions, some of whichpartook of a semi-political character. One of the subjects which engagedhis attention was the best method to be adopted for elevating thecharacter and conduct of the negro population of the country. Herecognized the gravity of the problem with which the nation had to dealand the difficulties attending its solution. One essay on the subject wasprepared for the meeting held at Washington in May, 1900, of the AmericanSocial Science Association, of which he was president. He was not able tobe there in person. The disease which was ultimately to strike him downhad already made its preliminary attack. His address was accordingly readfor him. It was a subject of special regret that he could not be presentto set forth more fully his views; for the debate, which followed thepresentation of his paper, was by no means confined to the meeting, butextended to the press of the whole country. Whether the conclusions hereached were right or wrong, they were in no case adopted hastily norindeed without the fullest consideration. 

But a more special interest of his lay in prison reform. The subject hadengaged his attention long before he published anything in connectionwith it. Later one of the earliest articles he wrote for Harper'sMagazine was devoted to it. It was in his thoughts just before his death. He was a member of the Connecticut commission on prisons, of the NationalPrison Association, and a vice-president of the New York Association forPrison Reform. A strong advocate of the doctrine of the indeterminatesentence, he had little patience with many of the judicial outgivings onthat subject. To him they seemed opinions inherited, not formed, and inmost cases were nothing more than the result of prejudice working uponignorance. This particular question was one which he purposed to make thesubject of his address as president of the Social Science Association, atits annual meeting in 1901. He never lived to complete what he had inmind. 

During his later years the rigor of the Northern winter had been toosevere for Warner's health. He had accordingly found it advisable tospend as much of this season as he could in warmer regions. He visited atvarious times parts of the South, Mexico, and California. He passed thewinter of 1892-93 at Florence; but he found the air of the valley of theArno no perceptible improvement upon that of the valley of theConnecticut. In truth, neither disease nor death entertains a prejudiceagainst any particular locality. This fact he was to learn by personalexperience. In the spring of 1899, while at New Orleans, he was strickenby pneumonia which nearly brought him to the grave. He recovered, but itis probable that the strength of his system was permanently impaired, andwith it his power of resisting disease. Still his condition was not suchas to prevent him from going on with various projects he had beencontemplating or from forming new ones. The first distinct warning of theapproaching end was the facial paralysis which suddenly attacked him inApril, 1900, while on a visit to Norfolk, Va. Yet even from that heseemed to be apparently on the full road to recovery during the followingsummer. 

It was in the second week of October, 1900, that Warner paid me a visitof two or three days. He was purposing to spend the winter in SouthernCalifornia, coming back to the East in ample time to attend the annualmeeting of the Social Science Association. His thoughts were even thenbusy with the subject of the address which, as president, he was todeliver on that occasion. It seemed to me that I had never seen him whenhis mind was more active or more vigorous. I was not only struck by theclearness of his views--some of which were distinctly novel, at least tome--but by the felicity and effectiveness with which they were put. 

Never, too, had I been more impressed with the suavity, theagreeableness, the general charm of his manner. He had determined duringthe coming winter to learn to ride the wheel, and we then and thereplanned to take a bicycle trip during the following summer, as we hadpreviously made excursions together on horseback. When we parted, it waswith the agreement that we should meet the next spring in Washington andfix definitely upon the time and region of our intended ride. It was on aSaturday morning that I bade him good-by, apparently in the best ofhealth and spirits. It was on the evening of the following Saturday--October 20th--that the condensed, passionless, relentless message whichthe telegraph transmits, informed me that he had died that afternoon. 

That very day he had lunched at a friend's, where were gathered severalof his special associates who had chanced to come together at the samehouse, and then had gone to the office of the Hartford Courant. There wasnot the slightest indication apparent of the end that was so near. Afterthe company broke up, he started out to pay a visit to one of the cityparks, of which he was a commissioner. On his way thither, feeling acertain faintness, he turned aside into a small house whose occupants heknew, and asked to sit down for a brief rest, and then, as the faintnessincreased, to lie undisturbed on the lounge for a few minutes. The fewminutes passed, and with them his life. In the strictest sense of thewords, he had fallen asleep. From one point of view it was an ideal wayto die. To the individual, death coming so gently, so suddenly, is shornof all its terrors. It is only those who live to remember and to lamentthat the suffering comes which has been spared the victim. Even to them, however, is the consolation that though they may have been fully preparedfor the coming of the inevitable event, it would have been none the lesspainful when it actually came. 

Warner as a writer we all know. The various and varying opinionsentertained about the quality and value of his work do not require noticehere. Future times will assign him his exact position in the roll ofAmerican authors, and we need not trouble ourselves to anticipate, as weshall certainly not be able to influence, its verdict. But to only acomparatively few of those who knew him as a writer was it given to knowhim as a man; to still fewer to know him in that familiarity of intimacywhich reveals all that is fine or ignoble in a man's personality. Scantyis the number of those who will come out of that severest of ordeals sosuccessfully as he. The same conclusion would be reached, whether we wereto consider him in his private relations or in his career as a man ofletters. Among the irritable race of authors no one was freer from pettyenvy or jealousy. During many years of close intercourse, in which heconstantly gave utterance to his views both of men and things withabsolute unreserve, I recall no disparaging opinion ever expressed of anywriter with whom he had been compared either for praise or blame. He hadunquestionably definite and decided opinions. He would point out thatsuch or such a work was above or below its author's ordinary level; butthere was never any ill-nature in his comment, no depreciation fordepreciation's sake. Never in truth was any one more loyal to hisfriends. If his literary conscience would not permit him to say anythingin favor of something which they had done, he usually contented himselfwith saying nothing. Whatever failing there was on his critical side wasdue to this somewhat uncritical attitude; for it is from his particularfriends that the writer is apt to get the most dispassionateconsideration and sometimes the coldest commendation. It was a part ofWarner's generous recognition of others that he was in all sinceritydisposed to attribute to those he admired and to whom he was attached anability of which some of them at least were much inclined to doubt theirown possession. 

Were I indeed compelled to select any one word which would best give theimpression, both social and literary, of Warner's personality, I shouldbe disposed to designate it as urbanity. That seems to indicate best theone trait which most distinguished him either in conversation or writing. Whatever it was, it was innate, not assumed. It was the genuine outcomeof the kindliness and broad-mindedness of his nature and led him tosympathize with men of all positions in life and of all kinds of ability. It manifested itself in his attitude towards every one with whom he camein contact. It led him to treat with fullest consideration all who werein the least degree under his direction, and converted in consequence thetoil of subordinates into a pleasure. It impelled him to do unsoughteverything which lay in his power for the success of those in whom hefelt interest. Many a young writer will recall his words of encouragementat some period in his own career when the quiet appreciation of one meantmore to him than did later the loud applause of many. As it was inpublic, so it was in private life. The generosity of his spirit, thegeniality and high-bred courtesy of his manner, rendered a visit to hishome as much a social delight as his wide knowledge of literature and hisappreciation of what was best in it made it an intellectualentertainment. 

THOMAS R. LOUNSBURY. 

THE RELATION OF LITERATURE TO LIFEPRELIMINARY

This paper was prepared and delivered at several of our universities asintroductory to a course of five lectures which insisted on the value ofliterature in common life--some hearers thought with an exaggeratedemphasis--and attempted to maintain the thesis that all genuine, enduringliterature is the outcome of the time that produces it, is responsive tothe general sentiment of its time; that this close relation to human lifeinsures its welcome ever after as a true representation of human nature;and that consequently the most remunerative method of studying aliterature is to study the people for whom it was produced. Illustrationsof this were drawn from the Greek, the French, and the Englishliteratures. This study always throws a flood of light upon the meaningof the text of an old author, the same light that the readerunconsciously has upon contemporary pages dealing with the life withwhich he is familiar. The reader can test this by taking up hisShakespeare after a thorough investigation of the customs, manners, andpopular life of the Elizabethan period. Of course the converse is truethat good literature is an open door into the life and mode of thought ofthe time and place where it originated. 

THE RELATION OF LITERATURE TO LIFE

I hade a vision once--you may all have had a like one--of the stream oftime flowing through a limitless land. Along its banks sprang up insuccession the generations of man. They did not move with the stream-theylived their lives and sank away; and always below them new generationsappeared, to play their brief parts in what is called history--thesequence of human actions. The stream flowed on, opening for itselfforever a way through the land. I saw that these successive dwellers onthe stream were busy in constructing and setting afloat vessels ofvarious size and form and rig--arks, galleys, galleons, sloops, brigs, boats propelled by oars, by sails, by steam. I saw the anxiety with whicheach builder launched his venture, and watched its performance andprogress. The anxiety was to invent and launch something that shouldfloat on to the generations to come, and carry the name of the builderand the fame of his generation. It was almost pathetic, these punyefforts, because faith always sprang afresh in the success of each newventure. Many of the vessels could scarcely be said to be launched atall; they sank like lead, close to the shore. Others floated out for atime, and then, struck by a flaw in the wind, heeled over anddisappeared. Some, not well put together, broke into fragments in thebufleting of the waves. Others danced on the flood, taking the sun ontheir sails, and went away with good promise of a long voyage. But only afew floated for any length of time, and still fewer were ever seen by thegeneration succeeding that which launched them. The shores of the streamwere strewn with wrecks; there lay bleaching in the sand the ribs of manya once gallant craft. 

Innumerable were the devices of the builders to keep their inventionsafloat. Some paid great attention to the form of the hull, others to thekind of cargo and the loading of it, while others--and these seemed themajority--trusted more to some new sort of sail, or new fashion ofrudder, or new application of propelling power. And it was wonderful tosee what these new ingenuities did for a time, and how each generationwas deceived into the belief that its products would sail on forever. Butone fate practically came to the most of them. They were too heavy, theywere too light, they were built of old material, and they went to thebottom, they went ashore, they broke up and floated in fragments. Andespecially did the crafts built in imitation of something that hadfloated down from a previous generation come to quick disaster. I sawonly here and there a vessel, beaten by weather and blackened by time--so old, perhaps, that the name of the maker was no longer legible; orsome fragments of antique wood that had evidently come from far up thestream. When such a vessel appeared there was sure to arise great disputeabout it, and from time to time expeditions were organized to ascend theriver and discover the place and circumstances of its origin. Along thebanks, at intervals, whole fleets of boats and fragments had gone ashore, and were piled up in bays, like the driftwood of a subsided freshet. Efforts were made to dislodge these from time to time and set them afloatagain, newly christened, with fresh paint and sails, as if they stood abetter chance of the voyage than any new ones. Indeed, I saw that a largepart of the commerce of this river was, in fact, the old hulks andstranded wrecks that each generation had set afloat again. As I saw it inthis foolish vision, how pathetic this labor was from generation togeneration; so many vessels launched; so few making a voyage even for alifetime; so many builders confident of immortality; so many livesoutlasting this coveted reputation! And still the generations, each withtouching hopefulness, busied themselves with this child's play on thebanks of the stream; and still the river flowed on, whelming and wreckingthe most of that so confidently committed to it, and bearing only hereand there, on its swift, wide tide, a ship, a boat, a shingle. 

These hosts of men whom I saw thus occupied since history began wereauthors; these vessels were books; these heaps of refuse in the bays weregreat libraries. The allegory admits of any amount of ingeniousparallelism. It is nevertheless misleading; it is the illusion of an idlefancy. I have introduced it because it expresses, with some whimsicalexaggeration--not much more than that of "The Vision of Mirza"--thepopular notion about literature and its relation to human life. In thepopular conception, literature is as much a thing apart from life asthese boats on the stream of time were from the existence, the struggle, the decay of the generations along the shore. I say in the popularconception, for literature is wholly different from this, not only in itseffect upon individual lives, but upon the procession of lives upon thisearth; it is not only an integral part of all of them, but, with itssister arts, it is the one unceasing continuity in history. Literatureand art are not only the records and monuments made by the successiveraces of men, not only the local expressions of thought and emotion, butthey are, to change the figure, the streams that flow on, enduring, amidthe passing show of men, reviving, transforming, ennobling the fleetinggenerations. Without this continuity of thought and emotion, historywould present us only a succession of meaningless experiments. Theexperiments fail, the experiments succeed--at any rate, they end--andwhat remains for transmission, for the sustenance of succeeding peoples?Nothing but the thought and emotion evolved and expressed. It is truethat every era, each generation, seems to have its peculiar work to do;it is to subdue the intractable earth, to repel or to civilize thebarbarians, to settle society in order, to build cities, to amass wealthin centres, to make deserts bloom, to construct edifices such as werenever made before, to bring all men within speaking distance of eachother--lucky if they have anything to say when that is accomplished--toextend the information of the few among the many, or to multiply themeans of easy and luxurious living. Age after age the world labors forthese things with the busy absorption of a colony of ants in its castleof sand. And we must confess that the process, such, for instance, asthat now going on here--this onset of many peoples, which is transformingthe continent of America--is a spectacle to excite the imagination in thehighest degree. If there were any poet capable of putting into an epicthe spirit of this achievement, what an epic would be his! Can it be thatthere is anything of more consequence in life than the great business inhand, which absorbs the vitality and genius of this age? Surely, we say, it is better to go by steam than to go afoot, because we reach ourdestination sooner--getting there quickly being a supreme object. It iswell to force the soil to yield a hundred-fold, to congregate men inmasses so that all their energies shall be taxed to bring food tothemselves, to stimulate industries, drag coal and metal from the bowelsof the earth, cover its surface with rails for swift-running carriages, to build ever larger palaces, warehouses, ships. This giganticachievement strikes the imagination. 

If the world in which you live happens to be the world of books, if yourpursuit is to know what has been done and said in the world, to the endthat your own conception of the value of life may be enlarged, and thatbetter things may be done and said hereafter, this world and this pursuitassume supreme importance in your mind. But you can in a moment placeyourself in relations--you have not to go far, perhaps only to speak toyour next neighbor--where the very existence of your world is scarcelyrecognized. All that has seemed to you of supreme importance is ignored. You have entered a world that is called practical, where the things thatwe have been speaking of are done; you have interest in it and sympathywith it, because your scheme of life embraces the development of ideasinto actions; but these men of realities have only the smallestconception of the world that seems to you of the highest importance; and, further, they have no idea that they owe anything to it, that it has everinfluenced their lives or can add anything to them. And it may chancethat you have, for the moment, a sense of insignificance in the smallpart you are playing in the drama going forward. Go out of your library, out of the small circle of people who talk of books, who are engaged inresearch, whose liveliest interest is in the progress of ideas, in theexpression of thought and emotion that is in literature; go out of thisatmosphere into a region where it does not exist, it may be into a placegiven up to commerce and exchange, or to manufacturing, or to thedevelopment of certain other industries, such as mining, or the pursuitof office--which is sometimes called politics. You will speedily be awarehow completely apart from human life literature is held to be, how fewpeople regard it seriously as a necessary element in life, as anythingmore than an amusement or a vexation. I have in mind a mountain district, stripped, scarred, and blackened by the ruthless lumbermen, ravished ofits forest wealth; divested of its beauty, which has recently become thefield of vast coal-mining operations. Remote from communication, it wasyesterday an exhausted, wounded, deserted country. Today audaciousrailways are entering it, crawling up its mountain slopes, rounding itsdizzy precipices, spanning its valleys on iron cobwebs, piercing itshills with tunnels. Drifts are opened in its coal seams, to which irontracks shoot away from the main line; in the woods is seen the gleam ofthe engineer's level, is heard the rattle of heavily-laden wagons on thenewly-made roads; tents are pitched, uncouth shanties have sprung up, great stables, boarding-houses, stores, workshops; the miner, theblacksmith, the mason, the carpenter have arrived; households have beenset up in temporary barracks, children are already there who need aschool, women who must have a church and society; the stagnation hasgiven place to excitement, money has flowed in, and everywhere are thehum of industry and the swish of the goad of American life. On thishillside, which in June was covered with oaks, is already in October atown; the stately trees have been felled; streets are laid out and gradedand named; there are a hundred dwellings, there are a store, apost-office, an inn; the telegraph has reached it, and the telephone andthe electric light; in a few weeks more it will be in size a city, withthousands of people--a town made out of hand by drawing men and womenfrom other towns, civilized men and women, who have voluntarily putthemselves in a position where they must be civilized over again. 

This is a marvelous exhibition of what energy and capital can do. Youacknowledge as much to the creators of it. You remember that not far backin history such a transformation as this could not have been wrought in ahundred years. This is really life, this is doing something in the world, and in the presence of it you can see why the creators of it regard yourworld, which seemed to you so important, the world whose business is theevolution and expression of thought and emotion, as insignificant. Hereis a material addition to the business and wealth of the race, hereemployment for men who need it, here is industry replacing stagnation, here is the pleasure of overcoming difficulties and conquering obstacles. Why encounter these difficulties? In order that more coal may be procuredto operate more railway trains at higher speed, to supply more factories, to add to the industrial stir of modern life. The men who projected andare pushing on this enterprise, with an executive ability that wouldmaintain and manoeuvre an army in a campaign, are not, however, consciously philanthropists, moved by the charitable purpose of givingemployment to men, or finding satisfaction in making two blades of grassgrow where one grew before. They enjoy no doubt the sense of power inbringing things to pass, the feeling of leadership and the consequencederived from its recognition; but they embark in this enterprise in orderthat they may have the position and the luxury that increased wealth willbring, the object being, in most cases, simply materialadvantages--sumptuous houses, furnished with all the luxuries which arethe signs of wealth, including, of course, libraries and pictures andstatuary and curiosities, the most showy equipages and troops ofservants; the object being that their wives shall dress magnificently, glitter in diamonds and velvets, and never need to put their feet to theground; that they may command the best stalls in the church, the bestpews in the theatre, the choicest rooms in the inn, and--a considerationthat Plato does not mention, because his world was not our world--thatthey may impress and reduce to obsequious deference the hotel clerk. 

This life--for this enterprise and its objects are types of aconsiderable portion of life--is not without its ideal, its hero, itshighest expression, its consummate flower. It is expressed in a wordwhich I use without any sense of its personality, as the French use theword Barnum--for our crude young nation has the distinction of adding averb to the French language, the verb to barnum--it is expressed in thewell-known name Croesus. This is a standard--impossible to be reachedperhaps, but a standard. If one may say so, the country is sown withseeds of Croesus, and the crop is forward and promising. The interest tous now in the observation of this phase of modern life is not in theleast for purposes of satire or of reform. We are inquiring how whollythis conception of life is divorced from the desire to learn what hasbeen done and said to the end that better things may be done and saidhereafter, in order that we may understand the popular conception of theinsignificant value of literature in human affairs. But it is not asidefrom our subject, rather right in its path, to take heed of what thephilosophers say of the effect in other respects of the pursuit ofwealth. 

One cause of the decay of the power of defense in a state, says theAthenian Stranger in Plato's Laws--one cause is the love of wealth, whichwholly absorbs men and never for a moment allows them to think ofanything but their private possessions; on this the soul of every citizenhangs suspended, and can attend to nothing but his daily gain; mankindare ready to learn any branch of knowledge and to follow any pursuitwhich tends to this end, and they laugh at any other; that is the reasonwhy a city will not be in earnest about war or any other good andhonorable pursuit. 

The accumulation of gold in the treasury of private individuals, saysSocrates, in the Republic, is the ruin of democracy. They invent illegalmodes of expenditure; and what do they or their wives care about the law?

"And then one, seeing another's display, proposes to rival him, and thusthe whole body of citizens acquires a similar character. 

"After that they get on in a trade, and the more they think of making afortune, the less they think of virtue; for when riches and virtue areplaced together in the balance, the one always rises as the other falls. 

"And in proportion as riches and rich men are honored in the state, virtue and the virtuous are dishonored. 

"And what is honored is cultivated, and that which has no honor isneglected. 

"And so at last, instead of loving contention and glory, men becomelovers of trade and money, and they honor and reverence the rich man andmake a ruler of him, and dishonor the poor man. 

"They do so. "

The object of a reasonable statesman (it is Plato who is really speakingin the Laws) is not that the state should be as great and rich aspossible, should possess gold and silver, and have the greatest empire bysea and land. 

The citizen must, indeed, be happy and good, and the legislator will seekto make him so; but very rich and very good at the same time he cannotbe; not at least in the sense in which many speak of riches. For theydescribe by the term "rich" the few who have the most valuablepossessions, though the owner of them be a rogue. And if this is true, Ican never assent to the doctrine that the rich man will be happy: he mustbe good as well as rich. And good in a high degree and rich in a highdegree at the same time he cannot be. Some one will ask, Why not? And weshall answer, Because acquisitions which come from sources which are justand unjust indifferently are more than double those which come from justsources only; and the sums which are expended neither honorably nordisgracefully are only half as great as those which are expendedhonorably and on honorable purposes. Thus if one acquires double andspends half, the other, who is in the opposite case and is a good man, cannot possibly be wealthier than he. The first (I am speaking of thesaver, and not of the spender) is not always bad; he may indeed in somecases be utterly bad, but as I was saying, a good man he never is. For hewho receives money unjustly as well as justly, and spends neither justlynor unjustly, will be a rich man if he be also thrifty. On the otherhand, the utterly bad man is generally profligate, and therefore poor;while he who spends on noble objects, and acquires wealth by just meansonly, can hardly be remarkable for riches any more than he can be verypoor. The argument, then, is right in declaring that the very rich arenot good, and if they are not good they are not happy. 

And the conclusion of Plato is that we ought not to pursue any occupationto the neglect of that for which riches exist--"I mean, " he says, "souland body, which without gymnastics and without education will never beworth anything; and therefore, as we have said not once but many times, the care of riches should have the last place in our thoughts. "

Men cannot be happy unless they are good, and they cannot be good unlessthe care of the soul occupies the first place in their thoughts. That isthe first interest of man; the interest in the body is midway; and lastof all, when rightly regarded, is the interest about money. 

The majority of mankind reverses this order of interests, and thereforeit sets literature to one side as of no practical account in human life. More than this, it not only drops it out of mind, but it has noconception of its influence and power in the very affairs from which itseems to be excluded. It is my purpose to show not only the closerelation of literature to ordinary life, but its eminent position inlife, and its saving power in lives which do not suspect its influence orvalue. Just as it is virtue that saves the state, if it be saved, although the majority do not recognize it and attribute the salvation ofthe state to energy, and to obedience to the laws of political economy, and to discoveries in science, and to financial contrivances; so it isthat in the life of generations of men, considered from an ethical andnot from a religious point of view, the most potent and lasting influencefor a civilization that is worth anything, a civilization that does notby its own nature work its decay, is that which I call literature. It istime to define what we mean by literature. We may arrive at the meaningby the definition of exclusion. We do not mean all books, but some books;not all that is written and published, but only a small part of it. We donot mean books of law, of theology, of politics, of science, of medicine, and not necessarily books of travel, or adventure, or biography, orfiction even. These may all be ephemeral in their nature. The termbelles-lettres does not fully express it, for it is too narrow. In booksof law, theology, politics, medicine, science, travel, adventure, biography, philosophy, and fiction there may be passages that possess, orthe whole contents may possess, that quality which comes within ourmeaning of literature. It must have in it something of the enduring andthe universal. When we use the term art, we do not mean the arts; we areindicating a quality that may be in any of the arts. In art andliterature we require not only an expression of the facts in nature andin human life, but of feeling, thought, emotion. There must be an appealto the universal in the race. It is, for example, impossible for aChristian today to understand what the religious system of the Egyptiansof three thousand years ago was to the Egyptian mind, or to grasp theidea conveyed to a Chinaman's thought in the phrase, "the worship of theprinciple of heaven"; but the Christian of today comprehends perfectlythe letters of an Egyptian scribe in the time of Thotmes III. , whodescribed the comical miseries of his campaign with as clear an appeal touniversal human nature as Horace used in his 'Iter Brundusium;' and themaxims of Confucius are as comprehensible as the bitter-sweetness ofThomas a Kempis. De Quincey distinguishes between the literature ofknowledge and the literature of power. The definition is not exact; butwe may say that the one is a statement of what is known, the other is anemanation from the man himself; or that one may add to the sum of humanknowledge, and the other addresses itself to a higher want in humannature than the want of knowledge. We select and set aside as literaturethat which is original, the product of what we call genius. As I havesaid, the subject of a production does not always determine the desiredquality which makes it literature. A biography may contain all the factsin regard to a man and his character, arranged in an orderly andcomprehensible manner, and yet not be literature; but it may be sowritten, like Plutarch's Lives or Defoe's account of Robinson Crusoe, that it is literature, and of imperishable value as a picture of humanlife, as a satisfaction to the want of the human mind which is higherthan the want of knowledge. And this contribution, which I desire to beunderstood to mean when I speak of literature, is precisely the thing ofmost value in the lives of the majority of men, whether they are aware ofit or not. It may be weighty and profound; it may be light, as light asthe fall of a leaf or a bird's song on the shore; it may be the thoughtof Plato when he discourses of the character necessary in a perfectstate, or of Socrates, who, out of the theorem of an absolute beauty, goodness, greatness, and the like, deduces the immortality of the soul;or it may be the lovesong of a Scotch plowman: but it has this onequality of answering to a need in human nature higher than a need forfacts, for knowledge, for wealth. 

In noticing the remoteness in the popular conception of the relation ofliterature to life, we must not neglect to take into account what may becalled the arrogance of culture, an arrogance that has been emphasized, in these days of reaction from the old attitude of literaryobsequiousness, by harsh distinctions and hard words, which are paid backby equally emphasized contempt. The apostles of light regard the rest ofmankind as barbarians and Philistines, and the world retorts that theseself-constituted apostles are idle word-mongers, without any sympathywith humanity, critics and jeerers who do nothing to make the conditionsof life easier. It is natural that every man should magnify the circle ofthe world in which he is active and imagine that all outside of it iscomparatively unimportant. Everybody who is not a drone has hissufficient world. To the lawyer it is his cases and the body of law, itis the legal relation of men that is of supreme importance; to themerchant and manufacturer all the world consists in buying and selling, in the production and exchange of products; to the physician all theworld is diseased and in need of remedies; to the clergyman speculationand the discussion of dogmas and historical theology assume immenseimportance; the politician has his world, the artist his also, and theman of books and letters a realm still apart from all others. And to eachof these persons what is outside of his world seems of secondaryimportance; he is absorbed in his own, which seems to him all-embracing. To the lawyer everybody is or ought to be a litigant; to the grocer theworld is that which eats, and pays--with more or less regularity; to thescholar the world is in books and ideas. One realizes how possessed he iswith his own little world only when by chance he changes his professionor occupation and looks back upon the law, or politics, or journalism, and sees in its true proportion what it was that once absorbed him andseemed to him so large. When Socrates discusses with Gorgias the value ofrhetoric, the use of which, the latter asserts, relates to the greatestand best of human things, Socrates says: I dare say you have heard mensinging--at feasts the old drinking-song, in which the singers enumeratethe goods of life-first, health; beauty next; thirdly, wealth honestlyacquired. The producers of these things--the physician, the trainer, themoney-maker--each in turn contends that his art produces the greatestgood. Surely, says the physician, health is the greatest good; there ismore good in my art, says the trainer, for my business is to make menbeautiful and strong in body; and consider, says the money-maker, whetherany one can produce a greater good than wealth. But, insists Gorgias, thegreatest good of men, of which I am the creator, is that which gives menfreedom in their persons, and the power of ruling over others in theirseveral states--that is, the word which persuades the judge in the court, or the senators in the council, or the citizens in the assembly: if youhave the power of uttering this word, you will have the physician yourslave, and the trainer your slave, and the moneymaker of whom you talkwill be found to gather treasures, not for himself, but for those who areable to speak and persuade the multitude. 

What we call life is divided into occupations and interest, and thehorizons of mankind are bounded by them. It happens naturally enough, therefore, that there should be a want of sympathy in regard to thesepursuits among men, the politician despising the scholar, and the scholarlooking down upon the politician, and the man of affairs, the man ofindustries, not caring to conceal his contempt for both the others. Andstill more reasonable does the division appear between all the worldwhich is devoted to material life, and the few who live in and for theexpression of thought and emotion. It is a pity that this should be so, for it can be shown that life would not be worth living divorced from thegracious and ennobling influence of literature, and that literaturesuffers atrophy when it does not concern itself with the facts andfeelings of men. 

If the poet lives in a world apart from the vulgar, the most lenientapprehension of him is that his is a sort of fool's paradise. One of themost curious features in the relation of literature to life is this, thatwhile poetry, the production of the poet, is as necessary to universalman as the atmosphere, and as acceptable, the poet is regarded with thatmingling of compassion and undervaluation, and perhaps awe, which onceattached to the weak-minded and insane, and which is sometimes expressedby the term "inspired idiot. " However the poet may have been petted andcrowned, however his name may have been diffused among peoples, I doubtnot that the popular estimate of him has always been substantially whatit is today. And we all know that it is true, true in our individualconsciousness, that if a man be known as a poet and nothing else, if hischaracter is sustained by no other achievement than the production ofpoetry, he suffers in our opinion a loss of respect. And this is onlyrecovered for him after he is dead, and his poetry is left alone to speakfor his name. However fond my lord and lady were of the ballad, the placeof the minstrel was at the lower end of the hall. If we are pushed to saywhy this is, why this happens to the poet and not to the producers ofanything else that excites the admiration of mankind, we are forced toadmit that there is something in the poet to sustain the popular judgmentof his in utility. In all the occupations and professions of life thereis a sign put up, invisible--but none the less real, and expressing analmost universal feeling--"No poet need apply. " And this is not becausethere are so many poor poets; for there are poor lawyers, poor soldiers, poor statesmen, incompetent business men; but none of the personaldisparagement attaches to them that is affixed to the poet. This popularestimate of the poet extends also, possibly in less degree, to all theproducers of the literature that does not concern itself with knowledge. It is not our care to inquire further why this is so, but to repeat thatit is strange that it should be so when poetry is, and has been at alltimes, the universal solace of all peoples who have emerged out ofbarbarism, the one thing not supernatural and yet akin to thesupernatural, that makes the world, in its hard and sordid conditions, tolerable to the race. For poetry is not merely the comfort of therefined and the delight of the educated; it is the alleviator of poverty, the pleasure-ground of the ignorant, the bright spot in the most drearypilgrimage. We cannot conceive the abject animal condition of our racewere poetry abstracted; and we do not wonder that this should be so whenwe reflect that it supplies a want higher than the need for food, forraiment, or ease of living, and that the mind needs support as much asthe body. The majority of mankind live largely in the imagination, theoffice or use of which is to lift them in spirit out of the bare physicalconditions in which the majority exist. There are races, which we maycall the poetical races, in which this is strikingly exemplified. Itwould be difficult to find poverty more complete, physical wants lessgratified, the conditions of life more bare than among the Orientalpeoples from the Nile to the Ganges and from the Indian Ocean to thesteppes of Siberia. But there are perhaps none among the more favoredraces who live so much in the world of imagination fed by poetry andromance. Watch the throng seated about an Arab or Indian or Persianstory-teller and poet, men and women with all the marks of want, hungry, almost naked, without any prospect in life of ever bettering their sordidcondition; see their eyes kindle, their breathing suspended, their tenseabsorption; see their tears, hear their laughter, note their excitementas the magician unfolds to them a realm of the imagination in which theyare free for the hour to wander, tasting a keen and deep enjoyment thatall the wealth of Croesus cannot purchase for his disciples. Measure, ifyou can, what poetry is to them, what their lives would be without it. Tothe millions and millions of men who are in this condition, the bard, thestory-teller, the creator of what we are considering as literature, comeswith the one thing that can lift them out of poverty, suffering--all thewoe of which nature is so heedless. 

It is not alone of the poetical nations of the East that this is true, nor is this desire for the higher enjoyment always wanting in the savagetribes of the West. When the Jesuit Fathers in 1768 landed upon thealmost untouched and unexplored southern Pacific coast, they found in theSan Gabriel Valley in Lower California that the Indians had games andfeasts at which they decked themselves in flower garlands that reached totheir feet, and that at these games there were song contests whichsometimes lasted for three days. This contest of the poets was an oldcustom with them. And we remember how the ignorant Icelanders, who hadnever seen a written character, created the splendid Saga, and handed itdown from father to son. We shall scarcely find in Europe a peasantrywhose abject poverty is not in some measure alleviated by this powerwhich literature gives them to live outside it. Through our sacredScriptures, through the ancient storytellers, through the tradition whichin literature made, as I said, the chief continuity in the stream oftime, we all live a considerable, perhaps the better, portion of ourlives in the Orient. But I am not sure that the Scotch peasant, thecrofter in his Highland cabin, the operative in his squalidtenement-house, in the hopelessness of poverty, in the grime of a lifemade twice as hard as that of the Arab by an inimical climate, does notowe more to literature than the man of culture, whose materialsurroundings are heaven in the imagination of the poor. Think what hiswretched life would be, in its naked deformity, without the popularballads, without the romances of Scott, which have invested his land forhim, as for us, with enduring charm; and especially without the songs ofBurns, which keep alive in him the feeling that he is a man, which impartto his blunted sensibility the delicious throb of spring-songs thatenable him to hear the birds, to see the bits of blue sky-songs that makehim tender of the wee bit daisy at his feet--songs that hearten him whenhis heart is fit to break with misery. Perhaps the English peasant, theEnglish operative, is less susceptible to such influences than the Scotchor the Irish; but over him, sordid as his conditions are, close kin as heis to the clod, the light of poetry is diffused; there filters into hislife, also, something of that divine stream of which we have spoken, adialect poem that touches him, the leaf of a psalm, some bit ofimagination, some tale of pathos, set afloat by a poor writer so long agothat it has become the common stock of human tradition-maybe fromPalestine, maybe from the Ganges, perhaps from Athens--some expression ofreal emotion, some creation, we say, that makes for him a world, vagueand dimly apprehended, that is not at all the actual world in which hesins and suffers. The poor woman, in a hut with an earth floor, a reekingroof, a smoky chimney, barren of comfort, so indecent that a gentlemanwould not stable his horse in it, sits and sews upon a coarse garment, while she rocks the cradle of an infant about whom she cherishes noillusions that his lot will be other than that of his father before him. As she sits forlorn, it is not the wretched hovel that she sees, norother hovels like it--rows of tenements of hopeless poverty, theale-house, the gin-shop, the coal-pit, and the choking factory--but:

 "Sweet fields beyond the swelling flood Stand dressed in living green"

for her, thanks to the poet. But, alas for the poet there is not apeasant nor a wretched operative of them all who will not shake his headand tap his forehead with his forefinger when the poor poet chap passesby. The peasant has the same opinion of him that the physician, thetrainer, and the money-lender had of the rhetorician. 

The hard conditions of the lonely New England life, with its religioustheories as sombre as its forests, its rigid notions of duty as difficultto make bloom into sweetness and beauty as the stony soil, would havebeen unendurable if they had not been touched with the ideal created bythe poet. There was in creed and purpose the virility that creates astate, and, as Menander says, the country which is cultivated withdifficulty produces brave men; but we leave out an important element inthe lives of the Pilgrims if we overlook the means they had of livingabove their barren circumstances. I do not speak only of the culturewhich many of them brought from the universities, of the Greek and Romanclassics, and what unworldly literature they could glean from theproductive age of Elizabeth and James, but of another source, moreuniversally resorted to, and more powerful in exciting imagination andemotion, and filling the want in human nature of which we have spoken. They had the Bible, and it was more to them, much more, than a book ofreligion, than a revelation of religious truth, a rule for the conduct oflife, or a guide to heaven. It supplied the place to them of theMahabharata to the Hindoo, of the story-teller to the Arab. It opened tothem a boundless realm of poetry and imagination. 

What is the Bible? It might have sufficed, accepted as a book ofrevelation, for all the purposes of moral guidance, spiritualconsolation, and systematized authority, if it had been a collection ofprecepts, a dry code of morals, an arsenal of judgments, and a treasuryof promises. We are accustomed to think of the Pilgrims as training theirintellectual faculties in the knottiest problems of human responsibilityand destiny, toughening their mental fibre in wrestling with dogmas andthe decrees of Providence, forgetting what else they drew out of theBible: what else it was to them in a degree it has been to few peoplesmany age. For the Bible is the unequaled record of thought and emotion, the reservoir of poetry, traditions, stories, parables, exaltations, consolations, great imaginative adventure, for which the spirit of man isalways longing. It might have been, in warning examples and commands, all-sufficient to enable men to make a decent pilgrimage on earth andreach a better country; but it would have been a very different book tomankind if it had been only a volume of statutes, and if it lacked itswonderful literary quality. It might have enabled men to reach a bettercountry, but not, while on earth, to rise into and live in that bettercountry, or to live in a region above the sordidness of actual life. For, apart from its religious intention and sacred character, the book is sowritten that it has supremely in its history, poetry, prophecies, promises, stories, that clear literary quality that supplies, ascertainly no other single book does, the want in the human mind which ishigher than the want of facts or knowledge. 

The Bible is the best illustration of the literature of power, for italways concerns itself with life, it touches it at all points. And thisis the test of any piece of literature--its universal appeal to humannature. When I consider the narrow limitations of the Pilgrim households, the absence of luxury, the presence of danger and hardship, the harshlaws--only less severe than the contemporary laws of England andVirginia--the weary drudgery, the few pleasures, the curb upon theexpression of emotion and of tenderness, the ascetic repression ofworldly thought, the absence of poetry in the routine occupations andconditions, I can feel what the Bible must have been to them. It was anopen door into a world where emotion is expressed, where imagination canrange, where love and longing find a language, where imagery is given toevery noble and suppressed passion of the soul, where every aspirationfinds wings. It was history, or, as Thucydides said, philosophy teachingby example; it was the romance of real life; it was entertainmentunfailing; the wonder-book of childhood, the volume of sweet sentiment tothe shy maiden, the sword to the soldier, the inciter of the youth toheroic enduring of hardness, it was the refuge of the aged in failingactivity. Perhaps we can nowhere find a better illustration of the truerelation of literature to life than in this example. 

Let us consider the comparative value of literature to mankind. Bycomparative value I mean its worth to men in comparison with other thingsof acknowledged importance, such as the creation of industries, thegovernment of States, the manipulation of the politics of an age, theachievements in war and discovery, and the lives of admirable men. Itneeds a certain perspective to judge of this aright, for the near and theimmediate always assume importance. The work that an age has on hand, whether it be discovery, conquest, the wars that determine boundaries orare fought for policies, the industries that develop a country or affectthe character of a people, the wielding of power, the accumulation offortunes, the various activities of any given civilization or period, assume such enormous proportions to those engaged in them that such amodest thing as the literary product seems insignificant in comparison;and hence it is that the man of action always holds in slight esteem theman of thought, and especially the expresser of feeling and emotion, thepoet and the humorist. It is only when we look back over the ages, whencivilizations have passed or changed, over the rivalries of States, theambitions and enmities of men, the shining deeds and the base deeds thatmake up history, that we are enabled to see what remains, what ispermanent. Perhaps the chief result left to the world out of a period ofheroic exertion, of passion and struggle and accumulation, is a sheaf ofpoems, or the record by a man of letters of some admirable character. Spain filled a large place in the world in the sixteenth century, and itsinfluence upon history is by no means spent yet; but we have inheritedout of that period nothing, I dare say, that is of more value than theromance of Don Quixote. It is true that the best heritage of generationfrom generation is the character of great men; but we always owe itstransmission to the poet and the writer. Without Plato there would be noSocrates. There is no influence comparable in human life to thepersonality of a powerful man, so long as he is present to hisgeneration, or lives in the memory of those who felt his influence. Butafter time has passed, will the world, will human life, that isessentially the same in all changing conditions, be more affected by whatBismarck did or by what Goethe said?

We may without impropriety take for an illustration of the comparativevalue of literature to human needs the career of a man now living. In theopinion of many, Mr. Gladstone is the greatest Englishman of this age. What would be the position of the British empire, what would be thetendency of English politics and society without him, is a matter forspeculation. He has not played such a role for England and its neighborsas Bismarck has played for Germany and the Continent, but he has been oneof the most powerful influences in molding English action. He is theforemost teacher. Rarely in history has a nation depended more upon asingle man, at times, than the English upon Gladstone, upon his will, hisability, and especially his character. In certain recent crises thethought of losing him produced something like a panic in the Englishmind, justifying in regard to him, the hyperbole of Choate upon the deathof Webster, that the sailor on the distant sea would feel less safe--asif a protecting providence had been withdrawn from the world. His masteryof finance and of economic problems, his skill in debate, his marvelousachievements in oratory, have extorted the admiration of his enemies. There is scarcely a province in government, letters, art, or research inwhich the mind can win triumphs that he has not invaded and displayed hispower in; scarcely a question in politics, reform, letters, religion, archaeology, sociology, which he has not discussed with ability. He is ascholar, critic, parliamentarian, orator, voluminous writer. He seemsequally at home in every field of human activity--a man of prodigiouscapacity and enormous acquirements. He can take up, with a turn of thehand, and always with vigor, the cause of the Greeks, Papal power, education, theology, the influence of Egypt on Homer, the effect ofEnglish legislation on King O'Brien, contributing something noteworthy toall the discussions of the day. But I am not aware that he has everproduced a single page of literature. Whatever space he has filled in hisown country, whatever and however enduring the impression he has madeupon English life and society, does it seem likely that the sum total ofhis immense activity in so many fields, after the passage of so manyyears, will be worth to the world as much as the simple story of Rab andhis Friends? Already in America I doubt if it is. The illustration mighthave more weight with some minds if I contrasted the work of this greatman--as to its answering to a deep want in human nature--with a novellike 'Henry Esmond' or a poem like 'In Memoriam'; but I think it issufficient to rest it upon so slight a performance as the sketch by Dr. John Brown, of Edinburgh. For the truth is that a little page ofliterature, nothing more than a sheet of paper with a poem written on it, may have that vitality, that enduring quality, that adaptation to life, that make it of more consequence to all who inherit it than everymaterial achievement of the age that produced it. It was nothing but asheet of paper with a poem on it, carried to the door of his Londonpatron, for which the poet received a guinea, and perhaps a seat at thefoot of my lord's table. What was that scrap compared to my lord'sbusiness, his great establishment, his equipages in the Park, hisposition in society, his weight in the House of Lords, his influence inEurope? And yet that scrap of paper has gone the world over; it has beensung in the camp, wept over in the lonely cottage; it has gone with themarching regiments, with the explorers--with mankind, in short, on itsway down the ages, brightening, consoling, elevating life; and my lord, who regarded as scarcely above a menial the poet to whom he tossed theguinea--my lord, with all his pageantry and power, has utterly gone andleft no witness.