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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Theological Essays and Other Papers v2
+by Thomas de Quincey
+(#9 in our series by Thomas de Quincey)
+
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+Title: Theological Essays and Other Papers v2
+
+Author: Thomas de Quincey
+
+Release Date: October, 2004  [EBook #6660]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on January 10, 2003]
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+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
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+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THEOLOGICAL ESSAYS AND OTHER PAPERS V2 ***
+
+
+
+
+Joshua Hutchinson, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading
+Team.
+
+
+
+THEOLOGICAL ESSAYS AND OTHER PAPERS
+
+By THOMAS DE QUINCEY, AUTHOR OF
+
+_'CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER,' ETC. ETC._
+
+IN TWO VOLUMES.
+
+VOL. II.
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+
+SECESSION FROM THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND
+TOILETTE OF THE HEBREW LADY
+MILTON
+CHARLEMAGNE
+MODERN GREECE
+LORD CARLISLE ON POPE
+
+
+
+
+SECESSION FROM THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND.
+
+[1844.]
+
+
+
+A great revolution has taken place in Scotland. A greater has been
+threatened. Nor is that danger even yet certainly gone by. Upon the
+accidents of such events as may arise for the next five years, whether
+fitted or not fitted to revive discussions in which many of the
+Non-seceders went in various degrees along with the Seceders, depends
+the final (and, in a strict sense, the very awful) question, What is
+to be the fate of the Scottish church? Lord Aberdeen's Act is well
+qualified to tranquillize the agitations of that body; and at an earlier
+stage, if not intercepted by Lord Melbourne, might have prevented them
+in part. But Lord Aberdeen has no power to stifle a conflagration once
+thoroughly kindled. That must depend in a great degree upon the
+favorable aspect of events yet in the rear.
+
+Meantime these great disturbances are not understood in England; and
+chiefly from the differences between the two nations as to the language
+of their several churches and law courts. The process of ordination
+and induction is totally different under the different ecclesiastical
+administrations of the two kingdoms. And the church courts of Scotland
+do not exist in England. We write, therefore, with an express view to
+the better information of England proper. And, with this purpose, we
+shall lead the discussion through four capital questions:--
+
+I. _What_ is it that has been done by the moving party?
+
+II. _How_ was it done? By what agencies and influence?
+
+III. What were the _immediate results_ of these acts?
+
+IV. What are the _remote results_ yet to be apprehended?
+
+I. First, then, WHAT _is it that has been done?_ Up to the month of
+May in 1834, the fathers and brothers of the 'Kirk' were in harmony
+as great as humanity can hope to see. Since May, 1834, the church has
+been a fierce crater of volcanic agencies, throwing out of her bosom
+one-third of her children; and these children are no sooner born into
+their earthly atmosphere, than they turn, with unnatural passions, to
+the destruction of their brethren. What can be the grounds upon which
+an _acharnement_ so deadly has arisen?
+
+It will read to the ears of a stranger almost as an experiment upon
+his credulity, if we tell the simple truth. Being incredible, however,
+it is not the less true; and, being monstrous, it will yet be recorded
+in history, that the Scottish church has split into mortal feuds upon
+two points absolutely without interest to the nation; first, upon a
+demand for creating clergymen by a new process; secondly, upon a demand
+for Papal latitude of jurisdiction. Even the order of succession in
+these things is not without meaning. Had the second demand stood first,
+it would have seemed possible that the two demands might have grown
+up independently, and so far conscientiously. But, according to the
+realities of the case, this is _not_ possible; the second demand grew
+_out_ of the first. The interest of the Seceders, as locked up in their
+earliest requisition, was that which prompted their second. Almost
+everybody was contented with the existing mode of creating the pastoral
+relation. Search through Christendom, lengthways and breadthways, there
+was not a public usage, an institution, an economy, which more
+profoundly slept in the sunshine of divine favor or of civil prosperity,
+than the peculiar mode authorized and practised in Scotland of
+appointing to every parish its several pastor. Here and there an
+ultra-Presbyterian spirit might prompt a murmur against it. But the
+wise and intelligent approved; and those who had the appropriate--that
+is, the religious interest--confessed that it was practically successful.
+From whom, then, came the attempt to change? Why, from those only who
+had an alien interest, an indirect interest, an interest of ambition
+in its subversion. As matters stood in the spring of 1834, the patron
+of each benefice, acting under the severest restraints--restraints which
+(if the church courts did their duty) left no room or possibility for
+an unfit man to creep in--nominated the incumbent. In a spiritual sense,
+the church had all power: by refusing, first of all, to '_license_'
+unqualified persons; secondly, by refusing to '_admit_' out of these
+licensed persons such as might have become warped from the proper standard
+of pastoral fitness, the church had a negative voice, all-potential in
+the creation of clergymen; the church could exclude whom she pleased.
+But this contented her not. Simply to shut out was an ungracious office,
+though mighty for the interests of orthodoxy through the land. The
+children of this world, who became the agitators of the church, clamored
+for something more. They desired for the church that she should become a
+lady patroness; that she should give as well as take away; that she should
+wield a sceptre, courted for its bounties, and not merely feared for its
+austerities. Yet how should this be accomplished? Openly to translate
+upon the church the present power of patrons--_that_ were too
+revolutionary, that would have exposed its own object. For the present,
+therefore, let this device prevail--let the power nominally be
+transferred to congregations: let this be done upon the plea that each
+congregation understands best what mode of ministrations tends to its
+own edification. There lies the semblance of a Christian plea; the
+congregation, it is said, has become anxious for itself; the church
+has become anxious for the congregation. And then, if the translation
+should be effected, the church has already devised a means for
+appropriating the power which she has unsettled; for she limits this
+power to the communicants at the sacramental table. Now, in Scotland,
+though not in England, the character of communicant is notoriously
+created or suspended by the clergyman of each parish; so that, by the
+briefest of circuits, the church causes the power to revolve into her
+own hands.
+
+That was the first change--a change full of Jacobinism; and for which
+to be published was to be denounced. It was necessary, therefore, to
+place this Jacobin change upon a basis privileged from attack. How
+should _that_ be done? The object was to create a new clerical power;
+to shift the election of clergymen from the lay hands in which law and
+usage had lodged it; and, under a plausible mask of making the election
+popular, circuitously to make it ecclesiastical. Yet, if the existing
+patrons of church benefices should see themselves suddenly denuded of
+their rights, and within a year or two should see these rights settling
+determinately into the hands of the clergy, the fraud, the fraudulent
+purpose, and the fraudulent machinery, would have stood out in gross
+proportions too palpably revealed. In this dilemma the reverend
+agitators devised a second scheme. It was a scheme bearing triple
+harvests; for, at one and the same time, it furnished the motive which
+gave a constructive coherency and meaning to the original purpose, it
+threw a solemn shadow over the rank worldliness of that purpose, and
+it opened a diffusive tendency towards other purposes of the same
+nature, as yet undeveloped. The device was this: in Scotland, as in
+England, the total process by which a parish clergyman is created,
+subdivides itself into several successive acts. The initial act belongs
+to the patron of the benefice: he must '_present_;' that is, he notifies
+the fact of his having conferred the benefice upon A B, to a public
+body which officially takes cognizance of this act; and that body is,
+not the particular parish concerned, but the presbytery of the district
+in which the parish is seated. Thus far the steps, merely legal, of
+the proceedings, were too definite to be easily disturbed. These steps
+are sustained by Lord Aberdeen as realities, and even by the
+Non-intrusionists were tolerated as formalities.
+
+But at this point commence other steps not so rigorously defined by
+law or usage, nor so absolutely within one uniform interpretation of
+their value. In practice they had long sunk into forms. But ancient
+forms easily lend themselves to a revivification by meanings and
+applications, new or old, under the galvanism of democratic forces.
+The disturbers of the church, passing by the act of 'presentation' as
+an obstacle too formidable to be separately attacked on its own account,
+made their stand upon one of the two acts which lie next in succession.
+It is the regular routine, that the presbytery, having been warned of
+the patron's appointment, and having 'received' (in technical language)
+the presentee--that is, having formally recognised him in that
+character--next appoint a day on which he is to preach before the
+congregation. This sermon, together with the prayers by which it is
+accompanied, constitute the probationary act according to some views;
+but, according to the general theory, simply the inaugural act by which
+the new pastor places himself officially before his future parishioners.
+Decorum, and the sense of proportion, seem to require that to every
+commencement of a very weighty relation, imposing new duties, there
+should be a corresponding and ceremonial entrance. The new pastor,
+until this public introduction, could not be legitimately assumed for
+known to the parishioners. And accordingly at this point it was--viz.
+subsequently to his authentic publication, as we may call it--that,
+in the case of any grievous scandal known to the parish as outstanding
+against him, arose the proper opportunity furnished by the church for
+lodging the accusation, and for investigating it before the church
+court. In default, however, of any grave objection to the presentee,
+he was next summoned by the presbytery to what really _was_ a
+probationary act at their bar; viz. an examination of his theological
+sufficiency. But in this it could not be expected that he should fail,
+because he must previously have satisfied the requisitions of the
+church in his original examination for a license to preach. Once
+dismissed with credit from this bar, he was now beyond all further
+probation whatsoever; in technical phrase, he was entitled to
+'admission.' Such were the steps, according to their orderly succession,
+by which a man consummated the pastoral tie with any particular parish.
+And all of these steps, subsequent to the '_reception_' and inaugural
+preaching, were now summarily characterized by the revolutionists as
+'spiritual;' for the sake of sequestering them into their own hands.
+As to the initiatory act of presentation, _that_ might be secular, and
+to be dealt with by a secular law. But the rest were acts which belonged
+not to a kingdom of this world. 'These,' with a newborn scrupulosity
+never heard of until the revolution of 1834, clamored for new
+casuistries; 'these,' said the agitators, 'we cannot consent any longer
+to leave in their state of collapse as mere inert or ceremonial forms.
+They must be revivified. By all means, let the patron present as
+heretofore. But the acts of "examination" and "admission," _together
+with the power of altogether refusing to enter upon either,_ under a
+protest against the candidate from a clear majority of the
+parishioners--these are acts falling within the spiritual jurisdiction
+of the church. And these powers we must, for the future, see exercised
+according to spiritual views.'
+
+Here, then, suddenly emerged a perfect ratification for their own
+previous revolutionary doctrine upon the creation of parish clergymen.
+This new scruple was, in relation to former scruples, a perfect
+linch-pin for locking their machinery into cohesion. For vainly would
+they have sought to defeat the patron's right of presenting, unless
+through this sudden pause and interdict imposed upon the _latter_ acts
+in the process of induction, under the pretext that these were acts
+competent only to a spiritual jurisdiction. This plea, by its tendency,
+rounded and secured all that they had yet advanced in the way of claim.
+But, at the same time, though indispensable negatively, positively it
+stretched so much further than any necessity or interest inherent in
+their present innovations, that not improbably they faltered and shrank
+back at first from the immeasurable field of consequences upon which
+it opened. They would willingly have accepted less. But, unfortunately,
+it sometimes happens, that, to gain as much as is needful in one
+direction, you must take a great deal more than you wish for in another.
+Any principle, which _could_ carry them over the immediate difficulty,
+would, by a mere necessity, carry them incalculably beyond it. For if
+every act bearing in any one direction a spiritual aspect, showing at
+any angle a relation to spiritual things, is therefore to be held
+spiritual in a sense excluding the interference of the civil power,
+there falls to the ground at once the whole fabric of civil authority
+in any independent form. Accordingly, we are satisfied that the claim
+to a spiritual jurisdiction, in collision with the claims of the state,
+would not probably have offered itself to the ambition of the agitators,
+otherwise than as a measure ancillary to their earlier pretension of
+appointing virtually all parish clergymen. The one claim was found to
+be the integration or _sine qua non_ complement of the other. In order
+to sustain the power of appointment in their own courts, it was
+necessary that they should defeat the patron's power; and, in order
+to defeat the patron's power, ranging itself (as sooner or later it
+would) under the law of the land, it was necessary that they should
+decline that struggle, by attempting to take the question out of all
+secular jurisdictions whatever.
+
+In this way grew up that twofold revolution which has been convulsing
+the Scottish church since 1834; first, the audacious attempt to disturb
+the settled mode of appointing the parish clergy, through a silent
+robbery perpetrated on the crown and great landed aristocracy; secondly,
+and in prosecution of that primary purpose, the far more frantic attempt
+to renew in a practical shape the old disputes so often agitating the
+forum of Christendom, as to the bounds of civil and spiritual power.
+
+In our rehearsal of the stages through which the process of induction
+ordinarily travels, we have purposely omitted one possible interlude
+or parenthesis in the series; not as wishing to conceal it, but for
+the very opposite reason. It is right to withdraw from a
+_representative_ account of any transaction such varieties of the
+routine as occur but seldom: in this way they are more pointedly
+exposed. Now, having made that explanation, we go on to inform the
+Southern reader--that an old traditionary usage has prevailed in
+Scotland, but not systematically or uniformly, of sending to the
+presentee, through the presbytery, what is designated a '_call_,'
+subscribed by members of the parish congregation. This call is simply
+an invitation to the office of their pastor. It arose in the disorders
+of the seventeenth century; but in practice it is generally admitted
+to have sunk into a mere formality throughout the eighteenth century;
+and the very position which it holds in the succession of steps, not
+usually coming forward until _after_ the presentation has been notified
+(supposing that it comes forward at all), compels us to regard it in
+that light. Apparently it bears the same relation to the patron's act
+as the Address of the two Houses to the Speech from the Throne: it is
+rather a courteous echo to the personal compliment involved in the
+presentation, than capable of being regarded as any _original_ act of
+invitation. And yet, in defiance of that notorious fact, some people
+go so far as to assert, that a call is not good unless where it is
+subscribed by a clear majority of the congregation. This is amusing.
+We have already explained that, except as a liberal courtesy, the very
+idea of a call destined to be inoperative, is and must be moonshine.
+Yet between two moonshines, some people, it seems, can tell which is
+the denser. We have all heard of Barmecide banquets, where, out of
+tureens filled to the brim with--nothings the fortunate guest was
+helped to vast messes of--air. For a hungry guest to take this
+tantalization in good part, was the sure way to win the esteem of the
+noble Barmecide. But the Barmecide himself would hardly approve of a
+duel turning upon a comparison between two of his tureens, question
+being--which had been the fuller, or of two nihilities which had been
+seasoned the more judiciously. Yet this in effect is the reasoning of
+those who say that a call, signed by fifty-one persons out of a hundred,
+is more valid than another signed only by twenty-six, or by nobody;
+it being in the mean time fully understood that neither is valid in
+the least possible degree. But if the '_call_,' was a Barmecide call,
+there was another act open to the congregation which was not so.
+
+For the English reader must now understand, that over and above the
+passive and less invidious mode of discountenancing or forbearing to
+countenance a presentee, by withdrawing from the direct 'call' upon
+him, usage has sanctioned another and stronger sort of protest; one
+which takes the shape of distinct and clamorous _objections_. We are
+speaking of the routine in this place, according to the course which
+it _did_ travel or _could_ travel under that law and that practice
+which furnished the pleas for complaint. Now, it was upon these
+'objections,' as may well be supposed, that the main battle arose.
+Simply to want the 'call,' being a mere _zero_, could not much lay
+hold upon public feeling. It was a case not fitted for effect. You
+cannot bring a blank privation strongly before the public eye. 'The
+"call" did not take place last week;' well, perhaps it will take place
+next week. Or again, if it should never take place, perhaps it may be
+religious carelessness on the part of the parish. Many parishes
+notoriously feel no interest in their pastor, except as a quiet member
+of their community. Consequently, in two of three cases that might
+occur, there was nothing to excite the public; the parish had either
+agreed with the patron, or had not noticeably dissented. But in the
+third case of positive 'objections,' which (in order to justify
+themselves as not frivolous and vexatious) were urged with peculiar
+emphasis, the attention of all men was arrested. Newspapers reverberated
+the fact: sympathetic groans arose: the patron was an oppressor: the
+parish was under persecution: and the poor clergyman, whose case was
+the most to be pitied, as being in a measure _endowed_ with a lasting
+fund of dislike, had the mortification to find, over and above this
+resistance from within, that he bore the name of 'intruder' from
+without. He was supposed by the fiction of the case to be in league
+with his patron for the persecution of a godly parish; whilst in reality
+the godly parish was persecuting _him_, and hallooing the world _ab
+extra_ to join in the hunt.
+
+In such cases of pretended objections to men who have not been tried,
+we need scarcely tell the reader, that usually they are mere cabals
+and worldly intrigues. It is next to impossible that any parish or
+congregation should sincerely agree in their opinion of a clergyman.
+What one man likes in such cases, another man detests. Mr. A., with
+an ardent nature, and something of a histrionic turn, doats upon a
+fine rhetorical display. Mr. B., with more simplicity of taste,
+pronounces this little better than theatrical ostenostentation. Mr.
+C. requires a good deal of critical scholarship, Mr. D quarrels with
+this as unsuitable to a rustic congregation. Mrs. X., who is 'under
+concern' for sin, demands a searching and (as she expresses it) a
+'faithful' style of dealing with consciences. Mrs. Y., an aristocratic
+lady, who cannot bear to be mixed up in any common charge together
+with low people, abominates such words as 'sin,' and wills that the
+parson should confine his 'observations' to the 'shocking demoralization
+of the lower orders.'
+
+Now, having stated the practice of Scottish induction as it was formerly
+sustained in its first stage by law, in its second stage by usage, let
+us finish that part of the subject by reporting the _existing_ practice
+as regulated in all its stages by law. What law? The law as laid down
+in Lord Aberdeen's late Act of Parliament. This statement should,
+historically speaking, have found itself under our _third_ head, as
+being one amongst the consequences immediately following the final
+rupture. But it is better placed at this point; because it closes the
+whole review of that topic; and because it reflects light upon the
+former practice--the practice which led to the whole mutinous tumult:
+every alteration forcing more keenly upon the reader's attention what
+had been the previous custom, and in what respect it was held by any
+man to be a grievance.
+
+This act, then, of Lord Aberdeen's removes all _legal_ effect from the
+'_call_.' Common sense required _that_. For what was to be done with
+patronage? Was it to be sustained, or was it not? If not, then why
+quarrel with the Non-intrusionists? Why suffer a schism to take place
+in the church? Give legal effect to the 'call,' and the original cause
+of quarrel is gone. For, with respect to the opponents of the
+Non-intrusionists, _they_ would bow to the law. On the other hand, if
+patronage _is_ to be sustained, then why allow of any lingering or
+doubtful force to what must often operate as a conflicting claim? 'A
+call,' which carries with it any legal force, annihilates patronage.
+Patronage would thus be exercised only on sufferance. Do we mean then,
+that a 'call' should sink into a pure fiction of ceremony, like the
+English _conge-d'elire_ addressed to a dean and chapter, calling on
+them to elect a bishop, when all the world knows that already the see
+has been filled by a nomination from the crown? Not at all; a _moral_
+weight will still attach to the 'call,' though no legal coercion: and
+what is chiefly important, all those _doubts_ will be removed by express
+legislation, which could not but arise between a practice pointing
+sometimes in one direction, and sometimes in another, between legal
+decisions again upholding one view, whilst something very like legal
+prescription was occasionally pleaded for the other. Behold the evil
+of written laws not rigorously in harmony with that sort of customary
+law founded upon vague tradition or irregular practice. And here, by
+the way, arises the place for explaining to the reader that
+irreconcilable dispute amongst Parliamentary lawyers as to the question
+whether Lord Aberdeen's bill were _enactory_, that is, created a new
+law, or _declaratory_, that is, simply expounded an old one. If
+enactory, then why did the House of Lords give judgment against those
+who allowed weight to the 'call?' That might need altering; _that_
+might be highly inexpedient; but if it required a new law to make it
+illegal, how could those, parties be held in the wrong previously to
+the new act of legislation? On the other hand, if declaratory, then
+show us any old law which made the 'call' illegal. The fact is, that
+no man can decide whether the act established a new law, or merely
+expounded an old one. And the reason why he cannot, is this: the
+practice, the usage, which often is the law, had grown up variously
+during the troubles of the seventeenth century. In many places political
+reasons had dictated that the elders should nominate the incumbent.
+But the ancient practice had authorized patronage: by the act of Queen
+Anne (10th chap.) it was even formally restored; and yet the patron
+in known instances was said to have waived his right in deference to
+the 'call.' But why? Did he do so in courteous compliance with the
+parish, as a party whose _reasonable_ wishes ought, for the sake of
+all parties, to meet with attention? Or did he do so, in humble
+submission to the parish, as having by their majorities a legal right
+to the presentation? There lay the question. The presumptions from
+antiquity were all against the call. The more modern practice had
+occasionally been _for_ it. Now, we all know how many colorable claims
+of right are created by prescription. What was the exact force of the
+'call,' no man could say. In like manner, the exact character and limit
+of allowable objections had been ill-defined in practice, and rested
+more on a vague tradition than on any settled rule. This also made it
+hard to say whether Lord Aberdeen's Act were enactory or declaratory,
+a predicament, however, which equally affects all statutes _for removing
+doubts_.
+
+The 'call,' then, we consider as no longer recognised by law. But did
+Lord Aberdeen by that change establish the right of the patron as an
+unconditional right? By no means. He made it strictly a conditional
+right. The presentee is _now_ a candidate, and no more. He has the
+most important vote in his favor, it is true; but that vote may still
+be set aside, though still only with the effect of compelling the
+patron to a new choice. '_Calls_' are no longer doubtful in their
+meaning, but '_objections_' have a fair field laid open to them. All
+reasonable objections are to be weighed. But who is to judge whether
+they _are_ reasonable? The presbytery of the district. And now pursue
+the action of the law, and see how little ground it leaves upon which
+to hang a complaint. Everybody's rights are secured. Whatever be the
+event, first of all the presentee cannot complain, if he is rejected
+only for proved insufficiency. He is put on his trial as to these
+points only: 1. Is he orthodox? 2. Is he of good moral reputation? 3.
+Is he sufficiently learned? And note this (which in fact Sir James
+Graham remarked in his official letter to the Assembly), strictly
+speaking, he ought not to be under challenge as respects the third
+point, for it is your own fault, the fault of your own licensing courts
+(the presbyteries), if he is not qualified so far. You should not have
+created him a licentiate, should not have given him a license to preach,
+as must have been done in an earlier stage of his progress, if he were
+not learned enough. Once learned, a man is learned for life. As to the
+other points, he may change, and _therefore_ it is that an examination
+is requisite. But how can _he_ complain if he is found by an impartial
+court of venerable men objectionable on any score? If it were possible,
+however, that he should be wronged, he has his appeal. Secondly, how
+can the patron complain? _His_ case is the same as his presentee's
+case; his injuries the same; his relief the same. Besides, if _his_
+man is rejected, it is not the parish man that takes his place. No;
+but a second man of his own choice: and, if again he chooses amiss,
+who is to blame for _that_? Thirdly, can the congregation complain?
+They have a _general_ interest in their spiritual guide. But as to the
+preference for oratory--for loud or musical voice--for peculiar views
+in religion--these things are special: they interest but an exceedingly
+small minority in any parish; and, what is worse, that which pleases
+one is often offensive to another. There are cases in which a parish
+would reject a man for being a married man: some of the parish have
+unmarried daughters. But this case clearly belongs to the small
+minority; and we have little doubt that, where the objections lay 'for
+cause not shown,' it was often for _this_ cause. Fourthly, can the
+church complain? Her interest is represented, 1, not by the presentee;
+2, not by the patron; 3, not by the congregation; but 4, by the
+presbytery. And, whatever the presbytery say, _that_ is supported.
+Speaking either for the patron, for the presentee, for the congregation,
+or for themselves as conservators of the church, that court is heard;
+what more would they have? And thus in turn every interest is protected.
+Now the point to be remarked is-that each party in turn has a separate
+influence. But on any other plan, giving to one party out of the four
+an absolute or unconditional power, no matter which of the four it
+be--all the rest have none at all. Lord Aberdeen has reconciled the
+rights of patrons for the first time with those of all other parties
+interested. Nobody has more than a conditional power. Everybody has
+_that_. And the patron, as necessity requires, if property is to be
+protected, has, in all circumstances, the revisionary power.
+
+II. _Secondly_, How _were these things don?_? By what means were the
+hands of any party strengthened, so as to find this revolution possible?
+
+We seek not to refine; but all moral power issues out of moral forces.
+And it may be well, therefore, rapidly to sketch the history of
+religion, which is the greatest of moral forces, as it sank and rose
+in this island through the last two hundred years.
+
+It is well known that the two great revolutions of the seventeenth
+century--that in 1649, accomplished by the Parliament armies (including
+its reaction in 1660), and secondly, that in 1688-9--did much to
+unsettle the religious tone of public morals. Historians and satirists
+ascribe a large effect in this change to the personal influence of
+Charles II., and the foreign character of his court. We do not share
+in their views; and one eminent proof that they are wrong, lies in the
+following fact--viz., that the sublimest act of self-sacrifice which
+the world has ever seen, arose precisely in the most triumphant season
+of Charles's career, a time when the reaction of hatred had not yet
+neutralized the sunny joyousness of his Restoration. Surely the reader
+cannot be at a loss to know what we mean--the renunciation in one hour,
+on St. Bartholomew's Day in 1662, of two thousand benefices by the
+nonconforming clergymen of England. In the same year, occurred a similar
+renunciation of three hundred and sixty benefices in Scotland. These
+great sacrifices, whether called for or not, argue a great strength
+in the religious principle at that era. Yet the decay of external
+religion towards the close of that century is proved incontestably.
+We ourselves are inclined to charge this upon two causes; first, that
+the times were controversial; and usually it happens--that, where too
+much energy is carried into the controversies or intellectual part of
+religion, a very diminished fervor attends the culture of its moral
+and practical part. This was perhaps one reason; for the dispute with
+the Papal church, partly, perhaps, with a secret reference to the
+rumored apostasy of the royal family, was pursued more eagerly in the
+latter half of the seventeenth than even in any section of the sixteenth
+century. But, doubtless, the main reason was the revolutionary character
+of the times. Morality is at all periods fearfully shaken by intestine
+wars, and by instability in a government. The actual duration of war
+in England was not indeed longer than three and a half years, viz.,
+from Edgehill Fight in the autumn of 1642, to the defeat of the king's
+last force under Sir Jacob Astley at Stow-in-the-walds in the spring
+of 1846. Any other fighting in that century belonged to mere insulated
+and discontinuous war. But the insecurity of every government between
+1638 and 1702, kept the popular mind in a state of fermentation.
+Accordingly, Queen Anne's reign might be said to open upon an
+irreligious people. The condition of things was further strengthened
+by the unavoidable interweaving at that time of politics with religion.
+They could not be kept separate; and the favor shown even by religious
+people to such partisan zealots as Dr. Sacheverell, evidenced, and at
+the same time promoted, the public irreligion. This was the period in
+which the clergy thought too little of their duties, but too much of
+their professional rights; and if we may credit the indirect report
+of the contemporary literature, all apostolic or missionary zeal for
+the extension of religion, was in those days a thing unknown. It may
+seem unaccountable to many, that the same state of things should have
+spread in those days to Scotland; but this is no more than the analogies
+of all experience entitled us to expect. Thus we know that the instincts
+of religious reformation ripened everywhere at the same period of the
+sixteenth century from one end of Europe to the other; although between
+most of the European kingdoms there was nothing like so much intercourse
+as between England and Scotland in the eighteenth century. In both
+countries, a cold and lifeless state of public religion prevailed up
+to the American and French Revolutions. These great events gave a shock
+everywhere to the meditative, and, consequently to the religious
+impulses of men. And, in the mean time, an irregular channel had been
+already opened to these impulses by the two founders of Methodism. A
+century has now passed since Wesley and Whitefield organized a more
+spiritual machinery of preaching than could then be found in England,
+for the benefit of the poor and laboring classes. These Methodist
+institutions prospered, as they were sure of doing, amongst the poor
+and the neglected at any time, much more when contrasted with the deep
+slumbers of the Established Church. And another ground of prosperity
+soon arose out of the now expanding manufacturing system. Vast
+multitudes of men grew up under that system--humble enough by the
+quality of their education to accept with thankfulness the ministrations
+of Methodism, and rich enough to react, upon that beneficent
+institution, by continued endowments in money. Gradually, even the
+church herself, that mighty establishment, under the cold shade of
+which Methodism had grown up as a neglected weed, began to acknowledge
+the power of an extending Methodistic influence, which originally she
+had haughtily despised. First, she murmured; then she grew anxious or
+fearful; and finally, she began to find herself invaded or modified
+from within, by influences springing up from Methodism. This last
+effect became more conspicuously evident after the French Revolution.
+The church of Scotland, which, as a whole, had exhibited, with much
+unobtrusive piety, the same outward torpor as the church of England
+during the eighteenth century, betrayed a corresponding resuscitation
+about the same time. At the opening of this present century, both of
+these national churches began to show a marked rekindling of religious
+fervor. In what extent this change in the Scottish church had been
+due, mediately or immediately, to Methodism, we do not pretend to
+calculate; that is, we do not pretend to settle the proportions. But
+_mediately_ the Scottish church must have been affected, because she
+was greatly affected by her intercourse with the English church (as,
+_e.g._, in Bible Societies, Missionary Societies, &c.); and the English
+church had been previously affected by Methodism. _Immediately_ she
+must also have been affected by Methodism, because Whitefield had been
+invited to preach in Scotland, and _did_ preach in Scotland. But,
+whatever may have been the cause of this awakening from slumber in the
+two established churches of this island, the fact is so little to be
+denied, that, in both its aspects, it is acknowledged by those most
+interested in denying it. The two churches slept the sleep of torpor
+through the eighteenth century; so much of the fact is acknowledged
+by their own members. The two churches awoke, as from a trance, in or
+just before the dawning of the nineteenth century; this second half
+of the fact is acknowledged by their opponents. The Wesleyan Methodists,
+that formidable power in England and Wales, who once reviled the
+Establishment as the dormitory of spiritual drones, have for many years
+hailed a very large section in that establishment--viz., the section
+technically known by the name of the Evangelical clergy--as brothers
+after their own hearts, and corresponding to their own strictest model
+of a spiritual clergy. That section again, the Evangelical section,
+in the English church, as men more highly educated, took a direct
+interest in the Scottish clergy, upon general principles of liberal
+interest in all that could affect religion, beyond what could be
+expected from the Methodists. And in this way grew up a considerable
+action and reaction between the two classical churches of the British
+soil. Such was the varying condition, when sketched in outline, of the
+Scottish and English churches. Two centuries ago, and for half a century
+beyond that, we find both churches in a state of trial, of turbulent
+agitation, and of sacrifices for conscience, which involved every fifth
+or sixth beneficiary. Then came a century of languor and the
+carelessness which belongs to settled prosperity. And finally, for
+both has arisen a half century of new light--new zeal--and, spiritually
+speaking, of new prosperity. This deduction it was necessary to bring
+down, in order to explain the new power which arose to the Scottish
+church, during the last generation of suppose thirty years.
+
+When two powerful establishments, each separately fitted to the genius
+and needs of its several people, are pulling together powerfully towards
+one great spiritual object, vast must be the results. Our ancestors
+would have stood aghast as at some fabulous legend or some mighty
+miracle, could they have heard of the scale on which our modern
+contributions proceed for the purposes of missions to barbarous nations,
+of circulating the Scriptures, (whether through the Bible Society,
+that is the National Society, or Provincial Societies,) of translating
+the Scriptures into languages scarcely known by name to scholars, of
+converting Jews, of organizing and propagating education. Towards these
+great objects the Scottish clergy had worked with energy and with
+little disturbance to their unanimity. Confidence was universally felt
+in their piety and in their discretion. This confidence even reached
+the supreme rulers of the state. Very much through ecclesiastical
+influence, new plans for extending the religious power of the Scottish
+church, and indirectly of extending their secular power, were
+countenanced by the Government. Jealousy had been disarmed by the
+upright conduct of the Scottish clergy, and their remarkable freedom
+hitherto from all taint of ambition. It was felt, besides, that the
+temper of the Scottish nation was radically indisposed to all intriguing
+or modes of temporal ascendency in ecclesiastical bodies. The nation,
+therefore, was in some degree held as a guarantee for the discretion
+of their clergy. And hence it arose, that much less caution was applied
+to the first encroachment of the non-intrusionists, than would have
+been applied under circumstances of more apparent doubt. Hence, it
+arose, that a confidence from the Scottish nation was extended to this
+clergy, which too certainly has been abused.
+
+In the years 1824-5, Parliament had passed acts 'for building additional
+places of worship in the highlands and islands of Scotland.' These
+acts may be looked upon as one section in that general extension of
+religious machinery which the British people, by their government and
+their legislature, have for many years been promoting. Not, as is
+ordinarily said, that the weight of this duty had grown upon them
+simply through their own treacherous neglect of it during the latter
+half of the eighteenth century; but that no reasonable attention to
+that duty _could_ have kept pace with the scale upon which the claims
+of a new manufacturing population had increased. In mere equity we
+must admit--not that the British nation had fallen behind its duties,
+(though naturally it might have done so under the religious torpor
+prevalent at the original era of manufacturing extension,) but that
+the duties had outstripped all human power of overtaking them. The
+efforts, however, have been prodigious in this direction for many
+years. Amongst those applied to Scotland, it had been settled by
+Parliament that forty-two new churches should be raised in the
+highlands, with an endowment from the government of [pound symbol]120
+annually for each incumbent. There were besides more than two hundred
+chapels of ease to be founded; and towards this scheme the Scottish
+public subscribed largely. The money was intrusted to the clergy.
+_That_ was right, but mark what followed. It had been expressly provided
+by Parliament--that any district or circumjacent territory, allotted
+to such parliamentary churches as the range within which the incumbent
+was to exercise his spiritual ministration, should _not_ be separate
+parishes for any civil or legal effects. Here surely the intentions
+and directions of the legislature were plain enough, and decisive
+enough.
+
+How did the Scottish clergy obey them? They erected all these
+jurisdictions into _bona fide_ 'parishes,' enjoying the plenary rights
+(as to church government) of the other parishes, and distinguished
+from them in a merely nominal way as parishes _quoad sacra_. There
+were added at once to the presbyteries, which are the organs of the
+church power, two hundred and three clerical persons for the chapels
+of ease, and forty-two for the highland churches--making a total of
+two hundred and forty-five new members. By the constitution of the
+Scottish church, an equal number of lay elders (called ruling elders)
+accompany the clerical elders. Consequently four hundred and ninety
+new members were introduced at once into that particular class of
+courts (presbyteries) which form the electoral bodies in relation to
+the highest court of General Assembly. The effect of this change, made
+in the very teeth of the law, was twofold. First, it threw into many
+separate presbyteries a considerable accession of voters--_all owing
+their appointments to the General Assembly_. This would at once give
+a large bias favorable to their party views in every election for
+members to serve in the Assembly. Even upon an Assembly numerically
+limited, this innovation would have told most abusively. But the
+Assembly was _not_ limited; and therefore the whole effect was, at the
+same moment, greatly to extend the electors and the elected.
+
+Here, then, was the machinery by which the faction worked. They drew
+that power from Scotland rekindled into a temper of religious anxiety,
+which they never could have drawn from Scotland lying torpid, as she
+had lain through the eighteenth century. The new machinery (created
+by Parliament in order to meet the wishes of the Scottish nation), the
+money of that nation, the awakened zeal of that nation; all these were
+employed, honorably in one sense, that is, not turned aside into private
+channels for purposes of individuals, but factiously in the result,
+as being for the benefit of a faction; honorably as regarded the open
+mode of applying such influence--a mode which did not shrink from
+exposure; but most dishonorably, in so far as privileges, which had
+been conceded altogether for a spiritual object, were abusively
+transferred to the furtherance of a temporal intrigue. Such were the
+methods by which the new-born ambition of the clergy moved; and that
+ambition had become active, simply because it had suddenly seemed to
+become practicable. The presbyteries, as being the effectual electoral
+bodies, are really the main springs of the ecclesiastical
+administration. To govern _them_, was in effect to govern the church.
+A new scheme for extending religion, had opened a new avenue to this
+control over the presbyteries. That opening was notoriously unlawful.
+But not the less the church faction precipitated themselves ardently
+upon it; and but for the faithfulness of the civil courts, they would
+never have been dislodged from what they had so suddenly acquired.
+Such was the extraordinary leap taken by the Scottish clergy, into a
+power, of which, hitherto, they had never enjoyed a fraction. It was
+a movement _per saltum_, beyond all that history has recorded. At
+cock-crow they had no power at all; when the sun went down, they had
+gained (if they could have held) a papal supremacy. And a thing not
+less memorably strange is, that even yet the ambitious leaders were
+not disturbed; what they had gained was viewed by the public as a
+collateral gain, indirectly adhering to a higher object, but forming
+no part at all of what the clergy had sought. It required the scrutiny
+of law courts to unmask and decompose their true object The obstinacy
+of the defence betrayed the real _animus_ of the attempt. It was an
+attempt which, in connection with the _Veto_ Act (supposing that to
+have prospered), would have laid the whole power of the church at their
+feet. What the law had distributed amongst three powers, patron, parish,
+and presbyter, would have been concentrated in themselves. The _quoad
+sacra_ parishes would have riveted their majorities in the presbyteries;
+and the presbyteries, under the real action of the _Veto_, would have
+appointed nearly every incumbent in Scotland. And this is the answer
+to the question, when treated merely in outline--_How were these things
+done_? The religion of the times had created new machineries for
+propagating a new religious influence. These fell into the hands of
+the clergy; and the temptation to abuse these advantages led them into
+revolution.
+
+III. Having now stated WHAT was done, as well as HOW it was done, let
+us estimate the CONSEQUENCES of these acts; under this present, or
+_third_ section, reviewing the immediate consequences which have taken
+effect already, and under the next section anticipating the more remote
+consequences yet to be expected.
+
+In the spring of 1834, as we have sufficiently explained, the General
+Assembly ventured on the fatal attempt to revolutionize the church,
+and (as a preliminary towards _that_) on the attempt to revolutionize
+the property of patronage. There lay the extravagance of the attempt;
+its short-sightedness, if they did not see its civil tendencies; its
+audacity, if they _did_. It was one revolution marching to its object
+through another; it was a vote, which, if at all sustained, must entail
+a long inheritance of contests with the whole civil polity of Scotland.
+
+  'Heu quantum, fati parva tabella vehit!'
+
+It might seem to strangers a trivial thing, that an obscure court,
+like the presbytery, should proceed in the business of induction by
+one routine rather than by another; but was it a trivial thing that
+the power of appointing clergymen should lapse into this perilous
+dilemma--either that it should be intercepted by the Scottish clerical
+order, and thus, that a lordly hierarchy should be suddenly created,
+disposing of incomes which, in the aggregate, approach to half a million
+annually; or, on the other hand, that this dangerous power, if defeated
+as a clerical power, should settle into a tenure exquisitely democratic?
+Was _that_ trivial? Doubtless, the Scottish ecclesiastical revenues
+are not equal, nor nearly equal, to the English; still, it is true,
+that Scotland, supposing all her benefices equalized, gives a larger
+_average_ to each incumbent than England, of the year 1830. England,
+in that year, gave an average of [pound symbol]299 to each beneficiary;
+Scotland gave an average of [pound symbol]303. That body, therefore,
+which wields patronage in Scotland, wields a greater relative power
+than the corresponding body in England. Now this body, in Scotland,
+must finally have been the _clerus_; but supposing the patronage to
+have settled nominally where the Veto Act had placed it, then it would
+have settled into the keeping of a fierce democracy. Mr. Forsyth has
+justly remarked, that in such a case the hired ploughmen of a parish,
+mercenary hands that quit their engagements at Martinmas, and _can_
+have no filial interest in the parish, would generally succeed in
+electing the clergyman. That man would be elected generally, who had
+canvassed the parish with the arts and means of an electioneering
+candidate; or else, the struggle would lie between the property and
+the Jacobinism of the district.
+
+In respect to Jacobinism, the condition of Scotland is much altered
+from what it was; pauperism and great towns have worked 'strange
+defeatures' in Scottish society. A vast capital has arisen in the west,
+on a level with the first-rate capitalists of the Continent--with
+Vienna or with Naples; far superior in size to Madrid, to Lisbon, to
+Berlin; more than equal to Rome and Milan; or again to Munich and
+Dresden, taken by couples: and, in this point, beyond comparison with
+any one of these capitals, that whilst _they_ are connected by slight
+ties with the circumjacent country, Glasgow keeps open a communication
+with the whole land. Vast laboratories of encouragement to manual
+skill, too often dissociated from consideration of character; armies
+of mechanics, gloomy and restless, having no interfusion amongst their
+endless files of any gradations corresponding to a system of controlling
+officers; these spectacles, which are permanently offered by the _castra
+stativa_ of combined mechanics in Glasgow and its dependencies (Paisley,
+Greenock, &c.), supported by similar districts, and by turbulent
+collieries in other parts of that kingdom, make Scotland, when now
+developing her strength, no longer the safe and docile arena for popular
+movements which once she was, with a people that were scattered and
+habits that were pastoral. And at this moment, so fearfully increased
+is the overbearance of democratic impulses in Scotland, that perhaps
+in no European nation--hardly excepting France--has it become more
+important to hang weights and retarding forces upon popular movements
+amongst the laboring classes.
+
+This being so, we have never been able to understand the apparent
+apathy with which the landed body met the first promulgation of the
+_Veto_ Act in May, 1834. Of this apathy, two insufficient explanations
+suggest themselves:--1st, It seemed a matter of delicacy to confront
+the General Assembly, upon a field which they had clamorously challenged
+for their own. The question at issue was tempestuously published to
+Scotland as a question exclusively spiritual. And by whom was it thus
+published? The Southern reader must here not be careless of dates. _At
+present_, viz. in 1844, those who fulminate such views of spiritual
+jurisdiction, are simply dissenters; and those who vehemently withstand
+them are the church, armed with the powers of the church. Such are the
+relations between the parties in 1844. But in 1834, the revolutionary
+party were not only _in_ the church, but (being the majority) they
+came forward _as_ the church. The new doctrines presented themselves
+at first, not as those of a faction, but of the Scottish kirk assembled
+in her highest court. The _prestige_ of that advantage has vanished
+since then; for this faction, after first of all falling into a
+minority, afterwards ceased to be any part or section of the church;
+but in that year 1834, such a _prestige_ did really operate; and this
+must be received as one of the reasons which partially explain the
+torpor of the landed body. No one liked to move _first_, even amongst
+those who meant to move. But another reason we find in the conscientious
+scruples of many landholders, who hesitated to move at all upon a
+question then insufficiently discussed, and in which their own interest
+was by so many degrees the largest.
+
+These reasons, however, though sufficient for suspense, seem hardly
+sufficient for not having solemnly protested against the _Veto_ Act
+immediately upon its passing the Assembly. Whatever doubts a few persons
+might harbor upon the expediency of such an act, evidently it was
+contrary to the law of the land. The General Assembly could have no
+power to abrogate a law passed by the three estates of the realm. But
+probably it was the deep sense of that truth which reined up the
+national resistance. Sure of a speedy collision between some patron
+and the infringers of his right, other parties stood back for the
+present, to watch the form which such a collision might assume.
+
+In that same year of 1834, not many months after the passing of the
+Assembly's Act, came on the first case of collision; and some time
+subsequently a second. These two cases, Auchterarder and Marnoch,
+commenced in the very same steps, but immediately afterwards diverged
+as widely as was possible. In both cases, the rights of the patron and
+of the presentee were challenged peremptorily; that is to say, in both
+cases, parishioners objected to the presentee without reason shown.
+The conduct of the people was the same in one case as in the other;
+that of the two presbyteries travelled upon lines diametrically
+opposite. The first case was that of _Auchterarder_. The parish and
+the presbytery concerned, both belonged to Auchterarder; and there the
+presbytery obeyed the new law of the Assembly; they rejected the
+presentee, refusing to take him on trial of his qualifications: And
+why? we cannot too often repeat--simply because a majority of a rustic
+congregation had rejected him, without attempting to show reason for
+his rejection. The Auchterarder presbytery, for _their_ part in this
+affair, were prosecuted in the Court of Session by the injured
+parties--Lord Kinnoul, the patron, and Mr. Young, the presentee. Twice,
+upon a different form of action, the Court of Session gave judgment
+against the presbytery; twice the case went up by appeal to the Lords;
+twice the Lords affirmed the judgment of the court below. In the other
+case of _Marnoch_, the presbytery of Strathbogie took precisely the
+opposite course. So far from abetting the unjust congregation of
+rustics, they rebelled against the new law of the Assembly, and
+declared, by seven of their number against three, that they were ready
+to proceed with the trial of the presentee, and to induct him (if found
+qualified) into the benefice. Upon this, the General Assembly suspended
+the seven members of presbytery. By that mode of proceeding, the
+Assembly fancied that they should be able to elude the intentions of
+the presbytery; it being supposed that, whilst suspended, the presbytery
+had no power to ordain; and that, without ordination, there was no
+possibility of giving induction. But here the Assembly had
+miscalculated. Suspension would indeed have had the effects ascribed
+to it; but in the mean time, the suspension, as being originally
+illegal, was found to be void; and the presentee, on that ground,
+obtained a decree from the Court of Session, ordaining the presbytery
+of Strathbogie to proceed with the settlement. Three of the ten members
+composing this presbytery, resisted; and they were found liable in
+expenses. The other seven completed the settlement in the usual form.
+Here was plain rebellion; and rebellion triumphant. If this were
+allowed, all was gone. What should the Assembly do for the vindication
+of their authority? Upon deliberation, they deposed the contumacious
+presbytery from their functions as clergymen, and declared their
+churches vacant. But this sentence was found to be a _brutum fulmen_;
+the crime was no crime, the punishment turned out no punishment: and
+a minority, even in this very Assembly, declared publicly that they
+would not consent to regard this sentence as any sentence at all, but
+would act in all respects as if no such sentence had been carried by
+vote. _Within_ their own high Court of Assembly, it is, however,
+difficult to see how this refusal to recognise a sentence voted by a
+majority could be valid. Outside, the civil courts came into play; but
+within the Assembly, surely its own laws and votes prevailed. However,
+this distinction could bring little comfort to the Assembly at present;
+for the illegality of the deposal was now past all dispute; and the
+attempt to punish, or even ruin a number of professional brethren for
+not enforcing a by-law, when the by-law itself had been found
+irreconcilable to the law of the land, greatly displeased the public,
+as vindictive, oppressive, and useless to the purposes of the Assembly.
+
+Nothing was gained, except the putting on record an implacability that
+was _confessedly_ impotent. This was the very lunacy of malice.
+Mortifying it might certainly seem for the members of a supreme court,
+like the General Assembly, to be baffled by those of a subordinate
+court: but still, since each party must be regarded as representing
+far larger interests than any personal to themselves, trying on either
+side, not the energies of their separate wits, but the available
+resources of law in one of its obscurer chapters, there really seemed
+no more room for humiliation to the one party, or for triumph to the
+other, than there is amongst reasonable men in the result from a game,
+where the game is one exclusively of chance.
+
+From this period it is probable that the faction of Non-intrusionists
+resolved upon abandoning the church. It was the one sole resource left
+for sustaining their own importance to men who were now sinking fast
+in public estimation. At the latter end of 1842, they summoned a
+convocation in Edinburgh. The discussions were private; but it was
+generally understood that at this time they concerted a plan for going
+out from the church, in the event of their failing to alarm the
+Government by the notification of this design. We do not pretend to
+any knowledge of secrets. What is known to everybody is--that, on the
+annual meeting of the General Assembly, in May, 1843, the great body
+of the Non-intrusionists moved out in procession. The sort of
+theatrical interest which gathered round the Seceders for a few hurried
+days in May, was of a kind which should naturally have made wise men
+both ashamed and disgusted. It was the merest effervescence from that
+state of excitement which is nursed by novelty, by expectation, by the
+vague anticipation of a 'scene,' possibly of a quarrel, together with
+the natural interest in _seeing_ men whose names had been long before
+the public in books and periodical journals.
+
+The first measure of the Seceders was to form themselves into a
+pseudo-General Assembly. When there are two suns visible, or two moons,
+the real one and its duplicate, we call the mock sun a _parhelios_,
+and the mock moon a _paraselene_. On that principle, we must call this
+mock Assembly a _para-synodos_. Rarely, indeed, can we applaud the
+Seceders in the fabrication of names. They distinguish as _quoad sacra_
+parishes those which were peculiarly _quoad politica_ parishes; for
+in that view only they had been interesting to the Non-intrusionists.
+Again, they style themselves _The Free Church_, by way of taunting the
+other side with being a servile church. But how are they any church
+at all? By the courtesies of Europe, and according to usage, a church
+means a religious incorporation, protected and privileged by the State.
+Those who are not so privileged are usually content with the title of
+Separatists, Dissenters, or Nonconformists. No wise man will see either
+good sense or dignity in assuming titles not appropriate. The very
+position and aspect towards the church (legally so called) which has
+been assumed by the Non-intrusionists--viz., the position of protesters
+against that body, not merely as bearing, amongst other features, a
+certain relation to the State, but specifically _because_ they bear
+that relation, makes it incongruous, and even absurd, for these
+Dissenters to denominate themselves a 'church.' But there is another
+objection to this denomination--the 'Free Church' have no peculiar and
+separate Confession of Faith. Nobody knows what are their
+_credenda_--what they hold indispensable for fellow-membership, either
+as to faith in mysteries or in moral doctrines. Now, if they reply--'Oh!
+as to that, we adopt for our faith all that ever we _did_ profess when
+members of the Scottish kirk'--then in effect they are hardly so much
+as a dissenting body, except in some elliptic sense. There is a grievous
+_hiatus_ in their own titledeeds and archives; they supply it by
+referring people to the muniment chest of the kirk. Would it not be
+a scandal to a Protestant church if she should say to communicants
+--We have no sacramental vessels, or even ritual; but you may borrow
+both from Papal Rome.' Not only, however, is the kirk to _lend_ her
+Confession, &c.; but even then a plain rustic will not be able to guess
+how many parts in his Confession are or may be affected by the
+'reformation' of the Non-intrusionists. Surely, he will think, if this
+reformation were so vast that it drove them out of the national church,
+absolutely exploded them, then it follows that it must have intervened
+and _indirectly_ modified innumerable questions: a difference that was
+punctually limited to this one or these two clauses, could not be such
+a difference as justified a rupture. Besides, if they have altered
+this one or these two clauses, or have altered their interpretation,
+how is any man to know (except from a distinct Confession of Faith)
+that they have not even _directly_ altered much more? Notoriety through
+newspapers is surely no ground to stand upon in religion. And now it
+appears that the unlettered rustic needs two guides--one to show him
+exactly how much they have altered, whether two points or two hundred,
+as well as _which_ two or two hundred; another to teach him how far
+these original changes may have carried with them secondary changes
+as consequences into other parts of the Christian system. One of the
+known changes, viz., the doctrine of popular election as the proper
+qualification for parish clergymen, possibly is not fitted to expand
+itself or ramify, except by analogy. But the other change, the infinity
+which has been suddenly turned off like a jet of gas, or like the
+rushing of wind through the tubes of an organ, upon the doctrine
+and application of _spirituality_, seems fitted for derivative effects
+that are innumerable. Consequently, we say of the Non-itrusionists--not
+only that they are no church; but that they are not even any separate
+body of Dissenters, until they have published a 'Confession' or a
+_revised_ edition of the Scottish Confession.
+
+IV. Lastly, we have to sum and to appreciate the _ultimate_ consequences
+of these things. Let us pursue them to the end of the vista.--First
+in order stands the dreadful shock to the National Church Establishment;
+and that is twofold: it is a shock from without, acting through opinion,
+and a shock from within, acting through the contagion of example. Each
+case is separately perfect. Through the opinion of men standing
+_outside_ of the church, the church herself suffers wrong in her
+authority. Through the contagion of sympathy stealing over men _inside_
+of the church, peril arises of other shocks in a second series, which
+would so exhaust the church by reiterated convulsions, as to leave her
+virtually dismembered and shattered for all her great national
+functions.
+
+As to that evil which acts through opinion, it acts by a machinery,
+viz. the press and social centralization in great cities, which in
+these days is perfect. Right or wrong, justified _or not_ justified
+by the acts of the majority, it is certain that every public body--how
+much more, then, a body charged with the responsibility of upholding
+the truth in its standard!--suffers dreadfully in the world's opinion
+by any feud, schism, or shadow of change among its members. This is
+what the New Testament, a code of philosophy fertile in new ideas,
+first introduced under the name of _scandal_; that is, any occasion
+of serious offence ministered to the weak or to the sceptical by
+differences irreconcilable in the acts or the opinions of those whom
+they are bound to regard as spiritual authorities. Now here, in
+Scotland, is a feud past all arbitration: here is a schism no longer
+theoretic, neither beginning nor ending in mere speculation; here is
+a change of doctrine, _on one side or the other_, which throws a sad
+umbrage of doubt and perplexity over the pastoral relation of the
+church to every parish in Scotland. Less confidence there must always
+be henceforward in great religious incorporations. Was there any such
+incorporation reputed to be more internally harmonious than the Scottish
+church? None has been so tempestuously agitated. Was any church more
+deeply pledged to the spirit of meekness? None has split asunder so
+irreconcilably. As to the grounds of quarrel, could any questions or
+speculations be found so little fitted for a popular intemperance? Yet
+no breach of unity has ever propagated itself by steps so sudden and
+irrevocable. One short decennium has comprehended within its circuit
+the beginning and the end of this unparalleled hurricane. In 1834, the
+first light augury of mischief skirted the horizon--a cloud no bigger
+than a man's hand. In 1843, the evil had 'travelled on from birth to
+birth.' Already it had failed in what may be called one conspiracy;
+already it had entered upon a second, viz., to rear up an _Anti-Kirk_,
+or spurious establishment, which should twist itself with snake-like
+folds about the legal establishment; surmount it as a Roman _vinea_
+surmounted the fortifications which it beleaguered; and which, under
+whatsoever practical issue for the contest, should at any rate overlook,
+molest, and insult the true church for ever. Even this brief period
+of development would have been briefer, had not the law courts
+interposed many delays. Demurs of law process imposed checks upon the
+uncharitable haste of the _odium theologicum_. And though in a question
+of schism it would be a _petitio principii_ for a neutral censor to
+assume that either party had been originally in error, yet it is within
+our competence to say, that the Seceders it was whose bigotry carried
+the dispute to that sad issue of a final separation. The establishment
+would have been well content to stop short of that consummation: and
+temperaments might have been found, compromises both safe and honorable,
+had the minority built less of their reversionary hopes upon the policy
+of a fanciful martyrdom. Martyrs they insisted upon becoming: and that
+they _might_ be martyrs, it was necessary for them to secede. That
+Europe thinks at present with less reverence of Protestant institutions
+than it did ten years ago, is due to one of these institutions in
+particular; viz. to the Scottish kirk, and specifically to the minority
+in that body. They it was who spurned all mutual toleration, all
+brotherly indulgence from either side to what it regarded as error in
+the other. Consequently upon _their_ consciences lies the responsibility
+of having weakened the pillars of the reformed churches throughout
+Christendom.
+
+Had those abuses been really such, which the Seceders denounced, were
+it possible that a primary law of pure Christianity had been set aside
+for generations, how came it that evils so gross had stirred no whispers
+of reproach before 1834? How came it that no aurora of early light,
+no prelusive murmurs of scrupulosity even from themselves, had run
+before this wild levanter of change? Heretofore or now there must have
+been huge error on their own showing. Heretofore they must have been
+traitorously below their duty, or now mutinously beyond it.
+
+Such conclusions are irresistible and upon any path, seceding or not
+seceding, they menace the worldly credit of ecclesiastical bodies.
+That evil is now past remedy. As for the other evil, that which acts
+upon church establishments, not through simple failure in the guarantees
+of public opinion, but through their own internal vices of composition;
+here undeniably we see a chasm traversing the Scottish church from the
+very gates to the centre. And unhappily the same chasm, which marks
+a division of the church internally, is a link connecting it externally
+with the Seceders. For how stands the case? Did the Scottish kirk, at
+the late crisis, divide broadly into two mutually excluding sections?
+Was there one of these bisections which said _Yes_, whilst the other
+responded _No_? Was the affirmative and negative shared between them
+as between the black chessmen and the white? Not so; and unhappily not
+so. The two extremes there were, but these shaded off into each other.
+Many were the _nuances_; multiplied the combinations. Here stood a
+section that had voted for all the changes, with two or three
+exceptions; there stood another that went the _whole_ length as to
+this change, but no part of the way as to that; between these sections
+arose others that had voted arbitrarily, or _eclectically_, that is,
+by no law generally recognised. And behind this eclectic school were
+grouped others who had voted for all novelties up to a certain day,
+but after _that_ had refused to go further with a movement party whose
+tendencies they had begun to distrust. In this last case, therefore,
+the divisional line fell upon no principle, but upon the accident of
+having, at that particular moment, first seen grounds of conscientious
+alarm. The principles upon which men had divided were various, and
+these various principles were variously combined. But on the other
+hand, those who have gone out were the men who approved totally, not
+partially--unconditionally, not within limits--up to the end, and not
+to a given day. Consequently those who stayed in comprehended all the
+shades and degrees which the men of violence excluded. The Seceders
+were unanimous to a man, and of necessity; for he who approves the
+last act, the extreme act, which is naturally the most violent act,
+_a fortiori_ approves all lesser acts. But the establishment, by parity
+of reason, retained upon its rolls all the degrees, all the
+modifications, all who had exercised a wise discretion, who, in so
+great a cause, had thought it a point of religion to be cautious; whose
+casuistry had moved in the harness of peace, and who had preferred an
+interest of conscience to a triumph of partisanship. We honor them for
+that policy; but we cannot hide from ourselves, that the very principle
+which makes such a policy honorable at the moment, makes it dangerous
+in reversion. For he who avows that, upon public motives, he once
+resisted a temptation to schism, makes known by that avowal that he
+still harbors in his mind the germ of such a temptation: and to that
+scruple, which once he resisted, hereafter he may see reason for
+yielding. The principles of schism, which for the moment were
+suppressed, are still latent in the church. It is urged that, in quest
+of unity, many of these men _succeeded_ in resisting the instincts of
+dissension at the moment of crisis. True: But this might be because
+they presumed on winning from their own party equal concessions by
+means less violent than schism; or because they attached less weight
+to the principle concerned, than they may see cause for attaching upon
+future considerations; or because they would not allow themselves to
+sanction the cause of the late Secession, by going out in company with
+men whose principles they adopted only in part, or whose manner of
+supporting those principles they abhorred. Universally it is evident,
+that little stress is to be laid on a negative act; simply to have
+declined going out with the Seceders proves nothing, for it is
+equivocal. It is an act which may cover indifferently a marked hostility
+to the Secession party, or an absolute friendliness, but a friendliness
+not quite equal to so extreme a test. And, again, this negative act
+may be equivocal in a different way; the friendliness may not only
+have existed, but may have existed in sufficient strength for any test
+whatever; not the principles of the Seceders, but their Jacobinical
+mode of asserting them, may have proved the true nerve of the repulsion
+to many. What is it that we wish the English reader to collect from
+these distinctions? Simply that the danger is not yet gone past. The
+earthquake, says a great poet, when speaking of the general tendency
+in all dangers to come round by successive and reiterated shocks--
+
+  'The earthquake is not satisfied at once.'
+
+All dangers which lie deeply seated are recurrent dangers; they
+intermit, only as the revolving lamps of a light-house are periodically
+eclipsed. The General Assembly of 1843, when closing her gates upon
+the Seceders, shut _in_, perhaps, more of the infected than at the
+time she succeeded in shutting _out_. As respected the opinion of the
+world outside, it seemed advisable to shut out the least number
+possible; for in proportion to the number of the Seceders, was the
+danger that they should carry with them an authentic impression in
+their favor. On the other hand, as respected a greater danger, (the
+danger from internal contagion), it seemed advisable that the church
+should have shut out (if she could) very many of those who, for the
+present, adhered to her. The broader the separation, and the more
+absolute, between the church and the secession, so much the less anxiety
+there would have survived lest the rent should spread. That the anxiety
+in this respect is not visionary, the reader may satisfy himself by
+looking over a remarkable pamphlet, which professes by its title to
+separate the _wheat from the chaff_. By the 'wheat,' in the view of
+this writer, is meant the aggregate of those who persevered in their
+recusant policy up to the practical result of secession. All who stopped
+short of that consummation (on whatever plea), are the 'chaff.' The
+writer is something of an incendiary, or something of a fanatic; but
+he is consistent with regard to his own principles, and so elaborately
+careful in his details as to extort admiration of his energy and of
+his patience in research.
+
+But the reason for which we notice this pamphlet, is, with a view to
+the proof of that large intestine mischief which still lingers behind
+in the vitals of the Scottish establishment. No proof, in a question
+of that nature, _can_ be so showy and _ostensive_ to a stranger as
+that which is supplied by this vindictive pamphlet. For every past
+vote recording a scruple, is the pledge of a scruple still existing,
+though for the moment suppressed. Since the secession, nearly four
+hundred and fifty new men may have entered the church. This
+supplementary body has probably diluted the strength of the
+revolutionary principles. But they also may, perhaps, have partaken
+to some extent in the contagion of these principles. True, there is
+this guarantee for caution, on the part of these new men, that as yet
+they are pledged to nothing; and that, seeing experimentally how
+fearfully many of their older brethren are now likely to be fettered
+by the past, they have every possible motive for reserve, in committing
+themselves, either by their votes or by their pens. In _their_
+situation, there is a special inducement to prudence, because there
+is a prospect, that for _them_ prudence is in time to be effectual.
+But for many of the older men, prudence comes too late. They are already
+fettered. And what we are now pointing out to the attention of our
+readers, is, that by the past, by the absolute votes of the past, too
+sorrowfully it is made evident, that the Scottish church is deeply
+tainted with the principles of the Secession. These germs of evil and
+of revolution, speaking of them in a _personal_ sense, cannot be purged
+off entirely until one generation shall have passed away. But, speaking
+of them as _principles_ capable of vegetation, these germs may or may
+not expand into whole forests of evil, according to the accidents of
+coming events, whether fitted to tranquillize our billowy aspects of
+society; or, on the other hand, largely to fertilize the many occasions
+of agitation, which political fermentations are too sure to throw off.
+Let this chance turn out as it may, we repeat for the information of
+Southerns--that the church, by shutting off the persons of particular
+agitators, has not shut off the principles of agitation; and that the
+_cordon sanataire_, supposing the spontaneous exile of the
+Non-intrusionists to be regarded in that light, was not drawn about
+the church until the disease had spread widely _within_ the lines.
+
+Past votes may not absolutely pledge a man to a future course of action;
+warned in time, such a man may stand neutral in practice; but thus far
+they poison the fountains of wholesome unanimity--that, if a man can
+evade the necessity of squaring particular _actions_ to his past
+opinions, at least he must find himself tempted to square his opinions
+themselves, or his counsels, to such past opinions as he may too
+notoriously have placed on record by his votes.
+
+But, if such are the continual dangers from reactions in the
+establishment, so long as men survive in that establishment who feel
+upbraided by past votes, and so long as enemies survive who will not
+suffer these upbraidings to slumber--dangers which much mutual
+forbearance and charity can alone disarm; on the other hand, how much
+profounder is the inconsistency to which the Free Church is
+doomed!--They have rent the unity of that church, to which they had
+pledged their faith--but on what plea? On the plea that in cases purely
+spiritual, they could not in conscience submit to the award of the
+secular magistrate. Yet how merely impracticable is this principle,
+as an abiding principle of action! Churches, that is, the charge of
+particular congregations, will be with _them_ (as with other religious
+communities) the means of livelihood. Grounds innumerable will arise
+for excluding or attempting to exclude, each other from these official
+stations. No possible form regulating the business of ordination, or
+of induction, can anticipate the infinite objections which may arise.
+But no man interested in such a case, will submit to a judge appointed
+by insufficient authority. Daily bread for his family is what few men
+will resign without a struggle. And that struggle will of necessity
+come for final adjudication to the law courts of the land, whose
+interference in any question affecting a spiritual interest, the Free
+Church has for ever pledged herself to refuse. But in the case supposed,
+she will not have the power to refuse it. She will be cited before the
+tribunals, and can elude that citation in no way but by surrendering
+the point in litigation; and if she should adopt the notion, that it
+is better for her to do _that_, than to acknowledge a sufficient
+authority in the court by pleading at its bar, upon this principle
+once made public, she will soon be stripped of everything, and will
+cease to be a church at all. She cannot continue to be a depository
+of any faith, or a champion of any doctrines, if she lose the means
+of defending her own incorporations. But how can she maintain the
+defenders of her rights, or the dispensers of her truths, if she
+refuses, upon immutable principle, to call in the aid of the magistrate
+on behalf of rights, which, under any aspect, regard spiritual
+relations? Attempting to maintain these rights by private arbitration
+within a forum of her own, she will soon find such arbitration not
+binding at all upon the party who conceives himself aggrieved. The
+issue will be as in Mr. O'Connell's courts, where the parties played
+at going to law; from the moment when they ceased to play, and no
+longer 'made believe' to be disputing, the award of the judge became
+as entire a mockery, as any stage mimicry of such a transaction.
+
+This should be the natural catastrophe of the case; and the probable
+evasion of that destructive consummation, to which she is carried by
+her principles, will be--that as soon as her feelings of rancor shall
+have cooled down, these principles will silently drop out of use; and
+the very reason will be suffered to perish for which she ever became
+a dissenting body. With this, however, we, that stand outside, are
+noways concerned. But an evil, in which we _are_ concerned, is the
+headlong tendency of the Free Church, and of all churches adulterating
+with her principle, to an issue not merely dangerous in a political
+sense, but ruinous in an anti-social sense. The artifice of the Free
+Church lies in pleading a spiritual relation of any case whatever,
+whether of doing or suffering, whether positive or negative, as a
+reason for taking it out of all civil control. Now we may illustrate
+the peril of this artifice, by a reality at this time impending over
+society in Ireland. Dr. Higgins, titular bishop of Ardagh, has
+undertaken upon this very plea of a spiritual power not amenable to
+civil control, a sort of warfare with Government, upon the question
+of their power to suspend or defeat the O'Connell agitation. For, says
+he, if Government should succeed in thus intercepting the direct power
+of haranguing mobs in open assemblies, then will I harangue them, and
+cause them to be harangued, in the same spirit, upon the same topics,
+from the altar or the pulpit. An immediate extension of this principle
+would be--that every disaffected clergyman in the three kingdoms, would
+lecture his congregation upon the duty of paying no taxes. This he
+would denominate passive resistance; and resistance to bad government
+would become, in his language, the most sacred of duties. In any
+argument with such a man, he would be found immediately falling back
+upon the principle of the Free Church; he would insist upon it as a
+spiritual right, as a ease entirely between his conscience and God,
+whether he should press to an extremity any and every doctrine, though
+tending to the instant disorganization of society. To lecture against
+war, and against taxes as directly supporting war, would wear a most
+colorable air of truth amongst all weak-minded persons. And these would
+soon appear to have been but the first elements of confusion under the
+improved views of spiritual rights. The doctrines of the _Levellers_
+in Cromwell's time, of the _Anabaptists_ in Luther's time, would exalt
+themselves upon the ruins of society, if governments were weak enough
+to recognise these spiritual claims in the feeblest of their initial
+advances. If it were possible to suppose such chimeras prevailing, the
+natural redress would soon be seen to lie through secret tribunals,
+like those of the dreadful _Fehmgericht_ in the middle ages. It would
+be absurd, however, seriously to pursue these anti-social chimeras
+through their consequences. Stern remedies would summarily crush so
+monstrous an evil. Our purpose is answered, when the necessity of such
+insupportable consequences is shown to link itself with that distinction
+upon which the Free Church has laid the foundations of its own
+establishment. Once for all, there is no act or function belonging to
+an officer of a church which is not spiritual by one of its two Janus
+faces. And every examination of the case convinces us more and more
+that the Seceders took up the old papal distinction, as to acts
+spiritual or not spiritual, not under any delusion less or more, but
+under a simple necessity of finding some evasion or other which should
+meet and embody the whole rancor of the moment.
+
+But beyond any other evil consequence prepared by the Free Church, is
+the appalling spirit of Jacobinism which accompanies their whole
+conduct, and which latterly has avowed itself in their words. The case
+began Jacobinically, for it began in attacks upon the rights of
+property. But since the defeat of this faction by the law courts,
+language seems to fail them, for the expression of their hatred and
+affected scorn towards the leading nobility of Scotland. Yet why? The
+case lies in the narrowest compass. The Duke of Sutherland, and other
+great landholders, had refused sites for their new churches. Upon this
+occurred a strong fact, and strong in both directions; first, for the
+Seceders; secondly, upon better information _against_ them. The _Record_
+newspaper, a religious journal, ably and conscientiously conducted,
+took part with the Secession, and very energetically; for they denounced
+the noble duke's refusal of land as an act of 'persecution;' and upon
+this principle--that, in a county where his grace was pretty nearly
+the sole landed proprietor, to refuse land (assuming that a fair price
+had been tendered for it) was in effect to show such intolerance as
+might easily tend to the suppression of truth. Intolerance, however,
+is not persecution; and, if it were, the casuistry of the question is
+open still to much discussion. But this is not necessary; for the
+ground is altogether shifted when the duke's reason for refusing the
+land comes to be stated; he had refused it, not unconditionally, not
+in the spirit of non-intrusion courts, '_without reason shown,_' but
+on this unanswerable argument--that the whole efforts of the new church
+were pointed (and professedly pointed) to the one object of destroying
+the establishment, and 'sweeping it from the land.' Could any guardian
+of public interests, under so wicked a threat, hesitate as to the line
+of his duty? By granting the land to parties uttering such menaces,
+the Duke of Sutherland would have made himself an accomplice in the
+unchristian conspiracy. Meantime, next after this fact, it is the
+strongest defence which we can offer for the duke--that in a day or
+two after this charge of 'persecution,' the _Record_ was forced to
+attack the Seceders in terms which indirectly defended the duke. And
+this, not in any spirit of levity, but under mere conscientious
+constraint. For no journal has entered so powerfully or so eloquently
+into the defence of the general principle involved in the Secession
+(although questioning its expediency), as this particular _Record_.
+Consequently, any word of condemnation from so earnest a friend, comes
+against the Seceders with triple emphasis. And this is shown in the
+tone of the expostulations addressed to the _Record_ by some of the
+Secession leaders. It spares us, indeed, all necessity of quoting the
+vile language uttered by members of the Free Church Assembly, if we
+say, that the _neutral_ witnesses of such unchristian outrages have
+murmured, remonstrated, protested in every direction; and that Dr,
+Macfarlane, who has since corresponded with the Duke of Sutherland
+upon the whole case--viz. upon the petition for land, as affected by
+the shocking menaces of the Seceders--has, in no other way, been able
+to evade the double mischief of undertaking a defence for the
+indefensible, and at the same time of losing the land irretrievably,
+than by affecting an unconsciousness of language used by his party
+little suited to his own sacred calling, or to the noble simplicities
+of Christianity. Certainly it is unhappy for the Seceders, that the
+only disavowal of the most fiendish sentiments heard in our days, has
+come from an individual not authorized or at all commissioned by his
+party--from an individual not showing any readiness to face the whole
+charges, disingenuously dissembling the worst of them, and finally
+offering his very feeble disclaimer, which equivocates between a denial
+and a palliation--not until _after_ he found himself in the position
+of a petitioner for favors.
+
+Specifically the great evil of our days, is the abiding temptation,
+in every direction, to popular discontent, to agitation, and to
+systematic sedition. Now, we say it with sorrow, that from no other
+incendiaries have we heard sentiments so wild, fierce, or maliciously
+democratic, as from the leaders of the Secession. It was the Reform
+Bill of 1832, and the accompanying agitation, which first suggested
+the veto agitation of 1834, and prescribed its tone. From all classes
+of our population, in turn, there have come forward individuals to
+disgrace themselves by volunteering their aid to the chief conspirators
+of the age. We have earls, we have marquesses, coming forward as
+Corn-League agents; we have magistrates by scores angling for popularity
+as Repealers. But these have been private parties, insulated,
+disconnected, disowned. When we hear of Christianity prostituted to
+the service of Jacobinism--of divinity becoming the handmaid to
+insurrection--and of clergymen in masses offering themselves as
+promoters of anarchy, we go back in thought to that ominous organization
+of irreligion, which gave its most fearful aspects to the French
+Revolution.
+
+Other evils are in the rear as likely to arise out of the _funds_
+provided for the new Seceders, were the distribution of those funds
+confessedly unobjectionable, but more immediately under the present
+murmurs against that distribution. There are two funds: one subscribed
+expressly for the building of churches, the other limited to the
+'sustentation' of incumbents. And the complaint is--that this latter
+fund has been invaded for purposes connected with the first. The reader
+can easily see the motive to this injustice: it is a motive of ambition.
+Far more display of power is made by the annunciation to the world of
+six hundred churches built, than of any difference this way or that
+in the comfort and decorous condition of the clergy. This last is a
+domestic feature of the case, not fitted for public effect. But the
+number of the churches will resound through Europe. Meantime, _at
+present_, the allowance to the great body of Seceding clergy averages
+but [pound symbol]80 a-year; and the allegation is--that, but for the
+improper interference with the fund on the motive stated, it _would_
+have averaged [pound symbol]150 a-year. If anywhere a town parish has
+raised a much larger provision for its pastor, even _that_ has now
+become a part of the general grievance. For it is said that all such
+special contributions ought to have been thrown into one general
+fund--liable to one general principle of distribution. Yet again, will
+even this fund, partially as it seems to have been divided, continue
+to be available? Much of it lies in annual subscriptions: now, in the
+next generation of subscribers, a son will possibly not adopt the views
+of his father; but assuredly he will not adopt his father's zeal. Here,
+however (though this is not probable), there may arise some compensatory
+cases of subscribers altogether new. But another question is pressing
+for decision, which menaces a frightful shock to the schismatical
+church: female agency has been hitherto all potent in promoting the
+subscriptions; and a demand has been made in consequence--that women
+shall be allowed to vote in the church courts. Grant this demand--for
+it cannot be evaded--and what becomes of the model for church government
+as handed down from John Knox and Calvin? Refuse it, and what becomes
+of the future subscriptions?
+
+But these are evils, it may be said, only for the Seceders. Not so:
+we are all interested in the respectability of the national teachers,
+whatever be their denomination: we are all interested in the maintenance
+of a high standard for theological education. These objects are likely
+to suffer at any rate. But it is even a worse result which we may count
+on from the changes, that a practical approximation is thus already
+made to what is technically known as Voluntaryism.
+
+The '_United Secession_,' that is the old collective body of Scottish
+Dissenters, who, having no regular provision, are carried into this
+voluntary system, already exult that this consummation of the case
+cannot be far off. Indeed, so far as the Seceders are dependent upon
+_annual_ subscriptions, and coupling that relation to the public with
+the great doctrine of these Seceders, that congregations are universally
+to appoint their own pastors, we do not see how such an issue is open
+to evasion. The leaders of the new Secession all protest against
+Voluntaryism: but to that complexion of things they travel rapidly by
+the mere mechanic action of their dependent (or semi-dependent)
+situation, combined with one of their two characteristic principles.
+
+The same United Secession journal openly anticipates another and more
+diffusive result from this great movement; viz. the general disruption
+of church establishments. We trust that this anticipation will be
+signally defeated. And yet there is one view of the case which saddens
+us when we turn our eyes in that direction. Among the reasonings and
+expostulations of the Schismatic church, one that struck us as the
+most eminently hypocritical, and ludicrously so, was this: 'You ought,'
+said they, when addressing the Government, and exposing the error of
+the law proceedings, 'to have stripped us of the temporalities arising
+from the church, stipend, glebe, parsonage, but not of the spiritual
+functions. We had no right to the emoluments of our stations, when the
+law courts had decided against us, but we _had_ a right to the laborious
+duties of the stations.' No gravity could refuse to smile at this
+complaint--verbally so much in the spirit of primitive Christianity,
+yet in its tendency so insidious. For could it be possible that a
+competitor introduced by the law, and leaving the duties of the pastoral
+office to the old incumbent, but pocketing the salary, should not be
+hooted on the public roads by many who might otherwise have taken no
+part in the feud? This specious claim was a sure and brief way to
+secure the hatefulness of their successors. Now, we cannot conceal
+from ourselves that something like this invidious condition of things
+might be realized under two further revolutions. We have said, that
+a second schism in the Scottish church is not impossible. It is also
+but too possible that Puseyism may yet rend the English establishment
+by a similar convulsion. But in such contingencies, we should see a
+very large proportion of the spiritual teachers in both nations actually
+parading to the public eye, and rehearsing something very like the
+treacherous proposal of the late Seceders, viz., the spectacle of one
+party performing much of the difficult duties, and another party
+enjoying the main emoluments. This would be a most unfair mode of
+recommending Voluntaryism. Falling in with the infirmities of many in
+these days, such a spectacle would give probably a fatal bias to that
+system in our popular and Parliamentary counsels. This would move the
+sorrow of the Seceders themselves: for they have protested against the
+theory of all Voluntaries with a vehemence which that party even
+complain of as excessive. Their leaders have many times avowed, that
+any system which should leave to men in general the estimate of their
+own religious wants as a pecuniary interest, would be fatal to the
+Christian tone of our national morals. Checked and overawed by the
+example of an establishment, the Voluntaries themselves are far more
+fervent in their Christian exertions than they could be when liberated
+from that contrast. The religious spirit of both England and Scotland
+under such a change would droop for generations. And in that one evil,
+let us hope, the remotest and least probable of the many evils
+threatened by the late schism, these nations would have reason by
+comparison almost to forget the rest.
+
+
+
+
+TOILETTE OF THE HEBREW LADY.
+
+EXHIBITED IN SIX SCENES.
+
+[1828.]
+
+
+
+[TO THE EDITOR OF BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE.]
+
+Sir,--Some years ago you published a translation of Bottiger's 'Sabina,'
+a learned account of the Roman toilette. I here send you a companion
+to that work--not a direct translation, but a very minute abstract
+from a similar dissertation by Hartmann, (weeded of the wordiness which
+has made the original unreadable, and in consequence unread,) on the
+toilette and the wardrobe of the ladies of ancient Palestine. Hartmann
+was a respectable Oriental scholar, and he published his researches,
+which occupy three thick octavos, making in all one thousand four
+hundred and eighty-eight pages, under the title of _Die Hebraerin am
+Putztische und als Braut_, _Amsterdam_, 1809. (_The Hebrew Woman at
+her Toilette, and in her Bridal character_.) I understand that the
+poor man is now gone to Hades, where let us hope that it is considered
+no crime in a learned man to be exceedingly tedious, and to repeat the
+same thing ten times over, or even, upon occasion, fifteen times,
+provided that his own upright heart should incline him to think that
+course the most advisable. Certainly Mr. Hartmann has the most excellent
+gifts at verbal expansion, and at tautology, that ever came within my
+knowledge; and I found no particular difficulty in compressing every
+tittle of what relates to his subject, into a compass which, I imagine,
+will fill about twelve of your pages, or fifty, at the utmost, of the
+original work.
+
+It was not to be expected, with the scanty materials before him, that
+an illustrator of the Hebrew costume should be as full and explicit
+as Bottiger, with the advantage of writing upon a theme more familiar
+to us Europeans of this day, than any parallel theme even in our own
+national archaeologies of two centuries back. United, however, with
+his great reading, this barrenness of the subject is so far an advantage
+for Hartmann, as it yields a strong presumption that he has exhausted
+it. The male costume of ancient Palestine is yet to be illustrated;
+but, for the female, it is probable that little could be added to what
+Hartmann has collected; [Footnote 1] and that any clever dress-maker
+would, with the indications here given, (especially if you could
+persuade Mr. Blackwood to adopt one or two of Mr. Hartmann's seven
+outlines,) enable any lady at the next great masquerade in London, to
+support the part of one of the ancient daughters of Palestine, and to
+call back, after eighteen centuries of sleep, the buried pomps of
+Jerusalem. As to the _talking_, there would be no difficulty at all
+in that point; bishops, and other 'sacred' people, if they ever go
+a-masquing, for their own sakes will not be likely to betray themselves
+by putting impertinent questions in Hebrew; and for 'profane' people,
+who might like the impertinence, they would very much dislike the
+Hebrew; indeed, of uncircumcised Hebrews, barring always the clergy,
+it is not thought that any are extant. In other respects, and as a
+_spectacle_, the Hebrew masque would infallibly eclipse every other
+in the room. The upper and under chemise, if managed properly, (and
+either you or I, Mr. North, would be most proud to communicate our
+private advice on that subject,) would transcend, in gorgeous display,
+the coronation robes of queens; nose-pendants would cause the masque
+to be immediately and unerringly recognised; or if those were not
+thought advisable, the silver ankle-bells, with their melodious
+chimes--the sandals, with their jewelled net-work--and the golden
+diadem, binding the forehead, and dropping from each extremity of the
+polished temples a rouleau of pearls, which, after traversing the
+cheeks, unite below the chin--are all so unique and exclusively
+Hebraic--that each and all would have the same advantageous effect,
+proclaiming and notifying the character, without putting the fair
+supporter to any disagreeable expense of Hebrew or Chaldee. The silver
+bells alone would 'bear the bell' from every competitor in the room;
+and she might besides carry a cymbal--a dulcimer--or a timbrel in her
+hands.
+
+In conclusion, my dear North, let me congratulate you that Mr. Hartmann
+is now in Hades (as I said before) rather than in Edinburgh; for, had
+he been in this latter place, he would have been the ruin of you. It
+was his intention, as I am well assured, just about the time that he
+took his flight for Hades, to have commenced regular contributor to
+your journal; so great was his admiration of you, and also of the terms
+which you offer to the literary world. As a learned Orientalist, you
+could not decorously have rejected him; and yet, once admitted, he
+would have beggared you before any means could have been discovered
+by the learned for putting a stop to him. [Greek Text: Aperantologia]
+was his forte; upon this he piqued himself, and most justly, since for
+covering the ground rapidly, and yet not advancing an inch, those, who
+knew and valued him as he deserved, would have backed him against the
+whole field of the _gens de plume_ now in Europe. Had he lived, and
+fortunately for himself communicated his _Hebrew Toilette_ to the world
+through you, instead of foundering (as he did) at Amsterdam, he would
+have flourished upon your exchequer; and you would not have heard the
+last of him or his Toilette, for the next twenty years. He dates, you
+see, from Amsterdam; and, had you been weak enough to take him on
+board, he would have proved that 'Flying Dutchman' that would infallibly
+have sunk your vessel.
+
+The more is your obligation to me, I think, for sweating him down to
+such slender dimensions. And, speaking seriously, both of us perhaps
+will rejoice that even with _his_ talents for telling everything, he
+was obliged on this subject to leave many things untold. For, though
+it might be gratifying to a mere interest of curiosity, yet I believe
+that we should both be grieved if anything were to unsettle in our
+feelings the mysterious sanctities of Jerusalem, or to disturb that
+awful twilight which will for ever brood over Judea--by letting in
+upon it the 'common light of day;' and this effect would infallibly
+take place, if any one department of daily life, as it existed in
+Judea, were brought with all the degrading minutiae of its details
+within the petty finishing of a domestic portrait.
+
+Farewell, my dear North, and believe me to be always your old friend
+and admirer,
+
+[Greek Text: Cap Omega, Cap Phi]
+
+SCENE THE FIRST.
+
+I. That simple body-cloth framed of leaves, skins, flax, wool, &c.
+which modesty had first introduced, for many centuries perhaps sufficed
+as the common attire of both sexes amongst the Hebrew Bedouins. It
+extended downwards to the knees, and upwards to the hips, about which
+it was fastened. Such a dress is seen upon many of the figures in the
+sculptures of Persepolis; even in modern times, Niebuhr found it the
+ordinary costume of the lower Arabians in Hedsjas; and Shaw assures
+us, that from its commodious shape, it is still a favorite dishabille
+of the Arabian women when they are behind the curtains of the tent.
+
+From this early rudiment was derived, by gradual elongation, that
+well-known under habiliment, which in Hebrew is called _Ch'tonet_, and
+in Greek and Latin by words of similar sound. [Footnote 2] In this
+stage of its progress, when extended to the neck and the shoulders,
+it represents pretty accurately the modern shirt, or _chemise_--except
+that the sleeves are wanting; and during the first period of Jewish
+history, it was probably worn as the sole under-garment by women of
+all ranks, both amongst the Bedouin Hebrews and those who lived in
+cities. A very little further extension to the elbows and the calves
+of the legs, and it takes a shape which survives even to this day in
+Asia. Now, as then, the female habiliment was distinguished from the
+corresponding male one by its greater length; and through all antiquity
+we find long clothes a subject of reproach to men, as an argument of
+effeminacy.
+
+According to the rank or vanity of the wearer, this tunic was made of
+more or less costly materials; for wool and flax was often substituted
+the finest byssus, or other silky substance; and perhaps, in the latter
+periods, amongst families of distinction in Jerusalem, even silk itself.
+Splendor of coloring was not neglected; and the opening at the throat
+was eagerly turned to account as an occasion for displaying fringe or
+rich embroidery.
+
+Bottiger remarks, that, even in the age of Augustus, the morning dress
+of Roman ladies when at home was nothing more than this very tunic;
+which, if it sate close, did not even require a girdle. The same remark
+applies to the Hebrew women, who, during the nomadic period of their
+history, had been accustomed to wear no night-chemises at all, but
+slept quite naked, or, at the utmost, with a cestus or zone: by way
+of bed-clothes, however, it must be observed, that they swathed their
+person in the folds of a robe or shawl. Up to the time of Solomon,
+this practice obtained through all ranks; and so long the universal
+household dress of a Hebrew lady in her harem, was the tunic as here
+described; and in this she dressed herself the very moment that she
+rose from bed. Indeed, so long as the Hebrew women were content with
+a single tunic, it flowed loose in liberal folds about the body; and
+was fastened by a belt or a clasp, just as we find it at this day
+amongst all Asiatic nations. But, when a second under-garment was
+introduced, the inner one fitted close to the shape, whilst the outer
+one remained full and free as before.
+
+II. No fashion of the female toilette is of higher antiquity than that
+of dyeing the margin of the eyelids and the eyebrows with a black
+pigment. It is mentioned or alluded to, 2 Kings, ix. 30, Jerem. iv.
+30, Ezek. xxiii. 40; to which may be added, Isaiah, iii. 16. The
+practice had its origin in a discovery made accidentally in Egypt. For
+it happens, that the substance used for this purpose in ancient times,
+is a powerful remedy in cases of ophthalmia and inflammation of the
+eyes;--complaints to which Egypt is, from local causes, peculiarly
+exposed. This endemic infirmity, in connection with the medical science
+for which Egypt was so distinguished, easily account for their
+discovering the uses of antimony, which is the principal ingredient
+in the pigments of this class. Egypt was famous for the fashion of
+painting the face from an early period: and in some remarkable
+curiosities illustrating the Egyptian toilette, which were discovered
+in the catacombs of Sahara in Middle Egypt, there was a single joint
+of a common reed containing an ounce or more of the coloring powder,
+and one of the needles for applying it. The entire process was as
+follows:--The mineral powder, finely prepared, was mixed up with a
+preparation of vinegar and gall-apples--sometimes with oil of almonds,
+or other oils--sometimes, by very luxurious women, with costly gums
+and balsams. [Footnote 3] And perhaps, as Sonnini describes the practice
+among the Mussulman women at present, the whole mass thus compounded
+was dried and again reduced to an impalpable powder, and consistency
+then given to it by the vapors of some odorous and unctuous substance.
+Thus prepared, the pigment was applied to the tip or pointed ferule
+of a little metallic pencil, called, in Hebrew, _Makachol_, and made
+of silver, gold, or ivory; the eyelids were then closed, and the little
+pencil, or probe, held horizontally, was inserted between them:--a
+process which is briefly and picturesquely described in the Bible. The
+effect of the black rim, which the pigment traced about the eyelid,
+was to throw a dark and majestic shadow over the eye; to give it a
+languishing and yet a lustrous expression; to increase its apparent
+size, and to apply the force of contrast to the white of the eye.
+Together with the eyelids, the Hebrew women colored the eyebrows, the
+point aimed at being twofold--to curve them into a beautiful arch of
+brilliant ebony--and, at the same time, to make the inner ends meet
+or flow into each other.
+
+III. Ear-rings of gold, silver, inferior metals, or even horn, were
+worn by the Hebrew women in all ages; and in the flourishing period
+of the Jewish kingdom, probably by men: and so essential an ornament
+were they deemed, that in the idolatrous times, even the images of
+their false gods were not considered becomingly attired without them.
+Their ear-rings were larger, according to the Asiatic taste; but whether
+quite large enough to admit the hand, is doubtful. In a later age, as
+we collect from the Thalmud, Part VI. 43, the Jewish ladies wore gold
+or silver pendants, of which the upper part was shaped like a lentil,
+and the lower hollowed like a little cup or pipkin. It is probable
+also, that, even in the oldest ages, it was a practice amongst them
+to suspend gold and silver rings, not merely from the lower, but also
+from the upper end of the ear, which was perforated like a sieve. The
+tinkling sound, with which, upon the slightest motion, two or three
+tiers of rings would be set a-dancing about the cheeks, was very
+agreeable to the baby taste of the Asiatics.
+
+From a very early age, the ears of Hebrew women were prepared for this
+load of trinketry; for, according to the Thalmud, II. 23, they kept
+open the little holes, after they were pierced, by threads or slips
+of wood: a fact which may show the importance they attached to this
+ornament.
+
+IV. Nose-rings, at an early period, became a universal ornament in
+Palestine. We learn, from Biblical and from Arabic authority, that it
+was a practice of Patriarchal descent amongst both the African and
+Asiatic Bedouins, to suspend rings of iron, wood, or braided hair,
+from the nostrils of camels, oxen, &c.--the rope by which the animal
+was guided being attached to these rings. It is probable, therefore,
+that the early Hebrews who dwelt in tents, and who, in the barrenness
+of desert scenery, drew most of their hints for improving their personal
+embellishment from the objects immediately about them, were indebted
+for their nose-rings to this precedent of their camels. Sometimes a
+ring depended from both nostrils; and the size of it was equal to that
+of the ear-ring; so that, at times, its compass included both upper
+and under lip, as in the frame of a picture; and, in the age succeeding
+to Solomon's reign, we hear of rings which were not less than three
+inches in diameter. Hebrew ladies of distinction had sometimes a cluster
+of nose-rings, as well for the tinkling sound which they were contrived
+to emit, as for the shining light which they threw off upon the face.
+
+That the nose-ring possessed no unimportant place in the Jewish
+toilette, is evident, from its being ranked, during the nomadic state
+of the Israelites, as one of the most valuable presents that a young
+Hebrew woman could receive from her lover. Amongst the Midianites, who
+were enriched by the caravan commerce, even men adopted this ornament:
+and this appears to have been the case in the family to which Job
+belonged, [chap. xli. 2.] Under these circumstances, we should naturally
+presume that the Jewish courtezans, in the cities of Palestine, would
+not omit so conspicuous a trinket, with its glancing lights, and its
+tinkling sound: this we might presume, even without the authority of
+the Bible: but, in fact, both Isaiah and Ezekiel expressly mention it
+amongst their artifices of attraction.
+
+Judith, when she appeared before the tent of Holofernes in the whole
+pomp of her charms, and appareled with the most elaborate attention
+to splendor of effect, for the purpose of captivating the hostile
+general, did not omit this ornament. Even the Jewish Proverbs show how
+highly it was valued; and that it continued to be valued in later
+times, appears from the ordinances of the Thalmud, II. 21, in respect
+to the parts of the female wardrobe which were allowed to be worn on
+the Sabbath.
+
+V. The Hebrew women of high rank, in the flourishing period of their
+state, wore NECKLACES composed of multiple rows of pearls. The thread
+on which the pearls were strung, was of flax or woollen,--and sometimes
+colored, as we learn from the Thalmud, VI. 43; and the different rows
+were not exactly concentric; but whilst some invested the throat,
+others descended to the bosom; and in many cases, even to the zone.
+On this part of the dress was lavished the greatest expense; and the
+Roman reproach was sometimes true of a Hebrew family, that its whole
+estate was locked up in a necklace. Tertullian complains heavily of
+a particular pearl necklace, which had cost about ten thousand pounds
+of English money--as of an enormity of extravagance. But, after making
+every allowance for greater proximity to the pearl fisheries, and for
+other advantages enjoyed by the people of Palestine, there is reason
+to believe that some Hebrew ladies possessed single pearls which had
+cost at least five times that sum. [Footnote 4] So much may be affirmed,
+without meaning to compare the most lavish of the ladies of Jerusalem
+with those of Rome, where it is recorded of some _elegantes_, that
+they actually slept with little bags of pearls suspended from their
+necks, that even when sleeping, they might have mementos of their pomp.
+
+But the Hebrew necklaces were not always composed of pearls, or of
+pearls only--sometimes it was the custom to interchange the pearls
+with little golden bulbs or berries: sometimes they were blended with
+the precious stones; and at other times, the pearls were strung two
+and two, and their beautiful whiteness relieved by the interposition
+of red coral.
+
+VI. Next came the BRACELETS of gold or ivory, and fitted up at the
+open side with a buckle or enamelled clasp of elaborate workmanship.
+These bracelets were also occasionally composed of gold or silver
+thread; and it was not unusual for a series of them to ascend from the
+wrist to the elbow. From the clasp, or other fastening of the bracelet,
+depended a delicate chain-work or netting of gold; and in some
+instances, miniature festoons of pearls. Sometimes the gold chain-work
+was exchanged for little silver bells, which could be used, upon
+occasion, as signals of warning or invitation to a lover.
+
+VII. This _bijouterie_ for the arms, naturally reminded the Hebrew
+lady of the ANKLE-BELLS, and other similar ornaments for the feet and
+legs. These ornaments consisted partly in golden belts, or rings,
+which, descending from above the ankle, compressed the foot in various
+parts, and partly in shells and little jingling chains, which depended
+so as to strike against clappers fixed into the metallic belts. The
+pleasant tinkle of the golden belts in collision, the chains rattling,
+and the melodious chime of little silver ankle-bells, keeping time
+with the motions of the foot, made an accompaniment so agreeable to
+female vanity, that the stately daughters of Jerusalem, with their
+sweeping trains flowing after them, appear to have adopted a sort of
+measured tread, by way of impressing a regular cadence upon the music
+of their feet. The chains of gold were exchanged, as luxury advanced,
+for strings of pearls and jewels, which swept in snaky folds about the
+feet and ankles.
+
+This, like many other peculiarities in the Hebrew dress, had its origin
+in a circumstance of their early nomadic life. It is usual with the
+Bedouins to lead the camel, when disposed to be restive, by a rope or
+a belt fastened to one of the fore feet, sometimes to both; and it is
+also a familiar practice to soothe and to cheer the long-suffering
+animal with the sound of little bells, attached either to the neck or
+to one of the fore legs. Girls are commonly employed to lead the camels
+to water; and it naturally happened, that, with their lively fancies,
+some Hebrew or Arabian girl should be prompted to repeat, on her own
+person, what had so often been connected with an agreeable impression
+in her mule companions to the well.
+
+It is probable, however, that afterwards, having once been introduced,
+this fashion was supported and extended by Oriental jealousy. For it
+rendered all clandestine movements very difficult in women; and by
+giving notice of their approach, it had the effect of preparing men
+for their presence, and keeping the road free from all spectacles that
+could be offensive to female delicacy.
+
+From the Hebrew Bedouins, this custom passed to all the nations of
+Asia; Medes, Persians, Lydians, Arabs, &c., and is dwelt on with
+peculiar delight by the elder Arabic poets. That it had spread to the
+westernmost parts of Africa, early in the Christian times, we learn
+from Tertullian, who cannot suppress his astonishment, that the foolish
+women of his time should bear to inflict such compression upon their
+tender feet. Even as early as the times of Herodotus, we find, from
+his account of a Lybian nation, that the women and girls universally
+wore copper rings about their ankles. And at an after period, these
+ornaments were so much cherished by the Egyptian ladies, that, sooner
+than, appear in public without their tinkling ankle-chimes, they
+preferred to bury themselves in the loneliest apartments of the harem.
+
+Finally, the fashion spread partially into Europe; to Greece even, and
+to polished Rome, in so far as regarded the ankle-belts, and the other
+ornamental appendages, with the single exception of the silver bells;
+these were too entirely in the barbaresque taste, to support themselves
+under the frown of European culture.
+
+VIII. The first rude sketch of the Hebrew SANDAL may be traced in that
+little tablet of undrest hide which the Arabs are in the habit of tying
+beneath the feet of their camels. This primitive form, after all the
+modifications and improvements it has received, still betrays itself
+to an attentive observer, in the very-latest fashions of the sandal
+which Palestine has adopted.
+
+To raw hides succeeded tanned leather, made of goat-skin, deer-skin,
+&c.; this, after being accurately cut out to the shape of the sole,
+was fastened on the bare upper surface of the foot by two thongs, of
+which one was usually carried within the great toe, and the other in
+many circumvolutions round about the ankles, so that both finally met
+and tied just above the instep.
+
+The laced sole, or sandal, of this form, continued in Palestine to be
+the universal out-of-doors protection for the feet, up to the
+Christian-era; and it served for both sexes alike. It was not, however,
+worn within doors. At the threshold of the inner apartments the sandals
+were laid aside; and visitors from a distance were presented with a
+vessel of water to cleanse the feet from the soiling of dust and
+perspiration. [Footnote 5]
+
+With this extreme simplicity in the form of the foot apparel, there
+was no great field for improvement. The article contained two parts--the
+sole and the fastening. The first, as a subject for decoration, was
+absolutely desperate; coarse leather being exchanged for fine, all was
+done that could be done; and the wit of man was able to devise no
+further improvement. Hence it happened, that the whole power of the
+inventive faculty was accumulated upon the fastenings, as the only
+subject that remained. These were infinitely varied. Belts of bright
+yellow, of purple, and of crimson, were adopted by ladies of
+distinction--especially those of Palestine, and it was a trial of art
+to throw these into the greatest possible varieties of convolution,
+and to carry them on to a nexus of the happiest form, by which means
+a reticulation, or trellis-work, was accomplished, of the most brilliant
+coloring, which brought into powerful relief the dazzling color of the
+skin.
+
+It is possible that, in the general rage for ornaments of gold which
+possessed the people of Palestine, during the ages of excessive luxury,
+the beauties of Jerusalem may have adopted gilt sandals with gilt
+fastenings, as the ladies of Egypt did. It is possible, also, that the
+Hebrew ladies adopted at one time, in exchange for the sandal, slippers
+that covered the entire foot, such as were once worn at Babylon, and
+are still to be seen on many of the principal figures on the monuments
+of Persepolis; and, if this were really so, ample scope would, in that
+case, have been obtained for inventive art: variations without end
+might then have been devised on the fashion or the materials of the
+subject; and by means of color, embroidery, and infinite combinations
+of jewellery and pearls, an unceasing stimulation of novelty applied
+to the taste of the gorgeous Asiatic.
+
+IX. The VEIL, of various texture--coarse or fine--according to
+circumstances, was thrown over the head by the Hebrew lady, when she
+was unexpectedly surprised, or when a sudden noise gave reason to
+expect the approach of a stranger. This beautiful piece of drapery,
+which flowed back in massy folds over the shoulders, is particularly
+noticed by Isaiah, as holding an indispensable place in the wardrobe
+of his haughty country-women; and in this it was that the enamored
+Hebrew woman sought the beloved of her heart.
+
+ADDENDA TO SCENE THE FIRST.
+
+I. Of the Hebrew ornaments for the throat, some were true necklaces,
+in the modern sense, of several rows, the outermost of which descended
+to the breast, and had little pendulous cylinders of gold, (in the
+poorer classes, of copper,) so contrived as to make a jingling sound
+on the least motion of the person; others were more properly golden
+stocks, or throat-bands, fitted so close as to produce in the spectator
+an unpleasant imagination (and in the wearer, as we learn from the
+Thalmud, VI. 43, until reconciled by use, an actual feeling) of
+constriction approaching to suffocation. Necklaces were, from the
+earliest times, a favorite ornament of the male sex in the East; and
+expressed the dignity of the wearer, as we see in the instances of
+Joseph, of Daniel, &c.; indeed the gold chain of office, still the
+badge of civic (and until lately, of military) dignities, is no more
+than the outermost row of the Oriental necklace. Philo of Alexandria,
+and the other Arabian poets, give us some idea of the importance
+attached by the women of Asia to this beautiful ornament, and of the
+extraordinary money value which it sometimes bore: and from the case
+of the necklace of gold and amber, in the 15th Odyssey, (v. 458,)
+combined with many other instances of the same kind, there can be no
+doubt that it was the neighboring land of Phoenicia from which the
+Hebrew women obtained their necklaces, and the practice of wearing
+them.
+
+II. The fashion, however, of adorning the necklace with golden _Suns_
+and _Moons_, so agreeable to the Hebrew ladies of Isaiah's time, (chap.
+iii. 18,) was not derived from Phoenicia, but from Arabia. At an earlier
+period, (Judges, viii. 21,) the camels of the Midianites were adorned
+with golden moons, which also decorated the necks of the emirs of that
+nomadic tribe. These appendages were not used merely by way of ornament,
+but originally as talismans, or amulets, against sickness, danger, and
+every species of calamity to which the desert was liable. The particular
+form of the amulet is to be explained out of the primitive religion,
+which prevailed in Arabia up to the rise of Mahometanism, in the seventh
+century of Christianity, viz. the _Sabean_ religion, or worship of the
+heavenly host--sun, moon, and stars, the most natural of all modes of
+idolatry, and especially to a nomadic people in flat and pathless
+deserts, without a single way-mark or guidance for their wanderings,
+except what they drew from the silent heavens above them. It is certain,
+therefore, that, long before their emigration into Palestine, the
+Israelites had received the practice of wearing suns and moons from
+the Midianites; even after their settlement in Palestine, it is certain
+that the worship of the starry host struck root pretty deeply at
+different periods; and that, to the sun and moon, in particular, were
+offered incense and libations.
+
+From Arabia, this fashion diffused itself over many countries; [Footnote
+6] and it was not without great displeasure that, in a remote age,
+Jerome and Tertullian discovered this idolatrous ornament upon the
+bosoms of their countrywomen.
+
+The crescents, or _half_-moons of silver, in connection with the golden
+suns, [Footnote 6] were sometimes set in a brilliant frame that
+represented a halo, and still keep their ground on the Persian and
+Turkish toilette, as a favorite ornament.
+
+III. The GOLDEN SNAKES, worn as one of the Hebrew appendages to the
+necklace, had the same idolatrous derivation, and originally were
+applied to the same superstitious use--as an amulet, or prophylactic
+ornament. To minds predisposed to this sort of superstition, the serpent
+came specially recommended under the circumstances of the Hebrews,
+from the conspicuous part which this reptile sustains in the mythologies
+of the East. From the earliest periods to which tradition ascends,
+serpents of various species were consecrated to the religious feelings
+of Egypt, by temples, sacrifices, and formal rites of worship. This
+mode of idolatry had at various periods infected Palestine. According
+to 2 Kings, xviii. 4, at the accession of King Hezekiah, the Israelites
+had raised peculiar altars to a great brazen serpent, and burned incense
+upon them. Even at this day the Abyssinians have an unlimited reverence
+for serpents; and the blacks in general regard them as fit subjects
+for divine honors. Sonnini (II. 388) tells us, that a serpent's skin
+is still looked upon in Egypt as a prophylactic against complaints of
+the head, and also as a certain cure for them. And of the same origin,
+no doubt, was the general belief of antiquity, (according to Pliny,
+30, 12,) that the serpent's skin was a remedy for spasms. That the
+golden serpent kept its place as an ornament of the throat and bosom
+after the Christian era, we learn from Clement of Alexandria. That
+zealous father, so intolerant of superstitious mummery under every
+shape, directs his efforts against this fashion as against a--device
+of the devil.
+
+IV. To the lowest of the several concentric circles which composed the
+necklace, was attached a little box, exquisitely wrought in silver or
+gold, sometimes an onyx phial of dazzling whiteness, depending to the
+bosom or even to the cincture, and filled with the rarest aromas and
+odorous spices of the East. What were the favorite essences preserved
+in this beautiful appendage to the female costume of Palestine, it is
+not possible at this distance of time to determine with
+certainty--Isaiah having altogether neglected the case, and Hosea (who
+appears to allude to it, ii. 14) having only once distinctly mentioned
+it, (ii. 20.) However, the Thalmud particularizes musk, and the
+delightful oil distilled from the leaf of the aromatic _malabathrum_
+of Hindostan. To these we may venture to add, oil of spikenard, myrrh,
+balsams, attar of roses, and rose-water, as the perfumes usually
+contained in the Hebrew scent-pendants. Rose-water, which I am the
+first to mention as a Hebrew perfume, had, as I presume, a foremost
+place on the toilette of a Hebrew _belle_. Express scriptural authority
+for it undoubtedly there is none; but it is notorious that Palestine
+availed itself of _all_ the advantages of Egypt, amongst which the
+rose in every variety was one. _Fium_, a province of central Egypt,
+which the ancients called the Garden of Egypt, was distinguished for
+innumerable species of the rose, and especially for those of the most
+balsamic order, and for the most costly preparations from it. The
+Thalmud not only speaks generally of the mixtures made by tempering
+it with oil, (i. 135,) but expressly cites (ii. 41) a peculiar
+rose-water as so costly an essence, that from its high price alone it
+became impossible to introduce the use of it into the ordinary medical
+practice. Indeed this last consideration, and the fact that the
+highly-prized _quintessence_ cannot be obtained except from an
+extraordinary multitude of the rarest roses, forbid us to suppose that
+women of the first rank in Jerusalem could have made a very liberal
+use of rose-water. In our times, Savary found a single phial of it in
+the place of its manufacture, valued at four francs. As to the _oil
+of roses_, properly so called, which floats in a very inconsiderable
+quantity upon the surface of distilled rose-water, it is certain that
+the Hebrew ladies were _not_ acquainted with it. This preparation can
+be obtained only from the balsamic roses of Fium, of Shiras, of Kerman,
+and of Kashmire, which surpass all the roses of the earth in power and
+delicacy of odor; and it is matter of absolute certainty, and
+incontrovertibly established by the celebrated Langles, that this oil,
+which even in the four Asiatic countries just mentioned, ranks with
+the greatest rarities, and in Shiras itself is valued at its weight
+in gold, was discovered by mere accident, on occasion of some festival
+solemnity in the year 1612.
+
+V. To what I said, in the first scene of my exhibition, about the
+Hebrew ear-ornaments, I may add,
+
+1. That sometimes, as Best remarked of the Hindoo dancing-girls, their
+ears were swollen from the innumerable perforations drilled into them
+to support their loads of trinketry.
+
+2. That in the large pendants of coral which the Hebrew ladies were
+accustomed to attach to their ears, either in preference to jewels,
+or in alternation with jewels, they particularly delighted in that
+configuration which imitated a cluster of grapes.
+
+3. That, in ear-rings made of gold, they preferred the form of drops,
+or of globes and bulbs.
+
+4. That of all varieties, however, of this appendage, pearls maintained
+the preference amongst the ladies of Palestine, and were either strung
+upon a thread, or attached by little hooks--singly or in groups,
+according to their size. This taste was very early established amongst
+the Jews, and chiefly, perhaps, through their intercourse with the
+Midianites, amongst whom we find the great Emirs wearing pearl ornaments
+of this class.
+
+_Mutatis mutandis_, these four remarks apply to the case of the nose
+ornaments.
+
+SCENE THE SECOND.
+
+I. THE HAIR.--This section I omit altogether; though with more room
+at my disposal, it would be well worth translating as a curiosity. It
+is the essay of a finished and perfect knave, who not merely being
+rather bare of facts, but having literally not one solitary fact of
+any kind or degree, sits down to write a treatise on the mode of
+dressing hair amongst Hebrew ladies. Samson's hair, and the dressing
+it got from the Philistines, is the nearest approach that he ever makes
+to his subject; and being conscious that this case of Samson and the
+Philistines is the one sole allusion to the subject of Hebrew hair
+that he is possessed of, he brings it round upon the reader as often
+perhaps as it will bear--viz. not oftener than once every sixth page.
+The rest is one continued shuffle to avoid coming upon the ground; and
+upon the whole, though too barefaced, yet really not without ingenuity.
+Take, by way of specimen, his very satisfactory dissertation on the
+particular sort of combs which the Hebrew ladies were pleased to
+patronize.
+
+'COMBS.--Whether the ladies of Palestine had upon their toilette a
+peculiar comb for parting the hair, another for turning it up, &c.;
+as likewise whether their combs were, as in ancient Rome, made of
+box-wood, or of ivory, or other costly and appropriate material, all
+these are questions upon which I--am not able, upon my honor, to
+communicate the least information. But, from the general silence of
+antiquity, prophets and all, [Footnote 7] upon the subject of Hebrew
+combs, my own private opinion is, that the ladies used their fingers
+for this purpose; in which case, there needs no more to be said on the
+subject of Hebrew combs.'
+
+II. PERFUMES.--Before, however, the hair received its final arrangement
+from the hands of the waiting maid, it was held open and dishevelled
+to receive the fumes of frankincense, aloes-wood, cassia, costmary and
+other odorous woods, gums, balsams, and spices of India, Arabia, or
+Palestine--placed upon glowing embers, in vessels of golden fretwork.
+It is probable, also, that the Hebrew ladies used amber, bisam, and
+the musk of Thibet; and when fully arranged, the hair was sprinkled
+with oil of nard, myrrh, oil of cinnamon, &c. The importance attached
+to this part of the Hebrew toilette may be collected indeed from an
+ordinance, of the Thalmud, III. 80, which directs that the bridegroom
+shall set apart one-tenth of the income which the bride brings him,
+for the purchase of perfumes, essences, precious ointments, &c. All
+these articles were preserved either in golden boxes, or in little
+oval narrow-necked phials of dazzling white alabaster, which bore the
+name of onyx, from its resemblance to the precious stone of that name,
+but was in fact a very costly sort of marble, obtained in the quarries
+of Upper Egypt, or those of the Libanus in Syria. Indeed, long before
+the birth of Christ, alabaster was in such general use for purposes
+of this kind in Palestine, that it became the generic name for valuable
+boxes, no matter of what material. To prevent the evaporation of the
+contents, the narrow neck of the phial was resealed every time that
+it was opened. It is probable, also, that the _myrrhine_ cups, about
+which there has been so much disputing, were no strangers to the Jewish
+toilette.
+
+III. THE MIRROR was not made of glass, (for glass mirrors cannot be
+shown to have existed before the thirteenth century,) but of polished
+metals; and amongst these, silver was in the greatest esteem, as being
+capable of a higher burnish than other metals, and less liable to
+tarnish. Metallic mirrors are alluded to by Job, xxxvii. 18. But it
+appears from the Second Book of Moses, xxxviii. 8, that in that age,
+copper must have been the metal employed throughout the harems of
+Palestine. For a general contribution of mirrors being made upon one
+occasion by the Israelitish women, they were melted down and recast
+into washing vessels for the priestly service. Now the sacred utensils,
+as we know from other sources, were undeniably of copper. There is
+reason to think, however, that the copper was alloyed, according to
+the prevailing practice in that age, with some proportions of lead or
+tin. In after ages, when silver was chiefly employed, it gave place
+occasionally to gold. Mines of this metal were well known in Palestine;
+but there is no evidence that precious stones, which were used for
+this purpose in the ages of European luxury, were ever so used in
+Palestine, or in any part of Asia.
+
+As to shape, the Hebrew mirrors were always either circular or oval,
+and cast indifferently flat or concave. They were framed in superb
+settings, often of pearls and jewels; and, when tarnished, were cleaned
+with a sponge of hyssop, the universal cleansing material in Palestine.
+
+SCENE THE THIRD.
+
+HEAD-DRESSES.
+
+The head-dresses of the Hebrew ladies may be brought under three
+principal classes:--
+
+The first was a NET-WORK CAP, made of fine wool or cotton, and worked
+with purple or crimson flowers. Sometimes the meshes of the net were
+of gold thread. The rim or border of the cap, generally of variegated
+coloring, was often studded with jewellery or pearls; and at the back
+was ornamented with a bow, having a few ends or tassels flying loose.
+
+Secondly, a TURBAN, managed in the following way: first of all, one
+or more caps in the form of a half oval, such are still to be seen
+upon the monuments of Egyptian and Persepolitan art, was fastened round
+the head by a ribbon or fillet tied behind. This cap was of linen,
+sometimes, perhaps, of cotton, and in the inferior ranks of leather,
+or, according to the prevailing fashion, of some kind of metal; and,
+in any case, it had ornaments worked into its substance. Round this
+white or glittering ground were carried, in snaky windings, ribbons
+of the finest tiffany, or of lawn resembling our cambric; and to conceal
+the joinings, a silky substance was carried in folds, which pursued
+the opposite direction, and crossed the tiffany at right angles. For
+the purpose of calling out and relieving the dazzling whiteness of the
+ground, colors of the most brilliant class were chosen for the ribbons;
+and these ribbons were either embroidered with flowers, in gold thread,
+or had ornaments of that description interwoven with their texture.
+
+Thirdly, the HELMET, adorned pretty nearly as the turban; and, in
+imitation of the helmets worn by Chaldean generals, having long tails,
+or tassels, depending from the hinder part, and flowing loosely between
+the shoulders. According to the Oriental taste for perfumes, all the
+ribbons or fillets used in these helmets and turbans were previously
+steeped in perfumes. Finally, in connection with the turban, and often
+with the veil, was a beautiful ornament for the forehead and the face,
+which the ladies of this day would do well to recall. Round the brow
+ran a brandeau or tiara of gold or silver, three fingers' breadth, and
+usually set with jewels or pearls; from this, at each of the temples,
+depended a chain of pearls or of coral, which, following the margin
+of the cheeks, either hung loose or united below the chin.
+
+SCENE THE FOURTH.
+
+I. The reader has been already made acquainted with the _chemise_, or
+innermost under-dress. The Hebrew ladies, however, usually wore two
+under-dresses, the upper of which it now remains to describe. In
+substance it was generally of a fine transparent texture, like the
+muslins (if we may so call them) of Cos; in the later ages it was no
+doubt of silk.
+
+The chemise sate up close to the throat; and we have already mentioned
+the elaborate work which adorned it about the opening. But the opening
+of the robe which we are now describing, was of much larger
+compass--being cut down to the bosom; and the embroidery, &c. which
+enriched it, was still more magnificent. The _chemise_ reached down
+only to the calf of the leg, and the sleeve of it to the elbow; but
+the upper chemise or tunic, if we may so call it, descended in ample
+draperies to the feet--scarcely allowing the point of the foot to
+discover itself; and the sleeves enveloped the hands to their middle.
+Great pomp was lavished on the folds of the sleeves; but still greater
+on the hem of the robe, and the fringe attached to it. The hem was
+formed by a broad border of purple, shaded and relieved according to
+patterns; and sometimes embroidered in gold thread with the most elegant
+objects from the animal or vegetable kingdoms. To that part which fell
+immediately behind the heels, there were attached thin plates of gold;
+or, by way of variety, it was studded with golden stars and
+filigree-work; sometimes with jewels and pearls interchangeably.
+
+II. On this upper tunic, to confine the exorbitance of its draperies,
+and to prevent their interfering with the free motions of the limbs,
+a superb GIRDLE was bound about the hips. Here, if anywhere, the Hebrew
+ladies endeavored to pour out the whole pomp of their splendor--both
+as to materials and workmanship. Belts from three to four inches broad,
+of the most delicate cottony substance, were chosen as the ground of
+this important part of female attire. The finest flowers of Palestine
+were here exhibited in rich relief, and in their native colors, either
+woven in the loom, or by the needle of the embroiderer. The belts being
+thirty or forty feet long, and carried round and round the person, it
+was in the power of the wearer to exhibit an infinite variety of forms,
+by allowing any fold or number of folds at pleasure to rise up more
+or less to view, just as fans or the colored edges of books with us
+are made to exhibit landscapes, &c. capable of great varieties of
+expansion as they are more or less unfolded. The fastening was by a
+knot below the bosom; and the two ends descended below the fringe;
+which, if not the only fashion in use, was, however, the prevailing
+one--as we learn both from the sculptures at Persepolis, and from the
+costume of the High Priest.
+
+
+Great as the cost was of these girdles, it would have been far greater
+had the knot been exchanged for a clasp; and in fact at a later period
+when this fashion did really take place, there was no limit to the
+profusion with which pearls of the largest size and jewellery were
+accumulated upon this conspicuous centre of the dress. Latterly the
+girdles were fitted up with beautiful chains, by means of which they
+could be contracted or enlarged, and with gold buckles, and large
+bosses and clasps that gradually became the basis for a ruinous display
+of expenditure.
+
+In conclusion, I must remark, that in Palestine, as elsewhere, the
+girdle was sometimes used as a purse: whether it were that the girdle
+itself was made hollow (as is expressly affirmed of the High Priest's
+girdle), or that, without being hollow, its numerous foldings afforded
+a secure depository for articles of small size. Even in our day, it
+is the custom to conceal the dagger, the handkerchief for wiping the
+face, and other bagatelles of personal convenience, in the folds of
+the girdle. However, the richer and more distinguished classes in
+Palestine appear to have had a peculiar and separate article of that
+kind. And this was,
+
+III. A PURSE made either of metal (usually gold or silver), or of the
+softest leather, &c. which was attached by a lace to the girdle, or
+kept amongst its folds, and which, even in the eyes of Isaiah, was
+important enough to merit a distinct mention. It was of a conical
+shape; and at the broader end was usually enriched with ornaments of
+the most elaborate and exquisite workmanship. No long time after the
+Christian era, the cost of these purses had risen to such a height,
+that Tertullian complains, with great displeasure, of the ladies of
+his time, that in the mere purse, apart from its contents, they carried
+about with them the price of a considerable estate.
+
+The girdle, however, still continued to be the appropriate depository
+for the napkin (to use the old English word), or suclatory--_i. e._
+handkerchief for clearing the forehead of perspiration. As to
+pocket-handkerchiefs, in our northern use of them, it has been
+satisfactorily shown by Bottiger, in a German Journal, that the Greek
+and Roman ladies knew nothing of that modern appendage to the pocket,
+[Footnote 8] however indispensable it may appear to us; and the same
+argument apply with equal force to the climate of Palestine.
+
+IV. The glittering RINGS, with which (according to Isaiah, iii. 21),
+the Hebrew ladies adorned their hands, seem to me originally to have
+been derived from the seal-rings, which, whether suspended from the
+neck, or worn upon the finger, have in all ages been the most favorite
+ornament of Asiatics. These splendid baubles were naturally in the
+highest degree attractive to women, both from the beauty of the stones,
+which were usually selected for this purpose, and from the richness
+of the setting--to say nothing of the exquisite art which the ancient
+lapidaries displayed in cutting them. The stones chiefly valued by the
+ladies of Palestine, were rubies--emeralds--and chrysolithes; and
+these, set in gold, sparkled on the middle, or little finger of the
+right hand; and in the luxurious times upon _all_ the fingers--even
+the thumb; nay, in some cases, upon the great toe.
+
+SCENE THE FIFTH.
+
+UPPER GARMENT.
+
+The upper or outer garments, which, for both sexes under all varieties
+and modifications, the Hebrews expressed by the comprehensive
+denomination of SIMLAH, have hi every age, and through all parts of
+the hot climates, in Asia and Africa alike, been of such voluminous
+compass--as not only to envelop the whole person, but to be fitted for
+a wide range of miscellaneous purposes. Sometimes (as in the triumphal
+entry of Christ into Jerusalem) they were used as carpets; sometimes
+as coverings for the backs of camels, horses, or asses, to render the
+rider's seat less incommodious; sometimes as a bed coverlid, or
+counterpane; at other times as sacks for carrying articles of value;
+or finally as curtains, hangings of parlors, occasionally tapestry,
+or even as sails for boats.
+
+From these illustrations of the uses to which it was applicable, we
+may collect the form of this robe: that it was nothing more than a
+shawl of large dimensions, or long square of cloth, just as it came
+from the weaver's loom, which was immediately thrown round the person,
+without receiving any artificial adjustment to the human shape.
+
+So much for the _form_: with regard to the _material_, there was less
+uniformity; originally it was of goats' or camels' hair; but, as
+civilization and the luxury of cities increased, these coarse substances
+were rejected for the finest wool, and Indian cotton. Indeed, through
+all antiquity, we find, that pure unsullied white was the festal color,
+and more especially in Palestine, where the indigenous soaps, and other
+cleaning materials, gave them peculiar advantages for adopting a dress
+of that delicate and perishable lustre.
+
+With the advance of luxury, however, came a love of variety; and this,
+added to the desire for more stimulating impressions than could be
+derived from blank unadorned white, gradually introduced all sorts of
+innovations, both in form and color; though, with respect to the first,
+amidst all the changes through which it travelled, the old original
+outline still manifestly predominated. An account of the leading
+varieties, we find in the celebrated third chapter of Isaiah.
+
+The most opulent women of Palestine, beyond all other colors for the
+upper robe, preferred purple--or, if not purple throughout the entire
+robe, at any rate purple flowers upon a white ground. The winter
+clothing of the very richest families in Palestine, was manufactured
+in their own houses; and for winter clothing, more especially, the
+Hebrew taste, no less than the Grecian and the Roman, preferred the
+warm and sunny scarlet, the puce color, the violet, and the regal
+purple. [Footnote 9]
+
+
+Very probable it is, that the Hebrew ladies, like those of Greece,
+were no strangers to the half-mantle--fastened by a clasp in front of
+each shoulder, and suffered to flow in free draperies down the back;
+this was an occasional and supernumerary garment flung over the regular
+upper robe--properly so called.
+
+There was also a longer mantle, reaching to the ankles, usually of a
+violet color, which--having no sleeves--was meant to expose to view
+the beauty not only of the upper robe, but even of the outer tunic
+formerly described. By the way, it should be mentioned, that, in order
+to steep them in fine odor, all parts of the wardrobe were stretched
+on a reticulated or grated vessel--called by the Thalmud (vi. 77)
+_Kanklin_--from which the steams of rich perfumes were made to ascend.
+
+In what way the upper robe was worn and fastened, may be collected
+perhaps with sufficient probability from the modern Oriental practice,
+as described by travellers; but, as we have no _direct_ authority on
+the subject, I shall not detain the reader with any conjectural
+speculations.
+
+SCENE THE SIXTH.
+
+DRESS OF CEREMONY.
+
+One magnificent dress remains yet to be mentioned, viz. the dress of
+honor, or festival dress--which answers in every respect to the modern
+CAFTAN. This was used on all occasions of ceremony, as splendid
+weddings, presentations at the courts of kings, sumptuous
+entertainments, &c.; and all persons who stood in close connection
+with the throne, as favorites, crown-officers, distinguished military
+commanders, &c., received such a dress as a gift from the royal
+treasury, in order to prepare them at all times for the royal presence.
+According to the universal custom of Asia, the trains were proportioned
+in length to the rank of the wearer; whence it is that the robes of
+the high-priest were adorned with a train of superb dimensions; and
+even Jehovah is represented, (Isaiah, vi. 1,) as filling the heavenly
+palace with the length of his train, [Footnote 10] Another distinction
+of this festival robe, was the ordinary fulness and length of the
+sleeves; these descended to the knee, and often ran to the ankle or
+to the ground. In the sleeves, and in the trains, but especially in
+the latter, lay the chief pride of a Hebrew _belle_, when dressed for
+any great solemnity or occasion of public display.
+
+
+
+
+NOTES.
+
+
+NOTE 1. It is one great advantage to the illustrator of ancient costume,
+that when almost everything in this sort of usages was fixed and
+determined either by religion and state policy, (as with the Jews,)
+or by state policy alone, (as with the Romans,) or by superstition and
+by settled climate, (as with both,) and when there was no stimulation
+to vanity in the love of change from an inventive condition of art and
+manufacturing skill, and where the system and interests of the
+government relied for no part of its power on such a condition,--dress
+was stationary for ages, both as to materials and fashion; Rebecca,
+the Bedouin, was drest pretty nearly as Mariamne in the age of the
+Caesars. And thus the labors of a learned investigator for one age are
+valid for those which follow and precede.
+
+NOTE 2. _Chiton (*)_ in Greek, and by inversion of the syllables,
+_Tunica_ in Latin.
+
+NOTE 3. Cheaper materials were used by the poorer Hebrews, especially
+of the Bedouin tribes--burnt almonds, lamp-black, soot, the ashes of
+particular woods, the gall-apple boiled and pulverized, or any dark
+powder made into an unguent by suitable liquors. The modern Grecian
+women, in some districts, as Sonnini tells us, use the spine of the
+sea-polypus, calcined and finely pulverized, for this purpose. Boxes
+of horn were used for keeping the pigment by the poorer Hebrews,--of
+onyx or alabaster by the richer.
+
+NOTE 4.
+
+Cleopatra had a couple of that value; and Julius Caesar had one, which
+he gave to Servilia, the beautiful mother of Brutus.
+
+NOTE 5.
+
+Washing the feet was a ceremony of ancient times, adopted not merely
+with a view, 1st, to personal comfort, in hotter climates; or, 2d, to
+decorum of appearance, where people walked about barefooted; but also,
+3d, to the reclining posture in use at meals, which necessarily brought
+the feet into immediate contact with the cushions, squabs, &c. of
+couches.
+
+NOTE 6.
+
+Chemistry had its first origin in Arabia; and it is not impossible
+that the chemical nomenclature for gold and silver, viz. _sol_ and
+_luna_, were derived from this early superstition of the Bedouin dress.
+
+NOTE 7.
+
+The Thalmud is the only Jewish authority which mentions such a utensil
+of the toilette as a comb, (vi. 39,) but without any particular
+description. Hartmann adds two remarks worth quoting. 1. That the
+Hebrew style of the _coiffure_ may probably be collected from the
+Syrian coins; and, 2. That black hair being admired in Palestine, and
+the Jewish hair being naturally black, it is probable that the Jewish
+ladies did not color their hair, as the Romans did.
+
+NOTE 8.
+
+Or rather it was required only in a catarrh, or other cases of checked
+perspiration, which in those climates was not a case of common
+occurrence.
+
+NOTE 9. By which was probably meant a color nearer to crimson, than
+to the blue class of purples.
+
+NOTE 10. It has been doubted whether these trains were supported by
+train-bearers; but one argument makes it probable that they were not,
+viz. that they were particularly favorable to the peacock walk or
+strut, which was an express object of imitation in the gait of the
+Hebrew women.
+
+
+
+
+FINAL NOTES.
+
+
+I. The _Syndon_, mentioned by Isaiah, &c. was a delicate and transparent
+substance, like our tiffany, and in point of money value was fully on
+a level with the Caftan; but whether imported from Egypt, or imitated
+in the looms of the Hebrews and Phoenicians, is doubtful. It was worn
+next to the skin; and consequently, in the harems of the great, occupied
+the place of the under tunic (or _chemise_) previously described; and,
+as luxury advanced, there is reason to think that it was used as a
+night _chemise_.
+
+II. The _Caftan_ is the _Kalaat_ of the East, so often mentioned by
+modern travellers; thus, for example, Thevenot (tom. iii. p. 352)
+says--'Le Roi fait assez souvent des presens a ses Khans, &c. L'on
+appelle ces presens _Kalaat_.' Chardin. (iii. 101,) 'On appelle _Calaat_
+les habits que le Roi donne par honeur.' And lately in Lord Amherst's
+progress through the northern provinces of our Indian empire, &c. we
+read continually of the _Khelawt_, or robe of state, as a present made
+by the native princes to distinguished officers.
+
+The Caftan, or festival robe of the Hebrews, was, in my opinion, the
+[Greek Text: Peaelos] of the Greeks, or _palla_ of the Romans. Among
+the points of resemblance are these:--
+
+1. The _palla_ was flung like a cloak or mantle, over the _stola_, or
+uppermost robe, 'Ad talos stola demissa et _circundata_ palla.'
+
+2. The _palla_ not only descended in flowing draperies to the feet,
+(thus Tibullus, I. VII. C. 'Fusa sed ad teneros lutea palla pedes,')
+but absolutely swept the ground; 'Verrit humum Tyrio saturata murice
+palla.'
+
+3. The _palla_ was of the same wide compass, and equally distinguished
+for its splendor.
+
+4. Like the Hebrew festival garment, the _palla_ was a _vestis
+seposita_, and reserved for rare solemnities.
+
+With respect to the [Greek Text: Peplos], Eustathius describes it as
+[Greek Text: megan xai peoixallea xai poixilon peobolaion]; and it
+would be easy in other respects to prove its identity with the _Palla_.
+
+Salmasius, by the way, in commenting upon Tertullian, _de Pallio_, is
+quite wrong, where he says--'Palla nunquam de virili pallio dicitur.'
+Tibullus, tom. iii. iv. 35, sufficiently contradicts that opinion.
+
+
+
+
+MILTON.
+
+[1839.]
+
+
+
+We have two ideas, which we are anxious to bring under public notice,
+with regard to Milton. The reader whom Providence shall send us will
+not measure the value of these ideas (we trust and hope) by their bulk.
+The reader indeed--that great idea!--is very often a more important
+person towards the fortune of an essay than the writer. Even 'the
+prosperity of a jest,' as Shakespeare tells us, lies less in its own
+merit than 'in the ear of him that hears it.' If _he_ should happen
+to be unusually obtuse, the wittiest jest perishes--the most pointed
+is found blunt. So, with regard to books, should the reader on whom
+we build prove a sandy and treacherous foundation, the whole edifice,
+'temple and tower,' must come to the ground. Should it happen, for
+instance, that the reader, inflicted upon ourselves for our sins,
+belongs to that class of people who listen to books in the ratio of
+their much speaking--find no eloquence in 32mo., and little force of
+argument except in such a folio as might knock him down upon occasion
+of his proving restive against its logic--in that case he will despise
+our present essay. _Will_ despise it? He _does_ despise it already:
+for already he sees that it is short. His contempt is a high _a priori_
+contempt: for he measures us by anticipation, and needs to wait for
+no experience in order to vindicate his sentence against us.
+
+Yet, in one view, this brevity of an essayist does seem to warrant his
+reader in some little indignation. We, the writer, expect to bring
+over the reader to our opinion--else wherefore do we write? But, within
+so small a compass of ground, is it reasonable to look for such a
+result? 'Bear witness to the presumption of this essay,' we hear the
+reader complaining: 'It measures about fourteen inches by
+two--twenty-eight square inches at the most--and is it within human
+belief that I, simply as I stand here, shall be converted in so narrow
+an area? Here am I in a state of nature, as you may say. An acre of
+sound argument might do something: but here is a man who flatters
+himself--that, before I am advanced seven inches further in my studies,
+he is to work a notable change in my creed. By Castor and Pollux! he
+must think very superbly of himself, or very meanly of me.'
+
+Too true, we reply, too true; but, perhaps, there are faults on both
+sides. The writer is too peremptory and exacting; the reader is too
+restive. The writer is too full of his office, which he fancies is
+that of a teacher or a professor speaking _ex cathedra_: the rebellious
+reader is oftentimes too determined that he will not learn. The one
+conceits himself booted and spurred, and mounted on his reader's back,
+with an express commission for riding him: the other is vicious, apt
+to bolt out of the course at every opening, and resolute in this
+point--that he will not be ridden.
+
+There are some, meantime, who take a very different view of the
+relations existing between those well-known parties to a book--writer
+and reader. So far from regarding the writer as entitled to the homage
+of his reader, as if he were some feudal superior, they hold him little
+better than an actor bowing before the reader as his audience. The
+feudal relation of fealty [_fidelitas_] may subsist between them, but
+the places are inverted; the writer is the liegeman--the reader it is
+who claims to be the sovereign. Our own opinion inclines this way. It
+is clear that the writer exists for the sake of the reader, not the
+reader for the sake of the writer. Besides, the writer bears all sorts
+of characters, whilst the reader universally has credit for the best
+possible. We have all heard of 'the courteous reader,' 'the candid
+reader,' 'the enlightened reader.' But which of us ever heard of 'the
+discourteous reader,' 'the mulish reader,' 'the barbarous reader?'
+Doubtless there is no such person. The Goths and Vandals are all
+confined to the writers. 'The reader'--that great character--is ever
+wise, ever learned, ever courteous. Even in the worst of times, this
+great man preserved his purity. Even in the tenth and eleventh
+centuries, which we usually account the very noontide of darkness, he
+shone like a mould candle amongst basest dips. And perhaps it is our
+duty to presume all other virtues and graces as no less essential to
+him than his glorious 'candor,' his 'courtesy,' (surpassing that of
+Sir Gawain,) and his truly 'enlightened' understanding. Indeed, we
+very much question whether a writer, who carries with him a just feeling
+of his allegiance--a truly loyal writer--can lawfully suppose his
+sovereign, the reader, peccable or capable of error; and whether there
+is not even a shade of impiety in conceiving him liable to the
+affections of sleep, or of yawning.
+
+Having thus, upon our knees as it were, done feudal homage to our great
+_suzerain_, the reader--having propitiated him with Persian adorations
+and with Phrygian genuflexions, let us now crave leave to convert him
+a little. Convert him!--that sounds '_un pen fort_,' does it not? No,
+not at all. A cat may look at a king; and upon this or that
+out-of-the-way point a writer may presume to be more knowing than his
+reader--the serf may undertake to convert his lord. The reader is a
+great being--a great noun-substantive; but still, like a mere
+adjective, he is liable to the three degrees of comparison. He may
+rise above himself--he may transcend the ordinary level of readers,
+however exalted that level be. Being great, he may become greater.
+Full of light, he may yet labor with a spot or two of darkness. And
+such a spot we hold the prevalent opinion upon Milton in two particular
+questions of taste--questions that are not insulated, but diffusive;
+spreading themselves over the entire surface of the _Paradise Lost_,
+and also of the _Paradise Regained_; insomuch that, if Milton is wrong
+once, then he is wrong by many scores of times. Nay, which transcends
+all counting of cases or numerical estimates of error, if, in the
+separate instances, (be they few or be they many,) he is truly and
+indeed wrong--then he has erred, not by the case but by the principle;
+and that is a thousand times worse; for a separate case or instance
+of error may escape any man--may have been overlooked amongst the press
+of objects crowding on his eye; or, if _not_ overlooked, if passed
+deliberately, may plead the ordinary privilege of human frailty. The
+man erred; and his error terminates in itself. But an error of principle
+does _not_ terminate in itself; it is a fountain; it is self-diffusive;
+and it has a life of its own. The faults of a great man are in any
+case contagious; they are dazzling and delusive by means of the great
+man's general example. But his false principles have a worse contagion.
+They operate not only through the general haze and halo which invests
+a shining example; but even if transplanted where that example is
+unknown, they propagate themselves by the vitality inherent in all
+self-consistent principles, whether true or false.
+
+Before we notice these two cases of Milton, first of all let us ask--Who
+and what _is_ Milton? Dr. Johnson was furiously incensed with a certain
+man, by trade an author and manufacturer of books wholesale and retail,
+for introducing Milton's name into a certain index thus--'Milton, Mr.
+John.' That _Mister_, undoubtedly, was hard to digest. Yet very often
+it happens to the best of us--to men who are far enough from 'thinking
+small beer of themselves,'--that about ten o'clock, A. M., an official
+big-wig, sitting at Bow Street, calls upon the man to account for his
+_sprees_ of the last night, for his feats in knocking down lamp-posts
+and extinguishing watchmen, by this ugly demand of--'Who and what are
+you, sir?' And perhaps the poor man, sick and penitential for want of
+soda water, really finds a considerable difficulty in replying
+satisfactorily to the worthy _beek's_ apostrophe. Although, at five
+o'clock in the evening, should the culprit be returning into the country
+in the same coach as his awful interrogator, he might be very apt to
+look fierce, and retort this amiable inquiry, and with equal thirst
+for knowledge to demand, 'D--your eyes, if you come to _that_, who and
+what are _you_?' And the _beek_ in _his_ turn, though so apt to indulge
+his own curiosity at the expense of the public, might find it very
+difficult to satisfy that of others.
+
+The same thing happens to authors; and to great authors beyond all
+others. So accustomed are we to survey a great man through the cloud
+of years that has gathered round him--so impossible is it to detach
+him from the pomp and equipage of all who have quoted him, copied him,
+echoed him, lectured about him, disputed about him, quarrelled about
+him, that in the case of any Anacharsis the Scythian coming amongst
+us--any savage, that is to say, uninstructed in our literature, but
+speaking our language, and feeling an interest in our great men--a man
+could hardly believe at first how perplexed he would feel--how utterly
+at a loss for any _adequate_ answer to this question, suddenly
+proposed-_'Who and what was Milton?'_ That is to say, what is the place
+which he fills in his own vernacular literature? what station does he
+hold in universal literature?
+
+We, if abruptly called upon in that summary fashion to convey a
+_commensurate_ idea of Milton, one which might at once correspond to
+his pretensions, and yet be readily intelligible to the savage, should
+answer perhaps thus:--Milton is not an author amongst authors, not a
+poet amongst poets, but a power amongst powers; and the _Paradise Lost_
+is not a book amongst books, not a poem amongst poems, but a central
+force amongst forces. Let us explain. There is this great distinction
+amongst books; some, though possibly the best in their class, are still
+no more than books--not indispensable, not incapable of supplementary
+representation by other books. If they had never been--if their place
+had continued for ages unfilled--not the less, upon a sufficient
+excitement arising, there would always have been found the ability,
+either directly to fill up the vacancy, or at least to meet the same
+passion virtually, though by a work differing in form. Thus, supposing
+Butler to have died in youth, and the _Hudibras_ to have been
+intercepted by his premature death, still the ludicrous aspects of the
+Parliamentary war, and its fighting saints, were too striking to have
+perished. If not in a narrative form, the case would have come forward
+in the drama. Puritanical sanctity, in collision with the ordinary
+interests of life, and with its militant propensities, offered too
+striking a field for the Satiric Muse, in any case, to have passed in
+total neglect. The impulse was too strong for repression--it was a
+volcanic agency, that, by some opening or, other, must have worked a
+way for itself to the upper air. Yet Butler was a most original poet,
+and a creator within his own province. But, like many another original
+mind, there is little doubt that he quelled and repressed, by his own
+excellence, other minds of the same cast. Mere despair of excelling
+him, so far as not, after all, to seem imitators, drove back others
+who would have pressed into that arena, if not already brilliantly
+filled. Butler failing, there would have been another Butler, either
+in the same or in some analogous form.
+
+But, with regard to Milton and the Miltonic power, the case is far
+otherwise. If the man had failed, the power would have failed. In that
+mode of power which he wielded, the function was exhausted in the
+man--species was identified with the individual--the poetry was
+incarnated in the poet.
+
+Let it be remembered, that, of all powers which act upon man through
+his intellectual nature, the very rarest is that which we moderns call
+the _Sublime_. The Grecians had apparently no word for it, unless it
+were that which they meant by [Greek Text: to ogchodes]: for [Greek
+Text: upsos] was a comprehensive expression for all qualities which
+gave a character of grace or animation to the composition, such even
+as were philosophically opposed to the sublime. In the Roman poetry,
+and especially in Lucan, at times also Juvenal, there is an exhibition
+of a moral sublime, perfectly distinct from anything known to the Greek
+poetry. The delineations of republican grandeur, as expressing itself
+through the principal leaders in the Roman camps, or the trampling
+under foot of ordinary superstitions, as given in the reasons assigned
+to Labienus for passing the oracle of the Lybian Jupiter unconsulted,
+are in a style to which there is nothing corresponding in the whole
+Grecian literature, nor would they have been comprehensible to an
+Athenian. The famous line--'Jupiter est quodcunque vides, quodcunque
+moveris,' and the brief review of such questions as might be worthy
+of an oracular god, with the summary declaration, that every one of
+those points we know already by the light of nature, and could not
+know them better though Jupiter Ammon himself were to impress them on
+our attention--
+
+'Scimus, et haec nobis non altius inseret Ammon:' all this is truly
+Roman in its sublimity; and so exclusively Roman, that there, and not
+in poets like the Augustan, expressly modelling their poems on Grecian
+types, ought the Roman mind to be studied.
+
+On the other hand, for that species of the sublime which does not rest
+purely and merely on moral energies, but on a synthesis between man
+and nature--for what may properly be called the Ethico-physical
+Sublime--there is but one great model surviving in the Greek poetry,
+viz. the gigantic drama of the Prometheus crucified on Mount Elborus.
+And this drama differs so much from everything else, even in the poetry
+of Aeschylus, as the mythus itself differs so much from all the rest
+of the Grecian mythology, (belonging apparently to an age and a people
+more gloomy, austere, and nearer to the _incunabula mundi_, than those
+which bred the gay and sunny superstitions of Greece,) that much
+curiosity and speculation have naturally gathered round the subject
+of late years. Laying this one insulated case apart, and considering
+that the Hebrew poetry of Isaiah and Ezekiel, as having the benefit
+of inspiration, does not lie within the just limits of competition,
+we may affirm that there is no human composition which can be challenged
+as constitutionally sublime--sublime equally by its conception and
+by its execution, or as uniformly sublime from first to last, excepting
+the _Paradise Lost_. In Milton only, first and last, is the power of
+the sublime revealed. In Milton only does this great agency blaze and
+glow as a furnace kept up to a white heat--without intermission and
+without collapse.
+
+If, therefore, Milton occupies this unique position--and let the reader
+question himself closely whether he can cite any other book than the
+_Paradise Lost_, as continuously sublime, or sublime even by its
+prevailing character--in that case there is a peculiarity of importance
+investing that one book which belongs to no other; and it must be
+important to dissipate any erroneous notions which affect the integrity
+of that book's estimation. Now, there are two notions countenanced by
+Addison and by Dr. Johnson, which tend greatly to disparage the
+character of its composition. If the two critics, one friendly, the
+other very malignant, but both meaning to be just, have in reality
+built upon sound principles, or at least upon a sound appreciation of
+Milton's principles--in that case there is a mortal taint diffused
+over the whole of the _Paradise Lost_: for not a single book is clear
+of one or other of the two errors which they charge upon him. We will
+briefly state the objections, and then as briefly reply to them, by
+exposing the true philosophy of Milton's practice. For we are very
+sure that, in doing as he did, this mighty poet was governed by no
+carelessness or oversight, (as is imagined,) but by a most refined
+theory of poetic effects.
+
+I. The first of these two charges respects a supposed pedantry, or too
+ambitious a display of erudition. It is surprising to us that such an
+objection should have occurred to any man; both because, after all,
+the quantity of learning cannot be great for which any poem can find
+an opening; and because, in any poem burning with concentrated fire,
+like the Miltonic, the passion becomes a law to itself, and will not
+receive into connection with itself any parts so deficient in harmony,
+as a cold ostentation of learned illustrations must always have been
+found. Still, it is alleged that such words as _frieze, architrave,
+cornice, zenith,_ &c., are words of art, out of place amongst the
+primitive simplicities of Paradise, and at war with Milton's purpose
+of exhibiting the Paradisaical state.
+
+Now, here is displayed broadly the very perfection of ignorance, as
+measured against the very perfection of what may be called poetic
+science. We will lay open the true purpose of Milton, by a single
+illustration. In describing impressive scenery, as occurring in a hilly
+or a woody country, everybody must have noticed the habit which young
+ladies have of using the word _amphitheatre_: 'amphitheatre of
+woods'--'amphitheatre of hills,'--these are their constant expressions.
+Why? Is it because the word _amphitheatre_ is a Grecian word? We
+question if one young lady in twenty knows that it is; and very certain
+we are that no word would recommend itself to her use by that origin,
+if she happened to be aware of it. The reason lurks here:--In the word
+_theatre_, is contained an evanescent image of a great audience--of
+a populous multitude. Now, this image--half withdrawn, half-flashed
+upon the eye--and combined with the word _hills_ or _forests_, is
+thrown into powerful collision with the silence of hills--with the
+solitude of forests; each image, from reciprocal contradiction,
+brightens and vivifies the other. The two images act, and react, by
+strong repulsion and antagonism.
+
+This principle we might exemplify, and explain at great length; but
+we impose a law of severe brevity upon ourselves. And we have said
+enough. Out of this one principle of subtle and lurking antagonism,
+may be explained everything which has been denounced under the idea
+of pedantry in Milton. It is the key to all that lavish pomp of art
+and knowledge which is sometimes put forward by Milton in situations
+of intense solitude, and in the bosom of primitive nature--as, for
+example, in the Eden of his great poem, and in the Wilderness of his
+_Paradise Regained_. The shadowy exhibition of a regal banquet in the
+desert, draws out and stimulates the sense of its utter solitude and
+remotion from men or cities. The images of architectural splendor,
+suddenly raised in the very centre of Paradise, as vanishing shows by
+the wand of a magician, bring into powerful relief the depth of silence,
+and the unpopulous solitude which possess this sanctuary of man whilst
+yet happy and innocent. Paradise could not, in any other way, or by
+any artifice less profound, have been made to give up its essential
+and differential characteristics in a form palpable to the imagination.
+As a place of rest, it was necessary that it should be placed in close
+collision with the unresting strife of cities; as a place of solitude,
+with the image of tumultuous crowds; as the centre of mere natural
+beauty in its gorgeous prime, with the images of elaborate architecture
+and of human workmanship; as a place of perfect innocence in seclusion,
+that it should be exhibited as the antagonist pole to the sin and
+misery of social man.
+
+Such is the covert philosophy which governs Milton's practice, and
+which might be illustrated by many scores of passages from both the
+_Paradise Lost_ and the _Paradise Regained_. [Footnote: For instance,
+this is the key to that image in the _Paradise Regained_, where Satan,
+on first emerging into sight, is compared to an old man gathering
+sticks 'to warm him on a winter's day.' This image, at first sight,
+seems little in harmony with the wild and awful character of the supreme
+fiend. No: it is _not in_ harmony; nor is it meant to be in harmony.
+On the contrary, it is meant to be in antagonism and intense repulsion.
+The household image of old age, of human infirmity, and of domestic
+hearths, are all meant as a machinery for provoking and soliciting the
+fearful idea to which they are placed in collision, and as so many
+repelling poles.] In fact, a volume might be composed on this one
+chapter. And yet, from the blindness or inconsiderate examination of
+his critics, this latent wisdom--this cryptical science of poetic
+effects--in the mighty poet, has been misinterpreted, and set down to
+the account of defective skill, or even of puerile ostentation.
+
+II. The second great charge against Milton is, _prima facie_, even
+more difficult to meet. It is the charge of having blended the Pagan
+and Christian forms. The great realities of angels and archangels are
+continually combined into the same groups with the fabulous
+impersonations of the Greek mythology. Eve is interlinked in comparisons
+with Pandora; sometimes again with Eurynome. Those impersonations,
+however, may be thought to have something of allegoric meaning in their
+conceptions, which in a measure corrects this Paganism of the idea.
+But Eve is also compared with Ceres, with Hebe, and other fixed forms
+of Pagan superstition. Other allusions to the Greek mythologic forms,
+or direct combination of them with the real existences of the Christian
+heavens, might be produced by scores, were it not that we decline to
+swell our paper beyond the necessity of the case. Now, surely this at
+least is an error. Can there be any answer to this?
+
+At one time we were ourselves inclined to fear that Milton had been
+here caught tripping. In this instance, at least, he seems to be in
+error. But there is no trusting to appearances. In meditating upon the
+question, we happened to remember that the most colossal and Miltonic
+of painters had fallen into the very same fault, if fault it were. In
+his _Last Judgment_, Michael Angelo has introduced the Pagan deities
+in connection with the hierarchy of the Christian heavens. Now, it is
+very true that one great man cannot palliate the error of another great
+man, by committing the same error himself. But, though it cannot avail
+as an excuse, such a conformity of ideas serves as a summons to a much
+more vigilant examination of the case than might else be instituted.
+One man might err from inadvertency; but that two, and both men trained
+to habits of constant meditation, should fall into the same error--makes
+the marvel tenfold greater.
+
+Now we confess that, as to Michael Angelo, we do not pretend to assign
+the precise key to the practice which he adopted. And to our feelings,
+after all that might be said in apology, there still remains an
+impression of incongruity in the visual exhibition and direct
+juxtaposition of the two orders of supernatural existence so potently
+repelling each other. But, as regards Milton, the justification is
+complete; it rests upon the following principle: In all other parts
+of Christianity, the two orders of superior beings, the Christian
+heaven and the Pagan pantheon, are felt to be incongruous--not as the
+pure opposed to the impure, (for, if that were the reason, then the
+Christian fiends should be incongruous with the angels, which they are
+not,)--but as the unreal opposed to the real. In all the hands of other
+poets, we feel that Jupiter, Mercury, Apollo, Diana, are not merely
+impure conceptions, but that they are baseless conceptions, phantoms
+of air, nonentities; and there is much the same objection, in point
+of just taste, to the combination of such fabulous beings in the same
+groups with glorified saints and angels, as there is to the combination,
+by a painter or a sculptor, of real flesh-and-blood creatures with
+allegoric abstractions.
+
+This is the objection to such combination in all other poets. But this
+objection does not apply to Milton: it glances past him; and for the
+following reason: Milton has himself laid an early foundation for his
+introduction of the Pagan pantheon into Christian groups:--_the false
+gods of the heathen world were, according to Milton, the fallen angels_.
+They are not false, therefore, in the sense of being unreal, baseless,
+and having a merely fantastical existence, like our European fairies,
+but as having drawn aside mankind from a pure worship. As ruined angels
+under other names, they are no less real than the faithful and loyal
+angels of the Christian heavens. And in that one difference of the
+Miltonic creed, which the poet has brought pointedly and elaborately
+under his reader's notice by his matchless catalogue of the rebellious
+angels, and of _their Pagan transformations_ in the very first book
+of the _Paradise Lost_, is laid beforehand the amplest foundation for
+his subsequent practice; and at the same time, therefore, the amplest
+answer to the charge preferred against him by Dr. Johnson, and by so
+many other critics, who had not sufficiently penetrated the latent
+theory on which he acted.
+
+
+
+
+CHARLEMAGNE.
+
+
+
+[FOOTNOTE: The History of Charlemagne; with a Sketch, and History of
+France from the Fall of the Roman Empire to the Rise of the Carlovingian
+Dynasty. By G.P.R. JAMES, Esq. VOL. II.]
+
+[1832.]
+
+
+History is sometimes treated under the splendid conception of
+'philosophy teaching by example,' and sometimes as an 'old almanac;'
+and, agreeably to this latter estimate, we once heard a celebrated
+living professor of medicine, who has been since distinguished by royal
+favor, and honored with a title, making it his boast, that he had never
+charged his memory with one single historical fact; that, on the
+contrary, he had, out of profound contempt for a sort of knowledge so
+utterly without value in his eyes, anxiously sought to extirpate from
+his remembrance,--or, if that were impossible, to perplex and
+confound,--any relics of historical records which might happen to
+survive from his youthful studies. 'And I am happy to say,' added he,
+'and it is consoling to have it in my power conscientiously to declare,
+that, although I have not been able to dismiss entirely from my mind
+some ridiculous fact about a succession of four great monarchies, (for
+human infirmity still clings to our best efforts, and will forever
+prevent our attaining perfection,) still I have happily succeeded in
+so far confounding all distinctions of things and persons, of time and
+of places, that I could not assign the era of any one transaction, as
+I humbly trust, within a thousand years. The whole vast series of
+history is become a wilderness to me; and my mind, as to all such
+absurd knowledge, under the blessing of Heaven, is pretty nearly a
+_tabula rasa_.' In this Gothic expression of self-congratulation upon
+the extent of his own ignorance, though doubtless founded upon what
+the Germans call an _einseitig_ or one-sided estimate, there was however
+that sort of truth which is apprehended only by strong minds, and such
+as naturally adhere to extreme courses. Certainly the blank knowledge
+of facts, which is all that most readers gather from their historical
+studies, is a mere deposition of rubbish without cohesion, and resting
+upon no basis of theory (that is, of general comprehensive survey)
+applied to the political development of nations, and accounting for
+the great stages of their internal movements. Rightly and profitably
+to understand history, it ought to be studied in as many ways as it
+may be written. History, as a composition, falls into three separate
+arrangements, obeying three distinct laws, and addressing itself to
+three distinct objects. Its first and humblest office is to deliver
+a naked unadorned exposition of public events and their circumstances.
+This form of history may be styled the purely Narrative; the second
+form is that which may be styled the Scenical; and the third the
+Philosophic. What is meant by Philosophic History, is well understood
+in our present advanced state of society; and few histories are written
+except in the simplest condition of human culture, which do not in
+part assume its functions, or which are content to rest their entire
+attraction upon the abstract interest of facts. The privileges of this
+form have, however, been greatly abused; and the truth of facts has
+been so much forced to bend before preconceived theories, whereas every
+valid theory ought to be abstracted from the facts, that Mr. Southey
+and others in this day have set themselves to decry the whole genus
+and class--as essentially at war with the very primary purposes of the
+art. But, under whatever name, it is evident that philosophy, or an
+investigation of the true moving forces in every great train and
+sequence of national events, and an exhibition of the motives and the
+moral consequences in their largest extent which have concurred with
+these events, cannot be omitted in any history above the level of a
+childish understanding. Mr. Southey himself will be found to illustrate
+this necessity by his practice, whilst assailing it in principle. As
+to the other mode of history--history treated scenically, it is upon
+the whole the most delightful to the reader, and the most susceptible
+of art and ornament in the hands of a skilful composer. The most
+celebrated specimen in this department is the Decline and Fall of
+Gibbon. And to this class may in part [Footnote 1] be referred the
+Historical Sketches of Voltaire. Histories of this class proceed upon
+principles of selection, presupposing in the reader a general knowledge
+of the great cardinal incidents, and bringing forward into especial
+notice those only which are susceptible of being treated with
+distinguished effect.
+
+These are the three separate modes of treating history; each has its
+distinct purposes; and all must contribute to make up a comprehensive
+total of historical knowledge. The first furnishes the facts; the
+second opens a thousand opportunities for pictures of manners and
+national temper in every stage of their growth; whilst the third
+abstracts the political or the ethical moral, and unfolds the philosophy
+which knits the history of one nation to that of others, and exhibits
+the whole under their internal connection, as parts of one great
+process, carrying on the great economy of human improvement by many
+stages in many regions at one and the same time.
+
+Pursued upon this comprehensive scale, the study of history is the
+study of human nature. But some have continued to reject it, not upon
+any objection to the quality of the knowledge gained--but simply on
+the ground of its limited extent; contending that in public and
+political transactions, such as compose the matter of history, human
+nature exhibits itself upon too narrow a scale and under too monotonous
+an aspect; that under different names, and in connection with different
+dates and regions, events virtually the same are continually revolving;
+that whatever novelty may strike the ear, in passages of history taken
+from periods widely remote, affects the names only, and circumstances
+that are extra-essential; that the passions meantime, the motives, and
+(allowing for difference of manners) the means even, are subject to
+no variety; that in ancient or in modern history there is no real
+accession made to our knowledge of human nature: but that all proceeds
+by cycles of endless repetition; and in fact that, according to the
+old complaint, 'there is nothing new under the sun.' It is not true
+that 'there is nothing new under the sun,' This is the complaint, as
+all men know, of a jaded voluptuary, seeking for a new pleasure and
+finding none, for reasons which lay in his own vitiated nature. Why
+did he seek for novelty? Because old pleasures had ceased to stimulate
+his exhausted organs; and that was reason enough why no new pleasure,
+had any been found, would operate as such for _him_. The weariness of
+spirit, and the poverty of pleasure which he bemoaned as belonging to
+our human condition, were not in reality _objective_, (as a German
+philosopher would express himself,) or laid in the nature of things,
+and thus pressing upon all alike, but _subjective_, that is to say,
+derived from the peculiar state and affections of his own organs for
+apprehending pleasure. Not the _apprehensibile_, but the _apprehendens_,
+was in fault--not the pleasures, or the dewy freshness of pleasures,
+had decayed, but the sensibilities of him who thus undertook to appraise
+them.
+
+More truly, and more philosophically, it may be said that there is
+nothing old under the sun, no absolute repetition. It is the well-known
+doctrine of Leibnitz, [Footnote 2] that amongst the familiar objects
+of our daily experience, there is no perfect identity. All in external
+nature proceeds by endless variety. Infinite change, illimitable
+novelty, inexhaustible difference, these are the foundations upon which
+nature builds and ratifies her purpose of _individuality_--so
+indispensable, amongst a thousand other great uses, to the very elements
+of social distinctions and social rights, But for the endless
+circumstances of difference which characterize external objects, the
+rights of property, for instance, would have stood upon no certain
+basis, nor admitted of any general or comprehensive guarantee.
+
+As with external objects, so with human actions; amidst their infinite
+approximations and affinities, they are separated by circumstances of
+never-ending diversity. History may furnish her striking
+correspondences, Biography her splendid parallels, Rome may in certain
+cases appear but the mirror of Athens, England of Rome,--and yet, after
+all, no character can be cited, no great transaction, no revolution
+of 'high-viced cities,' no catastrophe of nations, which, in the midst
+of its resemblances to distant correspondences in other ages, docs not
+include features of abundant distinction and individualizing
+characteristics, so many and so important, as to yield its own peculiar
+matter for philosophical meditation and its own separate moral. Rare
+is the case in history, or (to speak with suitable boldness) there is
+none, which does not involve circumstances capable to a learned eye,
+without any external aid from chronology, of referring it to its own
+age. The doctrine of Leibnitz, on the grounds of individuality in the
+objects of sense, may, in fact, be profitably extended to all the great
+political actions of mankind. Many pass, in a popular sense, for pure
+transcripts or duplicates of similar cases in past times; but,
+accurately speaking, none are such truly and substantially. Neither
+are the differences, by which they are severally marked and featured,
+interesting only to the curiosity or to the spirit of minute research.
+All public acts in the degree in which they are great and comprehensive,
+are steeped in living feelings, and saturated with the spirit of their
+own age; and the features of their individuality, that is, the
+circumstances which chiefly distinguish them from their nearest
+parallels in other times, and chiefly prevent them from lapsing into
+blank repetitions of the same identical case, are generally the very
+cardinal points, the organs, and the depositories which lodge whatever
+best expresses the temper and tendencies of the age to which they
+belong. So far are these special points of distinction from being
+slight or trivial, that in them _par excellence_ is gathered and
+concentrated, whatever a political philosopher would be best pleased
+to insulate and to converge within his field of view.
+
+This, indeed, is evident upon consideration; and is in some sense
+implied in the very verbal enunciation of the proposition; _vi termini_,
+it should strike every man who reflects--that in great national
+transactions of different ages, so far resembling each other as to
+merit the description of _parallels_, all the circumstances of
+agreement--all those which compose the resemblance for the very reason
+that they are _common_ to both periods of time, specially and
+characteristically belong to neither. It is the differential, and not
+the common--the points of special dissimilitude, not those of general
+similitude--which manifestly must be looked to, for the philosophic
+valuation of the times or the people--for the adjudication of their
+peculiar claims in a comparison with other times and other people--and
+for the appraisement of the progress made, whether positively for its
+total amount, or relatively to itself, for its rate of advance at each
+separate stage.
+
+It is in this way of critical examination, that comparison and the
+collation of apparent parallels, from being a pure amusement of
+ingenuity, rises to a philosophic labor, and that the study of History
+becomes at once dignified and in a most practical sense profitable.
+It is the opinion of the subtlest and the most combining (if not the
+most useful) philosopher whom England has produced, that a true
+knowledge of history confers the gift of prophecy; or that intelligently
+and sagaciously to have looked backwards, is potentially to have looked
+forwards. For example, he is of opinion that any student of the great
+English civil war in the reign of Charles I., who should duly have
+noted the signs precurrent and concurrent of those days, and should
+also have read the contemporary political pamphlets, coming thus
+prepared, could not have failed, after a corresponding study of the
+French literature from 1750 to 1788, and in particular, after collecting
+the general sense and temper of the French people from the _Cahiers_,
+(or codes of instruction transmitted by the electoral bodies to the
+members of the first National Assembly,) to foresee in clear succession
+the long career of revolutionary frenzy, which soon afterwards deluged
+Europe with tears and blood. This may perhaps be conceded, and without
+prejudice to the doctrine just now delivered, of endless diversity in
+political events. For it is certain that the political movements of
+nations obey everlasting laws, and travel through the stages of known
+cycles, which thus insure enough of resemblance to guarantee the general
+outline of a sagacious prophecy; whilst on the other hand, the times,
+the people, and the extraordinary minds which, in such critical eras,
+soon reveal themselves at the head of affairs, never fail of producing
+their appropriate and characteristic results of difference. Sameness
+enough there will always be to encourage the true political seer; with
+difference enough to confer upon each revolution its separate character
+and its peculiar interest.
+
+All this is strikingly illustrated in the history of those great
+revolutionary events, which belong to the life and times of the Emperor
+Charlemagne. If any one period in history might be supposed to offer a
+barren and unprofitable picture of war, rapine, and bloodshed--unfeatured
+by characteristic differences, and unimproved by any peculiar moral,
+it is this section of the European annals. Removed from our present
+times by a thousand years, divided from us by the profound gulf of what
+we usually denominate the _dark ages_; placed, in fact, entirely upon
+the farther [Footnote 3] side of that great barrier--this period of
+history can hardly be expected to receive much light from contemporary
+documents in an age so generally illiterate. Not from national archives,
+or state papers, when diplomacy was so rare, when so large a proportion
+of its simple transactions was conducted by personal intercourse, and
+after the destruction wrought amongst its slender chancery of written
+memorials by the revolution of one entire millenium. Still less could we
+have reason to hope for much light from private memoirs at a period when
+the means of writing were as slenderly diffused as the motives; when the
+rare endowments, natural and acquired, for composing history could so
+seldom happen to coincide with the opportunities for obtaining accurate
+information; when the writers were so few, and the audience so limited
+and so widely dispersed, to which they could then profitably address
+themselves. With or without illustration, however, the age itself and
+its rapid succession of wars between barbarous and semi-barbarous tribes,
+might, if any one chapter in history, be presumed barren of either interest
+or instruction, wearisomely monotonous; and, by comparison with any
+parallel section from the records of other nations in the earliest
+stages of dawning civilization, offering no one feature of novelty
+beyond the names of the combatants, their local and chronological
+relations, and the peculiar accidents and unimportant circumstances
+of variety in the conduct or issue of the several battles which they
+fought.
+
+Yet, in contradiction to all these very plausible presumptions, even
+this remote period teems with its own peculiar and separate instruction.
+It is the first great station, so to speak, which we reach after
+entering the portals of modern [Footnote 4] history. It presents us
+with the evolution and propagation of Christianity in its present
+central abodes; with the great march of civilization, and the gathering
+within the pale of that mighty agency for elevating human nature, and
+beneath the gentle yoke of the only true and beneficent religion, of
+the last rebellious recusants among the European family of nations.
+We meet also, in conjunction with the other steps of the vast humanizing
+process then going on, the earliest efforts at legislation--recording
+at the same time the barbarous condition of those for whom they were
+designed, and the anti-barbarous views and aspirations of the legislator
+in the midst of his condescensions to the infirmities of his subjects.
+Here also we meet with the elementary state, growing and as yet
+imperfectly rooted, of feudalism. Here, too, we behold in their
+incunabula, forming and arranging themselves under the pressure of
+circumstances, the existing kingdoms of Christendom. So far, then,
+from being a mere echo, or repetition, of other passages in history,
+the period of Charlemagne is rich and novel in its instruction, and
+almost (we might say) unique in the quality of that instruction. For
+here only perhaps we see the social system forming itself in the mine,
+and the very process, as it were, of crystallization going on beneath
+our eyes. Mr. James, therefore, may be regarded as not less fortunate
+in the choice of his subject, than meritorious in its treatment; indeed,
+his work is not so much the best, as the only history of Charlemagne
+which will hereafter be cited. For it reposes upon a far greater body
+of research and collation, than has hitherto been applied [Footnote
+4] even in France to this interesting theme; and in effect it is the
+first account of the great emperor and his times which can, with a due
+valuation of the term, be complimented with the title of a _critical_
+memoir. Charlemagne, 'the greatest man of the middle ages,' in the
+judgment of his present biographer, was born A. D. 742--seven years
+before his father assumed the _name_ of King. This date has been
+disputed: but, on the whole, we may take it as settled, upon various
+collateral computations, that the year now assigned is the true one.
+The place is less certain: but we do not think Mr. James warranted in
+saying that it is 'unknown.' If every thing is to be pronounced
+'unknown,' for which there is no absolute proof of a kind to satisfy
+forensic rules of evidence, or which has ever been made a question for
+debate, in that case we may apply a sponge to the greater part of
+history before the era of printing.
+
+Aix-la-Chapelle, Mr. James goes on to tell us, is _implied_ as the
+birth-place of one of the chief authorities. But our own impression
+is, that according to the general belief of succeeding ages, it was
+not Aix-la-Chapelle, but Ingelheim, a village near Mentz, to which
+that honor belonged. Some have supposed that Carlsburg, in Bavaria,
+was the true place of his birth; and, indeed, that it drew its name
+from that distinguished event. Frantzius, in particular, says, that
+in his day the castle of that place was still shown to travellers with
+the reverential interest attached to such a pretension. But, after
+all, he gives his own vote for Ingelheim; and it is singular that he
+does not so much as mention Aix-la-Chapelle. Of his education and his
+early years, Mr. James is of opinion that we know as little as of his
+birth-place. Certainly our information upon these particulars is neither
+full nor circumstantial; yet we know as much, perhaps, in these
+respects, of Charlemagne as of Napoleon Bonaparte. And remarkable
+enough it is, that not relatively, (or making allowances for the age,)
+but absolutely, Charlemagne was much more accomplished than Napoleon
+in the ordinary business of a _modern_ education; Charlemagne, in the
+middle of the 8th century, than Napoleon in the latter end of the 18th.
+Charlemagne was, in fact, the most accomplished man of his age; Napoleon
+a sciolist for any age. The tutor of Charlemagne was Peter of Pisa,
+a man eminent at that time for his attainments in literature (_in re
+grammatica_). From him it was that Charlemagne learned Latin and Greek;
+Greek in such a degree 'ut sufficienter intelligeret,' and Latin to
+the extent of using it familiarly and fluently in conversation. Now,
+as to the man of the 18th century, Greek was to him as much a sealed
+language as Chinese; and, even with regard to Latin, his own secretary
+doubts, upon one occasion, whether he were sufficiently master of it
+to translate Juvenal's expressive words of _Panem et Circenses_. Yet
+he had enjoyed the benefits of an education in a Royal College, in a
+country which regards itself self-complacently as at the head of
+civilization. Again, there is a pretty strong tradition, (which could
+hardly arise but upon some foundation,) that Charlemagne had cultivated
+the Arabic so far as to talk it; [Footnote 6] having no motive to that
+attainment more urgent than that political considerations made it
+eligible for him to undertake an expedition against those who could
+negotiate in no other language. Now, let it be considered how very
+much more powerful arguments there were in Napoleon's position for
+mastering the German and the English. His continental policy moved
+entirely upon the pivot of central Europe, that is, the German system
+of nations--the great federation of powers upon the Rhine and the
+Danube. And, as to England, his policy and his passions alike pointed
+in that direction as uniformly and as inevitably as the needle to the
+Pole: every morning, we are told, tossing aside the Paris journals as
+so many babbling echoes of his own public illusions, expressing rather
+what was desired, than what was probable, he required of his secretary
+that he should read off into French the leading newspapers of England.
+And many were the times when he started up in fury, and passionately
+taxed his interpreter with mistranslation; sometimes as softening the
+expressions, sometimes as over-coloring their violence. Evidently he
+lay at the mercy of one whom he knew to be wanting in honor, and who
+had it in his power, either by way of abetting any sinister views of
+his own, or in collusion with others, to suppress--to add--to
+garble--and in every possible way to color and distort what he was
+interpreting. Yet neither could this humiliating sense of dependency
+on the one hand, nor the instant pressure of political interest on the
+other, ever urge Napoleon to the effort of learning English in the
+first case, German or Spanish in the second. Charlemagne again
+cultivated most strenuously and successfully, as an accomplishment
+peculiarly belonging to the functions of his high station, the art and
+practice of eloquence; and he had this reward of his exertions--that
+he was accounted the most eloquent man of his age: 'totis viribus ad
+orationem exercendam conversus naturalem facundiam ita roboravit studio,
+ut praeter [l. _propter_] promptum ac profluens sermonis genus _facile
+aevi sui eloquentissimus crederetur.'
+
+Turn to Bonaparte. It was a saying of his sycophants, that he sometimes
+spoke like a god, and sometimes worse than the feeblest of mortals.
+But, says one who knew him well,--the mortal I have often heard,
+unfortunately never yet the god. He who sent down this sneer to
+posterity, was at Napoleon's right hand on the most memorable occasion
+of his whole career--that cardinal occasion, as we may aptly term it,
+(for upon _that_ his whole fortunes hinged,) when he intruded violently
+upon the legislative body, dissolved the Directory and effected the
+revolution of the 18th Brumaire. That revolution it was which raised
+him to the Consular power; and by that revolution, considered in its
+manner and style, we may judge of Napoleon in several of his chief
+pretensions--courage, presence of mind, dignity, and eloquence; for
+then, if ever, these qualities were all in instant requisition; one
+word effectually urged by the antagonist parties, a breath, a gesture,
+a nod, suitably followed up, would have made the total difference
+between ruler of France and a traitor hurried away _a la lanterne_.
+It is true that the miserable imbecility of all who should have led
+the hostile parties, the irresolution and the quiet-loving temper of
+Moreau, the base timidity of Bernadotte, in fact, the total defect of
+heroic minds amongst the French of that day, neutralized the defects
+and more than compensated the blunders of Napoleon. But these were
+advantages that could not be depended on: a glass of brandy
+extraordinary might have emboldened the greatest poltroon to do that
+which, by once rousing a movement of popular enthusiasm, once making
+a beginning in that direction, would have precipitated the whole affair
+into hands which must have carried it far beyond the power of any party
+to control. Never, according to all human calculation, were eloquence
+and presence of mind so requisite: never was either so deplorably
+wanting. A passionate exposition of the national degradations inflicted
+by the imbecility of the Directors, an appeal to the Assembly as
+Frenchmen, contrasting the glories of 1796 with the humiliating
+campaigns that had followed, might, by connecting the new candidate
+for power with the public glory, and the existing rulers with all the
+dishonors which had settled on the French banners, have given an
+electric shock to the patriotism of the audience, such as would have
+been capable for the moment of absorbing their feelings as partisans.
+In a French assembly, movements of that nature, under a momentary
+impulse, are far from being uncommon. Here, then, if never before, and
+never again, the grandeur of the occasion demanded--almost, we might
+say, implored, and clamorously invoked, the effectual powers of
+eloquence and perfect self-possession. How was the occasion met? Let
+us turn to the actual scene, as painted in lively colors by a friend
+and an eye-witness: [Footnote 7]--'The accounts brought every instant
+to General Bonaparte determined him to enter the hall [of the Ancients]
+and take part in the debate. His entrance was hasty and in anger--no
+favorable prognostics of what he would say. The passage by which we
+entered led directly forward into the middle of the house; our backs
+were towards the door; Bonaparte had the President on his right; he
+could not see him quite in front. I found myself on the General's
+right; our clothes touched: Berthier was on his left.
+
+'All the harangues composed for Bonaparte after the event differ from
+each other;--no miracle that. There was, in fact, none pronounced to
+the Ancients; unless a broken conversation with the President, carried
+on without nobleness, propriety, or dignity, may be called a speech.
+We heard only these words--"_Brothers in arms--frankness of a soldier_."
+The interrogatories of the President were clear. Nothing could be more
+confused or worse enounced, than the ambiguous and disjointed replies
+of Bonaparte. He spoke incoherently of volcanoes--secret
+agitations--victories--constitution violated. He found fault even
+with the 18th Fructidor, of which he had himself been the prime
+instigator and most powerful upholder.' [Not, reader, observe, from
+bold time-serving neglect of his own principles, but from absolute
+distraction of mind, and incoherency of purpose.] 'Then came
+_Caesar_--_Cromwell_--_Tyrant_'--[allusions which, of all others, were
+the most unseasonable for that crisis, and for his position.] 'He
+repeated several times--_I have no more than that to tell you_; and
+he had told them nothing. Then out came the words,--_Liberty, Equality:_
+for these every one saw he had not come to St. Cloud. Then his action
+became animated, and we lost him--comprehending nothing beyond _18th
+Fructidor, 30 Prairial, hypocrites, intriguers; I am not so; I shall
+declare all; I will abdicate the power when the danger which threatens
+the Republic has passed_.' Then, after further instances of Napoleon's
+falsehood, and the self-contradictory movements of his disjointed
+babble, the secretary goes on thus: 'These interruptions, apostrophes,
+and interrogations, overwhelmed him; he believed himself lost. The
+disapprobation became more violent, and his discourse still more wanting
+in method and coherence. Sometimes he addressed the representatives,
+quite stultified; sometimes the military in the court,' [_i. e._
+outside,] 'who were beyond hearing; then, without any transition, he
+spoke of the thunder of war--saying, _I am accompanied by the god of
+war and fortune_. The President then calmly observed to him that he
+found nothing, absolutely nothing, upon which they could deliberate;
+that all he had said was vague. _Explain yourself, unfold the plots
+into which you have been invited to enter_. Bonaparte repeated the
+same things; and in what style! No idea in truth can be formed of the
+whole scene, unless by those present. There was not the least order
+in all he stammered out (to speak sincerely) with the most inconceivable
+incoherence. Bonaparte was no orator. Perceiving the bad effect produced
+upon the meeting by this rhapsody, and the progressive confusion of
+the speaker, I whispered (pulling his coat gently at the same
+time)--'Retire, General, you no longer know what you are saying.' I
+made a sign to Berthier to second me in persuading him to leave the
+place; when suddenly, after stammering out a few words more, he turned
+round, saying, 'Let all who love me follow.' So ended this famous
+scene--in which, more than in any other upon record, eloquence and
+presence of mind were needful. And if it should be said that vagueness
+was not altogether the least eligible feature in a speech whose very
+purpose was to confuse, and to leave no room for answer, we reply--true;
+but then it was the vagueness of art, which promised to be serviceable,
+and that of preconcerted perplexity, not the vagueness of incoherence,
+and a rhapsody of utter contradiction. [Footnote 8]
+
+What a contrast all this to the indefeasible majesty of Charlemagne--to
+his courage and presence of mind, which always rose with the occasion,
+and, above all, to his promptitude of winning eloquence, that _promptum
+ac praftuens genus sermonis_, which caused him to be accounted _evi
+sui eloquentissimus!_
+
+Passing for a moment to minor accomplishments, we find that Charlemagne
+excelled in athletic and gymnastic exercises; he was a _pancratiast_.
+Bonaparte wanted those even which were essential to his own daily
+security. Charlemagne swam well; Bonaparte not at all. Charlemagne was
+a first-rate horseman even amongst the Franks; Napoleon rode ill
+originally, and no practice availed to give him a firm seat, a graceful
+equestrian deportment, or a skilful bridle hand. In a barbarous age
+the one possessed all the elegances and ornamental accomplishments of
+a gentleman; the other, in a most polished age, and in a nation of
+even false refinement, was the sole barbarian of his time; presenting,
+in his deficiencies, the picture of a low mechanic--and, in his positive
+qualities, the violence and brutality of a savage. [Footnote 9] Hence,
+by the way, the extreme folly of those who have attempted to trace a
+parallel between Napoleon and the first Caesar. The heaven-born Julius,
+as beyond all dispute the greatest man of ancient history in moral
+grandeur, and therefore raised unspeakably above comparison with one
+who was eminent, even amongst ordinary men, for the pettiness of his
+passions--so also, upon an intellectual trial, will be found to
+challenge pretty nearly an equal precedency. Meantime, allowing for
+the inequality of their advantages, even Caesar would not have disdained
+a comparison with Charlemagne. All the knowledge current in Rome,
+Athens, or Rhodes, at the period of Caesar's youth, the entire cycle
+of a nobleman's education in a republic where all noblemen were from
+their birth dedicated to public services, this--together with much and
+various knowledge peculiar to himself and his own separate objects--had
+Caesar mastered; whilst, in an age of science, and in a country where
+the fundamental science of mathematics was generally diffused in
+unrivalled perfection, it is well ascertained that Bonaparte's knowledge
+did not go beyond an elementary acquaintance with the first six books
+of Euclid; but, on the other hand, Charlemagne, even in that early
+age, was familiar with the intricate mathematics and the elaborate
+_computus_ of Practical Astronomy.
+
+But these collations, it will be said, are upon questions not primarily
+affecting their peculiar functions. They are questions more or less
+extra-judicial. The true point of comparison is upon the talents of
+policy in the first place, and strategies in the second. A trial between
+two celebrated performers in these departments, is at any rate
+difficult; and much more so when they are separated by vast intervals
+of time. Allowances must be made, so many and so various; compensations
+or balances struck upon so many diversities of situation; there is so
+much difference in the modes of warfare--offensive and defensive; the
+financial means, the available alliances, and other resources, are
+with so much difficulty appraised--in order to raise ourselves to that
+station from which the whole question can be overlooked, that nothing
+short of a general acquaintance with the history, statistics, and
+diplomacy of the two periods, can lay a ground for the solid
+adjudication of so large a comparison. Meantime, in the absence of
+such an investigation, pursued upon a scale of suitable proportions,
+what if we should sketch a rapid outline [Greek Text: os en tupo
+pexilabeln] of its _elements_, (to speak by a metaphor borrowed from
+practical astronomy)--_i. e._ of the principal and most conspicuous
+points which its path would traverse? How much these two men, each
+central to a mighty system in his own days, how largely and essentially
+they differed--whether in kind or in degree of merit, will appear in
+the course even of the hastiest sketch. The circumstances in which
+they agreed, and that these were sufficient to challenge an inquiry
+into their characteristic differences, and to support the interest of
+such an inquiry, will probably be familiar to most readers, as among
+the common places of general history which survive even in the daily
+records of conversation. Few people can fail to know--that each of
+these memorable men stood at the head of a new era in European history,
+and of a great movement in the social development of nations; that
+each laid the foundations for a new dynasty in his own family, the one
+by building forwards upon a basis already formed by his two immediate
+progenitors, the other by dexterously applying to a great political
+crisis his own military preponderance; and finally, that each forfeited
+within a very brief period--the one in his own person, the other in
+the persons of his immediate descendants--the giddy ascent which he
+had mastered, and all the distinctions which it conferred; in short,
+that 'Time, which gave, did his own gifts confound ;' [Footnote 10]
+but with this mighty difference--that Time co-operated in the one case
+with extravagant folly in the individual, and in the other with the
+irresistible decrees of Providence.
+
+Napoleon Bonaparte and Charlemagne were both, in a memorable degree,
+the favorites of fortune. It is true, that the latter found himself
+by inheritance in possession of a throne, which the other ascended by
+the fortunate use of his own military advantages. But the throne of
+Charlemagne had been recently won by his family, and in a way so nearly
+corresponding to that which was afterwards pursued by Napoleon, that
+in effect, considering how little this usurpation had been hallowed
+by time, the throne might in each case, if not won precisely on the
+same terms, be considered to be held by the same tenure. Charlemagne,
+not less than Napoleon, was the privileged child of revolution; he was
+required by the times, and indispensable to the crisis which had arisen
+for the Franks; and he was himself protected by the necessities to
+which he ministered. Clouds had risen, or were rising, at that era,
+on every quarter of France; from every side she was menaced by hostile
+demonstrations; and, without the counsels of a Charlemagne, and with
+an energy of action inferior to his, it is probable that she would
+have experienced misfortunes which, whilst they depressed herself,
+could not but have altered the destinies of Christendom for many ages
+to come. The resources of France, it is true, were immense; and, as
+regarded the positions of her enemies, they were admirably concentrated.
+But to be made available in the whole extent which the times demanded,
+it was essential that they should be wielded by a first-rate statesman,
+supported by a first-rate soldier. The statesman and the soldier were
+fortunately found united in the person of one man; and that man, by
+the rarest of combinations, the same who was clothed with the supreme
+power of the State. Less power, or power less harmonious, or power the
+most consummate, administered with less absolute skill, would doubtless
+have been found incompetent to struggle with the tempestuous assaults
+which then lowered over the entire frontier of France. It was natural,
+and, upon the known constitution of human nature, pretty nearly
+inevitable, that, in the course of the very extended warfare which
+followed, love for that glorious trade--so irritating and so
+contagious--should be largely developed in a mind as aspiring as
+Charlemagne's, and stirred by such generous sensibilities. Yet is it
+in no one instance recorded, that these sympathies with the pomp and
+circumstance of war, moved him to undertake so much as a single
+campaign, or an expedition which was not otherwise demanded by his
+judgment, or that they interfered even to bias or give an impulse to
+his judgment, where it had previously wavered. In every case he tried
+the force of negotiation before he appealed to arms; nay, sometimes
+he condescended so far in his love of peace, as to attempt purchasing
+with gold rights or concessions of expediency, which he knew himself
+in a situation amply to extort by arms. Nor where these courses were
+unavailing, and where peace was no longer to be maintained by any
+sacrifices, is it ever found that Charlemagne, in adopting the course
+of war, suffered himself to pursue it as an end valuable in and for
+itself. And yet _that_ is a result not uncommon; for a long and
+conscientious resistance to a measure originally tempting to the
+feelings, once being renounced as utterly unavailing, not seldom issues
+in a headlong surrender of the heart to purposes so violently thwarted
+for a time. And even as a means, war was such in the eyes of Charlemagne
+to something beyond the customary ends of victory and domestic security.
+Of all conquerors, whose history is known sufficiently to throw light
+upon their motives, Charlemagne is the only one who looked forward to
+the benefit of those he conquered, as a principal element amongst the
+fruits of conquest. 'Doubtless,' says his present biographer, 'to
+defend his own infringed territory, and to punish the aggressors,
+formed a part of his design; but, beyond that, he aimed at civilizing
+a people whose barbarism had been for centuries the curse of the
+neighboring countries, and at the same time communicating to the cruel
+savages, who shed the blood of their enemies less in the battle than
+in the sacrifice, the bland and mitigating spirit of the Christian
+religion.'
+
+This applies more particularly and circumstantially to his Saxon
+campaigns; but the spirit of the remark is of general application. At
+that time a weak light of literature was beginning to diffuse
+improvement in Italy, in France, and in England. France, by situation,
+geographically and politically speaking, by the prodigious advantage
+which she enjoyed exclusively of an undivided government, and
+consequently of entire unity in her counsels, was peculiarly fitted
+for communicating the benefits of intellectual culture to the rest of
+the European continent, and for sustaining the great mission of
+civilizing conquest. Above all, as the great central depository of
+Christian knowledge, she seemed specially stationed by Providence as
+a martial apostle for carrying by the sword that mighty blessing,
+which, even in an earthly sense, Charlemagne could not but value as
+the best engine of civilization, to the potent infidel nations on her
+southern and eastern frontier. A vast revolution was at hand for Europe;
+all her tribes were destined to be fused in a new crucible, to be
+recast in happier moulds, and to form one family of enlightened nations,
+to compose one great collective brotherhood, united by the tie of a
+common faith and a common hope, and hereafter to be known to the rest
+of the world, and to proclaim this unity, under the comprehensive name
+of _Christendom_. Baptism therefore was the indispensable condition
+and forerunner of civilization; and from the peculiar ferocity and the
+sanguinary superstitions which disfigured the Pagan nations in Central
+Europe, of which the leaders and the nearest to France were the Saxons,
+and from the bigotry and arrogant intolerance of the Mahometan nations
+who menaced her Spanish frontier, it was evident that by the sword
+only it was possible that baptism should be effectually propagated.
+War, therefore, for the highest purposes of peace, became the present
+and instant policy of France; bloodshed for the sake of a religion the
+most benign; and desolation with a view to permanent security. The
+Frankish Emperor was thus invited to indulge in this most captivating
+of luxuries--in the royal tiger-hunt of war--as being also at this
+time, and for a special purpose, the sternest of duties. He had a
+special dispensation for wielding at times a barbarian and exterminating
+sword--but for the extermination of barbarism; and he was privileged
+to be in a single instance an Attila, in order that Attilas might no
+more arise. Simply as the enemies, bitter and perfidious of France,
+the Saxons were a legitimate object of war; as the standing enemies
+of civilization, who would neither receive it for themselves, nor
+tolerate its peaceable enjoyment in others, they and Charlemagne stood
+opposed to each other as it were by hostile instincts. And this most
+merciful of conquerors was fully justified in departing for once, and
+in such a quarrel, from his general rule of conduct; and for a paramount
+purpose of comprehensive service to all mankind, we entirely agree
+with Mr. James, that Charlemagne had a sufficient plea, and that he
+has been censured only by calumnious libellers, or by the feeble-
+minded, for applying a Roman severity of punishment to treachery
+continually repeated. The question is one purely of policy; and it may
+be, as Mr. James is disposed to think, that in point of judgment the
+emperor erred; but certainly the case was one of great difficulty; for
+the very infirmity even of maternal indulgence, if obstinately and
+continually abused, must find its ultimate limit; and we have no right
+to suppose that Charlemagne made his election for the harsher course
+without a violent self-conflict. His former conduct towards those
+very people, his infinite forbearance, his long-suffering, his monitory
+threats, all make it a duty to presume that he suffered the acutest
+pangs in deciding upon a vindictive punishment; that he adopted this
+course as being virtually by its consequences the least sanguinary;
+and finally, that if he erred, it was not through his heart, but by
+resisting its very strongest impulses.
+
+It is remarkable that both Charlemagne and Bonaparte succeeded as by
+inheritance to one great element of their enormous power; each found,
+ready to his hands, that vast development of martial enthusiasm, upon
+which, as its first condition, their victorious career reposed. Each
+also found the great armory of resources opened, which such a spirit,
+diffused over so vast a territory, must in any age ensure. Of
+Charlemagne, in an age when as yet the use of infantry was but
+imperfectly known, it may be said symbollically, that he found the
+universal people, patrician and plebeian, chieftain and vassal, with
+the left foot [Footnote 11] in the stirrup--of Napoleon, in an age
+when the use of artillery was first understood, that he found every
+man standing to his gun. Both, in short, found war _in pro-cinctu_--both
+found the people whom they governed, willing to support the privations
+and sacrifices which war imposes; hungering and thirsting for its
+glories, its pomps and triumphs; entering even with lively sympathy
+of pleasure into its hardships and its trials; and thus, from within
+and from without, prepared for military purposes. So far both had the
+same good fortune; [Footnote 12] neither had much merit. The enthusiasm
+of Napoleon's days was the birth of republican sentiments, and built
+on a reaction of civic and patriotic ardor. In the very plenitude of
+their rage against kings, the French Republic were threatened with
+attack, and with the desolation of their capital by a banded crusade
+of kings; and they rose in frenzy to meet the aggressors. The Allied
+Powers had themselves kindled the popular excitement which provoked
+this vast development of martial power amongst the French, and first
+brought their own warlike strength within their own knowledge. In the
+days of Charlemagne the same martial character was the result of ancient
+habits and training, encouraged and effectually organized by the energy
+of the aspiring mayors of the palace, or great lieutenants of the
+Merovingian kings. But agreeing in this--that they were indebted to
+others for the martial spirit which they found, and that they turned
+to their account a power not created by themselves, Charlemagne and
+Napoleon differed, however, in the utmost possible extent as to the
+final application of their borrowed advantages. Napoleon applied them
+to purposes the very opposite of those which had originally given them
+birth. Nothing less than patriotic ardor in defence of what had at one
+time appeared to be the cause of civil liberty, could have availed to
+evoke those mighty hosts which gathered in the early years of the
+Revolution on the German and Italian frontiers of France. Yet were
+these hosts applied, under the perfect despotism of Napoleon, to the
+final extinction of liberty; and the armies of Jacobinism, who had
+gone forth on a mission of liberation for Europe, were at last employed
+in riveting the chains of their compatriots, and forging others for
+the greater part of Christendom. Far otherwise was the conduct of
+Charlemagne. The Frankish government, though we are not circumstantially
+acquainted with its forms, is known to have been tempered by a large
+infusion of popular influence. This is proved, as Mr. James observes,
+by the deposition of Chilperic--by the grand national assemblies of
+the Champ de Mars--and by other great historical facts. Now, the
+situation of Charlemagne, successor to a throne already firmly
+established, and in his own person a mighty amplifier of its glories,
+and a leader in whom the Franks had unlimited confidence, threw into
+his hands an unexampled power of modifying the popular restraints upon
+himself in any degree he might desire.
+
+--'Nunquam libertas gratior exit, Quam sub rege pio'--
+
+is the general doctrine. But as to the Franks, in particular, if they
+resembled their modern representatives in their most conspicuous moral
+feature, it would be more true to say, that the bribe and the almost
+magical seduction for _them_, capable of charming away their sternest
+resolutions, and of relaxing the hand of the patriot when grasping his
+noblest birthright, has ever lain in great military success, in the
+power of bringing victory to the national standards, and in continued
+offerings on the altar of public vanity. In _their_ estimate for above
+a thousand years, it has been found true that the harvest of a few
+splendid campaigns, reaped upon the fields of neighboring nations, far
+outweighs any amount of humbler blessings in the shape of civil and
+political privileges. Charlemagne as a conqueror, and by far the
+greatest illustrator of the Frankish name, might easily have conciliated
+their gratitude and admiration into a surrender of popular rights; or,
+profiting by his high situation, and the confidence reposed in him,
+he might have undermined their props; or, by a direct exertion of his
+power, he might have peremptorily resumed them. Slowly and surely, or
+summarily and with violence, this great emperor had the national
+privileges in his power. But the beneficence of his purposes required
+no such aggression on the rights of his subjects. War brought with it
+naturally some extension of power; and a military jurisdiction is
+necessarily armed with some discretionary license. But in the civil
+exercise of his authority, the emperor was content with the powers
+awarded to him by law and custom. His great schemes of policy were all
+of a nature to prepare his subjects for a condition of larger political
+influence; he could not in consistency be adverse to an end towards
+which he so anxiously prepared the means. And it is certain, that,
+although some German writers have attempted to fasten upon Charlemagne
+a charge of vexatious inquisition into the minor police of domestic
+life, and into petty details of economy below the majesty of his
+official character, even _their_ vigilance of research--sharpened by
+malice--has been unable to detect throughout his long reign, and in
+the hurry of sudden exigencies natural to a state of uninterrupted
+warfare and alarm, one single act of tyranny, personal revenge, or
+violation of the existing laws. Charlemagne, like Napoleon, had bitter
+enemies--some who were such to his government and his public purposes;
+some again to his person upon motives of private revenge. Tassilo, for
+example, the Duke of Bavaria, and Desiderius, the King of the Lombards,
+acted against him upon the bitterest instigations of feminine
+resentment; each of these princes conceiving himself concerned in a
+family quarrel, pursued the cause which he had adopted in the most
+ferocious spirit of revenge, and would undoubtedly have inflicted death
+upon Charlemagne, had he fallen into their power. Of this he must
+himself have been sensible; and yet, when the chance of war threw both
+of them into his power, he forbore to exercise even those rights of
+retaliation for their many provocations which the custom of that age
+sanctioned universally; he neither mutilated nor deprived them of
+sight. Confinement to religious seclusion was all that he inflicted;
+and in the case of Tassilo, where mercy could be more safely exercised,
+he pardoned him so often, that it became evident in what current his
+feelings ran, wherever the cruel necessities of the public service
+allowed him to indulge them.
+
+In the conspiracy formed against him, upon the provocations offered
+to the Frankish nobility by his third wife, he showed the same spirit
+of excessive clemency,--a clemency which again reminds us of the first
+Caesar, and which was not merely parental, but often recalls to us the
+long-suffering and tenderness of spirit which belong to the infirmity
+of maternal affection. Here are no Palms, executed for no real offence
+known to the laws of his country, and without a trial such as any laws
+in any country would have conceded. No innocent D'Enghiens murdered,
+without the shadow of provocation, and purely on account of his own
+reversionary rights; not for doing or meditating wrong, but because
+the claims which unfortunately he inherited might by possibility become
+available in his person; not, therefore, even as an enemy by intention
+or premeditation; not even as an apparent competitor, but in the rare
+character of a competitor presumptive; one who might become an ideal
+competitor by the extinction of a whole family, and even then no
+substantial competitor until after a revolution in France, which must
+already have undermined the throne of Bonaparte. To his own subjects,
+and his own kinsmen, never did Charlemagne forget to be, in acts, as
+well as words, a parent. In his foreign relations, it is true, for one
+single purpose of effectual warning Charlemagne put forth a solitary
+trait of Roman harshness. This is the case which we have already noticed
+and defended; and, with a view to the comparison with Napoleon,
+remarkable enough it is, that the numbers sacrificed on this occasion
+are pretty nearly the same as on the celebrated massacre at Jaffa,
+perpetrated by Napoleon in council. [Footnote 13] In the Saxon, as in
+the Syrian massacre, the numbers were between four and five thousand;
+not that the numbers or the scale of the transaction can affect its
+principle, but it is well to know it, because then to its author, as
+now to us who sit as judges upon it, that circumstance cannot be
+supposed to have failed in drawing the very keenest attention to its
+previous consideration. A butchery, that was in a numerical sense so
+vast, cannot be supposed to have escaped its author in a hurry, or to
+be open to any of the usual palliations from precipitance or
+inattention. Charlemagne and Napoleon must equally be presumed to have
+regarded this act on all sides, to have weighed it in and for itself,
+and to have traversed by anticipation the whole sum of its consequences.
+In the one case we find a general, the leader of a _soi-disant_
+Christian army, the representative of the 'most Christian' nation,
+and, as amongst infidels, specially charged with the duty of supporting
+the sanctity of Christian good faith, unfortunately pledged by his own
+most confidential and accredited agents, officers bearing on their
+persons the known ensigns of his _aides-de-camp_, to a comprehensive
+promise of mercy to a large body of Turkish troops, having arms in
+their hands, and otherwise well-disposed and well able to have made
+a desperate defence. This promise was peculiarly embarrassing;
+provisions ran short, and, to detain them as prisoners, would draw
+murmurs from his own troops, now suffering hardships themselves. On
+the other hand, to have turned them adrift would have insured their
+speedy re-appearance as active enemies to a diminished and debilitated
+army; for, as to sending them off by sea, that measure was
+impracticable, as well from want of shipping as from the presence of
+the English. Such was the dilemma, doubtless perplexing enough, but
+not more so than in ten thousand other cases, for which their own
+appropriate ten thousand remedies have been found. What was the issue?
+The entire body of gallant (many, doubtless, young and innocent)
+soldiers, disarmed upon the faith of a solemn guarantee from a Christian
+general, standing in the very steps of the noble (and the more noble,
+because bigoted) Crusaders, were all mowed down by the musketry of
+their thrice accursed enemy; and, by way of crowning treachery with
+treachery, some few who had swum off to a point of rock in the sea,
+were lured back to destruction under a second series of promises,
+violated almost at the very instant when uttered. A larger or more
+damnable murder does not stain the memory of any brigand, buccaneer,
+or pirate; nor has any army, Huns, Vandals, or Mogul Tartars, ever
+polluted itself by so base a perfidy; for, in this memorable tragedy,
+the whole army were accomplices.
+
+Now, as to Charlemagne, he had tried the effect of forgiveness and
+lenity often in vain. Clemency was misinterpreted; it had been, and
+it would be, construed into conscious weakness. Under these
+circumstances, with a view, undoubtedly, to the final extinction of
+rebellions which involved infinite bloodshed on both sides, he permitted
+one trial to be made of a severe and sanguinary chastisement. It failed;
+insurrections proceeded as before, and it was not repeated. But the
+main difference in the principle of the two cases is this, that
+Charlemagne had exacted no penalty but one, which the laws of war in
+that age conferred, and even in this age the laws of allegiance. However
+bloody, therefore, this tragedy was no murder. It was a judicial
+punishment, built upon known acts and admitted laws, designed in mercy,
+consented to unwillingly, and finally repented. Lastly, instead of
+being one in a multitude of acts bearing the same character, it stood
+alone in a long career of intercourse with wild and ferocious nations,
+owning no control but that of the spear and sword.
+
+Many are the points of comparison, and some of them remarkable enough,
+in the other circumstances of the two careers, separated by a thousand
+years. Both effected the passage of the Great St. Bernard; [Footnote
+14] but the one in an age when mechanical forces, and the aids of art,
+were yet imperfectly developed; the other in an age when science had
+armed the arts of war and of locomotion with the fabulous powers of
+the Titans, and with the whole resources of a mighty nation at his
+immediate disposal. Both, by means of this extraordinary feat, achieved
+the conquest of Lombardy in a single hour; but Charlemagne, without
+once risking the original impression of this _coup d'eclat_; Napoleon,
+on the other hand, so entirely squandering and forfeiting his own
+success, that in the battle which followed he was at first utterly
+defeated, and but for the blunder of his enemy, and the sudden aid of
+an accomplished friend, irretrievably. Both suffered politically by
+the repudiation of a wife; but Charlemagne, under adequate provocation,
+and with no final result of evil; Bonaparte under heavy aggravations
+of ingratitude and indiscretion. Both assumed the character of a patron
+to learning and learned men; but Napoleon, in an age when knowledge
+of every kind was self-patronized--when no possible exertions of power
+could avail to crush it--and yet, under these circumstances, with utter
+insincerity. Charlemagne, on the other hand, at a time when the
+countenance of a powerful protector made the whole difference between
+revival and a long extinction--and what was still more to the purpose
+of doing honor to his memory, not merely in a spirit of sincerity, but
+of fervid activity. Not content with drawing counsel and aid from the
+cells of Northumberland, even the short time which he passed at Rome,
+he had 'collected a number of grammarians (that is _litterateurs_) and
+arithmeticians, the poor remains of the orators and philosophers of
+the past, and engaged them to accompany him from Italy to France.'
+
+What resulted in each case from these great efforts and prodigious
+successes? Each failed in laying the foundations of any permanent
+inheritance to his own glory in his own family. But Bonaparte lived
+to lay in ruins even his personal interest in this great edifice of
+empire; and that entirely by his own desperate presumption,
+precipitance, and absolute defect of self-command. Charlemagne, on
+_his_ part, lost nothing of what he had gained: if his posterity did
+not long maintain the elevation to which he had raised them, _that_
+did but the more proclaim the grandeur of the mind which had reared
+a colossal empire, that sunk under any powers inferior to his own. If
+the empire itself lost its unity, and divided into sections, even thus
+it did not lose the splendor and prosperity of its separate parts; and
+the praise remains entire--let succeeding princes, as conservators,
+have failed as much and as excusably as they might--that he erected
+the following splendid empire:--The whole of France and Belgium, with
+their natural boundaries of the Alps, the Pyrenees, the Ocean, the
+Mediterranean; to the south, Spain, between the Ebro and the Pyrenees;
+and to the north, the whole of Germany, up to the banks of the Elbe.
+Italy, as far as the Lower Calabria, was either governed by his son,
+or tributary to his crown; Dalmatia, Croatia, Liburnia, and Istria,
+(with the exception of the maritime cities,) were joined to the
+territories, which he had himself conquered, of Hungary and Bohemia.
+As far as the conflux of the Danube with the Teyss and the Save, the
+east of Europe acknowledged his power. Most of the Sclavonian tribes,
+between the Elbe and the Vistula, paid tribute and professed obedience;
+and Corsica, Sardinia, with the Balearic Islands, were dependent upon
+his possessions in Italy and Spain.
+
+His moral were yet greater than his territorial conquests: In the
+eloquent language of his present historian, 'he snatched from darkness
+all the lands he conquered; and may be said to have added the whole
+of Germany to the world.' Wherever he moved, civilization followed his
+footsteps. What he conquered was emphatically the conquest of his own
+genius; and his vast empire was, in a peculiar sense, his own creation.
+And what, under general circumstances, would have exposed the hollowness
+and insufficiency of his establishment, was for him, in particular,
+the seal and attestation of his extraordinary grandeur of mind. His
+empire dissolved after he had departed; his dominions lost their
+cohesion, and slipped away from the nerveless hands which succeeded;
+a sufficient evidence--were there no other--that all the vast resources
+of the Frankish throne, wielded by imbecile minds, were inadequate to
+maintain that which, in the hands of a Charlemagne, they had availed
+to conquer and cement.
+
+
+
+
+NOTES
+
+
+NOTE 1.
+
+_In part_ we say, because in part also the characteristic differences
+of these works depend upon the particular mode of the narrative. For
+narration itself, as applied to history, admits of a triple
+arrangement--dogmatic, sceptical, and critical; dogmatic, which adopts
+the current records without examination; sceptical, as Horace Walpole's
+Richard III., Laing's Dissertation on Perkin Warbeck, or on the Gowrie
+Conspiracy, which expressly undertakes to probe and try the unsound
+parts of the story; and critical, which, after an examination of this
+nature, selects from the whole body of materials such as are coherent.
+There is besides another ground of difference in the quality of
+historical narratives, viz. between those which move by means of great
+public events, and those which (like the Caesars of Suetonius, and the
+French Memoirs), referring to such events as are already known, and
+keeping them in the background, crowd their foreground with those
+personal and domestic notices which we call anecdotes.
+
+NOTE 2.
+
+Leibnitz, (who was _twice_ in England,) when walking in Kensington
+Gardens with the Princess of Wales, whose admiration oscillated between
+this great countryman of her own, and Sir Isaac Newton, the
+corresponding idol of her adopted country, took occasion, from the
+beautiful scene about them, to explain in a lively way, and at the
+same time to illustrate and verify this favorite thesis: Turning to
+a gentleman in attendance upon her Royal Highness, he challenged him
+to produce two leaves from any tree or shrub, which should be exact
+duplicates or facsimiles of each other in those lines which variegate
+the surface. The challenge was accepted; but the result justified
+Leibnitz. It is in fact upon this infinite variety in the superficial
+lines of the human palm, that Palmistry is grounded, (or the science
+of divination by the hieroglyphics written on each man's hand,) and
+has its _prima facie_ justification. Were it otherwise, this mode of
+divination would not have even a _plausible_ sanction; for, without
+the inexhaustible varieties which are actually found in the combinations
+of these lines, and which give to each separate individual his own
+separate type, the same identical fortunes must be often repeated; and
+there would be no foundation for assigning to each his peculiar and
+characteristic destiny.
+
+NOTE 3.
+
+According to the general estimate of philosophical history, the _tenth_
+century (or perhaps the tenth and the eleventh conjointly) must be
+regarded as the meridian, or the perfect midnight, of the dark ages.
+
+NOTE 4.
+
+It has repeatedly been made a question--at what era we are to date the
+transition from ancient to modern history. This question merits a
+separate dissertation. Meantime it is sufficient to say in this
+place--that Justinian in the 6th century will unanimously be referred
+to the ancient division, Charlemagne in the 8th to the modern. These
+then are two limits fixed in each direction; and somewhere between
+them must lie the frontier line. Now the era of Mahomet in the 7th
+century is evidently the exact and perfect line of demarcation; not
+only as pretty nearly bisecting the debatable ground, but also because
+the rise of the Mohammedan power, as operating so powerfully upon the
+Christian kingdoms of the south, and through them upon the whole of
+Christendom, at that time beginning to mould themselves and to knit,
+marks in the most eminent sense the birth of a new era.
+
+NOTE 5.
+
+Or, in fact, than is likely to manifest itself to an unlearned reader
+of Mr. James's own book; for he has omitted to load his margin with
+references to authorities in many scores of instances where he might,
+and perhaps where he ought, to have accredited his narrative by those
+indications of research.
+
+NOTE 6.
+
+'Arabice loquutum esse Aigolando Saracenorum regulo, Turpinus (the
+famous Archbishop) auctor est; nec id fide indignum. Dum enim in
+expeditione Hispanica praecipuam belli molem in illum vertit, facile
+temporis tractu notitiam linguae sibi comparare potuit.' FRANTZ. _Hist.
+Car. Mag._ That is, he had time sufficient for this acquisition, and
+a motive sufficient.
+
+NOTE 7.
+
+Not having the French original of Bourrienne's work, we are compelled
+to quote from Dr. Memes's translation, which, however, is everywhere
+incorrect, and in a degree absolutely astonishing; and, where not
+incorrect, offensive from vulgarisms or ludicrous expressions. Thus,
+he translates _un drole_, a droll fellow--wide as the poles from the
+true meaning, Again, the verb _devoir_, in all tenses, that eternal
+stumbling-block to bad French scholars, is uniformly mistranslated.
+As an instance of ignoble language, at p. 294, vol. I., he says,
+'Josephine was delighted with the disposition of her _goodman_,' a
+word used only by underbred people. But of all the absurdities which
+disfigure the work, what follows is perhaps the most striking:--'Kleber,'
+he says, 'took a _precognition_ of the army,' p. 231, vol. I. A
+precognition! What Pagan ceremony may that be? Know, reader, that this
+monster of a word is a technical term of Scotch law; and even to the
+Scotch, excepting those few who know a little of law, absolutely
+unintelligible. In speaking thus harshly, we are far from meaning any
+thing unkind to Dr. M., whom, on the contrary, for his honorable
+sentiments in relation to the merits of Bonaparte, we greatly respect.
+But that as nothing to do with French translation--the condition of
+which, in this country, is perfectly scandalous.
+
+NOTE 8.
+
+Some people may fancy that this scene of that day's drama was got up
+merely to save appearances by a semblance of discussion, and that in
+effect it mattered not how the performance was conducted where all was
+scenical, and the ultimate reliance, after all, on the bayonet. But
+it is certain that this view is erroneous, and that the final decision
+of the soldiery, even up to the very moment of the crisis, was still
+doubtful. Some time after this exhibition, 'the hesitation reigning
+among the troops,' says Bourrienne, 'still continued.' And in reality
+it was a mere accident of pantomime, and a clap-trap of sentiment,
+which finally gave a sudden turn in Napoleon's favor to their wavering
+resolutions.
+
+NOTE 9.
+
+We have occasionally such expressions as--'When wild in woods _the
+noble savage_ ran.' These descriptions rest upon false conceptions;
+in fact, no such combination anywhere exists as a man having the
+training of a savage, or occupying the exposed and naked situation of
+a savage, who is at the same time in any moral sense at liberty to be
+noble-minded. Men are moulded by the circumstances in which they stand
+habitually; and the insecurity of savage life, by making it impossible
+to forego any sort of advantages, obliterates the very idea of honor.
+Hence, with all savages alike, the point of honor lies in treachery--in
+stratagem--and the utmost excess of what is dishonorable, according
+to the estimate of cultivated man.
+
+NOTE 10.
+
+Shakespeare's Sonnets.
+
+NOTE 11.
+
+Or perhaps the _right_, for the Prussian cavalry (who drew their custom
+from some regiments in the service of Gustavus Adolphus; and they again
+traditionally from others) are always trained to mount in this way.
+
+NOTE 12.
+
+It is painful to any man of honorable feelings that, whilst a great
+rival nation is pursuing the ennobling profession of arms, his own
+should be reproached contemptuously with a sordid dedication to
+commerce. However, on the one hand, things are not always as they seem;
+commerce has its ennobling effects, direct or indirect; war its
+barbarizing degradations. And, on the other hand, the facts even are
+not exactly as _prima facie_ they were supposed; for the truth is,
+that, in proportion to its total population, England had more men in
+arms during the last war than France. But, generally speaking, the
+case may be stated thus: the British nation is, by original constitution
+of mind, and by long enjoyment of liberty, a far nobler people than
+the French. And hence we see the reason and necessity that the French
+should, with a view to something like a final balance in the effect,
+be trained to a nobler profession. Compensations are every where
+produced or encouraged by nature and by Providence; and a nobler
+discipline in the one nation is doubtless some equilibrium to a nobler
+nature in the other.
+
+NOTE 13.
+
+_In council_, we say purposely and in candor; for the only pleas in
+palliation ever set up by Napoleon's apologists, are these
+two--_necessity_, the devil's plea, in the first place; secondly, that
+the guilt of the transaction, whether more or less, was divided between
+the general and his council.
+
+NOTE 14.
+
+And from the fact of that corps in Charlemagne's army, which effected
+the passage, having been commanded by his uncle, Duke Bernard, this
+mountain previously known as the _Mons_ Jovis, (and, by corruption,
+Mont le Joux,) very justly obtained the name which it still retains.
+
+
+
+
+MODERN GREECE.
+
+'Journal of a Tour in Greece and the Ionian Islands.' By WILLIAM MURE,
+of Caldwell.
+
+[1842.]
+
+
+
+What are the nuisances, special to Greece, which repel tourists from
+that country? They are three;--robbers, fleas, and dogs. It is
+remarkable that all are, in one sense, respectable nuisances--they
+are ancient, and of classical descent. The monuments still existing
+from pre-Christian ages, in memory of honest travellers assassinated
+by brigands of klephts, (Kleptai,) show that the old respectable calling
+of freebooters by sea and land, which Thucydides, in a well-known
+passage, describes as so reputable an investment for capital during
+the times preceding his own, and, as to northern Greece, even during
+his own, had never entirely languished, as with us it has done, for
+two generations, on the heaths of Bagshot, Hounslow, or Finchley. Well
+situated as these grounds were for doing business, lying at such
+convenient distances from the metropolis, and studying the convenience
+of all parties, (since, if a man were destined to lose a burden on his
+road, surely it was pleasing to his feelings that he had not been
+suffered to act as porter over ninety or a hundred miles, in the service
+of one who would neither pay him nor thank him); yet, finally, what
+through banks, and what through policemen, the concern has dwindled
+to nothing. In England, we believe, this concern was technically known
+amongst men of business and 'family men,' as the 'Low Toby.' In Greece
+it was called [Greek: laeseia]; and Homericaliy speaking, it was perhaps
+the only profession thoroughly respectable. A few other callings are
+mentioned in the Odyssey as furnishing regular bread to decent men--viz.
+the doctor's, the fortune-teller's or conjurer's, and the armorer's.
+Indeed it is clear, from the offer made to Ulysses of a job, in the
+way of hedging and ditching, that sturdy big-boned beggars, or what
+used to be called 'Abraham men' in southern England, were not held to
+have forfeited any heraldic dignity attached to the rank of pauper,
+(which was considerable,) by taking a farmer's pay where mendicancy
+happened to be 'looking downwards.' Even honest labor was tolerated,
+though, of course, disgraceful. But the Corinthian order of society,
+to borrow Burke's image, was the bold sea-rover, the buccaneer, or,
+(if you will call him so) the robber in all his varieties. Titles were,
+at that time, not much in use--honorary titles we mean; but had our
+prefix of 'Right Honorable' existed, it would have been assigned to
+burglars, and by no means to privy-councillors; as again our English
+prefix of 'Venerable' would have been settled, not on so sheepish a
+character as the archdeacon, but on the spirited appropriator of church
+plate. We were surprised lately to find, in a German work of some
+authority, so gross a misconception of Thucydides, as that of supposing
+him to be in jest. Nothing of the sort. The question which he represents
+as once current, on speaking a ship in the Mediterranean--'Pray,
+gentlemen, are you robbers?' actually occurs in Homer; and to Homer,
+no doubt, the historian alludes. It neither was, nor could be conceived,
+as other than complimentary; for the alternative supposition presumed
+him that mean and well-known character--the merchant, who basely paid
+for what he took. It was plainly asking--Are you a knight grand-cross
+of some martial order, or a sort of costermonger? And we give it as
+no hasty or fanciful opinion, that the South Sea islands (which
+Bougainville held to be in a state of considerable civilization) had,
+in fact, reached the precise stage of Homeric Greece. The power of
+levying war, as yet not sequestered by the ruling power of each
+community, was a private right inherent in every individual of any one
+state against all individuals of any other. Captain Cook's ship, the
+Resolution, and her consort, the Adventure, were as much independent
+states and objects of lawful war to the islanders, as Owyhee, in the
+Sandwich group, was to Tongataboo in the Friendly group. So that to
+have taken an Old Bailey view of the thefts committed was unjust, and,
+besides, inefectual; the true remedy being by way of treaty or
+convention with the chiefs of every island. And perhaps, if Homer had
+tried it, the same remedy (in effect, regular payments of _black-mail_)
+might have been found available in _his_ day.
+
+It is too late to suggest _that_ idea now. The princely pirates are
+gone; and the last dividend has been paid upon their booty; so that,
+whether he gained or lost by them, Homer's estate is not liable to any
+future inquisitions from commissioners of bankruptcy or other sharks.
+He, whether amongst the plundered, or, as is more probable, a
+considerable shareholder in the joint-stock privateers from Tenedos,
+&c., is safe both from further funding and refunding. We are not. And
+the first question of moment to any future tourist is, what may be the
+present value, at a British insurance office, of any given life risked
+upon a tour in Greece? Much will, of course, depend upon the extent
+and the particular route. A late prime minister of Greece, under the
+reigning king Otho, actually perished by means of one day's pleasure
+excursion from Athens, though meeting neither thief nor robber. He
+lost his way: and this being scandalous in an ex-chancellor of the
+exchequer having ladies under his guidance, who were obliged, like
+those in the Midsummer Night's Dream, to pass the night, in an Athenian
+wood, his excellency died of vexation. Where may not men find a death?
+But we ask after the calculation of any office which takes extra risks:
+and, as a basis for such a calculation, we submit the range of tour
+sketched by Pausanius, more than sixteen centuries back--that [Greek:
+Pansapachae periodos], as Colonel Leake describes it, which carries
+a man through the heart of all that can chiefly interest in Greece.
+Where are the chances upon such a compass of Greek travelling, having
+only the ordinary escort and arms, or having _no_ arms, (which the
+learned agree in thinking the safer plan at present,) that a given
+traveller will revisit the glimpses of an English moon, or again embrace
+his 'placens uxor?' As with regard to Ireland, it is one stock trick
+of Whiggery to treat the chances of assassination in the light of an
+English hypochondriacal chimaera, so for a different reason it has
+been with regard to Italy, and soon will be for Greece. Twenty years
+ago it was a fine subject for jesting--the English idea of stilettos
+in Rome, and masqued bravos, and assassins who charged so much an inch
+for the depth of their wounds. But all the laughter did not save a
+youthful English marriage party from being atrociously massacred; a
+grave English professional man with his wife from being carried off
+to a mountainous captivity, and reserved from slaughter only by the
+prospect of ransom; a British nobleman's son from death or the
+consequences of Italian barbarity; or a prince, the brother of Napoleon,
+from having the security of his mansion violated, and the most valuable
+captives carried off by daylight from his household. In Greece
+apparently the state of things is worse, because absolutely worse under
+a far slighter temptation. But Mr. Mure is of opinion that Greek robbers
+have private reasons as yet for sparing English tourists.
+
+So far then is certain: viz. that the positive danger is greater in
+poverty-stricken Greece than in rich and splendid Italy. But as to the
+valuation of the danger, it is probably as yet imperfect from mere
+defect of experience: the total amount of travellers is unknown. And
+it may be argued that at least Colonel Leake, Mr. Dodwell, and our
+present Mr. Mure, with as many more as have written books, cannot be
+among the killed, wounded, or missing. There is evidence in octavo
+that they are yet 'to the fore.' Still with respect to books, after
+all, they may have been posthumous works: or, to put the case in another
+form, who knows how many excellent works in medium quarto, not less
+than crown octavo, may have been suppressed and intercepted in their
+rudiments by these expurgatorial ruffians? Mr. Mure mentions as the
+exquisite reason for the present fashion of shooting from an ambush
+first, and settling accounts afterwards, that by this means they evade
+the chances of a contest. The Greek robber, it seems, knows as well
+as Cicero that 'non semper viator a latrone, nonnunquam etiam latro
+a viatore occiditur'--a disappointment that makes one laugh exceedingly.
+Now this rule as to armed travellers is likely to bear hard upon our
+countrymen, who being rich, (else how come they in Greece?) will surely
+be brilliantly armed; and thus again it may be said, in a sense somewhat
+different from Juvenal's--
+
+   Et _vacuus_ cantat coram latrone viator;
+
+_Vacuus_ not of money, but of pistols. Yet on the other hand, though
+possibly sound law for the thickets of Mount Cithaeron, this would be
+too unsafe a policy as a general rule: too often it is the exposure
+of a helpless exterior which first suggests the outrage. And perhaps
+the best suggestion for the present would be, that travellers should
+carry in their hands an apparent telescope or a reputed walking-cane;
+which peaceful and natural part of his appointments will first operate
+to draw out his lurking forest friend from his advantage; and on closer
+colloquy, if this friend should turn restive, then the 'Tuscan artist's
+tube,' contrived of course a double debt to pay, will suddenly reveal
+another sort of tube, insinuating an argument sufficient for the
+refutation of any sophism whatever. This is the best compromise which
+we can put forward with the present dilemma in Greece, where it seems
+that to be armed or to be unarmed is almost equally perilous. But our
+secret opinion is, that in all countries alike, the only absolute
+safeguard against highway robbery is--a railway; for then the tables
+are turned; not he who is stopped--incurs the risk, but he who stops:
+we question whether Samson himself could have pulled up his namesake
+on the Liverpool railway. Recently, indeed, in the Court of Common
+Pleas, on a motion to show cause by Sergeant Bompas, in Hewitt v.
+Price, Tindal (Chief-Justice) said--'We cannot call a railway a public
+[Footnote 1] security, I think,' (_laughter:_) but _we_ think otherwise.
+In spite of 'laughter,' we consider it a specific against the Low Toby.
+And, _en attendant_, there is but one step towards amelioration of
+things for Greece, which lies in summary ejecting of the Bavarian
+locusts. Where all offices of profit or honor are engrossed by needy
+aliens, you cannot expect a cheerful temper in the people. And,
+unhappily, from moody discontent in Greece to the taking of purses is
+a short transition.
+
+Thus have we disposed of 'St. Nicholas's Clerks.' Next we come to fleas
+and dogs:--Have we a remedy for these? We have: but as to fleas,
+applicable or not, according to the purpose with which a man travels.
+If, as happened at times to Mr. Mure, a natural, and, for his readers,
+a beneficial anxiety to see something of domestic habits, overcomes
+all sense of personal inconvenience, he will wish, at any cost, to
+sleep in Grecian bedrooms, and to sit by German hearths. On the other
+hand, though sensible of the honor attached to being bit by a flea
+lineally descended from an Athenian flea that in one day may possibly
+have bit three such men as Pericles, Phidias, and Euripides, many quiet
+unambitious travellers might choose to dispense with 'glory,' and
+content themselves with the view of Greek _external_ nature. To these
+persons we would recommend the plan of carrying amongst their baggage
+a tent, with portable camp-beds; one of those, as originally invented
+upon the encouragement of the Peninsular campaigns from 1809 to 1814,
+and subsequently improved, would meet all ordinary wants. It is
+objected, indeed, that by this time the Grecian fleas must have
+colonized the very hills and woods; as once, we remember, upon
+Westminster Bridge, to a person who proposed bathing in the Thames by
+way of a ready ablution from the July dust, another replied, 'My dear
+sir, by no means; the river itself is dusty. Consider what it is to
+have received the dust of London for nineteen hundred years since
+Caesar's invasion.' But in any case the water cups, in which the
+bed-posts rest, forbid the transit of creatures not able to swim or
+to fly. A flea indeed leaps; and, by all report, in a way that far
+beats a tiger--taking the standard of measurement from the bodies of
+the competitors. But even this may be remedied: giving the maximum
+leap of a normal flea, it is always easy to raise the bed indefinitely
+from the ground--space upwards is unlimited--and the supporters of the
+bed may be made to meet in one pillar, coated with so viscous a
+substance as to put even a flea into chancery.
+
+As to dogs, the case is not so easily settled; and before the reader
+is in a condition to judge of our remedy, he ought to know the evil
+in its whole extent. After all allowances for vermin that waken you
+before your time, or assassins that send you to sleep before your time,
+no single Greek nuisance can be placed on the same scale with the dogs
+attached to every _menage_, whether household or pastoral. Surely as
+a stranger approaches to any inhospitable door of the peasantry, often
+before he knows of such a door as in _rerum natura_, out bounds upon
+him by huge careering leaps a horrid infuriated ruffian of a
+dog--oftentimes a huge _moloss_, big as an English cow--active as a
+leopard, fierce as a hyena but more powerful by much, and quite as
+little disposed to hear reason. So situated--seeing an enemy in motion
+with whom it would be as idle to negotiate as with an earthquake--what
+is the bravest man to do? Shoot him? Ay; that was pretty much the
+course taken by a young man who lived before Troy: and see what came
+of it. This man, in fact a boy of seventeen, had walked out to see the
+city of Mycenae, leaving his elder cousin at the hotel sipping his
+wine. Out sprang a huge dog from the principal house in what you might
+call the High street of Mycenae; the young man's heart began to
+palpitate; he was in that state of excitement which affects most people
+when fear mingles with excessive anger. What was he to do? Pistols he
+had none. And, as nobody came out to his aid, he put his hand to the
+ground; seized a _chermadion_, (or paving-stone), smashed the skull
+of the odious brute, and with quite as much merit as Count Robert of
+Paris was entitled to have claimed from his lucky hit in the dungeon,
+then walked off to report his little exploit to his cousin at the
+hotel. But what followed? The wretches in the house, who never cared
+to show themselves so long as it might only be the dog killing a boy,
+all came tumbling out by crowds when it became clear that a boy had
+killed the dog. '_A la lanterne!_' they yelled out; valiantly charged
+_en masse_: and among them they managed to kill the boy. But there was
+a reckoning to pay for this. Had they known who it was that sat drinking
+at the hotel, they would have thought twice before they backed their
+brute. That cousin, whom the poor boy had left at his wine, happened
+to be an ugly customer--Hercules _incog_. It is needless to specify
+the result. The child unborn had reason to rue the murder of the boy.
+For his cousin proved quite as deaf to all argument or submission as
+their own foul thief of a dog or themselves. Suffice it--that the royal
+house of Mycenae, in the language of Napoleon's edicts, ceased to
+reign. But here is the evil; few men leave a Hercules at their hotel;
+and all will have to stand the vindictive fury of the natives for their
+canine friends, if you should pistol them. Be it in deliverance of
+your own life, or even of a lady's by your side, no apology would be
+listened to. In fact, besides the disproportionate annoyance to a
+traveller's nerves, that he shall be kept uneasy at every turn of the
+road in mere anxiety as to the next recurrence of struggles so
+desperate, it arms the indignation of a bold Briton beforehand--that
+a horrid brute shall be thought entitled to kill _him_; and if he
+_does_, it is pronounced an accident: but if he, a son of the mighty
+island, kills the brute, instantly a little hybrid Greek peasant shall
+treat it as murder.
+
+Many years ago, we experienced the selfsame annoyance in the north of
+England. Let no man talk of courage in such cases. Most justly did
+Marechal Saxe ask an officer sneeringly, who protested that he had
+never known the sensation of fear, and could not well imagine what it
+was like, had he never snuffed a candle with his fingers? 'because in
+that case,' said the veteran, 'I fancy you must have felt afraid of
+burning your thumb.' A brave man, on a service of known danger, braces
+up his mind by a distinct effort to the necessities of his duty. The
+great sentiment that it is his duty, the sentiments of honor and of
+country, reconcile him to the service while it lasts. No use, besides,
+in ducking before shot, or dodging, or skulking; he that faces the
+storm most cheerfully, has after all the best chance of escaping--were
+that the object of consideration. But, as soon as this trial is over,
+and the energy called forth by a high tension of duty has relaxed, the
+very same man often shrinks from ordinary trials of his prowess. Having,
+perhaps, little reason for confidence in his own bodily strength,
+seeing no honor in the struggle, and sure that no duty would be hallowed
+by any result, he shrinks from it in a way which surprises those who
+have heard of his martial character. Brave men in extremities are many
+times the most nervous, and the shyest under perils of a mean order.
+We, without claiming the benefit of these particular distinctions,
+happened to be specially 'soft' on this one danger from dogs. Not from
+the mere terror of a bite, but from the shocking doubt besieging such
+a case for four or five months that hydrophobia may supervene. Think,
+excellent reader, if we should suddenly prove hydrophobous in the
+middle of this paper, how would you distinguish the hydrophobous from
+the non-hydrophobous parts? You would say, as Voltaire of Rousseau,
+'sa plume apparemment brulera le papier.' Such being the horror ever
+before our mind, images of eyeballs starting from their sockets, spasms
+suffocating the throat--we could not see a dog starting off into a
+yell of sudden discovery bound for the foot of our legs, but that
+undoubtedly a mixed sensation of panic and fury overshadowed us; a
+[Greek: Chermadion] was not always at hand; and without practice we
+could have little confidence in our power of sending it home, else
+many is the head we should have crushed. Sometimes, where more than
+one dog happened to be accomplices in the outrage, we were not
+altogether out of danger. 'Euripides,' we said, 'was really torn to
+pieces by the dogs of a sovereign prince; in Hounslow, but a month
+since, a little girl was all but worried by the buck-hounds of a greater
+sovereign than Archelaus; and why not we by the dogs of a farmer?' The
+scene lay in Westmorland and Cumberland. Oftentimes it would happen
+that in summer we had turned aside from the road, or perhaps the road
+itself forced us to pass a farm-house from which the family might be
+absent in the hayfield. Unhappily the dogs in such a case are often
+left behind. And many have been the fierce contests in which we have
+embarked; for, as to retreating, be it known that there (as in Greece)
+the murderous savages will pursue you--sometimes far into the high
+road. That result it was which uniformly brought us back to a sense
+of our own wrong, and finally of our rights. 'Come,' we used to say,
+'this is too much; here at least is the king's highway, and things are
+come to a pretty pass indeed, if we, who partake of a common nature
+with the king, and write good Latin, whereas all the world knows what
+sort of Latin is found among dogs, may not have as good a right to
+standing-room as a low-bred quadruped with a tail like you.' Non usque
+adeo summis permiscuit ima longa dies, &c. We remember no instance
+which ever so powerfully illustrated the courage given by the
+consciousness of rectitude. So long as we felt that we were trespassing
+on the grounds of a stranger, we certainly sneaked, we seek not to
+deny it. But once landed on the high-road, where we knew our own title
+to be as good as the dog's, not all the world should have persuaded
+us to budge one foot.
+
+Our reason for going back to these old Cumbrian remembrances will be
+found in what follows. Deeply incensed at the insults we had been
+obliged to put up with for years, brooding oftentimes over
+
+  'Wrongs unredress'd, and insults unaveng'd,'
+
+we asked ourselves--Is vengeance hopeless? And at length we hit upon
+the following scheme of retribution. This it is which we propose as
+applicable to Greece. Well acquainted with the indomitable spirit of
+the bull-dog, and the fidelity of the mastiff, we determined to obtain
+two such companions; to re-traverse our old ground; to make a point
+of visiting every house where we had been grossly insulted by dogs;
+and to commit our cause to the management of these new allies. 'Let
+us see,' said we, 'if they will speak in the same bullying tone _this_
+time.' 'But with what ulterior views?' the dispassionate reader asks.
+The same, we answer, which Mr. Pitt professed as the objects of the
+Revolutionary war--'Indemnity for the past, and security for the
+future.' Years, however, passed on; Charles X. fell from his throne;
+the Reform Bill passed; other things occurred, and as last this change
+struck us--that the dogs, on whom our vengeance would alight, generally
+speaking, must belong to a second generation, or even a third, in
+descent from our personal enemies. Now, this vengeance 'by procuration'
+seemed no vengeance at all. But a plan which failed, as regarded our
+own past wrongs, may yet apply admirably to a wrong current and in
+progress. If we Englishmen may not pistol Greek canine ruffians, at
+any rate we suppose an English bulldog has a right to make a tour in
+Greece, A mastiff, if he pays for his food and lodgings, possesses as
+good a title, to see Athens and the Peloponnesus as a Bavarian, and
+a better than a Turk; and, if he cannot be suffered to pass quietly
+along the roads on his own private affairs, the more is the pity. But
+assuredly the consequences will not fall on _him_; we know enough of
+the sublime courage bestowed on that heroic animal, to be satisfied
+that he will shake the life out of any enemy that Greece can show. The
+embassy sent by Napoleon to the Schah of Persia about the year 1810,
+complained much and often of the huge dogs scattered over all parts
+of Western Asia, whether Turkish or Persian; and, by later travels
+amongst the Himalayas, it seems that the same gigantic ruffians prevail
+in Central Asia. But the noble English bull-dogs, who, being but three
+in number, did not hesitate for one instant to rush upon the enormous
+lion at Warwick, will face any enemy in the world, and will come off
+victors, unless hyperbolically overweighted; a peril which need not
+be apprehended, except perhaps in Laconia or Messenia.
+
+Here, therefore, we should be disposed to leave the subject. But, as
+it is curious for itself, is confessedly of importance to the traveller,
+and has thrown light upon a passage in the Odyssey that had previously
+been unintelligible--we go on to one other suggestion furnished by the
+author before us. It is really a discovery; and is more worthy of a
+place in annotations upon Homer than nine in ten of all that we read;--
+
+'Among the numerous points of resemblance with which the classical
+traveller cannot fail to be struck, between the habits of pastoral and
+agricultural life as still exemplified in Greece, and those which
+formerly prevailed in the same country, there is none more calculated
+to arrest his attention than the correspondence of the shepherds'
+encampments, scattered on the face of the less cultivated districts,
+with the settlements of the same kind whose concerns are so frequently
+brought forward in the imagery of the Iliad and Odyssey. Accordingly,
+the passage of Homer to which the existing peculiarity above described,'
+(viz. of pelting off dogs by large jagged stones,) 'affords the-most
+appropriate commentary, is the scene where Ulysses, disguised as a
+beggar, in approaching the farm of the swineherd, is fiercely assaulted
+by the dogs, but delivered by the master of the establishment. Pope's
+translation, with the exception of one or two expressions,' (amongst
+which Mr. Mure notices _mastiff_ as "not a good term for a sheep-dog,")
+'here conveys with tolerable fidelity the spirit of the original:--
+
+  '"Soon as Ulysses near the enclosure drew,
+    With open mouths the furious mastiffs flew;
+    Down sate the sage; and, cautious to withstand,
+    Let fall the offensive truncheon from his hand.
+    Sudden the master runs--aloud he calls;
+    And from his hasty hand the leather falls;
+    With show'rs of stones he drives them far away;
+    The scatter'd dogs around at distance bay."'
+    ODYSS. xiv. 29.
+
+First, however, let us state the personal adventure which occasions
+this reference to Homer, as it illustrates a feature in Greek scenery,
+and in the composition of Greek society. In the early part of his
+travels, on a day when Mr. Mure was within a few hours of the immortal
+Mesolonghi, he (as better mounted) had ridden a-head of his suite.
+Suddenly he came upon 'an encampment of small, low, reed wigwams,'
+which in form resembled 'the pastoral capanne of the Roman plain;' but
+were 'vastly inferior in size and structure.' Women and children were
+sitting outside: but finally there crawled forth from the little
+miserable hovels two or three male figures of such gigantic dimensions
+as seemed beyond the capacity of the entire dwellings. Several others
+joined them, all remarkable for size and beauty. And one, whose air
+of authority bespoke his real rank of chief, Mr. Mure pronounces 'a
+most magnificent-looking barbarian,' This was a nomad tribe of
+Wallachian shepherds, descended (it is supposed) from the Dacian
+colonies, Romans intermingled with natives, founded by the later
+Caesars; the prevalent features of their faces are, it seems, Italian;
+their language is powerfully veined with Latin; their dress differing
+from that of all their Albanian neighbors, resembles the dress of
+Dacian captives sculptured on the triumphal monuments of Rome; and
+lastly, their peculiar name, _Vlack Wallachian_, indicates in the
+Sclavonic language pretty much the same relation to a foreign origin,
+as in German is indicated by the word _Welsh_: an affinity of which
+word is said to exist in our word _Walnut_, where _wall_ (as the late
+Mr. Coleridge thinks) means _alien_, _outlandish_. The evidence
+therefore is as direct for their non-Grecian descent as could be
+desired. But they are interesting to Greece at this time, because
+annually migrating from Thessaly in the summer, and diffusing themselves
+in the patriarchal style with their wives, their children, and their
+flocks, over the sunny vales of Boeotia, of Peloponnesus, and in general
+of southern Greece. Their men are huge, but they are the mildest of
+the human race. Their dogs are huge, also; so far the parallel holds.
+We regret that strict regard to truth forbids us to pursue the
+comparison.
+
+'I found myself on a sudden,' says Mr. Mure, 'surrounded by a fierce
+pack of dogs, of size proportioned to that of their masters, and which
+rushed forth on every side as if bent on devouring both myself and
+beast: being altogether unprovided with any means of defence but the
+rope-end of the same halter that supplied my stirrups, I was (I confess)
+not a little disconcerted by the assault of so unexpected an enemy.'
+From this he was soon delivered at the moment by some of the gentle
+giants, who 'pelted off the animals with the large loose stones that
+lay scattered over the rocky surface of the heath.' But upon the
+character of the nuisance, and upon the particular remedy employed--both
+of which are classical, and older than Troy, Mr. Mure makes the
+following explanations:--
+
+'The number and ferocity of the dogs that guard the Greek hamlets and
+sheepfolds, as compared with those kept for similar purposes in other
+parts of the world, is one of the peculiarities of this country which
+not only first attracts the attention of the tourist, but is chiefly
+calculated to excite his alarm, and call into exercise his prowess or
+presence of mind. It is also amongst the features of modern Greek life
+that supply the most curious illustrations of classical antiquity.
+Their attacks are not confined to those who approach the premises of
+which they are the appointed guardians;' they do not limit themselves
+to defensive war: 'in many districts they are in the habit of rushing
+from a considerable distance to torment the traveller passing along
+the public track; and when the pastoral colonies, as is often the case,
+occur at frequent intervals, the nuisance becomes quite intolerable.'
+But in cases where the succession is less continuous, we should imagine
+that the nuisance was in the same proportion more dangerous; and Mr.
+Mure acknowledges--that under certain circumstances, to a solitary
+stranger the risk would be serious; though generally, and in the case
+of cavalcades, the dogs fasten chiefly upon the horses. But endless
+are the compensations which we find in the distributions of nature.
+Is there a bane? Near it lies an antidote. Is there a disease? Look
+for a specific in that same neighborhood. Here, also, the universal
+rule prevails. As it was destined that Greece in all ages should be
+scourged by this intestine enemy, it was provided that a twofold
+specific should travel concurrently with the evil. And because the
+vegetable specific, in the shape of oaken cudgels, was liable to local
+failure, (at this moment, in fact, from the wreck of her woods by means
+of incendiary armies, Greece is, for a season, disafforested,) there
+exists a second specific of a mineral character, which (please Heaven?)
+shall never fail, so long as Greece is Greece. 'The usual weapons of
+defence, employed in such cases by the natives, are the large loose
+stones with which the soil is _everywhere_ strewed--a natural feature
+of this region, to which also belongs its own proper share of classic
+interest.' The character of the rocks prevailing in those mountain
+ridges which intersect the whole of Greece is, that whilst in its
+interior texture 'of iron-hard consistency,' yet at the surface it is
+'broken into detached fragments of infinitely varied dimensions.'
+Balls, bullets, grape, and canister shot, have all been 'parked' in
+inexhaustible magazines; whilst the leading feature which strikes the
+mind with amazement in this natural artillery, is its fine _retail_
+distribution. Everywhere you may meet an enemy: stoop, and everywhere
+there is shot piled for use. We see a Leibnitzian preestablished harmony
+between the character of the stratification and the character of the
+dogs. Cardinal de Retz explains why that war, in the minority of Louis
+XIV., was called the _Fronde_; and it seems that in Greece, where an
+immortal _fronde_ was inevitable, an immortal magazine was supplied
+for it--one which has been and will continue to be, under all
+revolutions, for the uncultured tracts present the missiles equally
+diffused; and the first rudiments of culture show themselves in
+collections of these missiles along the roads. Hence, in fact, a general
+mistake of tourists. 'It is certain,' says Mr. Mure, 'that many of the
+circular mounds, which are noticed in the itineraries under the rubric
+of _ancient tumulus_, have been heaped up in this manner. It is to
+these stones that travellers, and the population at large instinctively
+have recourse, as the most effectual weapon against the assaults of
+the dogs.' The small shot of pebbles, however, or even stones equal
+to pigeon's eggs, would avail nothing: 'those selected are seldom
+smaller than a man, exerting his whole force, can conveniently lift
+and throw with one hand.' Thence, in fact, and from no other cause,
+comes (as Mr. Mure observes) the Homeric designation of such stones,
+viz. _chermadion_, or handful; of which he also cites the definition
+given by Lucian, [Greek text: lithos cheiroplaethaes], a _hand-filling
+stone_. Ninety generations have passed since the Trojan war, and each
+of the ninety has used the same bountiful magazine. All readers of the
+_Iliad_ must remember how often Ajax or Hector, took up _chermadia_,
+'such as twice five men in our degenerate days could barely lift,'
+launching them at light-armed foes, who positively would not come
+nearer to take their just share of the sword or spear. 'The weapon is
+the more effectual, owing to the nature of the rock itself, broken as
+it is in its whole surface into angular and sharp-pointed inequalities,
+which add greatly to the severity of the wound inflicted. Hence, as
+most travellers will have experienced, a fall amongst the Greek rocks
+is unusually painful.' It is pleasing to find Homer familiar not only
+with the use of the weapon, but with its finest external 'developments.'
+Not only the stone must be a bouncer, a _chermadion_, with some of the
+properties (we believe) marking a good cricket-ball, but it ought to
+be [Greek Text: ochxioeis]--such is the Homeric epithet of endearment,
+his caressing description of a good brainer, viz. _splinting-jagged_.
+
+This fact of the chermadic weight attached to the good war-stone
+explains, as Mr. Mure ingeniously remarks, a simile of Homer's, which
+ought to have been pure nonsense for Pope and Cowper; viz. that in
+describing a dense mist, such as we foolishly imagine peculiar to our
+own British climate, and meaning to say that a man could scarcely
+descry an object somewhat ahead of his own station, he says, [Greek
+Text: tosson tis t'ep leussel oson t'epi laan iaesi]: _so far does man
+see as lie hurls a stone_. Now, in the skirmish of 'bickering,' this
+would argue no great limitation of eyesight. 'Why, man, how far _would_
+you see? Would you see round a corner?' 'A shot of several hundred
+yards,' says Mr. Mure, 'were no great feat for a country lad well
+skilled in the art of stone-throwing.' But this is not Homer's
+meaning--'The cloud of dust' (which went before an army advancing, and
+which it is that Homer compares to a mist on the hills perplexing the
+shepherd) 'was certainly much denser than to admit of the view extending
+to such a distance. In the Homeric sense, as allusive to the hurling
+of the ponderous _chermadion, the figure is correct and expressive.'
+And here, as everywhere, we see the Horatian parenthesis upon Homer,
+as one, _qui nil molitur inepte_, who never speaks vaguely, never wants
+a reason, and never loses sight of a reality, amply sustained. Here,
+then, is a local resource to the British tourist besides the imported
+one of the bull-dog. And it is remarkable that, except where the dogs
+are preternaturally audacious, a mere hint of the chermadion suffices.
+Late in our own experience too late for glory, we made the discovery
+that all dogs have a mysterious reverence for a trundling stone. It
+calls off attention from the human object, and strikes alarm into the
+caitiff's mind. He thinks the stone alive. Upon this hint we thought
+it possible to improve: stooping down, we 'made believe' to launch a
+stone, when, in fact, we had none; and the effect generally followed.
+So well is this understood in Greece that, according to a popular
+opinion reported by Mr. Mure, the prevailing habit in Grecian dogs,
+as well as bitches, of absenting themselves from church, grows out of
+the frequent bowing and genuflexions practised in the course of the
+service. The congregation, one and all, simultaneously stoop; the dog's
+wickedness has made him well acquainted with the meaning of that act;
+it is a symbol but too significant to his conscience; and he takes to
+his heels with the belief that a whole salvo of one hundred and one
+_chermadia_ are fastening on his devoted 'hurdies.'
+
+Here, therefore, is a suggestion at once practically useful, and which
+furnishes more than one important elucidation to passages in Homer
+hitherto unintelligible. For the sake of one other such passage, we
+shall, before dismissing the subject, pause upon a novel fact,
+communicated by Mr. Mure, which is equally seasonable as a new Homeric
+light, and as a serviceable hint in a situation of extremity.
+
+In the passage already quoted under Pope's version from Odyssey, xiv.
+29, what is the meaning of that singular couplet--
+
+  'Down sate the sage; and cautious to withstand,
+  Let fall the offensive truncheon from his hand.' [Footnote 2]
+
+Mr. Mure's very singular explanation will remind the naturalist of
+something resembling it in the habits of buffaloes. Dampier mentions
+a case which he witnessed in some island with a Malay population, where
+a herd of buffaloes continued to describe concentric circles, by
+continually narrowing around a party of sailors; and at last submitted
+only to the control of children _not too far beyond the state of
+infancy_. The white breed of wild cattle, once so well known at Lord
+Tankerville's in Northumberland, and at one point in the south-west
+of Scotland, had a similar instinct for regulating the fury of their
+own attack; but it was understood that when the final circle had been
+woven, the spell was perfect; and that the herd would 'do business'
+most effectually. As respects the Homeric case, 'I,' (says Mr. Mure,)
+'am probably not the only reader who has been puzzled to understand
+the object of this manoeuvre' (the sitting down) 'on the part of the
+hero. I was first led to appreciate its full value in the following
+manner:--At Argos one evening, at the table of General Gordon,' (then
+commanding-in-chief throughout the Morea, and the best historian of
+the Greek revolution, but who subsequently resigned, and died in the
+spring of 1841, at his seat in Aberdeenshire,) 'the conversation
+happened to turn, as it frequently does where tourists are in company,
+on this very subject of the number and fierceness of the Grecian dogs;
+when one of the company remarked that he knew of a very simple expedient
+for appeasing their fury. Happening on a journey to miss his road, and
+being overtaken by darkness, he sought refuge for the night at a
+pastoral settlement by the wayside. As he approached, the dogs rushed
+out upon him; and the consequences might have been serious had he not
+been rescued by an old shepherd, (the Eumeus of the fold,) who after
+pelting off his assailants, gave him a hospitable reception in his
+hut. The guest made some remark on the zeal of his dogs, and on the
+danger to which he had been exposed from their attack. The old man
+replied 'that it was his own fault, from not taking the customary
+precaution in such an emergency; that he ought to have stopped, and
+_sate down_ until some person came to protect him.' Here we have the
+very act of Ulysses; with the necessary circumstance that he laid aside
+his arms; after which the two parties were under a provisional treaty.
+And Adam Smith's doubtful assumption that dogs are incapable of
+exchange, or reciprocal understanding, seems still more doubtful. As
+this expedient was new to the traveller, 'he made some further
+inquiries; and was assured that, if any person in such a predicament
+will simply seat himself on the ground, laying aside his weapon of
+defence, the dogs will also squat in a circle round him; that, as long
+as he remains quiet, they will follow his example; but that, as soon
+as he rises and moves forward, they will renew their assault. This
+story, though told without the least reference to the Odyssey, at once
+brought home to my own mind the scene at the fold of Eumeus with the
+most vivid reality. The existence of the custom was confirmed by other
+persons present, from their own observation or experience.' Yet, what
+if the night were such as is often found even in Southern Greece during
+winter--a black frost; and that all the belligerents were found in the
+morning symmetrically grouped as petrifactions? However, here again
+we have the Homer _qui nil molitur inepte_, who addressed a people of
+known habits. Yet _quare_--as a matter of some moment for Homeric
+disputes--were these habits of Ionian colonies, or exclusively of
+Greece Proper?
+
+But enough of the repulsive features in Greek travelling. We, for our
+part, have endeavored to meet them with remedies both good and novel.
+Now let us turn to a different question. What are the positive
+attractions of Greece? What motives are there to a tour so costly?
+What are the _Pros_, supposing the _Cons_ dismissed? This is a more
+difficult question than is imagined: so difficult that most people set
+out without waiting for the answer: they travel first and leave to
+providential contingencies the chance that, on a review of the tour
+in its course, some adequate motive may suggest itself. Certainly it
+may be said, that the word Greece already in itself contains an adequate
+motive; and we do not deny that a young man, full of animal ardor and
+high classical recollections, may, without blame, give way to the mere
+instincts of wandering. It is a fine thing to bundle up your traps at
+an hour's warning, and fixing your eye upon some bright particular
+star, to say--'I will travel after thee: I will have no other mark:
+I will chase thy rising or thy setting: that is, on Mr. Wordsworth's
+hint derived from a Scottish lake, to move on a general object of
+_stepping westwards_, or _stepping eastwards_. But there are few men
+qualified to travel, who stand in this free 'unhoused' condition of
+license to spend money, to lose time, or to court peril. In balancing
+the pretensions of different regions to a distinction so costly as an
+_effectual_ tour, money it is, simply the consideration of cost, which
+furnishes the chief or sole ground of administration; having but 100
+pounds sterling disposable in any one summer, a man finds his field
+of choice circumscribed at once: and rare is the household that can
+allow twice that sum annually. He contents himself with the Rhine, or
+possibly, if more adventurous, he may explore the passes of the
+Pyrenees; he may unthread the mazes of romantic Auvergne, or make a
+stretch even to the Western Alps of Savoy.
+
+But, for the Mediterranean, and especially for the Levant--these he
+resigns to richer men; to those who can command from three to five
+hundred pounds. And next, having submitted to this preliminary
+limitation of radius, he is guided in selecting from what remains by
+some indistinct prejudice of his early reading. Many are they in England
+who start with a blind faith, inherited from Mrs. Radeliffe's romances,
+and thousands beside, that, in Southern France or in Italy, from the
+Milanese down to the furthest nook of the Sicilies, it is physically
+impossible for the tourist to go wrong. And thus it happens, that a
+spectacle, somewhat painful to good sense, is annually renewed of
+confiding households leaving a real Calabria in Montgomeryshire or
+Devonshire, for dreary, sunburned flats in Bavaria, in Provence, in
+Languedoc, or in the 'Legations' of the Papal territory. 'Vintagers,'
+at a distance, how romantic a sound! Hops--on the other hand--how
+mercenary, nay, how culinary, by the feeling connected with their use,
+or their taxation! Arcadian shepherds again, or Sicilian from the 'bank
+of delicate Galesus,' can these be other than poetic? The hunter of
+the Alpine ibex--can he be other than picturesque? A sandalled monk
+mysteriously cowled, and in the _distance_, (but be sure of _that!_)
+a band of robbers reposing at noon amidst some Salvator-Rosa-looking
+solitudes of Calabria--how often have such elements, semi-consciously
+grouped, and flashing upon the indistinct mirrors lighted up by early
+reading, seduced English good sense into undertakings terminating in
+angry disappointment! We acknowledge that the English are the only
+nation under this romantic delusion; but so saying, we pronounce a
+very mixed censure upon our country. In itself it is certainly a folly,
+which other nations (Germany excepted) are not above, but below: a
+folly which presupposes a most remarkable distinction for our
+literature, significant in a high moral degree. The plain truth is--that
+Southern Europe has no romance in its household literature; has not
+an organ for comprehending what it is that we mean by Radcliffian
+romance. The old ancestral romance of knightly adventure, the
+_Sangreal_, the _Round Table_, &c., exists for Southern Europe as an
+antiquarian subject; or if treated aesthetically, simply as a subject
+adapted to the ludicrous. And the secondary romance of our later
+literature is to the south unintelligible. No Frenchman, Spaniard, or
+Italian, at all comprehends the grand poetic feeling employed and
+nursed by narrative fictions through the last seventy years in England,
+though connected by us with their own supposed scenery.
+
+Generally, in speaking of Southern Europe, it may be affirmed that the
+idea of heightening any of the grander passions by association with
+the shadowy and darker forms of natural scenery, heaths, mountainous
+recesses, 'forests drear,' or the sad desolation of a silent sea-shore,
+of the desert, or of the ocean, is an idea not developed amongst them,
+nor capable of combining with their serious feelings. By the evidence
+of their literature, viz. of their poetry, their drama, their novels,
+it is an interest to which the whole race is deaf and blind. A Frenchman
+or an Italian (for the Italian, in many features of Gallic
+insensibility, will be found ultra-Gallican) can understand a state
+in which the moving principle is sympathy with the world of conscience.
+Not that his own country will furnish him with any grand exemplification
+of such an interest; but, merely as a human being, he cannot escape
+from a certain degree of human sympathy with the dread tumults going
+on in that vast theatre--a conscience-haunted mind. So far he stands
+on common ground; but how this mode of shedding terror can borrow any
+alliance from chapels, from ruins, from monastic piles, from Inquisition
+dungeons, inscrutable to human justice, or dread of confessionals,--all
+this is unfathomably mysterious to Southern Europe. The Southern
+imagination is passively and abjectly dependent on _social_ interests;
+and these must conform to modern types. Hence, partly, the reason that
+only the British travel. The German is generally too poor. The Frenchman
+desires nothing but what he finds at home: having Paris at hand, why
+should he seek an inferior Paris in distant lands? To an Englishman
+this demur could seldom exist. He may think, and, with introductions
+into the higher modes of aristocratic life, he may know that London
+and St. Petersburg are far more magnificent capitals than Paris; but
+_that_ will not repel his travelling instincts. A superior London he
+does not credit or desire; but what he seeks is not a superior, it is
+a different, life;--not new degrees of old things, but new kinds of
+experience are what he asks. His scale of conception is ampler; whereas,
+generally, the Frenchman is absorbed into one ideal. Why else is it,
+that, after you have allowed for a few Frenchmen carried of necessity
+into foreign lands by the diplomatic concerns of so vast a country,
+and for a few artists travelling in quest of gain or improvement, we
+hear of no French travellers as a class? And why is it that, except
+as regards Egypt, where there happens to lurk a secret political object
+in reversion for France, German literature builds its historic or
+antiquarian researches almost exclusively upon English travellers? Our
+travellers may happen or not to be professional; but they are never
+found travelling for professional objects. Some have been merchants
+or bankers, many have been ecclesiastics; but neither commercial nor
+clerical or religious purposes have furnished any working motive,
+unless where, as express missionaries, they have prepared their readers
+to expect such a bias to their researches. Colonel Leake, the most
+accurate of travellers, is a soldier; and in reviewing the field of
+Marathon, of Plataa, and others deriving their interest from later
+wars, he makes a casual use of his soldiership. Captain Beaufort,
+again, as a sailor, uses his nautical skill where it is properly called
+for. But in the larger proportions of their works, even the professional
+are not professional; whilst such is our academic discipline, that all
+alike are scholars. And in this quality of merit the author before us
+holds a distinguished rank. He is no artist, though manifesting the
+eye learned in art and in landscape. He is not professionally a soldier;
+he is so only by that secondary tie, which, in our island, connects
+the landed aristocracy with the landed militia; yet though not, in a
+technical sense, military, he disputes, with such as _are_, difficult
+questions of Greek martial history. He is no regular agriculturist,
+yet he conveys a good general impression of the Greek condition with
+relation to landed wealth or landed skill, as modified at this moment
+by the unfortunate restraints on a soil handed over, in its best parts,
+by a Turkish aristocracy that had engrossed them, to a Bavarian that
+cannot use them. In short, Mr. Mure is simply a territorial gentleman;
+elevated enough to have stood a contest for the representation of a
+great Scottish county; of general information; and, in particular, he
+is an excellent Greek scholar; which latter fact we gather, not from
+anything we have heard, but from these three indications meeting
+together;--1. That his verbal use of Greek, in trying the true meaning
+of names, (such as Mycene, the island of Asteris, &c.,) is original
+as well as accurate. 2. That his display of reading (not volunteered
+or selected, but determined by accidents of local suggestion) is ample.
+3. That the frugality of his Greek citations is as remarkable as their
+pertinence. He is never tempted into trite references; nor ever allows
+his page to be encumbered by more of such learning than is severely
+needed.
+
+With regard to the general motives for travelling, _his_ for Greece
+had naturally some relation to his previous reading; but perhaps an
+occasional cause, making his true motives operative, may have been his
+casual proximity to Greece at starting--for he was then residing in
+Italy. Others, however, amongst those qualified to succeed him, wanting
+this advantage, will desire some positive objects of a high value, in
+a tour both difficult as regards hardships, costly, and too tedious,
+even with the aids of steam, for those whose starting point is England.
+These objects, real or imaginary, in a Greek tour, co-extensive with
+the new limits of Greek jurisdiction, let us now review:--
+
+I. _The Greek People_.--It is with a view to the Greeks personally,
+the men, women, and children, who in one sense at least, viz., as
+occupants of the Greek soil, represent the ancient classical Greeks,
+that the traveller will undertake this labor. Representatives in one
+sense! Why, how now? are they not such in all senses? Do they not trace
+their descent from the classical Greeks?' We are sorry to say _not_;
+or in so doubtful a way, that the interest derived from that source
+is too languid to sustain itself against the opposing considerations.
+Some authors have peremptorily denied that one drop of genuine Grecian
+blood, transmitted from the countrymen of Pericles, now flows in the
+veins of any Greek subject. Falmereyer, the German, is at the head (we
+believe) of those who take that view. And many who think Falmereyer
+in excess, make these unpleasant concessions; viz., 1st, that in Athens
+and throughout Attica, where, by special preference, one would wish
+to see the Grecian cast of face predominating, _there_, to a single
+family almost, you may affirm all to be Albanian. Well; but what is
+Albanian? For the Albanian race, as having its headquarters in regions
+once undoubtedly occupied by a Greek race. Epirus, for instance,
+Acarnania, &c., may still be Grecian by descent: but unfortunately it
+is not so. The Albanians are no more Grecian, and notoriously no more
+represent the old legitimate Greeks, who thumped the Persians and whom
+the Romans thumped, than the modern English represent the Britons, or
+the modern Lowland Scotch represent the Scoti, of the centuries
+immediately following the Christian era. Both English and Lowland
+Scotch, for the first five centuries after the Christian era, were
+ranging the forests of north Germany or of southern Sweden. The men
+who fought with Caesar, if now represented at all, are so in Wales,
+in Cornwall, or other western recesses of the island. And the Albanians
+are held to be a Sclavonic race--such at least is the accredited theory;
+so that modern Greece is connected with Russia not merely by the bond
+of a common church, but also by blood, since the Russian people is the
+supreme branch of the Sclavonic race. This is the first concession
+made which limits any remnant of the true Greek blood to parts of the
+ancient Hellas not foremost in general interest, nor most likely to
+be visited.
+
+A second is, that if any claim to a true Grecian descent does exist
+extensively, it must be looked for amongst Mahometan clans, descended
+from renegades of former days, now confounded with our Mussulmans
+ejected from Greece, and living in Thrace, or other regions under the
+Sultan's sceptre. But even here the purity of the descent is in the
+last degree uncertain.
+
+This case is remarkable. From the stationary character of all things
+in the East, there was a probability beforehand, that several
+nations--as in particular, four that we will mention: the Greeks, the
+Egyptians, the Persians, the Affghans--should have presented the same
+purity of descent, untainted by alien blood, which we find in the
+children of Ishmael, and the children of his half-brother the patriarch
+Isaac. Yet, in that case, where would have been the miraculous unity
+of race predicted for these two nations exclusively by the Scriptures?
+The fact is, the four nations mentioned have been so profoundly changed
+by deluges of foreign conquest or foreign intrusion, that at this day,
+perhaps, no solitary individual could be found whose ancestral line
+had not been confounded with other bloods. The Arabs only, and the
+Jews, are under no suspicion of this hybrid mixture. Vast deserts,
+which insulate one side of the Arabian peninsula; the sea, which
+insulates the other sides, have, with other causes, preserved the Arab
+blood from all general attaint of its purity. Ceremonies, institutions,
+awful scruples of conscience, and through many centuries, misery and
+legal persecution, have maintained a still more impassable gulf between
+the Jews and other races. Spain is the only Christian land where the
+native blood was at any time intermingled with the Jewish; and hence
+one cause for the early vigilance of the Inquisition in that country
+more than elsewhere; hence also the horror of a Jewish taint in the
+Spanish hidalgo; Judaism masquing itself in Christianity, was so keenly
+suspected, or so haughtily disclaimed, simply because so largely it
+existed. It was, however, under a very peculiar state of society, that,
+even during an interval, and in a corner, Jews _could_ have intermarried
+with Christians. Generally, the intensity of reciprocated hatred, long
+oppression upon the one side, deep degradation upon the other,
+perpetuated the alienation, had the repulsion of creeds even relaxed.
+And hence, at this day, the intense purity of the Jewish blood, though
+probably more than six millions of individuals.
+
+But with respect to the Grecians, as no barrier has ever existed between
+them and any other [Footnote 3] race than the Turks, and these only
+in the shape of religious scruples, which on one side had the highest
+political temptation to give way, there was no pledge stronger than
+individual character, there could be no national or corporate pledge,
+for the maintenance of this insulation. As therefore, in many recorded
+cases, the strongest barrier (viz., that against Mahometan alliances)
+is known to have given way, as in other cases innumerable, but
+forgotten, it must be presumed to have given way? this inference
+follows, viz., that if anywhere the Grecian blood remains in purity,
+the fact will be entirely without evidence; and for us, the result
+will be the same as if the fact had no existence. Simply as a matter
+of curiosity, if our own opinion were asked as to the probability,
+that in any situation, a true-blooded population yet survives at this
+day, we should answer that, if anywhere, it will be found in the most
+sterile of the Greek islands. Yet, even there the bare probability of
+such a result will have been open to many disturbances; and especially
+if the island happen to be much in the way of navigators, or the harbors
+happen to be convenient, or if it happen to furnish a good stage in
+a succession of stages, (according to the ancient usages of
+Mediterranean seamanship), or if it possessed towns containing
+accumulations of provisions or other stores, or offered good
+watering-places; under any of these endowments, an island might be
+tempting to pirates, or to roving adventurers, or to remote overpeopled
+parts of Italy, Africa, Asia Minor, &c.; in short, to any vicious city
+where but one man amongst the poorer classes knew the local invitations
+to murderous aggressions. Under so many contingencies operative through
+so many centuries, and revolutions so vast upon nations so multiplied,
+we believe that even a poor unproductive soil is no absolute pledge
+for non-molestation to the most obscure of recesses.
+
+For instance, the poorest district of the large island Crete, might
+(if any could) be presumed to have a true Greek population. There is
+little to be found in that district beyond the means of bare
+subsistence; and (considering the prodigious advantages of the ground
+for defensive war) little to be looked for by an invader but hard
+knocks, 'more kicks than halfpence,' so long as there was any indigenous
+population to stand up and kick. But often it must have happened in
+a course of centuries, that plague, small-pox, cholera, the
+sweating-sickness, or other scourges of universal Europe and Asia,
+would absolutely depopulate a region no larger than an island; as in
+fact, within our brief knowledge of the New Hollanders, has happened
+through small-pox alone, to entire tribes of those savages, and, upon
+a scale still more awful, to the American Indians. In such cases, mere
+strangers would oftentimes enter upon the lands as a derelict. The
+Sfakians, in that recess of Crete which we have noticed, are not
+supposed by scholars to be a true Grecian race; nor do we account them
+such. And one reason of our own, superadded to the common reasons
+against allowing a Greek origin, is this:--The Sfakians are a
+large-limbed, fine-looking race, more resembling the Wallachians whom
+we have already noticed, than the other races of Crete, or the other
+Greek islanders, and like the Wallachians, are often of colossal
+stature. But the classical Greeks, we are pretty certain, were a race
+of little men. We have more arguments than one for this belief. But
+one will be sufficient. The Athenian painter who recorded the battle
+of Marathon in fresco upon the walls of a portico, was fined for
+representing the Persians as conspicuously taller than the Greeks. But
+why?--why should any artist have ascribed such an advantage to the
+enemy, unless because it was a fact? What plausible motive, other than
+the notoriety of the fact, can be imagined in the painter? In reality,
+this artist proceeded as a general rule amongst the Greeks, and a rule
+strictly, if not almost superstitiously observed, and of ancient
+establishment, which was, that all conquerors in any contest, or at
+any games, olympic, or whatsoever they might be, were memorialized by
+statues exactly representing the living man in the year of victory,
+taken even with their personal defects. The dimensions were preserved
+with such painful fidelity, as though the object had been to collect
+and preserve for posterity, a series from every generation, of those
+men who might be presumed by their trophies to have been the models
+by natural prefiguration for that particular gymnastic accomplishment
+in which they had severally excelled. [See the _Acad. des Inscriptions_,
+about the year 1725.] At the time of Marathon, fought against the
+Lieutenant of Darius, the Olympic games had existed for two hundred
+years, _minus_ thirteen; and at the closing battle of Plataea, fought
+against the Lieutenant of Xerxes, for two hundred, _minus_ only two.
+During all this period, it is known for certain, perhaps even from far
+older times, that this rule of exact _portraiture_, a rigid demand for
+duplicates or fac-similes of the individual men, had prevailed in
+Greece. The enormous amount of Persian corpses buried by the Greeks,
+(or perhaps by Persian prisoners,) in the Polyandrium on the field of
+battle, would be measured and observed by the artists against the
+public application for their services. And the armor of those select
+men-at-arms, or [Greek Text: oplitai], who _had_ regular suits of
+armor, would remain for many centuries suspended as consecrated
+anathaeyata in the Grecian temples; so that Greek artists would never
+want sure records of the Persian dimensions. Were it not for this rule,
+applied sternly to all real conflicts, it might have been open to
+imagine that the artist had exaggerated the persons of the enemy by
+way of exalting to posterity the terrors which their ancestors had
+faced; a more logical vanity than that inverse artifice imputed to
+Alexander, of burying in the Punjaub gigantic mangers and hyperbolical
+suits of armor, under the conceit of impressing remote ages with a
+romantic idea of the bodily proportions in the men and horses composing
+the _elite_ of the Macedonian army. This was the true secret for
+disenchanting the martial pretensions of his army. Were you indeed
+such colossal men? In that case, the less is your merit; of which most
+part belongs manifestly to a _physical_ advantage: and in the ages of
+no gunpowder the advantage was less equivocal than it is at present.
+In the other direction, the logic of the Greek artist who painted
+Marathon is more cogent. The Persians were numerically superior, though
+doubtless this superiority has been greatly exaggerated, not wilfully
+so much as from natural mistakes incident to the Oriental composition
+of armies; and still more on the Grecian side, from extreme inaccuracy
+in the original reports, which was so great that even Herodotus, who
+stood removed from Plataea at the time of commencing his labors, by
+pretty much the same interval as we in 1842 from Waterloo, is rightly
+observed by Colonel Leake (_Travels in Greece_) to have stated to him
+the Greek numbers on the great day of Plataea, rather from the basis
+of fixed rateable contingents which each state was bound to furnish,
+than of any positive return that he could allege. However, on the
+whole, it seems undeniable that even at Platsea, much more at Marathon,
+the Persians had the advantage in numbers. If, besides this numerical
+advantage, they had another in qualities of bodily structure, the
+inference was the greater to the Grecian merit. So far from slighting
+a Persian advantage which really existed, a Greek painter might rather
+be suspected of inventing one which did not. We apprehend, however,
+that he invented nothing. For, besides that subsequent intercourse
+with Persians would have defeated the effect of his representation had
+it reposed on a fiction, it is known that the Greeks did not rightly
+appreciate tallness. 'Procerity,' to use Dr. Johnson's stately word
+in speaking of the stately Prussian regiment, was underrated in Greece;
+perhaps for this reason, that in some principal gymnastic contests,
+running, leaping, horsemanship, and charioteering, it really _was_ a
+disadvantage. And hence possibly arose a fact which has been often
+noticed with surprise; viz. that the legendary Hercules was never
+delineated by the Greek artists as more than an athletic man of the
+ordinary standard with respect to height and bulk. The Greek imagination
+was extravagantly mastered by physical excellence; this is proved by
+the almost inconceivable value attached to gymnastic merit. Nowhere,
+except in Greece, could a lyrical enthusiasm have been made available
+in such a service. But amongst physical qualities they did not
+adequately value that of lofty stature. At all events, the rule of
+portraiture--the whole portrait and nothing but the portrait--which
+we have mentioned as absolute for Greece, coerced the painter into the
+advantageous distinction for the Persians which we have mentioned. And
+this rule, _as servile to the fact_, is decisive for the Greek
+proportions of body in comparison with the Persian.
+
+But were not some tribes amongst the Greeks celebrated for their
+stature? Yes; the Daulians, for instance, both men and women: and in
+some modern tourist we remember a distinction of the same kind claimed
+for the _present_ occupants of Daulis. But the ancient claim bad
+reference only to the Grecian scale. Tall, were they? Yes, but tall
+for Grecians. The Romans were possibly a shade taller than the Greeks,
+but they also were a little race of men. This is certain. And, if a
+man were incautious enough to plead in answer the standard of the
+modern Italians, who are often both tall and athletic, he must be
+reminded that to Tramontanes, in fact, such as Goths, Heruli, Scyrra,
+Lombards, and other tribes of the Rhine, Lech, or Danube, Italy is
+indebted for the improved breed of her carcasses. [Footnote 4] Man,
+instead of degenerating according to the scandalous folly of books,
+very slowly improves everywhere; and the carcasses of the existing
+generation, weighed off, million for million, against the carcasses
+of any pre-Christian generation, we feel confident would be found to
+have the advantage by many thousands of stones [the butchers' stone
+is eight pounds] upon each million. And universally the best _prima
+facie_ title to a pure Greek descent will be an elegantly formed, but
+somewhat under-sized, person, with a lively, animated, and intelligent
+physiognomy; of which last may be said, that, if never in the highest
+sense rising to the noble, on the other hand, it never sinks to the
+brutal. At Liverpool we used to see in one day many hundreds of Greek
+sailors from all parts of the Levant; these were amongst the most
+probable descendants from the children of Ion or of OEolus, and the
+character of their person was what we describe--short but symmetrical
+figures and faces, upon the whole, delicately chiselled. These men
+generally came from the Greek islands.
+
+Meantime, what is Mr. Mure's opinion upon this much-vexed question?
+Into the general problem he declines to enter; not, we may be sure,
+from want of ability to treat it with novelty and truth. But we collect
+that he sees no reason for disputing the general impression, that an
+Albanian or hybrid population is mainly in possession of the soil, and
+that perhaps he would say, _lis est de paupere regno_; for, if there
+is no beauty concerned in the decision, nor any of the quality of
+physical superiority, the less seems the value of the dispute. To
+appropriate a set of plain faces, to identify the descent of ordinary
+bodies, seems labor lost. And in the race now nominally claiming to
+be Grecian, Mr. Mure evidently finds only plain faces, and ordinary
+bodies. Those, whom at any time he commends for beauty or other
+advantages of person, are tribes confessedly alien; and, on the other
+hand, with respect to those claiming to be Greek, he pronounces a
+pointed condemnation by disparaging their women. It is notoriously a
+duty of the female sex to be beautiful, if they can, with a view to
+the recreation of us males--whom Lily's Grammar affirms to be 'of the
+worthier gender.' Sitting at breakfast, (which consisted 'of red
+herrings and Gruyere cheese,') upon the shore of Megara, Mr. Mure
+beheld the Megarensian lasses mustering in force for a general ablution
+of the Megarensian linen. The nymphs had not turned out upon the usual
+principles of feminine gatherings--
+
+    'Spectatum venit, venit spectentur it ipsae;'
+
+and yet, between them, the two parties reciprocated the functions.
+Each to the other was a true spectacle. A long Scotchman,
+
+    'Qui sicca solus secum spatiatur arena,'
+
+and holding in his dexter mauley a red herring, whilst a white
+table-cloth (the centre of his motions) would proclaim some mysterious
+rite, must to the young ladies have seemed a merman suddenly come up
+from the sea, without sound of conch; whilst to him the large deputation
+from female Megara furnished an extra theatre for the inspection of
+Greek beauty. 'There was no river mouth visible, the operation being
+performed in the briny sea itself;' and, so far from this being unusual,
+Mr. Mure notices it as a question of embarrassment to the men of
+Plutarch's age, why the Phoeacian princess in the Odyssey did _not_
+wash in the sea, but mysteriously preferred the river, (_Sympos, I.
+qu._ 9;) but as to beauty, says Mr. Mure, 'I looked in vain for a
+figure, which either as to face or form could claim even a remote
+resemblance to Nausicaa. The modern Greek woman indeed appeared to me,
+upon the whole, about the most ill-favored I have met with in any
+country.' And it attests the sef-consistency of Mr. Mure, that in
+Aracova, the only place where he notices the women as having any
+pretensions to beauty, he and others agree that their countenances are
+not true to the national type; they are generally reputed to offer
+something much nearer to the bloom and the _embonpoint_ of female
+rustics in Germany; and accordingly, it is by the Bavarian officers
+of King Otho's army that these fair Aracovites have been chiefly raised
+into celebrity. We cannot immediately find the passage in Mr. Mure's
+book relating to Aracova; but we remember that, although admitting the
+men to be a tolerably handsome race, he was disappointed in the females.
+Tall they are, and stout, but not, he thinks, beautiful.
+
+Yet, in dismissing this subject of personal appearance, as the most
+plausible test now surviving for the claim of a pure Greek descent,
+we must not forget to explain--that it is far from our design to
+countenance the hypothesis of any _abrupt_ supercession, at any period
+or by any means, to the old Grecian blood. The very phrase of 'national
+type,' which we used in the last paragraph, and the diffusion of a
+language essentially Greek, argue at once a slow and gradational
+transition of the population into its present physical condition. Mr.
+Mure somewhere describes, as amongst the characteristics of the present
+race, swarth-iness and leanness. These we suspect to have been also
+characteristics of the old original _ton d'apameibomenoi_ Greeks. If
+so, the fact would seem to argue, that the changes, after all, had not
+been on a scale sufficient to obliterate the primitive type of Hellenic
+nature; whilst the existence of any _diffused_ type marks a tendency
+to national unity, and shows that some one element has so much
+predominated as to fuse the rest into a homogeneous whole. Indeed, it
+is pretty certain that a powerful cross in any human breed, whatever
+effects it may have in other respects, leaves the intellect improved--if
+not in the very highest qualities, yet in mobility, activity, and
+pertinacity of attention. The Greek nation has also shown itself morally
+improved; their revolutionary war evoked and tried, as in a furnace,
+the very finest qualities of courage, both adventurous and enduring;
+and we heartily agree in the sentiment delivered so ably by Mr. Mure,
+that the struggles of these poor shepherds and herdsmen, driven into
+caves and thickets, and having no great rallying principle but the
+banner of the Cross against the Crescent, were as much more truly
+sublime in suffering and in daring, than the classical struggles against
+the Persians, as they are and will be more obscure in the page of
+general history. We do not at all question great stamina and noble
+elements in the modern Greek character--generations of independence
+will carry this character to excellence; but still we affirm, that he
+who looks for direct descendants from the race of Miliades, Pericles,
+or Epaminondas, is likely to be disappointed; and most disappointed
+in that Athens, which for all of us alike (as appealing to our
+imaginative feelings) still continues to be what it was for Cicero--true
+and very Greece; in which, therefore, of all cities locally recalling
+the classical times, we can least brook a disappointment.
+
+If not the people of Greece, is it then the NATURAL SCENERY of Greece
+which can justify the tourist in this preference? Upon this subject
+it is difficult to dispute. What a man is likely to relish in
+scenery--what style or mode of the natural picturesque; and secondly,
+what weight or value he will allow to his own preferences--are questions
+exceedingly variable. And the latter of these questions is the more
+important; for the objection is far less likely to arise against this
+mode of scenery or that, since every _characteristic_ mode is relished
+as a change, than universally against all modes alike as adequate
+indemnifications for the toils of travelling. Female travellers are
+apt to talk of 'scenery' as all in all, but men require a social
+interest superadded. Mere scenery palls upon the mind, where it is the
+sole and ever-present attraction relied on. It should come unbidden
+and unthought of, like the warbling of birds, to sustain itself in
+power. And at feeding-time we observe that men of all nations and
+languages, _Tros Tyriusve,_ grow savage, if, by a fine scene, you
+endeavor to make amends for a bad beef-steak. The scenery of the
+Himalaya will not 'draw houses' till it finds itself on a line of good
+hotels.
+
+This difference, noted above, between the knowledge and the power of
+a scenery hunter may be often seen illustrated in the fields of art.
+How common is the old sapless connoisseur in pictures, who retains his
+learned eye and his distinguished skill, but whose sensibilities are
+as dry as summer dust to the interests of the art. On the other hand,
+daily you see young people whose hearts and souls are in the forests
+and the hills, but for whom the eye is perfectly untutored. If, now,
+to the differences in this respect you add the extensive differences
+which prevail as to the kinds of scenery, it is easy to understand how
+rich in the materials for schism must be every party that starts up
+on the excitement of mere scenery. Some laud the Caucasus; some the
+northern and eastern valleys of Spain; some the Alpine scenery; some
+the Pyrenean. All these are different; and from all alike differs again
+what Mr. Mure classes as the classical character of scenery. For this,
+he thinks a regular education of the eye requisite. Such an education
+he himself had obtained from a residence in Italy. And, subject to
+that condition, he supposes the scenery on the Eurotas (to the eastern
+side of the Peloponnesus) the most delightful in Europe. We know not.
+It may be so. For ourselves, the obscure sense of being or moving under
+a vast superincumbency of some great natural power, as of a mighty
+forest, or a trackless succession of mountainous labyrinths, has a
+charm of secret force far better than any distinct scenes to which we
+are introduced. Such things ought not to be. But still so it is--that
+tours in search of the picturesque are peculiarly apt to break up in
+quarrels. Perhaps on the same principle which has caused a fact
+generally noticed, viz. that conchologists, butterfly-fanciers, &c.,
+are unusually prone to commit felonies, because too little of a human
+interest circulates through their arid pursuits. The morbid irritation
+accumulates until the amateur rushes, out with a knife, lets blood in
+some quarter, and so restores his own connection with the vitalities
+of human nature. In any case, we advise the Greek tourist to have at
+least two strings to his bow besides scenery.
+
+III.--Is it, then, the monuments of the antique, the memorials of
+Pericles and Phidias, which a man should seek in Greece? If so, no
+great use in going beyond Athens. Because, though more solemn images
+survive in other places, associated with powers more mysterious and
+ages more remote, as the gate of Lions at Mycense, or the relics yet
+standing (and perhaps to stand for ever) of Cyclopian cities, forms
+of art that for thousands of years have been dying away through dimness
+of outlines and vegetable overgrowth into forms of nature--yet in
+Athens only is there a great open museum of such monuments. The Athenian
+buildings, though none of them Homeric in point of origin, are old
+enough for us. Two-and-a-half millennia satisfy our grovelling
+aspirations. And Mr. Mure himself, whilst insisting on their too
+youthful character, admits that they are 'superior in number, variety,
+and elegance to those which the united cities of Greece can now show.'
+Yet even these pure monuments have been combined with modern
+aftergrowths, as in the case of the Propylyoea, of which multitudes
+doubt [Mr. Mure in particular] whether they can now be detached from
+the connection with effect. For more reasons than one, it will, perhaps,
+be advisable to leave them in their present condition, and that is as
+hybrid as the population. But, with respect to Athenian buildings, it
+strikes our feelings--that finish and harmony are essential conditions
+to their effect. Ruins are becoming to Gothic buildings--decay is there
+seen in a graceful form; but to an Attic building decay is more
+expressive of disease--it is scrofula; it is phagedoenic ulcer. And
+unless the Bavarian government can do more than is now held out or
+hoped, towards the restoration and _disengagement_ of the public
+buildings surmounting the city, we doubt whether there will not be as
+much of pain as of an artist's pleasure in a visit to the Athenian
+capital, though now raised to the rank of metropolis for universal
+Greece.
+
+IV.--There are, however, mixed monuments, not artificial in their
+origin, but which gradually came to act upon the feelings as such from
+their use, and habitual connection with human purposes. Such for
+instance is the Acro-Corinthus, of which Mr. Mure says--that it 'is
+by far the most striking object that I have ever seen, either abroad
+or at home. Neither the Acropolis of Athens, nor the Larissa of Argos,
+nor even Gibraltar, can enter into the remotest competition with this
+gigantic citadel.' Indeed, when a man is aware of the impression
+produced by a perpendicular rock over six hundred feet high, he may
+judge of the stupendous effect from a citadel rising almost insulated
+in the centre of a plain, sloping to the sea, and ascending to the
+height of nineteen hundred feet.
+
+Objects of this class, together with the mournful Pelasgic remains,
+the ruins or ruined plans which point back to Egypt, and to Phoenicia,
+these may serve as a further bribe to the tourist in Greece. If a
+collection of all the objects in every class, according to the best
+order of succession for the traveller, were arranged skilfully, we
+believe that a maritime circuit of Greece, with a few landings and
+short excursions, would bring the whole of what is first-rate within
+a brief period of weeks and an easy effort. As to the people, they
+will become more or less entitled to a separate interest, according
+to the improvement and improved popularity of their government. And
+upon that will depend much of the comfort, much even of the safety,
+to be looked for by tourists. The prospects at present are not
+brilliant. A government and a court, drawn from a needy aristocracy
+like the Bavarian, are not suited to a needy people, struggling with
+the difficulties of a new colony. However, we will hope for the best.
+And for the tourist in _Greece as it is_, perhaps Mr. Mure's work is
+the best fitted for popularity. He touches all things sufficiently,
+but exhausts none. And we add, very sincerely, this antithesis, as due
+to him, that of what may be called personal guides, or those who
+maintain a current of personal interest in their adventures, or in the
+selecting from their private experience, he is the most learned; whilst
+of learned guides he is, in the sense explained, the most amusingly
+personal.
+
+
+
+
+NOTES.
+
+
+NOTE 1.
+
+Chief Justice squinted probably at the Versailles affair, where parties
+were incinerated; for which, in Yorkshire, there is a local
+word--_crozelled,_ applied to those who lie down upon a treacherous
+lime-pit, whose crust gives way to their weight. But if he meant
+security in the sense of public funds, Chief-Justice was still more
+in error, as he will soon learn. For the British Railways now yield
+a regular income of three millions per annum--one tenth of the interest
+of the national debt; offer as steady an investment as the 3 per cent
+consols; and will soon be quoted in other securities.
+
+NOTE 2.
+
+As respects the _elegance_ of this translation, there is good reason
+to warn the reader--that much of the Odyssey was let off by-contract,
+like any poor-house proposal for 'clods' and 'stickings' of beef, to
+low undertakers, such as Broome and Fenton. Considering the ample
+fortune which Pope drew from the whole work, we have often been struck
+by the inexplicable indulgence with which this scandalous partition
+is treated by Pope's biographers. It is simply the lowest act of self-
+degradation ever connected with literature.
+
+NOTE 3.
+
+Some will urge the intolerance of the Greeks for Christians of the
+Latin Church. But that did not hinder alliances, and ambitious attempts
+at such alliances, with their Venetian masters in the most distinguished
+of the Greek houses. Witness the infernal atrocities by which the
+Venetian government avenged at times what they viewed as unpardonable
+presumption. See their own records.
+
+NOTE 4.
+
+It may be remarked, as a general prevailing tendency amongst the great
+Italian masters of painting, that there is the same conspicuous leaning
+to regard the gigantic as a vulgar straining after effect. Witness St.
+Paul before Agrippa, and St. Paul at Athens; Alexander the Great, or
+the Archangel Michael. Nowhere throughout the whole world is the
+opposite defect carried to a more intolerable excess than amongst the
+low (but we regret to add--and in all but the very highest) of London
+artists. Many things, which the wretched Von Raumer said of English
+art, were abominable and malicious falsehooods; circulated not for
+London, but for Berlin, and Dresden, where English engravers and
+landscape-painters are too justly prized by the wealthy purchasers nor
+to be hated by the needy sellers. Indeed to hear Von Raumer's account
+of our water-color exhibitions, you would suppose that such men as
+Turner, Dewint, Prout, and many others, had no merit whatever, and no
+name except in London. Raumer is not an honest man. But had he fixed
+his charges on the book-decorators amongst us, what an unlimited field
+for ridicule the most reasonable! In most sentimental poems, the musing
+young gentlemen and ladies usually run to seven and eight feet high.
+And in a late popular novel connected with the Tower of London, by Mr.
+Ainsworth, [which really pushes its falsifications of history to an
+unpardonable length, as e.g. in the case of the gentle victim lady
+Jane Grey,] the Spanish ambassador seems to us at least fourteen feet
+high; and his legs meant for some ambassador who happened to be
+twenty-seven feet high.
+
+
+
+
+LORD CARLISLE ON POPE.
+
+[1851.]
+
+
+
+Lord Carlisle's recent lecture upon Pope, addressed to an audience of
+artisans, drew the public attention first of all upon himself--_that_
+was inevitable. No man can depart conspicuously from the usages or the
+apparent sympathies of his own class, under whatsoever motive, but
+that of necessity he will awaken for the _immediate_ and the first
+result of his act an emotion of curiosity. But all curiosity is allied
+to the comic, and is not an ennobling emotion, either for him who feels
+it or for him who is its object. A second, however, and more thoughtful
+consideration of such an act may redeem it from this vulgarizing taint
+of oddity. Reflection may satisfy us, as in the present case it _did_
+satisfy those persons who were best acquainted with Lord Carlisle's
+public character, that this eccentric step had been adopted, not in
+ostentation, with any view to its eccentricity, but _in spite_ of its
+eccentricity, and from impulses of large prospective benignity that
+would not suffer itself to be defeated by the chances of immediate
+misconstruction.
+
+Whether advantageous, therefore, to Lord Carlisle, or disadvantageous
+(and in that case, I believe, most unjust), the first impressions
+derived from this remarkable lecture pointed themselves exclusively
+to the person of the lecturer--to his general qualifications for such
+a task, and to his possible motives for undertaking it. Nobody inquired
+_what_ it was that the noble lord had been discussing, so great was
+every man's astonishment that before such an audience any noble lord
+should have condescended to discuss anything at all. But gradually all
+wonder subsides--_de jure_, in nine days; and, after this collapse of
+the primary interest, there was leisure for a secondary interest to
+gather about the _subject_ of the patrician lecture. Had it any
+cryptical meaning? Coming from a man so closely connected with the
+government, could it be open to any hieroglyphic or ulterior
+interpretations, intelligible to Whigs, and significant to ministerial
+partisans? Finally, this secondary interest has usurped upon what
+originally had been a purely personal interest. POPE! What novelty was
+there, still open to even literary gleaners, about _him_, a man that
+had been in his grave for one hundred and six years? What _could_ there
+remain to say on such a theme? And what was it, in fact, that Lord
+Carlisle _had_ said to his Yorkshire audience?
+
+There was, therefore, a double aspect in the public interest--one
+looking to the rank of the lecturer, one to the singularity of his
+theme. There was the curiosity that connected itself with the assumption
+of a troublesome duty in the service of the lowest ranks by a volunteer
+from the highest; and, secondly, there was another curiosity connecting
+itself with the choice of a subject that had no special reference to
+this particular generation, and seemed to have no special adaptation
+to the intellectual capacities of a working audience.
+
+This double aspect of the public surprise suggests a double question.
+The volunteer assumption by a nobleman of this particular office in
+this particular service may, in the eyes of some people, bear a
+philosophic value, as though it indicated some changes going on beneath
+the surface of society in the relations of our English aristocracy to
+our English laboring body. On the other hand, it will be regarded by
+multitudes as the casual caprice of an individual--a caprice of vanity
+by those who do not know Lord Carlisle's personal qualities, a caprice
+of patriotic benevolence by those who do. According to the construction
+of the case as thus indicated, oscillating between a question of
+profound revolution moving subterraneously amongst us, and a purely
+personal question, such a discussion would ascend to the philosophic
+level, or sink to the level of gossip. The other direction of the
+public surprise points to a question that will interest a far greater
+body of thinkers. Whatever judgment may be formed on the general fact
+that a nobleman of ancient descent has thought fit to come forward as
+a lecturer to the humblest of his countrymen upon subjects detached
+from politics, there will yet remain a call for a second judgment upon
+the fitness of the particular subject selected for a lecture under
+such remarkable circumstances. The two questions are entirely
+disconnected. It is on the latter, viz., the character and pretensions
+of Pope, as selected by Lord Carlisle for such an inaugural experiment,
+that I myself feel much interest. Universally it must have been felt
+as an objection, that such a selection had no special adaptation to
+the age or to the audience. I say this with no wish to undervalue the
+lecture, which I understand to have been ably composed, nor the services
+of the lecturer, whose motives and public character, in common with
+most of his countrymen, I admire. I speak of it at all only as a public
+opportunity suddenly laid open for drawing attention to the true
+pretensions of Pope, as the most brilliant writer of his own class in
+European literature; or, at least, of drawing attention to some
+characteristics in the most popular section of Pope's works which
+hitherto have lurked unnoticed.
+
+This is my object, and none that can be supposed personal to Lord
+Carlisle. Pope, as the subject of the lecture, and not the earlier
+question as to the propriety of any lecture at all, under the
+circumstances recited, furnishes my _thesis_--that thesis on which the
+reader will understand me to speak with decision, not with the decision
+of arrogance, but with that which rightfully belongs to a faithful
+study of the author. The editors of Pope are not all equally careless,
+but all are careless; and, under the shelter of this carelessness, the
+most deep-seated vices of Pope's moral and satirical sketches have
+escaped detection, or at least have escaped exposure. These, and the
+other errors traditionally connected with the rank and valuation of
+Pope as a classic, are what I profess to speak of deliberately and
+firmly. Meantime, to the extent of a few sentences, I will take the
+liberty of suggesting, rather than delivering, an opinion upon the
+other question, viz., the prudence in a man holding Lord Carlisle's
+rank of lecturing at all to any public audience. But on this part of
+the subject I beg to be understood as speaking doubtfully,
+conjecturally, and without a sufficient basis of facts.
+
+The late Dr. Arnold of Rugby, notoriously a man of great ingenuity,
+possessing also prodigious fertility of thought, and armed with the
+rare advantage of being almost demoniacally in earnest, was, however
+(in some sort of balance to these splendid gifts), tainted to excess
+with the scrofula of impracticable crotchets. That was the opinion
+secretly held about him by most of his nearest friends; and it is
+notorious that he scarcely ever published a pamphlet or contribution
+to a journal in which he did not contrive to offend all parties, both
+friendly and hostile, by some ebullition of this capricious character.
+He hated, for instance, the High Church with a hatred more than
+theological; and _that_ would have recommended him to the favorable
+consideration of many thousands of persons in this realm, the same who
+have been secretly foremost in the recent outbreak of fanaticism against
+the Roman Catholics; but unfortunately it happened that, although not
+hating the Low Church (the self-styled Evangelicals), he despised
+them so profoundly as to make all alliance between them impossible.
+He hated also many individuals; but, not to do him any injustice, most
+(or perhaps all) of these were people that had been long dead; and
+amongst them, by the way, was Livy, the historian; whom I distinguish
+by name, as furnishing, perhaps, the liveliest illustration of the
+whimsical and all but lunatic excess to which these personal hatreds
+were sometimes pushed; for it is a fact that, when the course of an
+Italian tour had brought him unavoidably to the birthplace of Livy,
+Dr. Arnold felicitated himself upon having borne the air of that
+city--in fact, upon having survived such a collision with the local
+remembrances of the poor historian, very much in those terms which Mr.
+Governor Holwell might have used on finding himself 'pretty bobbish'
+on the morning after the memorable night in the Black Hole of Calcutta:
+he could hardly believe that he still lived. [Footnote 1] And yet, how
+had the eloquent historian trespassed on his patience and his weak
+powers of toleration? Livy was certainly not very learned in the
+archaeologies of his own country; where all men had gone astray, _he_
+went astray. And in geography, as regarded the Italian movements of
+Hannibal, he erred with his eyes open. But these were no objects of
+Livy's ambition: what he aspired to do was, to tell the story, 'the
+tale divine,' of Roman energy and perseverance; and _he so_ told it
+that no man, as regards the mere artifices of narration, would ever
+have presumed to tell it after him. I cite this particular case as
+illustrating the furnace-heat of Dr. Arnold's antipathies, unless where
+some consideration of kindness and Christian charity interposed to
+temper his fury. This check naturally offered itself only with regard
+to individuals: and therefore, in dealing with institutions, he
+acknowledged no check at all, but gave full swing to the license of
+his wrath. Amongst our own institutions, that one which he seems most
+profoundly to have hated was our nobility; or, speaking more generally,
+our aristocracy. Some deadly aboriginal schism he seems to have imagined
+between this order and the democratic orders; some predestined feud
+as between the head of the serpent and the heel of man.
+
+Accordingly, as one of the means most clamorously invoked by our social
+position for averting some dreadful convulsion constantly brooding
+over England, he insists upon a closer approximation between our highest
+classes and our lowest. Especially he seems to think that the peasantry
+needed to be conciliated by more familiar intercourse, or more open
+expressions of interest in their concerns, and by domiciliary visits
+not offered in too oppressive a spirit of condescension. But the close
+observer of our social condition will differ with Dr. Arnold at
+starting, as to the facts. The ancient territorial nobility are not
+those who offend by _hauteur_. On the contrary, a spirit of parental
+kindness marks the intercourse of the old authentic aristocracy with
+their dependants, and especially with the two classes of peasants on
+their own estates, and their domestic servants. [Footnote 2] Those who
+_really_ offend on this point, are the _nouveaux riches_--the
+_parvenus_. And yet it would be great injustice to say that even these
+offend habitually. No laws of classification are so false as those
+which originate in human scurrility. Aldermen, until very lately, were
+by an old traditional scurrility so proverbially classed as gluttons
+and cormorants, hovering over dinner-tables, with no other
+characteristics whatever, or openings to any redeeming qualities, that
+men became as seriously perplexed in our days at meeting an eloquent,
+enlightened, and accomplished alderman, as they would have been by an
+introduction to a benevolent cut-throat, or a patriotic incendiary.
+The same thing happened in ancient days. Quite as obstinate as any
+modern prejudice against a London alderman was the old Attic prejudice
+against the natives of Boeotia. Originally it had grown up under two
+causes--first, the animosities incident to neighborhood too close;
+secondly, the difference of bodily constitution consequent upon a
+radically different descent. The blood was different; and by a wider
+difference, perhaps, than that between Celtic and Teutonic. The
+garrulous Athenian despised the hesitating (but for that reason more
+reflecting) Boeotian; and this feeling was carried so far, that at
+last it provoked satire itself to turn round with scorn upon the very
+prejudice which the spirit of satire had originally kindled. Disgusted
+with this arrogant assumption of disgust, the Roman satirist reminded
+the scorners that men not inferior to the greatest of their own had
+been bred, or might be bred, amongst those whom they scorned:--
+
+   'Summos posse viros, et magna exempla daturos,
+   Vervecum in patria, crassoque sub are nasci.'
+
+Now, if there is any similar alienation between our lowest classes and
+our highest, such as Doctor Arnold imagined to exist in England, at
+least it does not assume any such character of disgust, nor clothe
+itself in similar expressions of scorn. Practical jealousy, so far as
+it exists at all, lies between classes much less widely separated. The
+master manufacturer is sometimes jealous of those amongst his
+ministerial agents who tread too nearly upon his own traces; he is
+jealous sometimes of their advances in domestic refinement, he is
+jealous of their aspirations after a higher education. And on _their_
+part, the workmen are apt to regard their masters as having an ultimate
+interest violently conflicting with their own. In these _strata_ of
+society there really _are_ symptoms of mutual distrust and hostility.
+Capital and the aristocracy of wealth is a standing object of suspicion,
+of fear, and therefore of angry irritation to the working-classes. But
+as to the aristocracy of rank and high birth, either it is little known
+to those classes, as happens in the most populous hives of our
+manufacturing industry, and is regarded, therefore, with no positive
+feeling of any kind, or else, as in the more exclusively agricultural
+and pastoral districts, is looked up to by the peasantry with blind
+feelings of reverence as amongst the immemorial monuments of the past--
+involved in one common mist of antiquity with the rivers and the hills
+of the district, with the cathedrals and their own ancestors. A
+half-religious sentiment of reverence for an old time-out-of-mind
+family associated with some antique residence, hall, or abbey, or
+castle, is a well-known affection of the rural mind in England; and
+if in one half it points to an infirmity not far off from legendary
+superstition, in the other half it wears the grace of chivalry and
+legendary romance. Any malignant scoff, therefore, against the peerage
+of England, such as calling the House of Lords a Hospital of Incurables,
+has always been a town-bred scurrility, not only never adopted by the
+simple rural laborer, but not even known to him, or distinctly
+intelligible supposing it were.
+
+If, therefore, there are great convulsions lying in wait for the
+framework of our English society; if, and more in sorrow than in hope,
+some vast attempt may be anticipated for recasting the whole of our
+social organization; and if it is probable that this attempt will
+commence in the blind wrath of maddened or despairing labor--still
+there is no ground for thinking, with Dr. Arnold, that this wrath,
+however blind (unless treacherously misled), would apply itself
+primarily to the destruction of our old landed aristocracy. It would
+often find itself grievously in error and self-baffled, even when
+following its first headlong impulses of revenge; but these are the
+impulses that it would follow, and none of these would primarily point
+in that direction. Suppose, however, that the probabilities were
+different, and that a policy of conciliation were become peculiarly
+needful to the aristocracy--which is what Dr. Arnold does suppose--in
+that case might not the course indicated by Lord Carlisle, viz.,
+advancing upon a new line of _intellectual_ communication with the
+laboring classes, be the surest mode of retrieving their affections,
+as most likely to flatter their self-esteem in its noblest aspirations?
+
+One swallow, it is true, cannot make a summer; and others of the
+aristocracy must repeat the experiment of Lord Carlisle before any
+ground can be won for the interest of the order. Even in Lord Carlisle,
+it might be added, the experiment, if it were not followed up, would
+not count for more than a caprice. But, on the other hand, think as
+we may of the probable results, in reference to the _purposes_ of its
+author, we ought to regard it as a sufficient justification that _thus_
+the ice has been broken, that _thus_ a beginning has been made, and
+_thus_ a sanction established under which no man, if otherwise free
+to enter upon such a path, needs ever again to find an obstacle in
+rank the highest or in blood the most ancient. He is authorized by a
+Howard; and though doubts must still linger about the propriety of
+such a course, when estimated as a means to a specific end, yet for
+itself, in reference to the prudery of social decorum, we may now
+pronounce that to lecture without fee or reward before any audience
+whatever is henceforth privileged by authentic precedent; and, unless
+adulterating with political partisanship, is consecrated by its own
+noble purposes.
+
+Still, if it be urged that these noble purposes are not ratified and
+sealed by a solitary experiment, I should answer that undoubtedly Lord
+Carlisle has placed himself under a silent obligation to renew his
+generous effort; or, in the event of his failing to do so, will have
+made himself a debtor to public censure, as one who has planned what
+he has not been strong enough to accomplish, and has founded a staircase
+or a portico to a temple yet in the clouds. _Had_ he the ulterior
+purposes assumed? Then, by deserting or neglecting them, he puts on
+record the instability of his own will. Had he _no_ these ulterior
+purposes? Then, and in that confession, vanishes into vapor the whole
+dignity of his bold pretensions, as the navigator who first doubled
+the Cape of Storms [Footnote 3] into an untried sea.
+
+But against a man dealing presumably with a noble purpose we should
+reckon nobly. Mean jealousies have no place in circumstances where,
+as yet, no meanness has been exhibited. The exaction would be too
+severe upon Lord Carlisle, if, by one act of kindness, he had pledged
+himself to a thousand; and if, because once his graciousness had been
+conspicuous, he were held bound over, in all time coming, to the
+unintermitting energies of a missionary amongst pagans. The laboring
+men of Yorkshire have not the clamorous necessities of pagans; and
+_therefore_ Lord Carlisle has not assumed the duties of a working
+missionary. When, by personally coming forward to lecture, he
+inaugurated a new era of intellectual prospects for the sons of toil,
+implicitly he promised that he would himself, from time to time, come
+forward to co-operate with a movement that had owed its birth to his
+own summons and impulse. But if he cannot honorably release himself
+from engagements voluntarily assumed, on the other hand he cannot
+justly be loaded with the responsibility of a continued participation
+in the Details of the work which he has set in motion. By sympathy
+with the liberal purposes of an intellectual movement, he gives to
+that movement its initial impulse. Henceforward it suffices if at
+intervals he continues to it such expressions of the same sympathy as
+may sustain its original activity, or at least may sustain the credit
+of his own consistency. It cannot be expected that any person in the
+circumstances of Lord Carlisle should continue even intermittingly to
+lecture. It is enough if, by any other modes of encouragement, or by
+inciting others to follow the precedent which he has set, he continues
+to express an unabated interest in the great cause of intellectual
+progress amongst poor men.
+
+A doubt may be raised, meantime, whether literature is the proper
+channel into which the intellectual energies of the poor should be
+directed. For the affirmative it may be urged, that the interest in
+literature is universal, whilst the interest in science is exceedingly
+limited. On the other hand, it may truly be retorted that the scientific
+interest may be artificially extended by culture; and that these two
+great advantages would in that case arise: 1. That the apparatus of
+means and instruments is much smaller in the one case than the other;
+2. That science opens into a progression of growing interest; whereas
+literature, having no determined order of advance, and offering no
+regular succession of stages to the student, does not with the same
+certainty secure a self-maintaining growth of pleasureable excitement.
+Some remedy, however, will be applied to this last evil, if a regular
+plan of _study_ should ever be devised for literature, and perhaps
+that may be found not impossible.
+
+But now, coming to the second question, namely, this question, _If any
+lecture at all, why upon Pope?_ We may see reason to think that Lord
+Carlisle was in error. To make a choice which is not altogether the
+best, will not of necessity argue an error; because much must be allowed
+to constitutional differences of judgment or of sensibility, which may
+be all equally right as against any philosophic attempts to prove any
+one of them wrong. And a lecturer who is possibly aware of not having
+made the choice which was absolutely best, may defend himself upon the
+ground that accidental advantages of a personal kind, such as previous
+familiarity with the subject, or preconformity of taste to the
+characteristic qualities of the author selected, may have qualified
+him to lecture on that theme with more effect and with more benefit,
+than upon a theme confessedly higher but less tractable for himself
+with his own peculiar preparations. Here, however, the case is
+different. What might be no error _per se_, becomes one if the special
+circumstances of the situation show it to have rested upon a deep
+misconception. Given the audience which Lord Carlisle had before him,
+the audience which he anticipated, and which he proposed to himself
+as the modulating law for the quality and style of his lecture, that
+same choice becomes a profound error which, for a different audience,
+more refined or more miscellaneous, would have been no error at all.
+I do not fear that I shall offend Lord Carlisle, so upright as he has
+always shown himself, so manly, and so faithful to his own views of
+truth, by repeating firmly that such a choice in such a situation
+argues a deep misconception of the true intellectual agencies by which
+Pope acts as a power in literature, and of the moral relations to
+general human sensibilities or _universal_ nature which such agencies
+involve. My belief is, that, if a prize had been offered for a bad and
+malappropriate subject, none worse could have been suggested; unless,
+perhaps, it had been the Letters of Madame de Sevigne, or the Fables
+of La Fontaine; in both of which cases the delicacies and subtle
+felicities of treatment are even more microscopic, more shy, and more
+inapprehensible without a special training and culture, than in Pope,
+And in this point they all agree, with no great difference amongst the
+three, that the sort of culture which forms the previous condition for
+enjoying them (a _conditio sine qua non_) is not of a kind to be won
+from study. Even of _that_ a mechanic artisan, whose daily bread depends
+upon his labor, cannot have had much. But the dedication of a life to
+books would here avail but litttle. What is needed must be the sort
+of culture won from complex social intercourse; and of, this the
+laboring artisan can have had none at all. Even the higher ranks,
+during those stages of society when social meetings are difficult, are
+rare, and consequently have their whole intellectual opportunities
+exhausted in forms and elaborate ceremonials, are not able to develope
+what may be called the social sense, that living, trembling sensibility
+to the expressions and the electric changes of human thought and
+feeling, so infinite as they are potentially, and as they will show
+themselves to be when the intercourse is free, is sudden, is
+spontaneous, and therefore has not leisure to be false, amongst all
+varieties of combination as to sex, age, rank, position, and personal
+accomplishments. Up to the time of James the First, society amongst
+ourselves wore a picturesque and even a scenical exterior: but the
+inner life and its pulsations had not then been revealed. Great passions
+were required to stir the freezing waters; so that certain kinds of
+comedy, in which such passions are inappropriate, could not then exist.
+And partly to this case it was amongst the early Romans, united with
+the almost Asiatic seclusion from social meetings of female influence
+or in any virtual sense even of female presence, that we must ascribe
+the meagreness of the true social interest, and of the dialogue
+exhibited by Plautus. Two separate frosts, during a century otherwise
+so full of movement as the sixteenth in England, repressed and killed
+all germinations of free intellectual or social intercourse amongst
+ourselves. One was the national reserve;' and this was strengthened
+by concurring with a national temperament--not phlegmatic (as is so
+falsely alleged), but melancholic, dignified, and for that reason, if
+there had been no other, anti-mercurial. But the main cause of this
+reserve lay in the infrequency of visits consequent upon the
+difficulties of local movement. The other frost lay in the Spanish
+stateliness and the inflexibility of our social ceremonies. Our social
+meetings of this period, even for purposes of pleasure, were true
+_solemnities_. With usage of politeness that laid a weight of silence
+and delay upon every movement of a social company, rapid motion of
+thought or fancy became in a literal sense _physically_ impossible.
+Not until, first, our _capital_ city had prodigiously expanded; not
+until, secondly, our representative system had so unfolded its
+tendencies as to bring _politics_ within the lawful privilege of
+ordinary conversation; not until, thirdly, the expansions of _commerce_
+had forced us into the continual necessity of talking with strangers;
+fourthly, not until all these changes, gradually breaking up the
+repulsion which separated our ungarrulous nation, had been ratified
+by continual improvements applied to the construction of _roads_ and
+the arts of _locomotion_, could it be said that such a state of social
+intercourse existed as would naturalty prompt the mind to seek food
+for its own intellectual activity in contemplating the phenomena of
+that intercourse. The primary aspects and the rapid changes of such
+an object could not arise until the object itself arose. Satire, which
+follows social intercourse as a shadow follows a body, was chained up
+till then. In Marston and in Donne (a man yet unappreciated) satire
+first began to respire freely, but applying itself too much, as in the
+great dramatists contemporary with Shakspeare, to the exterior play
+of society. Under Charles II. in the hands of Dryden, and under Anne
+in those of Pope, the larger and more intellectual sweep of satire
+showed that social activities were now appreaching to their culmination.
+Now, at length, it became evident that a new mode of pleasure had been
+ripened, and that a great instinct of the intellect had opened for
+itself an appropriate channel. No longer were social parties the old
+heraldic solemnities [Footnote 4] enjoined by red letters in the
+almanac, in which the chief objects were to discharge some arrear of
+ceremonious debt, or to ventilate old velvets, or to _apricate_ and
+refresh old gouty systems and old traditions of feudal ostentation,
+which both alike suffered and grew smoke-dried under too rigorous a
+seclusion. By a great transmigration, festal assemblages had assumed
+their proper station, and had unfolded their capacities, as true
+auxiliaries to the same general functions of intellect--otherwise
+expressing themselves and feeding themselves through literature, through
+the fine arts, and through scenic representations. A new world of
+pleasures had opened itself, offering new subjects of activity to the
+intellect, but also presupposing a new discipline and experience for
+enjoying them.
+
+Precisely at this point starts off what I presume to think the great
+error of Lord Carlisle. He postulates as if it were a mere gift of
+inevitable instinct, what too certainly is the gift, and the tardy
+gift, of training; which training, again, is not to be won from efforts
+of study, but is in the nature of a slow deposition--or sediment, as
+it were--from a constant, perhaps at the moment, an unconscious,
+experience. Apparently the error is twofold: first, an oversight, in
+which it is probable that, without altogether overlooking the truth,
+Lord Carlisle allowed to it a very insufficient emphasis; but, secondly,
+a positive misconception of a broad character. The oversight is probably
+his own, and originating in a general habit of too large and liberal
+concession; but the misconception, I suspect, that he owes to another.
+
+First, concerning the first. It is evidently assumed, in the adoption
+of Pope for his subject, that mechanic artists, as a body, are capable
+of appreciating Pope. I deny it; and in this I offer them no affront.
+If they cannot enjoy, or if often they cannot so much as understand
+Pope, on the other hand they can both enjoy and understand a far greater
+poet. It is no insult; but, on the contrary, it is often a secret
+compliment to the simplicity and the _breadth_ of a man's intellectual
+nature that he cannot enter into the artificial, the tortuous, the
+conventional. Many a rude mind has comprehended to the full, both
+Milton in his elementary grandeur and Shakspeare in his impassioned
+depths, that could not have even dimly guessed at the meaning of a
+situation in comedy where the comic rested upon arbitrary rules and
+conventional proprieties. In all satiric sketches of society, even
+where the direct object may happen to have a catholic intelligibility,
+there is much amongst the allusions that surround and invest it which
+no man will ever understand that has not personally mixed in society,
+or understand without very disproportional commentaries; and even in
+that case he will not enjoy it. This is true of such compositions as
+a class; but Pope, in reference to this difficulty, is disadvantageously
+distinguished even amongst his order. Dryden, for instance, is far
+larger and more capacious in his satire, and in all the genial parts
+would approach the level of universal sympathies; whereas Pope, besides
+that the basis of his ridicule is continually too narrow, local, and
+casual, is rank to utter corruption with a disease far deeper than
+false refinement or conventionalism. Pardon me, reader, if I use a
+coarse word and a malignant word, which I should abhor to use unless
+where, as in this case, I seek to rouse the vigilance of the inattentive
+by the apparent intemperance of the language. Pope, in too many
+instances, for the sake of some momentary and farcical effect,
+deliberately assumes the license of a _liar_. Not only he adopts the
+language of moral indignation where we know that it could not possibly
+have existed, seeing that the story to which this pretended indignation
+is attached was to Pope's knowledge a pure fabrication, but he also
+cites, as weighty evidences in the _forum_ of morality, anecdotes which
+he had gravely transplanted from a jest-book. [Footnote 5] Upon this,
+however, the most painful feature amongst Pope's literary habits, I
+will not dwell, as I shall immediately have occasion to notice it
+again. I notice it at all only for its too certain effect in limiting
+the sympathy with Pope's satiric and moral writings. Absolute truth
+and simplicity are demanded by all of us as preconditions to any
+sympathy with moral expressions of anger or intolerance. In all
+conventionalism there is a philosophic falsehood; and _that_ would be
+more than sufficient to repel all general sympathy with Pope from the
+mind of the laboring man, apart from the effect of direct falsification
+applied to facts, or of fantastic extravagance applied to opinions.
+Of this bar to the popularity of Pope, it cannot be supposed that Lord
+Carlisle was unaware. Doubtless he knew it, but did not allow it the
+weight which in practice it would be found to deserve. Yet why? Suppose
+that the unpopular tendency in Pope's writings were of a nature to be
+surmounted--upon a sufficient motive arising, suppose it not absolutely
+impossible to bring Pope within the toleration of working-men, upon
+whom, however, all that is bad would tell fearfully, and most of Pope's
+peculiar brilliancy would absolutely go for nothing--this
+notwithstanding, suppose the point established that by huge efforts,
+by pulling and hauling, by coaxing and flattering, and _invita Minerva_,
+the working-man might at length be _converted_ to Pope; yet, finally,
+when all was over, what object, what commensurate end, could be alleged
+in justification of so much preternatural effort? You have got your
+man into harness, that is true, and in a sullen fashion he pulls at
+his burden. But, after all, why not have yoked him according to his
+own original inclinations, and suffered him to pull where he would
+pull cheerfully? You have quelled a natural resistance, but clearly
+with so much loss of power to all parties as was spent uponthe
+resistance; and with what final gain to any party?
+
+The answer to this lies in the second of the errors which I have imputed
+to Lord Carlisle. The first error was, perhaps, no more than an
+undervaluation of the truth. The second, if I divine it rightly, rests
+upon a total misconception, viz., the attribution to Pope of some
+special authority as a moral teacher. And this, if it were really so,
+would go far to justify Lord Carlisle in his attempt to fix the
+attention of literary students amongst the working-classes upon the
+writings of Pope. Rightly he would judge, that some leading classic
+must furnish the central object for the general studies. Each man would
+have his own separate favorites; but it would be well that the whole
+community of students should also have some _common_ point of interest
+and discussion. Pope, for such a purpose, has some real advantages.
+He is far enough from our own times to stand aloof from the corroding
+controversies of the age--he is near enough to speak in a diction but
+slightly differing from our own. He is sparkling with wit and brilliant
+good sense, and his poems are all separately short. But if Lord Carlisle
+count it for his main advantage that he is by distinction a _moral_
+poet, and this I must suppose in order to find any solution whatever
+for the eagerness to press him upon the attention of our most numerous
+classes, when is it that this idea has originated? I suspect that it
+is derived originally from a distinguished man of genius in the last
+generation, viz., Lord Byron. Amongst the guardians of Lord Byron, one
+was the late Lord Carlisle; and Lord Byron was, besides, connected by
+blood with the House of Howard: so that there were natural reasons why
+a man of such extraordinary intellectual power should early obtain a
+profound influence over the present Earl of Carlisle. And the prejudice,
+which I suppose to have been first planted by Lord Byron, would very
+easily strengthen itself by the general cast of Pope's topics and
+pretensions. He writes with a showy air of disparaging riches, of doing
+homage to private worth, of honoring patriotism, and so on, through
+all the commonplaces of creditable morality. But in the midst of this
+surface display, and in defiance of his ostentatious pretensions, Pope
+is _not_ in any deep or sincere sense a moral thinker; and in his own
+heart there was a misgiving, not to be silenced, that he was not. Yet
+this is strange. Surely, Lord Carlisle, a man of ability and experience,
+might have credit given him for power to form a right judgment on such
+a question as that--_power_ undoubtedly, if he had ever been led to
+use his power, that is, to make up his opinion in _resistance_ to the
+popular impression. But to this very probably he never had any motive;
+and the reason why I presume to set up my individual opinion in this
+case against that of the multitude is, because I know experimentally
+that, until a man has a sincere interest in such a question, and sets
+himself diligently to examine and collate the facts, he will pretty
+certainly have no title to give any verdict on the case.
+
+What made Lord Byron undertake the patronage of Pope? It was, as usually
+happened with _him_, a motive of hostility to some contemporaries. He
+wished to write up Pope by way of writing down others. But, whatever
+were the motive, we may judge of the style in which he carried out his
+intentions by the following well-known _mot_. Having mentioned the
+poets, he compares them with the moralists--'the moralists,' these are
+his words, 'the moralists, their betters.' How, or in what sense that
+would satisfy even a lampooner, are moralists as a class the 'betters'
+in a collation with poets as a class? It is pretty clear at starting
+that, _in order_ to be a moralist of the first rank, that is, to carry
+a great moral truth with heart-shaking force into the mind, a moralist
+must begin by becoming a poet. For instance, 'to justify the ways of
+God to man.' _That_ is a grand moral doctrine; but to utter the doctrine
+authentically a man must write a 'Paradise Lost.' The order of
+precedency, therefore, between poets and moralists, as laid down by
+Lord Byron, is very soon inverted by a slight effort of reflection.
+
+But without exacting from a man so self-willed as Lord Byron (and at
+that moment in a great passion) any philosophic vigor, it may be worth
+while, so far as the case concerns Pope, to ponder for one moment upon
+this invidious comparison, and to expose the fallacy which it conceals.
+By the term _moralist_ we indicate two kinds of thinkers, differing
+as much in quality as a chestnut horse from horse chestnut, and in
+rank as a Roman proconsul from the nautical consul's first clerk at
+a seaport. A clerical moralist in a pulpit, reading a sermon, is a
+moralist in the sense of one who applies the rules of a known ethical
+system, viz., that system which is contained in the New Testament, to
+the ordinary cases of human action. Such a man pretends to no
+originality--it would be criminal in him to do so; or, if he seeks for
+novelty in any shape or degree, it is exclusively in the quality of
+his illustrations. But there is another use of the word _moralist_,
+which indicates an intellectual architect of the first class. A Grecian
+moralist was one who published a new _theory_ of morals--that is, he
+assumed some new central principle, from which he endeavored, with
+more or less success, to derive all the virtues and vices, and thus
+introduced new relations amongst the keys or elementary gamut of our
+moral nature. [Footnote 6] For example, the Peripatetic system of
+morality, that of Aristotle, had for its fundamental principle, that
+all vices formed one or other of two polar extremes, one pole being
+in excess, the other in defect; and that the corresponding virtue lay
+on an equatorial line between these two poles. Here, because the new
+principle became a law of coercion for the entire system, since it
+must be carried out harmoniously with regard to every element that
+could move a question, the difficulties were great, and hardly to be
+met by mere artifices of ingenuity. The legislative principle needed
+to be profound and comprehensive; and a moralist in this sense, the
+founder of an ethical system, really looked something like a great man.
+
+But, valued upon that scale. Pope is nobody; or in Newmarket language,
+if ranked against Chrysippus, or Plato, or Aristotle, or Epicurus, he
+would be found 'nowhere.' He is reduced, therefore, at one blow to the
+level of a pulpit moralist, or mere applier of moral laws to human
+actions. And in a function so exceedingly humble, philosophically
+considered, how could he pretend to precedency in respect of anybody,
+unless it were the amen clerk, or the sexton?
+
+In reality, however, the case is worse, If a man did really bring all
+human actions under the light of any moral system whatever, provided
+that he _could_ do so sternly, justly, and without favor this way or
+that, he would perform an exemplary service, such as no man ever _has_
+performed. And this is what we mean by casuistry, which is the
+application of a moral principle to the _cases_ arising in human life.
+A _case_ means a genuine class of human acts, but differentiated in
+the way that law cases are. For we see that every case in the law
+courts conforms in the major part to the genuine class; but always,
+or nearly always, it presents some one differential feature peculiar
+to itself; and the question about it always is, Whether the differential
+feature is sufficient to take it out of the universal rule, or whether,
+in fact, it ought not to disturb the incidence of the legal rule? This
+is what we mean by casuistry. All law in its practical processes is
+a mode of casuistry. And it is clear that any practical ethics, ethics
+applied to the realities of life, ought to take the professed shape
+of casuistry. We do not evade the thing by evading the name. But because
+casuistry under that name, has been chiefly cultivated by the Roman
+Catholic Church, we Protestants, with our ridiculous prudery, find a
+stumbling-block in the very name. This, however, is the only service
+that _can_ be rendered to morality among us. And nothing approaching
+to this has been attempted by Pope.
+
+What is it, then, that he _has_ attempted? Certainly he imagines himself
+to have done something or other in behalf of moral philosophy. For in
+a well-known couplet he informs us--
+
+'That not in Fancy's maze he lingered long, But stooped to Truth, and
+_moralized_ his song.'
+
+Upon these lines a lady once made to me this very acute and significant
+remark. The particular direction, she said, in which Pope fancied that
+he came upon Truth, showed pretty clearly what sort of truth it was
+that he searched after. Had he represented Fancy, as often is done,
+soaring aloft amongst the clouds, then, because Truth must be held to
+lie in the opposite direction, there might have been pleaded a necessity
+for _descending_ upon Truth, like one who is looking for mushrooms.
+But as Fancy, by good luck, is simply described as roaming about amongst
+labyrinths, which are always constructed upon dead levels, he had left
+it free for himself to soar after Truth into the clouds. But _that_
+was a mode of truth which Pope cared little for; if _she_ chose to go
+galavanting amongst the clouds, Pope, for _his_ part, was the last
+person to follow her. Neither was he the man to go down into a well
+in search of her. Truth was not liable to wet feet--but Pope _was_.
+And he had no such ardor for Truth as would ever lead him to forget
+that wells were damp, and bronchitis alarming to a man of his
+constitution.
+
+Whatever service Pope may have meditated to the philosophy of morals,
+he has certainly performed none. The direct contributions which he
+offered to this philosophy in his 'Essay on Man,' are not of a nature
+to satisfy any party; because at present the whole system may be read
+into different, and sometimes into opposite meanings, according to the
+quality of the integrations supplied for filling up the chasms in the
+chain of the development. The sort of service, however, expected from
+Pope in such a field, falls in better with the style of his satires
+and moral epistles than of a work professedly metaphysical. Here,
+however, most eminently it is that the falseness and hypocrisy which
+besieged his satirical career have made themselves manifest; and the
+dilemma for any working-man who should apply himself to these sections
+of Pope's writings is precisely this: Reading them with the slight and
+languid attention which belongs to ordinary reading, they will make
+no particular discoveries of Pope's hollowness and treacherous
+infidelities to the truth, whether as to things or persons; but in
+such a case neither will they reap any benefit. On the other hand, if
+they so far carry out Lord Carlisle's advice as to enter upon the study
+of Pope in the spirit of earnest students, and so as really to possess
+themselves of the key to his inner mind, they will rise from their
+labors not so much in any spirit of gratitude for enlarged and
+humanizing views of man, as in a spirit of cynical disgust at finding
+that such views can be so easily counterfeited, and so often virtually
+betrayed.
+
+[The paper of last month, [Footnote 7] on Lord Carlisle's lecture,
+having been written under the oppression of a nervous illness,
+accompanied by great suffering, may probably enough have been found
+heavy. Another objection to that paper is, that it too easily _assumes_
+the radical falseness, of Pope, as a notorious fact needing no evidence
+or illustration. To myself it _did_ not need either. But to any casual
+reader, whose attention had never been attracted to the
+circumstantialities of Pope's satiric sketches, this assumption would
+be startling; and it would have done him a service to offer a few
+exemplifications of the vice attributed to Pope, both as substantiating
+the charge, and as investing it with some little amusement. This it
+had been my intention to do at the moment; but being disabled by the
+illness above-mentioned, I now supply the omission.]
+
+Whom shall we pronounce a fit writer to be laid before an auditory of
+working-men, as a model of what is just in composition--fit either for
+conciliating their regard to literature at first or afterwards for
+sustaining it? The qualifications for such a writer are apparently
+these two: first, that he should deal chiefly with the elder and
+elementary affections of man, and under those relations which concern
+man's grandest capacities;--secondly, that he should treat his subject
+with solemnity, and not with sneer--with earnestness, as one under a
+prophet's burden of impassioned truth, and not with the levity of a
+girl hunting a chance-started caprice. I admire Pope in the very highest
+degree; but I admire him as a pyrotechnic for producing brilliant and
+evanescent effects out of elements that have hardly a moment's life
+within them. There is a flash and a startling explosion, then there
+is a dazzling coruscation, all purple and gold; the eye aches under
+the suddenness of a display that, springing like a burning arrow out
+of darkness, rushes back into darkness with arrowy speed, and in a
+moment all is over. Like festal shows, or the hurrying music of such
+shows--
+
+'It _was_, and it is not.'
+
+Untruly, therefore, was it ever fancied of Pope, that he belonged by
+his classification to the family of the Drydens. Dryden had within him
+a principle of continuity which was not satisfied without lingering
+upon his own thoughts, brooding over them, and oftentimes pursuing
+them through their unlinkings with the _sequaciousness_ (pardon a
+Coleridgian word) that belongs to some process of creative nature,
+such as the unfolding of a flower. But Pope was all jets and tongues
+of flame; all showers of scintillation and sparkle. Dryden followed,
+genially, an impulse of his healthy nature. Pope obeyed, spasmodically,
+an overmastering febrile paroxysm. Even in these constitutional
+differences between the two are written and are legible the
+corresponding necessities of 'utter falsehood in Pope, and of loyalty
+to truth in Dryden.' Strange it is to recall this one striking fact,
+that if once in his life Dryden might reasonably have been suspected
+of falsehood, it was in the capital matter of religion. He _ratted_
+from his Protestant faith; and according to the literal origin of that
+figure he _ratted_; for he abjured it as rats abjure a ship in which
+their instinct of divination has deciphered a destiny of ruin, and at
+the very moment when Popery wore the promise of a triumph that might,
+at any rate, have lasted his time. Dryden was a Papist by apostasy;
+and perhaps, not to speak uncharitably, upon some bias from
+self-interest. Pope, on the other hand, was a Papist by birth, and by
+a tie of honor; and he resisted all temptations to desert his afflicted
+faith, which temptations lay in bribes of great magnitude prospectively,
+and in persecutions for the present that were painfully humiliating.
+How base a time-server does Dryden appear on the one side!--on the
+other, how much of a martyr should we be disposed to pronounce Pope!
+And yet, for all that, such is the overruling force of a nature
+originally sincere, the apostate Dryden wore upon his brow the grace
+of sincerity, whilst the pseudo-martyr Pope, in the midst of actual
+fidelity to his Church, was at his heart a traitor--in the very oath
+of his allegiance to his spiritual mistress had a lie upon his lips,
+scoffed at her whilst kneeling in homage to her pretensions, and
+secretly forswore her doctrines whilst suffering insults in her service.
+
+The differences as to truth and falsehood lay exactly where, by all
+the external symptoms, they ought _not_ to have lain. But the reason
+for this anomaly was, that to Dryden sincerity had been a perpetual
+necessity of his intellectual nature, whilst Pope, distracted by his
+own activities of mind, living in an irreligious generation, and beset
+by infidel friends, had early lost his anchorage of traditional belief;
+and yet, upon an honorable scruple of fidelity to the suffering church
+of his fathers, he sought often to dissemble the fact of his own
+scepticism, which yet often he thirsted ostentatiously to parade.
+Through a motive of truthfulness he became false. And in this particular
+instance he would, at any rate, have become false, whatever had been
+the native constitution of his mind. It was a mere impossibility to
+reconcile any real allegiance to his church with his known irreverence
+to religion. But upon far more subjects than this Pope was habitually
+false in the quality of his thoughts, always insincere, never by any
+accident in earnest, and consequently many times caught in ruinous
+self-contradiction. Is that the sort of writer to furnish an
+advantageous study for the precious leisure, precious as rubies, of
+the toil-worn artisan?
+
+The root and the pledge of this falseness in Pope lay in a disease of
+his mind, which he (like the Roman poet Horace) mistook for a feature
+of preternatural strength; and this disease was the incapacity of
+self-determination towards any paramount or abiding _principles_.
+Horace, in a well-known passage, had congratulated himself upon this
+disease as upon a trophy of philosophic emancipation:
+
+   'Nullius addictus jurare in verba magistri,
+   Quo me cunque rapit tempestas, deferor liospes:'
+
+which words Pope thus translates, and applies to himself in his English
+adaptation of this epistle:--
+
+  'But ask not to what doctors I apply--
+  Sworn to no master, of no sect am I.
+  As drives the storm, at any door I knock;
+  And house with Montaigne now, or now with Locke.'
+
+That is, neither one poet nor the other having, as regarded philosophy,
+any internal principle of gravitation or determining impulse to draw
+him in one direction rather than another, was left to the random control
+of momentary taste, accident, or caprice; and this indetermination of
+pure, unballasted levity both Pope and Horace mistook for a special
+privilege of philosophic strength. Others, it seems, were chained and
+coerced by sertain fixed aspects of truth, and their efforts were
+overruled accordingly in one uniform line of direction. But _they_,
+the two brilliant poets, fluttered on butterfly-wings to the right and
+the left, obeying no guidance but that of some instant and fugitive
+sensibility to some momentary phasis of beauty. In this dream of drunken
+eclecticism, and in the original possibility of such an eclecticism,
+lay the ground of that enormous falsehood which Pope practised from
+youth to age. An eclectic philosopher already, in the very title which
+he assumes, proclaims his self-complacency in the large liberty of
+error purchased by the renunciation of all controlling principles.
+Having severed the towing-line which connected him with any external
+force of guiding and compulsory truth, he is free to go astray in any
+one of ten thousand false radiations from the true centre of rest. By
+his own choice he is wandering in a forest all but pathless,
+
+   ---'ubi passim.
+   Pallantes error recto de tramite pellit;'
+
+and a forest not of sixty days' journey, like that old Hercynian forest
+of Caesar's time, but a forest which sixty generations have not availed
+to traverse or familiarize in any one direction.
+
+For Horace, as I have endeavored to explain in the note, the apology
+is so much the readier as his intrusions into this province of
+philosophy are slighter, more careless, and more indirect. But Pope's
+are wilful, premeditated, with malice aforethought; and his falsehoods
+wear a more malignant air, because they frequently concern truth
+speculative, and are therefore presumably more deliberate in their
+origin, and more influential in the result. It is precisely this part
+of Pope's errors that would prove most perplexing to the unlearned
+student. Beyond a doubt the 'Essay on Man' would, in virtue of its
+subject, prove the most attractive to a laboring man of all Pope's
+writings, as most of all promising a glimpse into a world of permanence
+and of mysterious grandeur, and having an interest, therefore,
+transcendent to any that could be derived from the fleeting aspects
+of manners or social conventionalisms, though illuminated and vivified
+by satire. _Here_ would be the most advantageous and _remunerative_
+station to take for one who should undertake a formal exposure of
+Pope's hollow-heartedness; that is, it would most commensurately reward
+the pains and difficulties of such an investigation. But it would be
+too long a task for this situation, and it would be too polemic. It
+would move through a jungle of controversies. For, to quote a remark
+which I once made myself in print, the 'Essay on Man' in one point
+resembles some doubtful inscriptions in ancient forms of Oriental
+languages, which, being made up elliptically of mere consonants, can
+be read into very different senses according to the different sets of
+vowels which the particular reader may choose to interpolate. According
+to the choice of the interpreter, it may be read into a loyal or a
+treasonable meaning. Instead of this I prefer, as more amusing, as
+less elaborate, and as briefer, to expose a few of Pope's _personal_
+falsehoods, and falsehoods as to the notorieties of _fact_. Truths
+speculative oftentimes, drives its roots into depth so dark, that the
+falsifications to which it is liable, though detected, cannot always
+be exposed to the light of day--the result is known, but not therefore
+seen. Truth personal, on the other hand, may be easily made to confront
+its falsifier, not with refutation only, but with the visible _shame_
+of refutation. Such sharoe would settle upon _every_ page of Pope's
+satires and moral epistles, oftentimes upon every couplet, if any
+censor, armed with an adequate knowledge of the facts, were to prosecute
+the inquest. Apd the general impression from such an inquest would be,
+that Pope never delineated a character, nor uttered a sentiment, nor
+breathed an aspiration, which he, would not willingly have recast,
+have retracted, have abjured or trampled under foot with the curses
+assigned to heresy, if by sueh an act he could have added a hue of
+brilliancy to his coloring, or a new depth to his shadows. There is
+nothing he would not have sacrificed, not the most solemn of his
+opinions, nor the most pathetic memorial from his personal experiences,
+in return for a sufficient consideration, which consideration meant
+always with _him_ poetic effect. It is not, as too commonly is believed,
+that he was reckless of other people's feelings; so far from _that_,
+he had a morbid _facility_ in his kindness; and in cases where he had
+no reason to suspect any lurking hostility, he showed even a paralytic
+benignity. But, simply and constitutionally, he was incapable of a
+sincere thought or a sincere emotion. Nothing that ever he uttered,
+were it even a prayer to God, but he had a fancy for reading it
+backwards. And he was evermore false, not as loving or preferring
+falsehood, but as one who could not in his heart perceive much real
+difference between what people affected to call falsehood and what
+they affected to call truth. Volumes might be filled with illustrations;
+I content myself with three or four.
+
+I. Pope felt _intellectually_ that it was philosophic, and also that
+it wore an air of nobility, _not_ to despise poverty. _Morally_,
+however, he felt inversely: nature and the accidents of his life had
+made it his necessity to despise nothing so heartily. If in any one
+sentiment he ever was absolutely sincere, if there can be cited one
+insulated case upon which he found it difficult to play the hypocrite,
+it was in the case of that intense scorn with which he regarded poverty,
+and all the painful circumstances that form the equipage of poverty.
+To look at a pale, dejected fellow-creature creeping along the highway,
+and to have reason for thinking that he has not tasted food since
+yesterday--what a pang would such a sight, accompanied by such a
+thought, inflict upon many a million of benign human hearts! But in
+Pope, left to his spontaneous nature, such a sight and such a thought
+would have moved only fits of laughter. Not that he would have refused
+the poor creature a shilling, but still he would have laughed. For
+hunger, and cold, and poverty, appeared to _him_ only in the light of
+drolleries, and too generally of scoundrelisms. Still he was aware
+that some caution was requisite in giving public expression to such
+feelings. Accordingly, when he came forward in gala-dress as a
+philosopher, he assumed the serene air of one upon whom all such idle
+distinctions as rich and poor were literally thrown away. But watch
+him: follow his steps for a few minutes, and the deep realities of his
+nature will unmask themselves. For example, in the first book of the
+'Dunciad' he has occasion to mention Dennis:--
+
+  'And all the mighty mad in Dennis raged.'
+
+Upon this line (the 106th) of the text he hangs a note, in the course
+of which he quotes a few sentences about Dennis from Theobald. One of
+these begins thus: 'Did we really know how much this poor man suffers
+by being contradicted,' &c.; upon which Pope thinks proper to
+intercalate the following pathetic parenthesis in italics: _I wish
+that reflection on POVERTY had been spared._' How amiable! how pretty!
+Could Joseph Surface have more dexterously _improved_ the occasion:
+'The man that disparages poverty, is a man that--' &c. It is manifest,
+however, at a glance, that this virtuous indignation is altogether
+misplaced; for '_poor_' in the quotation from Theobald has no reference
+whatever to _poverty_ as the antithesis to _wealth_. What a pity that
+a whole phial of such excellent scenical morality should thus have
+been uncorked and poured out upon the wrong man and the wrong occasion!
+Really, this unhappy blunder extorts from me as many tears of laughter
+as ever poverty extorted from Pope. Meantime, reader, watch what
+follows. Wounded so deeply in his feelings by this constrained homage
+to poverty, Pope finds himself unable to resettle the equilibrium in
+his nervous system until he has taken out his revenge by an extra
+kicking administered to some old mendicant or vagrant lying in a ditch.
+
+At line 106 comes the flourish about Dennis's poverty. Just nine lines
+ahead, keeping close as a policeman upon the heels' of a thief, you
+come up with Pope in the very act of maltreating Gibber, upon no motive
+or pretence whatever, small or great, but that he (the said Gibber)
+was guilty of poverty. Pope had detected him--and this is Pope's own
+account of the assault--in an overt act of poverty. He deposes, as if
+it were an ample justification of his own violence, that Gibber had
+been caught in the very act--not of supping meanly, coarsely, vulgarly,
+as upon tripe, for instance, or other offal--but absolutely in the act
+of not supping at all!
+
+    'Swearing and _supperless_ the hero sate.'
+
+Here one is irresistibly reminded of the old story about the cat who
+was transformed into a princess: she played the _role_ with admirable
+decorum, until one day a mouse ran across the floor of the royal saloon,
+when immediately the old instinct and the hereditary hatred proved too
+much for the artificial nature, and her highness vanished over a
+six-barred gate in a furious mouse-chase. Pope, treading in the steps
+of this model, fancies himself reconciled to poverty. Poverty, however,
+suddenly presents herself, not as a high poetic abstraction, but in
+that one of her many shapes which to Pope had always seemed the most
+comic as well as the most hateful. Instantly Pope's ancient malice is
+rekindled; and in line 115 we find him assaulting that very calamity
+under one name, which under another, at line 106, he had treated with
+an ostentatious superfluity of indulgence.
+
+II. I have already noticed that some of Pope's most pointed examples
+which he presents to you as drawn from his own experience of life, are
+in fact due to jest-books; and some (offered as facts) are pure coinages
+of his own brain. When he makes his miser at the last gasp so tenacious
+of the worldly rights then slipping from his grasp as that he refuses
+to resign a particular manor, Pope forgot that even a jest-book must
+govern its jokes by some regard to the realities of life, and that
+amongst these realities is the very nature and operation of a will.
+A miser is not, therefore, a fool; and he knows that no possible
+testamentary abdication of an estate disturbs his own absolute command
+over it so long as he lives, or bars his power of revoking the bequest.
+The moral instruction is in this case so poor, that no reader cares
+much upon what sort of foundation the story itself rests. For such a
+story a lie may be a decent basis. True; but not so senseless a lie.
+If the old miser was delirious, there is an end of his responsibilities;
+and nobody has a right to draw upon _him_ for moral lessons or warnings.
+If he was _not_ delirirous, the case could not have happened. Modelled
+in the same spirit are all Pope's pretended portraitures of women; and
+the more they ought to have been true, as professing to be studies
+from life, the more atrociously they are false, and false in the
+transcendent sense of being impossible. Heaps of contradiction, or of
+revolting extravagance, do not verify themselves to our loathing
+incredulity because the artist chooses to come forward with his arms
+akimbo, saying angrily, 'But I tell you, sir, these are _not_
+fancy-pieces! These ladies whom I have here lampooned are familiarly
+known to me--they are my particular friends. I see them every day in
+the undiess of confiding friendship. They betray all their foibles to
+me in the certainty that I shall take no advantage of their candor;
+and will you, coming a century later, presume to dispute the fidelity
+or the value of my contemporary portraits?' Yes, and upon these two
+grounds: first (as to the fidelity), that the pretended portraits are
+delineations of impossible people; and secondly (as to the value),
+that, if after all they could be sworn to as copies faithful to the
+originals, not the less are they to be repelled as abnormal, and so
+far beyond the intelligibilities of nature as practically to mean
+nothing, neither teaching nor warning. The two Duchesses of Marlborough,
+for instance, Sarah and Henrietta, are atrocious caricatures, and
+constructed on the desperate principle of catching at a momentary stare
+or grin, by means of anarchy in the features imputed, and truculent
+antithesis in the expression. Who does not feel that these are the
+fierce pasquinades, and the coarse pasquinades, of some malignant
+electioneering contest? Is there a line that breathes the simplicity
+and single-heartedness of truth? Equal disgust settles upon every word
+that Pope ever wrote against Lady Mary W. Montagu. Having once come
+to hate her rancorously, and finding his hatred envenomed by the
+consciousness that Lady Mary had long ceased to care two straws for
+all the malice of all the wits in Christendom, Pope labored at his own
+spite, filing it and burnishing it as a hand-polisher works at the the
+blade of a scymitar. For years he had forgotten to ask after the
+realities of nature as they existed in Lady Mary, and considered only
+what had the best chance of stinging her profoundly. He looked out for
+a 'raw' into which he might lay the lash; not seeking it in the real
+woman, but generally in the nature and sensibilities of abstract woman.
+Whatever seemed to disfigure the idea of womanhood, _that_, by
+reiterated touches, he worked into his portraits of Lady Mary; and at
+length, no doubt, he had altogether obliterated from his own remembrance
+the true features of her whom he so much detested. On this class of
+Pope's satiric sketches I do not, however, wish to linger, having
+heretofore examined some of the more prominent cases with close
+attention.
+
+My last paper on Pope has been taxed with exaggeration. This charge
+comes from a London weekly journal (_The Leader_) distinguished by its
+ability, by its hardihood of speculation, by its comprehensive candor,
+but, in _my_ eyes, still more advantageously distinguished by its deep
+sincerity. Such qualities give a special value to the courtesies of
+that journal; and I in particular, as a literary man, have to thank
+it for repeated instances of kindness the most indulgent on any occasion
+which has brought up the mention of my name. Such qualities of necessity
+give a corresponding value to its censures. And accordingly, as a point
+of duty, I directed my attention immediately to _this_ censure. Whatever
+was still unprinted I reviewed; and whatever struck me as open to
+objection I removed. And if the result after all has been that I do
+not altogether concur in the criticism of _The Leader_, the reason is
+because, as upon re-examination it strikes me, in the worst cases Pope
+has not left room for exaggeration. I do not see any actual
+exaggeration, simply because I do not see that any exaggeration is
+possible. But though I thus found myself unable sincerely to make the
+sacrifice of my own opinion, another sacrifice of a different kind I
+_have_ made, viz., that of half my paper. I cancelled one half--viz.,
+that half which was occupied with cases in Pope of disingenuousness,
+and perhaps of moral falsehood or collusion with other people's
+falsehood, but not of falsehood atrociously literal and conscious;
+meaning thus to diminish by one half the penance of those who do not
+like to see Pope assaulted, although forced by uneasiness to watch the
+assault;--feeling with which I heartily sympathize; and meaning, on
+the other hand, in justification of mylelf, to throw the reader's
+attention more effectively, because more exclusively, upon such cases
+of frantic and moonstruck falsehood as could allow no room for suspense
+or mitigation of judgment. Of these I have selected two, one relating
+to the Duke of Buckingham, and the other to the history and derivation
+of English literature. Generally, I believe, that to a just appreciation
+of Pope's falseness, levity, and self-contradiction, it is almost
+essential that a reader should have studied him with the purpose of
+becoming his editor. This at one time was my own purpose; and thus it
+was that I became acquainted with qualities prevailing in Pope which,
+in the midst of my great admiration for him, would have made such a
+purpose difficult of execution. For in the relation between author and
+editor, any harshness of reproach on the part of the latter, or any
+expression of alienation and imperfect sympathy, seems unbecoming in
+one who has spontaneously assumed the office of a _patronus_ to a
+_client_, and are uniformly painful to the reader. On this account it
+is that the late Mr. Roscoe figures amongst all editors of Pope as by
+far the most agreeable. He has a just tenderness for the memory and
+merits of the great writer whom he undertakes to edit; this feeling
+keeps his annotations clear from the petulance of Joseph Warton and
+the malice of Bowles; whilst, not having happened to see Pope's errors
+in the same light as myself, he suffers from no conflict between his
+natural indulgence to intellectual splendor and his conscientious
+reverence for truth.
+
+But if the reader is shocked with Pope's false reading of phenomena,
+where not the circumstances so much as the construction of the
+circumstances may be challenged, what must he think of those cases in
+which downright facts, and incidents the most notorious, have been
+outrageously falsified only in obedience to a vulgar craving for effect
+in the dramatic situations, or by way of pointing a moral for the
+stimulation of torpid sensibilities? Take, for instance, the death of
+the second Villiers, Duke of Buckingham--a story which, in Pope's
+version of it, has travelled into a popularity that may be called
+national; and yet, the whole is one tissue of falsehoods--and of
+falsehoods that must have been known for such by Pope not less than
+to most of his contemporary readers. Suppose them _not_ known, and the
+whole must have wanted all natural interest. For this interest lay in
+the Duke's character, in his superb accomplishments and natural
+advantages, in his fine person, in his vast wealth, and in the admirable
+versatility of his intellectual powers, which made him alternately the
+idol and the terror of all circles that he approached, which caused
+Lord Clarendon to tremble with impotent malice in his chancellor's
+robes, and Dry den to shiver with panic under his laureate crowns.
+Now, wherever these features of the case were _not_ known, the story
+was no more than any ordinary death arising out of a fox-chase. But
+those to whom they _were_ known must, at the same time, have known the
+audacious falsehood which disfigures the story in Pope's way of telling
+it. _Without_ the personal interest, the incidents were nothing; and
+_with_ that interest, at starting, Pope's romance must have defeated
+itself by its fabulous coloring. Let me recall to the reader the
+principal lines in this famous description:--
+
+  'In the worst inn's worst room, with mat half hung,
+   The floors of plaster and the walls of dung,
+   On once a flock-bed, but repaired with straw,
+   With tape-tied curtains never meant to draw,
+   The George and Garter dangling from that bed
+   Where tawdry yellow strove with dirty red,
+   Great Villiers lies! Alas! how changed from him,
+   That life of pleasure, and that soul of whim,
+   Gallant and gay in Cliveden's proud alcove,
+   The bower of wanton Shrewsbury and love;
+   _There_, victor of his health, of fortune, friends,
+   And fame, the lord of useless thousands ends.'
+
+Without stopping to examine these famous lines as to thought and
+expression (both of which are scandalously vicious), what I wish the
+reader to remark is, the one pervading falsehood which connects them.
+Wherefore this minute and purely fanciful description of the road-side
+_cabaret_, with its bedroom and bed? Wherefore this impertinent and
+also fraudulent circumstantiality? It is, as Pope would tell you, for
+the sake of impressing with more vivacity the abject poverty to which
+the Duke's follies had brought him. The wretched bed, for instance,
+is meant to be the exponent of the empty purse which could purchase
+no better. And, for fear that you might miss this construction of the
+passage, Pope himself tells you, in a prose note, that the Duke 'died
+in a remote inn in Yorkshire, _reduced to the utmost misery_.' Being
+engaged in the business of dying, it could hardly be expected that the
+Duke should be particularly happy. But what Pope means you to understand
+by 'misery' is _poverty_; the prose note simply reiterates the words,
+'victor of _fortune_,' in the text. Now, had the truth been really so,
+what moral would such a story exemplify beyond the vulgar one of
+pecuniary improvidence? And yet surely this was not the cause of the
+Duke's being thrown from his horse. Meantime, Pope well knew that the
+whole was a ridiculous fable. The Duke had the misfortune to be fatally
+injured in a fox-chase. In such an extremity, naturally, his servants
+carry him into the house nearest at hand, which happens to be an
+alehouse--not 'the worst,' since there was no other; nor was it possible
+that, to a man of his distinction, once the lord-lieutenant of that
+very East Riding, any room would be offered worse than the very best
+that contained a bed. In these dreadful circumstances, it is not easy
+to measure the levity which can linger upon the description of such
+exquisite impertinences as the housewifely defects of the walls, the
+curtains, the flock-bed, &c. But Pope was at his wit's end for a
+striking falsehood. He needed for a momentary effect some tale of a
+great lord, once fabulously rich, who had not left himself the price
+of a halter or of a pauper's bed. And thus, for the sake of extorting
+a stare of wonderment from a mob of gaping readers, he did not scruple
+to give birth and currency to the grossest of legendary lies. The
+Duke's death happened a few months before Pope's birth. But the last
+of the Villiers family that wore a ducal coronet was far too memorable
+a person to have died under the cloud of obscurity which Pope's
+representation presumes. He was the most interesting person of the
+Alcibiades class [Footnote 9] that perhaps ever existed; and Pope's
+mendacious story found acceptance only amongst an after-generation
+unacquainted with the realities of the case. There was not so much as
+a popular rumor to countenance Pope. The story was a pure, gratuitous
+invention of his own. Even at the time of his death, the Duke of
+Buckingham was generally reputed to have sixty thousand per annum, and
+chiefly from land; an income at that period absolutely without precedent
+or parallel in Europe. In this there might be some exaggeration, as
+usually there _is_ in such cases. But the 'Fairfax Papers' have recently
+made it manifest that Pope's tale was the wildest of fictions. The
+Duke of Buckingham had, to some extent, suffered from his loyalty to
+the Crown, though apparently sheltered from the main fury of the storm
+by the interest of his Presbyterian father-in-law; and in his own
+person he had at one time been carelessly profuse. But all this was
+nothing. The sting of Pope's story requires him to have been a pauper;
+and yet--O heaven and incredulous earth!--a pauper hunting upon
+blood-horses, in a star and garter, and perhaps in a collar of SS! The
+plain, historical truth, meanwhile, survives, that this pauper was
+simply the richest man in Christendom; and that, except Aladdin (Oh,
+yes; always except Aladdin of the Arabian Nights!) there never had
+been a richer. And thus collapses the whole fable, like a soap-bubble
+punctured by a surgeon's probe.
+
+II. Yet even this specimen of Pope's propensity to falsehood is far
+from being the worst. Here were facts scandalously distorted. Falsehoods
+they were; but, if it had pleased God, they might have been truths.
+Next, however, comes a fiction so maniacally gross, so incoherent, and
+so rife with internal contradictions, as to involve its own exposure,
+literally shrinking from its own intelligible enunciation, burrowing
+in sentences kept aloof from the text, and calling upon foot-notes to
+cover it. The case will speak for itself. Pope had undertaken to
+translate the well-known epistle of Horace to Augustus Caesar; not
+literally, but upon the principle of adapting it to a modern and English
+treatment of its topics. Caesar, upon this system, becomes George the
+Second--a very strange sort of Caesar; and Pope is supposed to have
+been laughing at him, which may be the color that Pope gave to the
+travesty amongst his private circle; otherwise there is nothing in the
+expressions to sustain such a construction. Rome, with a little more
+propriety, masquerades as England, and France as Greece, or, more
+strictly, as Athens. Now, by such a transformation, already from the
+very beginning Pope was preparing for himself a dire necessity of
+falsehood. And he must have known it. Once launched upon such a course,
+he became pledged and committed to all the difficulties which it might
+impose. Desperate necessities would arise, from which nothing but
+desperate lying and hard swearing could extricate him. The impossibility
+of carrying through the parallel by means of _genuine_ correspondences
+threw him for his sole resource upon such as were extravagantly
+spurious; and apparently he had made up his mind to cut his way through
+the ice, though all the truths that ever were embattled against Baron
+Munchausen should oppose his advance. Accordingly about the middle of
+the Epistle, a dilemma occurs from which no escape or deliverance is
+possible, except by an almighty falsehood. Take the leap Pope must,
+or else he must turn back when half-way through. Horace had occasion
+to observe that, after Rome had made a conquest of Greece by force of
+arms, captive Greece retaliated upon her conqueror by another kind of
+victory, namely, by that of arts: [Footnote 10]--
+
+    'Graecia capta ferum ietorera cepit, et artes
+    Intulit agresti Latio.'
+
+Now, in the corresponding case (as Pope had arranged it) between England
+and France, the parallel certainly held good as far as the military
+conquest. England, it was undeniable, had conquered France in that
+sense, as completely as ever Rome had conquered Greece or Macedon. Two
+English kings had seated themselves in succession upon the throne of
+France--one virtually, one formally. So far all was tight, and held
+water. Nothing could disturb _that_ part of the case. But next came
+the retaliatory conquest, by means of arts and letters. How was this
+to be dealt with? What shadow or dream of a correspondency could be
+made out _there_? What impudence could face _that_? Already, in Pope's
+ears, sounded the trumpet of recall; and Pope mused a, little: but
+'No,' he said in effect, 'I will not turn back. Why should I? It is
+but one astounding falsehood that is wanted to set me free.' I will
+venture to say that Mendez Pinto, the Portuguese liar, that Sir John
+Mandeville, the traveller, that Baron Munchausen, the most philosophic
+of bold adventurers into the back settlements of lying, never soared
+into such an aerial bounce, never cleared such a rasper of a fence,
+as did Pope on this occasion. He boldly took it upon his honor and
+credit that our English armies, in the times of Agincourt and the
+Regent Bedford, found in France a real, full-grown French literature,
+packed it up in their baggage-wagons, and brought it home to England.
+The passage from Horace, part of which has been cited above, stands
+thus in the translation of Pope:--
+
+   'We conquered France, but felt our captive's charms--
+    Her arts victorious triumphed o'er our arms;
+    Britain to soft refinements less a foe,
+    Wit grew polite, and numbers learned to flow.'
+
+Ten years then, before Joan of Arc's execution, [Footnote 11] viz.,
+about 1420 (if we are to believe Pope), or even fifteen years, France
+had a great domestic literature; and this unknown literature has
+actually furnished a basis to our own. Let us understand clearly what
+it is that Pope means to assert. For it is no easy matter to do that
+where a man dodges behind texts and notes, and shuffles between verse
+and prose, mystifying the reader, and designing to do so. Under the
+torture of cross-examination let us force Pope to explain what
+literature _that_ is which, having glorified France, became the
+venerable mother of a fine English literature in an early stage of the
+fifteenth century? The reader, perhaps, fancies that possibly Pope may
+have expressed himself erroneously only from being a little hurried
+or a little confused. Not at all. I know my man better, perhaps, than
+the reader does; and I know that he is trying to hoax us. He is not
+confused himself, but is bent upon confusing _us_; and I am bent upon
+preventing him. And, therefore, again I ask sternly, What literature
+is this which very early in the fifteenth century, as early as
+Agincourt, we English found prospering in France, and which, for the
+benefit of the English intellect, such men as Ancient Pistol, Nym,
+Bardolph, Fluellen, Capt. Macmorris, Jamy, and other well-known literati
+in the army of Henry V., transplanted (or, 'as the wise it call,'
+_conveyed_) to England? Agincourt was fought in 1415; exactly four
+centuries before Waterloo. That was the beginning of our domination
+in France; and soon after the middle of that same fifteenth century,
+viz., about 1452, our domination was at an end. During that interval,
+therefore, it must have been, then, or not at all, that this great
+intellectual revolution worked by France upon England was begun and
+completed. Naturally, at this point, the most submissive and
+sycophantish of Pope's friends would feel moved by the devil of
+curiosity, if not absolutely by the devil of suspicion, humbly to ask
+for a name or two, just as a specimen, from this great host of
+Anglo-Gallic wits. Pope felt (and groaned as he felt) that so reasonable
+a demand could not be evaded. 'This comes of telling lies,' must have
+been his bitter reflection: 'one lie makes a necessity for another.'
+However, he reflected that this second lie need not be introduced into
+the text, where it would have the fatal effect of blowing up the whole
+bubble: it might be hidden away in a foot-note. Not one person in
+twenty would read it, and he that did might easily suppose the note
+to be some unauthorized impertinence of a foolish commentator. Secretly
+therefore, silently, stealthily--so as to draw as little attention
+as possible--Pope introduced into a note his wicked little brazen
+solution of his own wicked and brazen conundrum. France, such was the
+proposition, had worked a miracle upon English ground; as if with some
+magician's rod, she had called up spawn innumerable of authors, lyric,
+epic, dramatic, pastoral, each after his kind. But by whom had France
+moved in this creation as the chief demi-urgus? By whom, Mr. Pope?
+Name, name, Mr. Pope! 'Ay,' we must suppose the unhappy man to reply,
+'that's the very question which I was going to answer, if you wouldn't
+be so violent.' 'Well, answer it then. Take your own time, but answer;
+for we don't mean to be put off without some kind of answer.' 'Listen,
+then,' said Pope, 'and I'll whisper it into your ear; for it's a sort
+of secret.' Now think, reader, of a _secret_ upon a matter like this,
+which (if true at all) must be known to the antipodes. However, let
+us have the secret. 'The secret,' replied Pope, 'is, that some time
+in the reign of Charles the Second--when I won't be positive, but I'm
+sure it was after the Restoration--three gentlemen wrote an
+eighteen-penny pamphlet.' 'Good! And what were the gentlemen's names?'
+'One was Edmund Waller, the poet; one was Mr. Go-dolphin; and the other
+was Lord Dorset.' 'This trinity of wits, then, you say, Mr. Pope,
+produced a mountain, price eighteen-pence, and this mountain produced
+a mouse.' 'Oh, no! it was just the other way. They produced a mouse,
+price eighteen-pence, and this mouse produced a mountain, viz., the
+total English literature.' O day and night, but this is wondrous
+strange! The total English literature--not the tottle only, but the
+tottle of the whole, like an oak and the masts of some great amiral,
+that once slept in an acorn--absolutely lying hid in an eighteen-penny
+pamphlet! And what, now, might this pamphlet be about? Was it about
+the curing of bacon, or the sublimer art of sowing moonshine broadcast?
+It was, says Pope, if you _must_ know everything, a translation from
+the French. And judiciously chosen; for it was the _worst_ (and surely
+everybody must think it proper to keep back the _best_, until the
+English had earned a right to such luxuries by showing a proper sense
+of their value)--the _worst_ it was, and by very much the worst, of
+all Corneille's dramas; and its name was 'Pompey.' Pompey, was it? And
+so, then, from Pompey's loins we, the whole armies of English
+_litterateurs_, grubs and eagles, are lineally descended. So says Pope.
+So he _must_ say, In obedience to his own line of argument. And, this
+being the case, one would be glad to have a look at Pompey. It is hard
+upon us _literati_, that are the children of Pompey, not to have a
+look at the author of our existence. But our chance of such a look is
+small indeed. For Pompey, you are to understand, reader, never advanced
+so far as to a second edition. That was a poor return on the part of
+England for Pompey's services. And my too sceptical mind at one time
+inclined to doubt even Pompey's _first_ edition; which was wrong, and
+could have occurred only to a lover of paradoxes. For Warton (not Tom,
+but Joe) had actually seen Pompey, and records his opinion of him,
+which happened to be this: that Pompey was 'pitiful enough.' These are
+Joe's own words. Still, I do not see that one witness establishes a
+fact of this magnitude. A shade of doubt, therefore, continues to
+linger over Pompey's very existence; and the upshot is, that Pompey
+(not the great, but confessedly) the doubtful, eighteen-penny Pompey,
+but, in any case, Pompey, 'the Pitiful,' is the Great overriding and
+tutelary power, under whose inspiration and inaugurating impulse our
+English literature has blossomed and ripened, root, stem, and branch,
+through the life-struggles of five centuries, into its present colossal
+proportions.
+
+Here pause, reader, and look back upon the separate reticulations--so
+as, if possible, to connect them--in this network of hideous
+extravagance; where as elsewhere it happens, that one villany, hides
+another, and that the mere depth of the umbrage spread by fraudulent
+mystifications is the very cause which conceals the extent of those
+mystifications. Contemplated in a languid mood, or without original
+interest in the subject, that enormity of falsehood fails to strike,
+which, under circumstances personally interesting, would seem absolutely
+incredible. The outrage upon the intellect actually obscures and
+withdraws the outrage upon the facts. And, inversely, the affronts to
+historical accuracy obscure the affronts to good sense. Look steadily
+for a moment at the three points in the array of impeachments :--
+
+I. In the Red-rose invasion of France, Pope assumes, as a matter of
+notoriety, that the English invading force went from a land of
+semi-barbarism to a land of literature and refinement: the simple fact
+being so conspicuously the other way, that, whilst France had no
+literature at all, consequently _could_ have nothing to give (there
+being no book extensively diffused in the France of that period, except
+the 'De Imitatione Christi,') [Footnote 13] England, on the other hand,
+had so bright a jewel to offer, that to this hour the whole of
+Christendom has not matched it or approached it. Even at present, in
+the case so often supposed, that a man were _marooned_, that is,
+confined (as regarded his residence) to one desert island, and marooned
+also as to books, confined I mean (as regarded his reading) to one
+sole book, his choice (if he read English) would probably oscillate
+between Shakspeare and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Now, the Canterbury
+Tales had been finished about thirty-five years before Agincourt; so
+exquisitely false, even in this point, is Pope's account. Against the
+_nothing_ of beggarly France was even then to be set a work which _has_
+not been rivalled, and probably _will_ not be rivalled, on our planet.
+
+II. In this comparison of the France and England then existing,
+historically Pope betrays an ignorance which is humiliating. He speaks
+of France as if that name, of course, covered the same states and
+provinces that it now covers. But take away from the France of this
+day the parts then possessed by Burgundy--take away Alsace, and
+Lorraine, and Franche Compte--take away the alien territories adjacent
+to Spain and Navarre--take away Avignon, &c.--take away the extensive
+duchy of Britanny, &c.--and what remains of that which constituted the
+France of Pope's day? But even that which _did_ remain had no cohesion
+or unity as regarded any expanded sentiment of nationality, or the
+possibilities of a common literature. The moral anachronisms of Pope
+in this case are absolutely frightful--and the physical anachronisms
+of Pope also; for the simple want of roads, by intercepting all peaceful
+and pleasurable intercourse, must have intercepted all growth of
+nationality, unless when a rare community of selfish interest happened
+to arise, as when the whole was threatened with conquest or with famine
+through foreign aggression upon a part.
+
+III. That particular section of the French literature through which,
+Pope pretends to think (for think he does _not_) that France absolutely
+created our own, was the drama. Eighteen-penny Pompey belongs to this
+section. Now, most unhappily, these two broad facts are emblazoned
+beyond all power of impudence to darken them. The first is, that our
+English drama was closing,' or actually _had_ closed, just about the
+time when the French was opening. Shakspeare notoriously died in 1616,
+when Corneille [Footnote 14] was yet a child of ten, and the last of
+Shakspeare's great contemporary dramatists died, according to my
+remembrance, in 1636; and, in 1635, one year earlier, was first
+performed the first successful tragedy (the 'Medea') of Corneille.
+About seven or eight years after _that_, the Puritans officially
+suppressed the English drama by suppressing the theatres. At the opening
+of the Parliamentary war, the elder (that is, the immortal) English
+drama had finished its career. But Racine, the chief pillar of the
+French, did not begin until Cromwell was dead and gone, and Charles
+II. was restored. So, here we have the Asopian fable of the lamb
+troubling the waters for the wolf; or, in the Greek proverb, _ano
+potamon_. The other fact is, that, as no section whatever of the French
+literature has ever availed to influence, or in the slightest degree
+to modify, our own, it happens that the dramatic section in particular,
+which Pope insists on as the galvanizing force operating upon our
+seers, has been in the most signal repulsion to our own. All the other
+sections have been simply inert and neutral; but the drama has ever
+been in murderous antagonism to every principle and agency by which
+our own lives and moves. [Footnote 15] And to make this outrage upon
+truth and sense even more outrageous, Pope had not the excuse of those
+effeminate critics, sometimes found amongst ourselves, who recognise
+no special divinity in our own drama; _that_ would have been one great
+crime the more, but it would have been one inconsistency the less. For
+Pope had been amongst the earliest editors of Shakspeare; he had written
+a memorable preface to this edition. The edition, it is true, was
+shocking; and if the preface even was disfigured by concessions to a
+feeble system of dramatic criticism, rhetorically it was brilliant
+with the expression of a genuine enthusiasm as to Shakspeare, and a
+true sympathy with his colossal power.
+
+IV. Yet even this may not be the worst. Even below this deep perhaps
+there opens a lower deep. I submit that, when a man is asked for a
+specimen of the Agincourt French literature, he cannot safely produce
+a specimen from a literature two hundred and fifty years younger without
+some risk of facing a writ _de lunatico inquirendo_. Pompey the Pitiful
+(or, if the reader is vexed at hearing him so called, let us call him,
+with Lord Biron, in 'Love's Labor's Lost,' 'more than great, great
+Pompey--Pompey the Huge') was not published, even in France, until
+about two centuries and a quarter had elapsed from Agincourt. But, as
+respects England, eighteen-penny Pompey was not revealed; the fulness
+of time for his _avatar_ amongst us did not arrive until something
+like two hundred and sixty years had winged their flight from Agincourt.
+And yet Pope's doctrine had been that, in the conquest of France, we
+English first met with the Prometheus that introduced us to the
+knowledge of fire and intellectual arts. Is not this ghastly? Elsewhere,
+indeed, Pope skulks away from his own doctrine, and talks of
+'_correctness_' as the particular grace for which we were indebted to
+France. But this will not do. In his own 'Art of Criticism,' about
+verse 715, he describes 'us brave Britons' as incorrigibly rebellious
+in that particular. We _have_ no correctness, it seems, nor ever had;
+and therefore, except upon Sir Richard Blackmore's principle of stealing
+a suit of clothes 'from a naked Pict,' it is hard to see how we need
+to thank France for that which, as to us, has no existence. Then,
+again, Pope acquiesced at other times in an opinion of his early
+friends, that not Pompey, but himself, was the predestined patriarch
+of 'correctness.' Walsh, who was a sublime old blockhead, suggested
+to Pope that 'correctness' was the only tight-rope upon which a fresh
+literary performer in England could henceforth dance with any advantage
+of novelty; all other tight-ropes and slack-ropes of every description
+having been preoccupied by elder funambulists. Both Walsh and Pope
+forgot ever once to ask themselves what it was that they meant by
+'correctness;' an idea that, in its application to France, Akenside
+afterwards sternly ridiculed. Neither of the two _literati_ stopped
+to consider whether it was correctness in thought, or metrical
+correctness, or correctness in syntax and idiom; as to all of which,
+by comparison with other poets, Pope is conspicuously deficient. But
+no matter what they meant, or if they meant nothing at all. Unmeaning,
+or in any case inconsistent, as this talk about 'correctness' may be,
+we cannot allow Pope so to escape from his own hyperbolical absurdities.
+It was not by a little pruning or weeding that France, according to
+his original proposition, had bettered our native literature--it was
+by genial incubation, by acts of vital creation. She, upon our crab-tree
+cudgel of Agincourt, had engrafted her own peaches and apricots--our
+sterile thorn France had inoculated with roses. English literature was
+the Eve that, in the shape of a rib, had been abstracted from the side
+of the slumbering Pompey--of unconscious Pompey the Huge. And all at
+the small charge of eighteen-pence! O heavens, to think of _that!_ By
+any possibility, that the cost, the total 'damage' of our English
+literature should have been eighteen-pence!--that a shilling should
+actually be coming to us out of half-a-crown!
+
+  'Tantae molis erat Romanam condere gentem.'
+
+
+
+
+NOTES.
+
+
+NOTE 1.
+
+A similar instance of a craze beyond the bounds of perfect physical
+sanity may be found in Dr. Arnold's nervous paroxysm of horror on
+hearing St. Paul placed on a level with St. John the Evangelist.
+
+NOTE 2.
+
+And by the way, as to servants, a great man may offend in two ways:
+either by treating his servants himself superciliously, or secondly,
+which is quite reconcilable with the most paternal behavior on his own
+part, by suffering them to treat the public superciliously. Accordingly,
+all novelists who happen to have no acquaintance with the realities
+of life as it now exists, especially therefore rustic Scotch novelists,
+describe the servants of noblemen as 'insolent and pampered menials.'
+But, on the contrary, at no houses whatever are persons of doubtful
+appearance and anomalous costume, sure of more respectful attention
+than at those of the great feudal aristocracy. At a merchant's or a
+banker's house, it is odds but the porter or the footman will govern
+himself in his behavior by his own private construction of the case,
+which (as to foreigners) is pretty sure to be wrong. But in London,
+at a nobleman's door, the servants show, by the readiness of their
+civilities to all such questionable comers, that they have taken their
+lessons from a higher source than their own inexperience or unlearned
+fancies.
+
+NOTE 3.
+
+'_Cape of Storms_,' which should _primae facie_ be the Cape of Terrors.
+But it bears a deep allegoric sense to the bold wrestler with such
+terrors, that in English, and at length to all the world, this Cape
+of Terrors has transfigured itself into the Cape of _Good Hope_.
+
+NOTE 4.
+
+   '_Heraldic solemnities_'--
+    'Therefore are feasts so solemn and so rare;
+    Since seldom coming in the long year set,
+    Like precious stones they thinly placed are,
+    Or captain jewels in the carcanet.'
+     _Shakspeare, 52d Sonnet_.
+
+NOTE 5.
+
+'_I give and I bequeath, old Euclio said_'--and the ridiculous story
+of the dying epicure insisting upon having his luxurious dish brought
+back to his death-bed (for why not? since at any rate, eating or not
+eating, he was doomed to die) are amongst the lowest rubbish of
+jest-books--having done duty for the Christian and the Pagan worlds
+through a course of eighteen centuries. Not to linger upon the nursery
+silliness that could swallow the legend of epicureanism surviving up
+to the very brink of the grave, and when even the hypocrisy of _medical_
+hope had ceased to flatter, what a cruel memento of the infirmity
+charged upon himself was Pope preparing whilst he intended nothing
+worse than a falsehood! He meant only to tell a lie; naturally, perhaps,
+saying to himself, What's one lie more or less? And behold, if his
+friends are to be believed, he was unconsciously writing a sort of
+hieroglyphic epitaph for his own tomb-stone. Dr. Johnson's taste for
+petty gossip was so keen, that I distrust all his anecdotes. That Pope
+killed himself by potted lampreys, which he had dressed with his own
+hands, I greatly doubt; but if anything inclines me to believe it,
+chiefly it is the fury of his invectives against epicures and gluttons.
+What most of all he attacked as a moralist was the particular vice
+which most of all besieged him.
+
+NOTE 6.
+
+Upon this principle I doubt not that we should interpret the sayings
+attributed to the seven wise men of Greece. If we regard them as
+insulated aphorisms, they strike us all as mere impertinences; for by
+what right is some one prudential admonition separarately illuminated
+and left as a solemn legacy to all posterity in slight of others equally
+cogent? For instance, _Meden agan_--nothing in excess--is a maxim not
+to be neglected, but still not entitled to the exclusive homage which
+is implied in its present acceptation. The mistake, meantime, I believe
+to be, not in the Grecian pleiad of sages, but in ourselves, who have
+falsely apprehended them. The man, for instance (Bias was it, or who?),
+who left me this old saw about excess, did not mean to bias me in favor
+of that one moral caution; this would have argued a craze in favor of
+one element amongst many. What he meant was, to indicate the _radix_
+out of which his particular system was expanded. It was the key-note
+out of which, under the laws of thorough-bass, were generated the whole
+chord and its affinities. Whilst the whole evolution of the system was
+in lively remembrance, there needed no more than this short-hand memento
+for recalling it. But now, when the lapse of time has left the little
+maxim stranded on a shore of wrecks, naturally it happens that what
+was in old days the keystone of an arch has come to be compounded with
+its superfluous rubbish.
+
+NOTE 7.
+
+It is no matter of wonder or complaint that a paper written by a
+correspondent a distance of four hundred miles, or something more,
+from the press, requiring, therefore, a _diaulos_ of above eight hundred
+miles for every letter and its answer, a distance which becomes strictly
+infinite in the case when the correspondent sends no answer at all,
+should exhibit some press errors. These, having now done their worst,
+I will not vex the reader or the compositor by recalling. Only with
+respect to one, viz., the word _genuine_, which is twice printed for
+the true word _generic_, I make an exception, as it defeats the meaning
+in a way that may have perplexed a painstaking reader. Such readers
+are rare, and deserve encouragement. [The same _diaulos_ which Mr. De
+Quincey laments is also the cause of his present paper appearing
+incomplete. It will be resumed in the next number.--Ed.]
+
+NOTE 8.
+
+'_The two brilliant poets._' As regards Horace, it is scarcely worth
+while to direct the reader's attention upon inconsistency of this
+imaginary defiance to philosophic authority with his profession
+elsewhere of allegiance to Epicurus; for had it even been possible to
+direct the poet's own attention upon it, the same spirit of frank
+simplicity which has converted his very cowardice, his unmitigated
+cowardice (_relicta non bene parmula_), into one of those amiable and
+winning frailties which, once having come to know it, on no account
+could we consent to forego--would have reconciled us all by some
+inimitable picturesqueness of candor to inconsistency the most shocking
+as to the fulfilment of some great moral obligation; just as from the
+brute restiveness of a word (Equotuticum), that positively would not
+come into the harness of hexameter verse, he has extracted a gay,
+laughing _alias_ (viz., '_versu quod dicere non est_'); a pleasantry
+which is nowhere so well paralleled as by Southey's on the name of
+Admiral Tchichakoff:--
+
+    'A name which you all must know very well,
+    Which nobody can speak, and nobody can spell.'
+
+Vain would it be to fasten any blame upon a poet armed with such
+heaven-born playfulness that upon a verbal defect he raises a triumph
+of art, and upon a personal defect raises a perpetual memento of smiling
+and affectionate forgiveness. We 'condone' his cowardice, to use
+language of Doctors' Commons, many times over, before we know whether
+he would have cared for our condonation; and protest our unanimous
+belief, that, if he did run away from battle, he ran no faster than
+a gentleman ought to run. In fact, his character would have wanted its
+amiable unity had he _not_ been a coward, or had he _not_ been a rake.
+Vain were it to level reproaches at _him_, for whom all reproaches
+become only occasions of further and surplus honor. But, in fact, for
+any serious purposes of Horace, philosophy was not wanted. Some slight
+pretence of that kind served to throw a shade of pensiveness over his
+convivial revels, and thus to rescue them from the taint of plebeian
+grossness. So far, and no farther, a slight coloring of philosophy was
+needed for his moral musings. But Pope's case is different. The moral
+breathings of Horace are natural exhalations rising spontaneously from
+the heart under the ordinary gleams of chance and change in the human
+things that lay around him. But Pope is more ambitious. He is not
+content with _borrowing_ from philosophy the grace of a passing sanction
+or countersign, but undertakes to _lend_ her a systematic coherency
+of development, and sometimes even a fundamental basis. In his
+'Essay on Man,' his morals connect themselves with metaphysics. The
+metaphysics had been gathered together in his chance eclectic rambles
+amongst books of philosophy, such as Montaigne, Charron, and latterly
+amongst the fossil rubbish and _debris_ of Bayle's Dictionary. Much
+also had been suggested to his piercing intellect in conversation,
+especially with Lord Bolingbroke; but not so exclusively by any means
+with _him_ as the calumniators of Pope would have us suppose. Adopt
+he did from all quarters, but Pope was not the man servilely to beg
+or to steal. It was indispensable to his own comfort that he should
+at least understand the meaning of what he took from others, though
+seldom indeed he understood its wider relations, or pursued its ultimate
+consequences. Hence came anguish and horror upon Pope in his latter
+days, such as rarely can have visited any but the deathbed of some
+memorable criminal. To have rejected the _verba magistri_ might seem
+well, it might look promising, as all _real_ freedom is promising, for
+the interests of truth; but he forgot that, in rejecting the master,
+he had also rejected the doctrine--the guiding principle--the unity
+of direction secured for the inquirer by the master's particular system
+with its deep internal cohesion. Coming upon his own distracted choice
+of principles from opposite angles and lines of direction, he found
+that what once and under one aspect had seemed to him a guiding light,
+and one of the buoys for narrowing the uncertainties of a difficult
+navigation, absolutely under another aspect, differently approached
+and differently associated, did the treacherous office of a _spanselled_
+horse, as in past days upon the Cornish and the South Irish coast it
+was employed--expressly for showing false signals, and leading right
+amongst breakers. That _hortus siccus_ of pet notions, which had won
+Pope's fancy in their insulated and separate existence, when brought
+together as parts and elements of the same system in the elaborate and
+haughty 'Essay on Man,' absolutely refused to cohere. No doctoring,
+no darning, could disguise their essential inter-repulsion. Dismal
+rents, chasms, hiatuses, gaped and grinned in a theory whose very
+office and arrogant pretension had been to harmonize the dislocated
+face of nature, and to do _that_ in the way of justification for God
+which God had forgotten to do for himself. How if an enemy should come,
+and fill up these ugly chasms with some poisonous fungus of a nature
+to spread the dry rot through the main timbers of the vessel? And, in
+fact, such an enemy _did_ come. This enemy spread dismay through Pope's
+heart. Pope found himself suddenly shown up as an anti-social monster,
+as an incendiary, as a disorganizer of man's most aspiring hopes. 'O
+Heavens! What is to be done? what _can_ be done?' he cried out. 'When
+I wrote that passage, which now seems so wicked, certainly I meant
+something very good; or, if I didn't, at any rate I meant to mean it.'
+The case was singular; if no friend of the author's could offer a
+decent account of its meaning, to a certainty the author could _not_.
+Luckily, however, there are two ways of filling up chasms; and
+Warburton, who had reasons best known to himself for cultivating Pope's
+favor, besides considerable practice during his youth in a special
+pleader's office, took the desperate case in hand. He caulked the
+chasms with philosophic oakum, he 'payed' them with dialectic pitch,
+he sheathed them with copper and brass by means of audacious dogmatism
+and insolent quibbles, until the enemy seemed to have been silenced,
+and the vessel righted so far as to float. The result, however, as a
+permanent result, was this--that the demurs which had once been raised
+(however feebly pressed) against the poem, considered in the light of
+a system compatible with religion, settled upon it permanently as a
+sullen cloud of suspicion that a century has not availed to dissipate.
+
+NOTE 9.
+
+'_The most interesting person of the Alcibiades class._' But it is
+thoroughly characteristic of Pope, that the one solitary trait in the
+Duke's career which interested _him_, was the fact that a man so
+familiar with voluptuous splendor should have died on a flock-bed
+patched with straw. How advantageously does Dryden come forward on
+this occasion! _He_, as Mr. Bayes, had some bitter wrongs to avenge;
+and he was left at liberty to execute this revenge after his own heart,
+for he survived the Duke by a dozen years. Yet he took no revenge at
+all. _He_, with natural goodness and magnanimity, declined to kick the
+dead lion. And in the memorable lines, all alive and trembling with
+impassioned insight into the demoniac versatility of the Duke's
+character, how generously does he forbear every expression of scorn,
+and cover the man's frailties with a mantle of comprehensive apology,
+and, in fact, the true apology, by gathering them together, one and
+all, as the united results of some secret nympholepsy, or some sacred
+Pythian inspiration:--
+
+    'Blest madman! that could every hour employ
+    In something new to wish or to enjoy;
+
+    Now all for rhyming, wenching, fiddling, drinking;
+    Beside ten thousand freaks that died in thinking'
+
+Strangely enough, the only Duke of Buckingham that interested Pope was
+not the Villiers that so profoundly interested Dryden and his own
+generation, but in every sense a mock Duke of Buckingham, a pantomimic
+duke, that is known only for having built a palace as fine as gilt
+gingerbread, and for having built a pauper poem. Some time after the
+death of the Villiers duke, and the consequent extinction of the title,
+Sheffield, Lord Mulgrave, obtained a patent creating him, not Duke of
+Buckingham, but by a pawnbroker's dodge, devised between himself and
+his attorney, Duke of Buckingham_shire_; the ostensible reason for
+which, as alleged by himself, was, that he apprehended some lurking
+claim to the old title that might come forward to his own confusion
+at a future time, and in that case he was ready with this demur: 'You
+mistake, I am not _ham_, but ham_shire_.' Such was _his_ account of
+the matter. Mine is different: I tell the reason thus. He had known
+the Villiers of old, he knew well how that lubricated gladiator had
+defied all the powers of Chancery and the Privy Council, for months
+after months, once to get a 'grip' of him, or a hawk over him. It was
+the old familiar case of trying to catch a pig (but in this instance
+a wild boar of the forest) whose tail has been soaped. (See _Lord
+Clarendon_, not his History but his Life.) What the Birmingham duke
+therefore really feared was, that the worst room, the tawdry curtains,
+the flock-bed, &c., were all a pyramid of lies; that the Villiers had
+_not_ been thrown; had probably _not_ died at all; but was only 'trying
+it on,' in readiness for a great demonstration against himself; and
+that, in case the title of Buckingham were ever finally given away,
+the Villiers would be heard clattering on horseback up the grand
+staircase of the new-built Buckingham House, like the marble statue
+in 'Don Juan,' with a double commission against the false duke and the
+Government as joint-traders in stolen goods. But if Pope were callous
+to the splendor of the true Buckingham, what was it that drew him to
+the false one? Pope must have been well aware that, amongst all the
+poetic triflers of the day, there was not one more ripe for the
+'Dunciad.' Like the jaws of the hungry grave (_Acherontis avari_), the
+'Dunciad' yawned for him, whilst yet only in dim conception as a remote
+possibility. He was, besides, the most vain-glorious of men; and, being
+anxious above all things to connect himself with the blood royal, he
+had conceived the presumptuous thought of wooing Queen Anne (then the
+unmarried Princess Anne). Being rejected, of course, rather than have
+no connection at all with royalty, he transferred his courtship to a
+young lady born on the wrong side of the blanket, namely, the daughter
+of James II. by Miss Sedley. Her he married, and they reigned together
+in great pomp over Buckingham House. But how should this have attracted
+Pope? The fact, I fear is, that Pope admired him, in spite of his
+verses, as a man rich and prosperous. One morning, in some of his own
+verses, he lodged a compliment to the Duke as a poet and a critic:
+immediately the Duke was down upon him with an answering salute of
+twenty-one guns, and ever afterwards they were friends. But I repeat
+that, in Pope's own judgment, nine out of ten who found their way into
+that great _menagerie_ of the 'Dunciad,' had not by half so well
+established their right of entrance as the Duke.
+
+NOTE 10.
+
+Even this is open to demur. The Roman literature during the main Punic
+War with Hannibal, though unavoidably reached by some slight influence
+from the literature of Greece, was rich in native power and raciness.
+Left to itself, and less disturbed by direct imitation applied to
+foreign models, the Roman literature would probably have taken a wider
+compass, and fulfilled a nobler destiny.
+
+NOTE 11.
+
+'_Joan of Arc's execution_'--viz., not by any English, but virtually
+by a French tribunal, as _now_, at last, is satisfactorily established
+by the recent publication, at Paris, of the judicial process itself
+in its full official records.
+
+NOTE 12.
+
+The notes are _now_ (_i. e._, in all modern editions) assigned to their
+separate authors; though not always in a way to prevent doubts. For
+instance, Roscoe's notes, except that they are always distinguished
+by kindness and good sense, are indicated only by the _absence_ of any
+distinguishing signature. But in the early editions great carelessness
+prevailed as to this point, and, sometimes, intentional dissimulation.
+
+NOTE 13.
+
+Which was probably not of French origin. Thomas-a-Kempis, Gerson, and
+others, have had the credit of it; but the point is still doubtful.
+When I say that it was _extensively_ diffused, naturally I mean so far
+as it was possible before the invention of printing. One generation
+after Agincourt this invention was beginning to move, after which--that
+is, in two generations--the multiplication of copies, and even of
+separate editions and separate translations, ran beyond all power of
+registration. It is one amongst the wonders of the world; and the
+reason I have formerly explained. Froissart belongs to the courts of
+England and of Burgundy much more than to that of France.
+
+NOTE 14.
+
+Hardi, it is scarcely necessary to mention; as he never became a _power_
+even in France, and _out_ of France was quite unknown. He coincided
+in point of time, I believe, most nearly with Francis Beaumont.
+
+NOTE 15.
+
+Italian, Spanish, and finally German poetry have in succession exercised
+some slight influence, more or less, over our English poetry. But I
+have formerly endeavored to show that it is something worse than a
+mere historical blunder, that, in fact, it involves a gross
+misconception and a confusion in the understanding, to suppose that
+there ever has been what has been called a _French school_ in our
+literature, unless it is supposed that the unimpassioned understanding,
+or the understanding speaking' in a minor key of passion, is a French
+invention.
+
+
+
+
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