Chapter XII: The Discipline of Experience (3)

[Footnote 1814: Emerson is said to have had Nathaniel Hawthorne in his mind when writing the following passage in his 'Society and Solitude:'--"The most agreeable compliment you could pay him was, to imply that you had not observed him in a house or a street where you had met him. Whilst he suffered at being seen where he was, he consoled himself with the delicious thought of the inconceivable number of places where he was not. All he wished of his tailor was to provide that sober mean of colour and cut which would never detain the eye for a moment.... He had a remorse, running to despair, of his social GAUCHERIES, and walked miles and miles to get the twitchings out of his face, and the starts and shrugs out of his arms and shoulders. 'God may forgive sins,' he said, 'but awkwardness has no forgiveness in heaven or earth.'"]

[Footnote 1815: In a series of clever articles in the REVUE DES DEUX MONDES, entitled, 'Six mille Lieues a toute Vapeur,' giving a description of his travels in North America, Maurice Sand keenly observed the comparatively anti-social proclivities of the American compared with the Frenchman. The one, he says, is inspired by the spirit of individuality, the other by the spirit of society. In America he sees the individual absorbing society; as in France he sees society absorbing the individual. "Ce peuple Anglo-Saxon," he says, "qui trouvait devant lui la terre, l'instrument de travail, sinon inepuisable, du mons inepuise, s'est mis a l'exploiter sous l'inspiration de l'egoisme; et nous autres Francais, nous n'avons rien su en faire, parceque NOUS NE POUVONS RIEN DANS L'ISOLEMENT.... L'Americain supporte la solitude avec un stoicisme admirable, mais effrayant; il ne l'aime pas, il ne songe qu'a la detruire.... Le Francais est tout autre. Il aime son parent, son ami, son compagnon, et jusqu'a son voisin d'omnibus ou de theatre, si sa figure lui est sympathetique. Pourquoi? Parce qu'il le regarde et cherche son ame, parce qu'il vit dans son semblable autant qu'en lui-meme. Quand il est longtemps seul, il deperit, et quand il est toujours seul, it meurt."]

All this is perfectly true, and it explains why the comparatively unsociable Germans, English, and Americans, are spreading over the earth, while the intensely sociable Frenchmen, unable to enjoy life without each other's society, prefer to stay at home, and France fails to extend itself beyond France.]

[Footnote 1816: The Irish have, in many respects, the same strong social instincts as the French. In the United States they cluster naturally in the towns, where they have their "Irish Quarters," as in England. They are even more Irish there than at home, and can no more forget that they are Irishmen than the French can that they are Frenchmen. "I deliberately assert," says Mr. Maguire, in his recent work on 'The Irish in America,' "that it is not within the power of language to describe adequately, much less to exaggerate, the evils consequent on the unhappy tendency of the Irish to congregate in the large towns of America." It is this intense socialism of the Irish that keeps them in a comparatively hand-to-mouth condition in all the States of the Union.]

[Footnote 1817: 'The Statesman,' p. 35.]

[Footnote 1818: Nathaniel Hawthorne, in his 'First Impressions of France and Italy,' says his opinion of the uncleanly character of the modern Romans is so unfavourable that he hardly knows how to express it "But the fact is that through the Forum, and everywhere out of the commonest foot-track and roadway, you must look well to your steps.... Perhaps there is something in the minds of the people of these countries that enables them to dissever small ugliness from great sublimity and beauty. They spit upon the glorious pavement of St. Peter's, and wherever else they like; they place paltry-looking wooden confessionals beneath its sublime arches, and ornament them with cheap little coloured prints of the Crucifixion; they hang tin hearts, and other tinsel and trumpery, at the gorgeous shrines of the saints, in chapels that are encrusted with gems, or marbles almost as precious; they put pasteboard statues of saints beneath the dome of the Pantheon;--in short, they let the sublime and the ridiculous come close together, and are not in the least troubled by the proximity."]

[Footnote 1819: Edwin Chadwick's 'Address to the Economic Science and Statistic Section,' British Association [18Meeting, 1862].]

[Footnote 191: 'Kaye's 'Lives of Indian Officers.']

[Footnote 192: Emerson, in his 'Society and Solitude,' says "In contemporaries, it is not so easy to distinguish between notoriety and fame. Be sure, then, to read no mean books. Shun the spawn of the press or the gossip of the hour.... The three practical rules I have to offer are these:--1. Never read a book that is not a year old; 2. Never read any but famed books; 3. Never read any but what you like." Lord Lytton's maxim is: "In science, read by preference the newest books; in literature, the oldest."]

[Footnote 193: A friend of Sir Walter Scott, who had the same habit, and prided himself on his powers of conversation, one day tried to "draw out" a fellow-passenger who sat beside him on the outside of a coach, but with indifferent success. At length the conversationalist descended to expostulation. "I have talked to you, my friend," said he, "on all the ordinary subjects--literature, farming, merchandise, gaming, game-laws, horse-races, suits at law, politics, and swindling, and blasphemy, and philosophy: is there any one subject that you will favour me by opening upon?" The wight writhed his countenance into a grin: "Sir," said he, "can you say anything clever about BEND-LEATHER?" As might be expected, the conversationalist was completely nonplussed.]

[Footnote 194: Coleridge, in his 'Lay Sermon,' points out, as a fact of history, how large a part of our present knowledge and civilization is owing, directly or indirectly, to the Bible; that the Bible has been the main lever by which the moral and intellectual character of Europe has been raised to its present comparative height; and he specifies the marked and prominent difference of this book from the works which it is the fashion to quote as guides and authorities in morals, politics, and history. "In the Bible," he says, "every agent appears and acts as a self-substituting individual: each has a life of its own, and yet all are in life. The elements of necessity and freewill are reconciled in the higher power of an omnipresent Providence, that predestinates the whole in the moral freedom of the integral parts. Of this the Bible never suffers us to lose sight. The root is never detached from the ground, it is God everywhere; and all creatures conform to His decrees--the righteous by performance of the law, the disobedient by the sufferance of the penalty."]

[Footnote 195: Montaigne's Essay [19Book I. chap. xxv.]--'Of the Education of Children.']

[Footnote 196: "Tant il est vrai," says Voltaire, "que les hommes, qui sont audessus des autres par les talents, s'en RAPPROCHENT PRESQUE TOUJOURS PAR LES FAIBLESSES; car pourquoi les talents nous mettraient-ils audessous de l'humanite."--VIE DE MOLIERE.]

[Footnote 197: 'Life,' 8vo Ed., p. 102.]

[Footnote 198: 'Autobiography of Sir Egerton Brydges, Bart.,' vol. i. p. 91.]

[Footnote 199: It was wanting in Plutarch, in Southey [19'Life of Nelson'], and in Forster [19'Life of Goldsmith']; yet it must be acknowledged that personal knowledge gives the principal charm to Tacitus's 'Agricola,' Roper's 'Life of More,' Johnson's 'Lives of Savage and Pope,' Boswell's 'Johnson,' Lockhart's 'Scott,' Carlyle's 'Sterling,' and Moore's 'Byron,']

[Footnote 1910: The 'Dialogus Novitiorum de Contemptu Mundi.']

[Footnote 1911: The Life of Sir Charles Bell, one of our greatest physiologists, was left to be written by Amedee Pichot, a Frenchman; and though Sir Charles Bell's letters to his brother have since been published, his Life still remains to be written. It may also be added that the best Life of Goethe has been written by an Englishman, and the best Life of Frederick the Great by a Scotchman.]

[Footnote 1912: It is not a little remarkable that the pious Schleiermacher should have concurred in opinion with Goethe as to the merits of Spinoza, though he was a man excommunicated by the Jews, to whom he belonged, and denounced by the Christians as a man little better than an atheist. "The Great Spirit of the world," says Schleiermacher, in his REDE UBER DIE RELIGION, "penetrated the holy but repudiated Spinoza; the Infinite was his beginning and his end; the universe his only and eternal love. He was filled with religion and religious feeling: and therefore is it that he stands alone unapproachable, the master in his art, but elevated above the profane world, without adherents, and without even citizenship."]

Cousin also says of Spinoza:--"The author whom this pretended atheist most resembles is the unknown author of 'The Imitation of Jesus Christ.'"]

[Footnote 1913: Preface to Southeys 'Life of Wesley' [191864].]

[Footnote 1914: Napoleon also read Milton carefully, and it has been related of him by Sir Colin Campbell, who resided with Napoleon at Elba, that when speaking of the Battle of Austerlitz, he said that a particular disposition of his artillery, which, in its results, had a decisive effect in winning the battle, was suggested to his mind by the recollection of four lines in Milton. The lines occur in the sixth book, and are descriptive of Satan's artifice during the war with Heaven.

"In hollow cube
Training his devilish engin'ry, impal'd
On every side WITH SHADOWING SQUADRONS DEEP
TO HIDE THE FRAUD."

"The indubitable fact," says Mr. Edwards, in his book 'On Libraries,' "that these lines have a certain appositeness to an important manoeuvre at Austerlitz, gives an independent interest to the story; but it is highly imaginative to ascribe the victory to that manoeuvre. And for the other preliminaries of the tale, it is unfortunate that Napoleon had learned a good deal about war long before he had learned anything about Milton."]

[Footnote 1915: 'Biographia Literaria,' chap. i.]

[Footnote 1916: Sir John Bowring's 'Memoirs of Bentham,' p. 10.]

[Footnote 1917: Notwithstanding recent censures of classical studies as a useless waste of time, there can be no doubt that they give the highest finish to intellectual culture. The ancient classics contain the most consummate models of literary art; and the greatest writers have been their most diligent students. Classical culture was the instrument with which Erasmus and the Reformers purified Europe. It distinguished the great patriots of the seventeenth century; and it has ever since characterised our greatest statesmen. "I know not how it is," says an English writer, "but their commerce with the ancients appears to me to produce, in those who constantly practise it, a steadying and composing effect upon their judgment, not of literary works only, but of men and events in general. They are like persons who have had a weighty and impressive experience; they are more truly than others under the empire of facts, and more independent of the language current among those with whom they live."]

[Footnote 1918: Hazlitt's TABLE TALK: 'On Thought and Action.']

[Footnote 201: Mungo Park declared that he was more affected by this incident than by any other that befel him in the course of his travels. As he lay down to sleep on the mat spread for him on the floor of the hut, his benefactress called to the female part of the family to resume their task of spinning cotton, in which they continued employed far into the night. "They lightened their labour with songs," says the traveller, "one of which was composed extempore, for I was myself the subject of it; it was sung by one of the young women, the rest joining in a chorus. The air was sweet and plaintive, and the words, literally translated, were these: 'The winds roared, and the rains fell. The poor white man, faint and weary, came and sat under our tree. He has no mother to bring him milk, no wife to grind his corn.' Chorus--'Let us pity the white man, no mother has he!' Trifling as this recital may appear, to a person in my situation the circumstance was affecting in the highest degree. I was so oppressed by such unexpected kindness, that sleep fled before my eyes."]

[Footnote 202: 'Transformation, or Monte Beni.']

[Footnote 203: 'Portraits Contemporains,' iii. 519.]

[Footnote 204: Mr. Arthur Helps, in one of his Essays, has wisely said: "You observe a man becoming day by day richer, or advancing in station, or increasing in professional reputation, and you set him down as a successful man in life. But if his home is an ill-regulated one, where no links of affection extend throughout the family--whose former domestics [20and he has had more of them than he can well remember] look back upon their sojourn with him as one unblessed by kind words or deeds--I contend that that man has not been successful. Whatever good fortune he may have in the world, it is to be remembered that he has always left one important fortress untaken behind him. That man's life does not surely read well whose benevolence has found no central home. It may have sent forth rays in various directions, but there should have been a warm focus of love--that home-nest which is formed round a good mans heart."--CLAIMS OF LABOUR.]

[Footnote 205: "The red heart sends all its instincts up to the white brain, to be analysed, chilled, blanched, and so become pure reason--which is just exactly what we do NOT want of women as women. The current should run the other way. The nice, calm, cold thought, which, in women, shapes itself so rapidly that they hardly know it as thought, should always travel to the lips VIA the heart. It does so in those women whom all love and admire.... The brain-women never interest us like the heart-women; white roses please less than red."--THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST TABLE, by Oliver Wendell Holmes.]

[Footnote 206: 'The War and General Culture,' 1871.]

[Footnote 207: "Depend upon it, men set more value on the cultivated minds than on the accomplishments of women, which they are rarely able to appreciate. It is a common error, but it is an error, that literature unfits women for the everyday business of life. It is not so with men. You see those of the most cultivated minds constantly devoting their time and attention to the most homely objects. Literature gives women a real and proper weight in society, but then they must use it with discretion."--THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH.]

[Footnote 208: 'The Statesman,' pp. 73-75.]

[Footnote 209: Fuller, the Church historian, with his usual homely mother-wit, speaking of the choice of a wife, said briefly, "Take the daughter of a good mother."]

[Footnote 2010: She was an Englishwoman--a Miss Motley. It maybe mentioned that amongst other distinguished Frenchmen who have married English wives, were Sismondi, Alfred de Vigny, and Lamartine.]

[Footnote 2011: "Plus je roule dans ce monde, et plus je suis amene a penser qu'il n'y a que le bonheur domestique qui signifie quelque chose."--OEUVRES ET CORRESPONDENCE.]

[Footnote 2012: De Tocqueville's 'Memoir and Remains,' vol. i. p. 408.]

[Footnote 2013: De Tocqueville's 'Memoir and Remains,' vol. ii. p. 48.]

[Footnote 2014: Colonel Hutchinson was an uncompromising republican, thoroughly brave, highminded, and pious. At the Restoration, he was discharged from Parliament, and from all offices of state for ever. He retired to his estate at Owthorp, near Nottingham, but was shortly after arrested and imprisoned in the Tower. From thence he was removed to Sandown Castle, near Deal, where he lay for eleven months, and died on September 11th, 1664. The wife petitioned for leave to share his prison, but was refused. When he felt himself dying, knowing the deep sorrow which his death would occasion to his wife, he left this message, which was conveyed to her: "Let her, as she is above other women, show herself on this occasion a good Christian, and above the pitch of ordinary women." Hence the wife's allusion to her husband's "command" in the above passage.]

[Footnote 2015: Mrs. Lucy Hutchinson to her children concerning their father: 'Memoirs of the Life of Col. Hutchinson' [20Bohn's Ed.], pp. 29-30.]

[Footnote 2016: On the Declaration of American Independence, the first John Adams, afterwards President of the United States, bought a copy of the 'Life and Letters of Lady Russell,' and presented it to his wife, "with an express intent and desire" [20as stated by himself], "that she should consider it a mirror in which to contemplate herself; for, at that time, I thought it extremely probable, from the daring and dangerous career I was determined to run, that she would one day find herself in the situation of Lady Russell, her husband without a head:" Speaking of his wife in connection with the fact, Mr. Adams added: "Like Lady Russell, she never, by word or look, discouraged me from running all hazards for the salvation of my country's liberties. She was willing to share with me, and that her children should share with us both, in all the dangerous consequences we had to hazard."]

[Footnote 2017: 'Memoirs of the Life of Sir Samuel Romily,' vol. i. p. 41.]

[Footnote 2018: It is a singular circumstance that in the parish church of St. Bride, Fleet Street, there is a tablet on the wall with an inscription to the memory of Isaac Romilly, F.R.S., who died in 1759, of a broken heart, seven days after the decease of a beloved wife--CHAMBERS' BOOK OF DAYS, vol. ii. p. 539.]

[Footnote 2019: Mr. Frank Buckland says "During the long period that Dr. Buckland was engaged in writing the book which I now have the honour of editing, my mother sat up night after night, for weeks and months consecutively, writing to my father's dictation; and this often till the sun's rays, shining through the shutters at early morn, warned the husband to cease from thinking, and the wife to rest her weary hand. Not only with her pen did she render material assistance, but her natural talent in the use of her pencil enabled her to give accurate illustrations and finished drawings, many of which are perpetuated in Dr. Buckland's works. She was also particularly clever and neat in mending broken fossils; and there are many specimens in the Oxford Museum, now exhibiting their natural forms and beauty, which were restored by her perseverance to shape from a mass of broken and almost comminuted fragments."]

[Footnote 2020: Veitch's 'Memoirs of Sir William Hamilton.']

[Footnote 2021: The following extract from Mr. Veitch's biography will give one an idea of the extraordinary labours of Lady Hamilton, to whose unfailing devotion to the service of her husband the world of intellect has been so much indebted: "The number of pages in her handwriting," says Mr. Veitch,--"filled with abstruse metaphysical matter, original and quoted, bristling with proportional and syllogistic formulae--that are still preserved, is perfectly marvellous. Everything that was sent to the press, and all the courses of lectures, were written by her, either to dictation, or from a copy. This work she did in the truest spirit of love and devotion. She had a power, moreover, of keeping her husband up to what he had to do. She contended wisely against a sort of energetic indolence which characterised him, and which, while he was always labouring, made him apt to put aside the task actually before him--sometimes diverted by subjects of inquiry suggested in the course of study on the matter in hand, sometimes discouraged by the difficulty of reducing to order the immense mass of materials he had accumulated in connection with it. Then her resolution and cheerful disposition sustained and refreshed him, and never more so than when, during the last twelve years of his life, his bodily strength was broken, and his spirit, though languid, yet ceased not from mental toil. The truth is, that Sir William's marriage, his comparatively limited circumstances, and the character of his wife, supplied to a nature that would have been contented to spend its mighty energies in work that brought no reward but in the doing of it, and that might never have been made publicly known or available, the practical force and impulse which enabled him to accomplish what he actually did in literature and philosophy. It was this influence, without doubt, which saved him from utter absorption in his world of rare, noble, and elevated, but ever-increasingly unattainable ideas. But for it, the serene sea of abstract thought might have held him becalmed for life; and in the absence of all utterance of definite knowledge of his conclusions, the world might have been left to an ignorant and mysterious wonder about the unprofitable scholar."]

[Footnote 211: 'Calcutta Review,' article on 'Romance and Reality of Indian Life.']

[Footnote 212: Joseph Lancaster was only twenty years of age when [21in 1798: he opened his first school in a spare room in his father's house, which was soon filled with the destitute children of the neighbourhood. The room was shortly found too small for the numbers seeking admission, and one place after another was hired, until at length Lancaster had a special building erected, capable of accommodating a thousand pupils; outside of which was placed the following notice:--"All that will, may send their children here, and have them educated freely; and those that do not wish to have education for nothing, may pay for it if they please." Thus Joseph Lancaster was the precursor of our present system of National Education.]

[Footnote 213: A great musician once said of a promising but passionless cantatrice--"She sings well, but she wants something, and in that something everything. If I were single, I would court her; I would marry her; I would maltreat her; I would break her heart; and in six months she would be the greatest singer in Europe!"--BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE.]

[Footnote 214: Prescot's 'Essays,' art. Cervantes.]

[Footnote 215: A cavalier, named Ruy de Camera, having called upon Camoens to furnish a poetical version of the seven penitential psalms, the poet, raising his head from his miserable pallet, and pointing to his faithful slave, exclaimed: "Alas! when I was a poet, I was young, and happy, and blest with the love of ladies; but now, I am a forlorn deserted wretch! See--there stands my poor Antonio, vainly supplicating FOURPENCE to purchase a little coals. I have not them to give him!" The cavalier, Sousa quaintly relates, in his 'Life of Camoens,' closed his heart and his purse, and quitted the room. Such were the grandees of Portugal!--Lord Strangford's REMARKS ON THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF CAMOENS, 1824.]

[Footnote 216: See chapter v. p. 125.]

[Footnote 217: A Quaker called on Bunyan one day with "a message from the Lord," saying he had been to half the gaols of England, and was glad at last to have found him. To which Bunyan replied: "If the Lord sent thee, you would not have needed to take so much trouble to find me out, for He knew that I have been in Bedford Gaol these seven years past."]

[Footnote 218: Prynne, besides standing in the pillory and having his ears cut off, was imprisoned by turns in the Tower, Mont Orgueil [21Jersey], Dunster Castle, Taunton Castle, and Pendennis Castle. He after-wards pleaded zealously for the Restoration, and was made Keeper of the Records by Charles II. It has been computed that Prynne wrote, compiled, and printed about eight quarto pages for every working-day of his life, from his reaching man's estate to the day of his death. Though his books were for the most part appropriated by the trunkmakers, they now command almost fabulous prices, chiefly because of their rarity.]

[Footnote 219: He also projected his 'Review' in prison--the first periodical of the kind, which pointed the way to the host of 'Tatlers,' 'Guardians,' and 'Spectators,' which followed it. The 'Review' consisted of 102 numbers, forming nine quarto volumes, all of which were written by De Foe himself, while engaged in other and various labours.]

[Footnote 2110: A passage in the Earl of Carlisles Lecture on Pope--'Heaven was made for those who have failed in this world'--struck me very forcibly several years ago when I read it in a newspaper, and became a rich vein of thought, in which I often quarried, especially when the sentence was interpreted by the Cross, which was failure apparently."--LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROBERTSON [21of Brighton], ii. 94.]

[Footnote 2111:

"Not all who seem to fail, have failed indeed;
Not all who fail have therefore worked in vain:
For all our acts to many issues lead;
And out of earnest purpose, pure and plain,
Enforced by honest toil of hand or brain,
The Lord will fashion, in His own good time,
[21Be this the labourer's proudly-humble creed,]
Such ends as, to His wisdom, fitliest chime
With His vast love's eternal harmonies.
There is no failure for the good and wise:
What though thy seed should fall by the wayside
And the birds snatch it;--yet the birds are fed;
Or they may bear it far across the tide,
To give rich harvests after thou art dead."
POLITICS FOR THE PEOPLE, 1848.]

[Footnote 2112: "What is it," says Mr. Helps, "that promotes the most and the deepest thought in the human race? It is not learning; it is not the conduct of business; it is not even the impulse of the affections. It is suffering; and that, perhaps, is the reason why there is so much suffering in the world. The angel who went down to trouble the waters and to make them healing, was not, perhaps, entrusted with so great a boon as the angel who benevolently inflicted upon the sufferers the disease from which they suffered."--BREVIA.]

[Footnote 2113: These lines were written by Deckar, in a spirit of boldness equal to its piety. Hazlitt has or said of them, that they "ought to embalm his memory to every one who has a sense either of religion, or philosophy, or humanity, or true genius."]

[Footnote 2114: Reboul, originally a baker of Nismes, was the author of many beautiful poems--amongst others, of the exquisite piece known in this country by its English translation, entitled 'The Angel and the Child.']

[Footnote 2115: 'Cornhill Magazine,' vol. xvi. p. 322.]

[Footnote 2116: 'Holy Living and Dying,' ch. ii. sect. 6.]

[Footnote 2117: Ibid., ch. iii. sect. 6.]

[Footnote 2118: Gibbon's 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,' vol. x. p. 40.]