Chapter I: HAVE got past worrying about things, myself. I see all these (2)

MY DEAR FRIEND,--I wonder if you can understand how happy I am in my nook,--you who have so much of another sort of happiness, but not this, (no nook for you!) with my winter's task done, "with none to hurt nor destroy," that is, my time, "in all the holy [284] mountain," that is, the Taghkonic. Dear old Taghkonic,--quiet, happy valley,--blessed, undisturbed fireside,-what contrast could be greater than New York to all this! "Ahem! not so fast, my friend," say you; "other places are blessed and happy besides valleys and mountains." Yes, I know. And I confess my late experience inclines me to think that, for the mind's health and sharpening, cities are desirable places to be in, for a part of the year, notwithstanding all the notwithstandings. Of course, strong and collected thought works free and clear everywhere, or tends that way; but it did seem to me that the whirl of the great maelstrom left but few people in a condition to think, or to form well-considered opinions, or to meditate much upon anything. Yes, I know it,--"The mind is its own place," (nothing was ever better said), and it may be fretted and frittered away to nothing in country quiet, and it may be strong and calm and full in the city throng. . . . And more and more do I feel that this nature of mine is the deep ground-warrant for faith in God and immortality. Everywhere in the creation there is a proportion between means and ends,--between all natures and their destinies. And can it be that my soul, which, in its few days' unfolding, is already stretching ()LA its hands to God and to eternity, and which has all its being and welfare wrapped up in those sublime verities, is made to strive and sigh for them in vain, to stretch out its hands to--nothing? This day rises upon us fair and beautiful,--the precursor, [285] I believe, of endless days. If not, I would say with Job, "Let it be darkness; let not God regard it from above, neither let the light shine upon it; for darkness and the shadow of death stain it." But what a different staining was upon it this morning! As I looked out upon the mountain just before sunrise, it showed like a mountain-rose blossoming up out of the earth,--covered all over with the deepest rose-color. . . .

Ever your friend,

ORVILLE DEWEY.

To the Same.

SHEFFIELD, March 12, 1866.

MY DEAR FRIEND,--I should like to know whether you propose, from your own pen, to provide me with all my reading. Look which way I will,--towards the "Inquirer," the "Monthly," or the "Examiner,"--and H. W. B. is coming at me with an article, and sometimes with both hands full. You must write like a horse in full gallop. And yet you don't seem to. Those articles in the "Examiner," and the letter in the "Inquirer," seem to be thoroughly well considered; the breadth of view in them, the penetration, the candor and fairness, the sound judgment, please me exceedingly. Only one thing I questioned; and that is, putting the plea for universal suffrage on the ground that it is education for the people. One might ask if it were well to put a ship in the hands of the crew because it would be a good school for them. And looking at our popular elections, one, may doubt whether they are a good school. I should be inclined to say that if the people could consent that only property holders who could read [286] and write should vote, it would be better. But they will not consent; we are on the popular tide, and suffrage must be universal, and the freedmen eventually must and will have the franchise.

But with the general strain of your writing I agree entirely. What you say of the exceptional character of the Southern treason is true, and it has not been so distinctly nor so well said before. I had thought the same myself, and, of course, you must be right! Yet we must take care lest the concession go too far. Treason must forever be branded as the greatest of crimes. It aims not to murder a man, but a people. And as to opinion and conscience, I suppose all traitors have an opinion and a conscience.

I have read this time the whole of the "Examiner," which I seldom do. It is all very good and satisfactory. Osgood's article on Robertson is excellent; it appreciates him and his time. One laments that his mind had so hard a lot; but every real man must, in one way or another, fight a great battle. . . . Especially I feel indebted to Abbot's article. Truly he 'says, that the great question of the coming days is,--theism, or atheism? Not whether Jesus is our Master, the chief among men, but whether the God in whom Jesus believed really exists; and, by consequence, whether the immortality which lay open to his vision is but a dream of weary and burdened humanity? Herbert Spencer believes in no such God and Father, and his religion, which he vaunts so much, is but a hard and cold abstraction. On other subjects he is a great writer; and in his volume of essays there is not one which is not marked with strong and original thought. It is a prodigious intellect, certainly, and struggling hard with the greatest questions. [287] May it find its way out to light! Thus far its light is, to my thinking, the profoundest darkness. With our house's love to your house,

Yours ever,

ORVILLE DEWEY.

To Miss Catherine M. Sedgwick.

SHEFFIELD, March 28, 1866.

MY DEAR FRIEND,--To-day I am seventy-two years old. If I write to any one to-day, it must be to some one whose friendship is nearly as old as myself. Looking about me, I find no such one but you. Fifty years I have known you. Fifty years ago, and more, I saw you in your father's house; and charming as you were to my sight then, you have never--youth's loveliness set at defiance--been less so since. Forty years I think I have known you well. Thirty years we have been friends; and that word needs no epithet nor superlative to make it precious. This morning I called my wife to come and sit down by me, saying, "I will read you an old man's Idyl." And I read that in the March number of the "Atlantic." I believe Holmes wrote it; but whoever did, it is beautiful, and more than that it was to us--for it was true.

The greatest disappointment that I meet in old age is that I am not so good as I expected to be, nor so wise. I am ashamed to say that I was never so dissatisfied with myself as I am now. It seems as if it could not be a right state of things. My ideal of old age has been something very different. And yet seventy years is still within the infancy of the immortal life and progress. Why should it not say with the Apostle, "Not as though [288] I had attained, neither were already perfect." I can say with him, in some respects, "I have fought a good fight." I have fought through early false impressions of religion. I have fought through many life problems. I have fought, in these later years, through Mansel and Herbert Spencer, as hard a battle as I have ever had. But I have come, through all, to the most rooted conviction of the Infinite Rectitude and Goodness. Nothing, I think, can ever shake me from this,-that all is well, and shall be forever, whatever becomes of me. . . . Ever your friend,

ORVILLE DEWEY.

To Mrs. David Lane.

SHEFFIELD, July 9, 1866.

DEAR FRIEND,--I am etonne, as the French have it; at least Moliere and Corneille--whom I have been reading by and large of late, having read all the new things I could get hold of-are continually having their personages etonned. Or, I feel like Dominie Sampson, and say, "Pro-di-gi-ous!" Not as he said it to Meg Merrilies, but rather to Miss Julia Mannering, when he was confounded with her vivacity. What! two letters to my one! I do believe you are going to be literary.

And then,--was ever seen such an ambitious woman! Reading Mill, and going to read Herbert Spencer! And I suppose Kant will come next. But bravo! I say. I am very much pleased with you. And don't say, "I wish,--but what 's the use!" You are through with the great absorbing mother's cares, and can undertake studies, and I believe there is no study so worthy of our attention as our literature. I confess that I have come [289] to a somewhat new thought of this matter of late. What is there on the earth upon which we stand,--what is there that offers to help us, to lift and build us up, that can compare with the productions of the greatest minds which are gathered up in our literature? Whether we would study human nature or the Nature Divine,-whether we would study religion, science, nature in the world around us, in the life within us,--these are the lights that shine upon our path. For those who have time to read, it seems a deplorable mistake not to turn their thoughts distinctly to what the greatest minds have said; that is, upon as many subjects as they can compass.

If I were to undertake anything in the way of education, I would set up in New York an Institute of English Literature. I do not know but--might do something of the kind,--have a house and receive classes that should come once or twice in a week and read in the mean time under her direction, and teach them by reading to them, by commenting, talking, pointing out and opening up to them the best things in the best authors, the poets, the essayists, the historians, the fiction-writers, and thus making them acquainted with the finest productions of the English mind; and, what is better, inspiring them with an enthusiasm and taste for pursuing, for reading such things, instead of sensation novels and such stuff.

Moliere and Corneille have struck me much on this reading,--the first with the tenuity of his thought, the slender thread on which he weaves his entertaining and life-like drama, making it to live through the ages simply by sticking to nature, making his personages speak so naturally; and the second, with the real dramatic [290] grandeur of his genius. I feel that I have never done justice to Corneille before, I have been so dissatisfied with the formal rhyme, the want of the natural dramatic play of language in his work, the stilted rhetoric. And when I heard Rachel in the Cid, I thought, by the rapid, undramatic way in which she hurried through his declamations, while, in a few exclamatory bursts, she swept everything before her, that she justified my criticism. But this was the misfortune of Corneille; he walked in shackles imposed by the taste of his time. Yet it was a lofty stride. I am particularly struck with his grand moral ideals. I wish I had a good life of him. He must have been a good man. Like Beethoven and Michael Angelo, he does not seem to have liked flattery, court, or ceremony. But I guess that is the case with most men of the higher genius. . . .

As ever,

ORVILLE DEWEY.

To Miss Catherine M. Sea'gwitk.

SHEFFIELD, Aug. 27, 1866.

MY DEAR FRIEND,--It is some time since I have written to you, and I am almost afraid you are glad of it, not having to answer. You must acknowledge, however, that I have always offered you the easiest terms of exchange; two for one, three, four, anything you liked. . . . I have been lately with Mr. Bryant, in his great affliction, staying with my sisters, who occupy one of his cottages, but spending all the time I could with him. It was very sad,--talking upon many things as we did, and much upon those things that were pressing upon his mind, for he felt that he was losing his chief earthly [291] treasure. His wife was that to him, by her simplicity, her simple truthfulness, her perfect sincerity and heart-earnestness, latterly of a very religious character, and by her good judgment also; he told me that he always consulted her upon everything he published, and found that her opinion was always confirmed by that of the public, that is, as to the relative merit of his writings. He was bound to her the more, because his ties of close affection with others are so very few. Sometimes he could not repress his tears in our talking; and they told me that in the morning, when he went to her bedside, he often sat weeping, saying, "You have been suffering all night, and I have been sleeping." In the last days she longed to depart, and often said to him, "You must let me go; I want to go" And so she went, peacefully to her rest.

We have had a very pleasant visit from Mr. R. . . . His visits are always a great pleasure to us, both for the talk we have, and the music. It is really a great thing to know anything as he knows music. As I listened to him last evening, I could not help feeling that I knew nothing as he knows that, and thinking that if there are infant schools in the next world, I should certainly be put into one of them.

I hope the weather will allow you to sit often on the piazza in the coming month. It is what we have not been able to do in the present month at all,--by a fire, rather, in the parlor, half the time.

. . . With our affectionate remembrances to those around you, hold me to be, as ever,

Yours, ORVILLE DEWEY.

[292] To his Daughter Mary.

ST. DAVID'S, Oct. 28, 1866.

DEAREST MOLLY,--I have the pleasure to be seated at my desk to write to you, in my new gown and slippers, and with my new sermon, finished, before me. A "combination and a form," indeed, but I say no more. "But how is the sermon?" you 'll say. Why, as inimitable as the writer. But really, I think it is worth something. I did think, indeed, when I took my pen, that I could write a stronger argument for immortality than I ever saw, that is, in any one sermon or thesis. And if I have failed entirely, and shall come to think so, as is very likely, it will be no worse, doubtless, than my presumption deserved. You and K., who are satisfied with your spiritual instincts, would think it no better, probably, than a belt of sand to bolster up a mountain. Well, every one must help himself as he can. This meditation certainly has strengthened my own faith in the immortal life.

I should like to go to church with you this morning, where you are probably going; but the places are very few where I should want to go. More and more do all public services dissatisfy me,--all devout utterances, my own included. Communion with the Highest, with the Unseen and Unspeakable, seems to me to consist of breathings, not words, and requires a freedom of all thoughts and feelings,--of awe and wonder, of adoration and thanksgiving, of meditations and of stirrings of the deeps within us, such as can with difficulty be brought into a regular prayer.

[293] To the Same.

Nov. 21, 1866.

THE last "Register" has a sermon in it of Abbot's upon the Syracuse Conference, which I thought so excellent, that I told the editor it was itself worth a quarter's payment. Your mother admires it, too. Though she has no sympathy, as you well know, with Abbot's Left-Wing views, her righteous nature warmly takes part with his argument. The fact is, the Conference is wrong. If it expects the young men to act with it, it should adopt a platform on which they can conscientiously and comfortably stand. The conduct of the majority, in my opinion, is inconsistent and ungenerous. Either take ground upon which all can stand,--and I think there is such ground,--or else say to the ultra-liberals, "We cannot consent that any part of our common means shall be used for the spread of your views, influence, and preaching, and we must part."

To Rev. Henry W. Bellows, D.D.

ST. DAVID'S, March 20, 1867.

COME up here, my anxious friend, and I'll read my Concio to you; for it is written, as I preferred to do, before the warm and cold, wet and dry meslin of April weather comes, which always breaks me up in my studies. I will read it to you, and I rather think you will like it. . . . But do not make yourself uneasy. There will be nothing in the address of what you call "a defection to the radical side," simply because, in opinion, I cannot take that ground. I do not and cannot give up the miraculous element in Christianity. But I [294] embrace our whole denomination in my sympathies and do not think our differences so important as you do. That religion has its roots in our nature, if that is radicalism, I strongly hold and always have. And in its development and culture I have never given that exclusive place to Christianity that many do. I confess that I always disliked and resisted the utterances of the extreme conservatives on this point, more than those of their opponents. So you see that M. was mainly right. And certainly I think the minority in the Conference has had hard measure from the majority; and I liked Abbot's sermon as much as you heard I did.

Yours ever,

ORVILLE DEWEY.

To Mrs. David Lane.

ST. DAVID'S, April 14, 1867.

DEAR FRIEND,--Why should I write to you about the things you speak of in your letter which crossed mine? How vain to attempt to discuss such matters on note-paper!

But, without discussing, I will tell you, in few words, what I think.

The vitality of the Christian religion lies deeper than the miraculous element in it. The miraculous is but an attestation to that. That is authority to me. The authority of God is more clearly and unquestionably revealed to me, than in anything else, in the inborn spiritual convictions of my nature, without which, indeed, I could not understand Christianity, nor anything else religious. These convictions accord with the deepest truths of Christianity, else I could not receive it. Jesus has strengthened, elevated, and purified these natural [295] convictions in such a way,--by such teachings, by such a life, by such an unparalleled beauty of character,-that I believe God has breathed a grace into his soul that he never-has [given] in the same measure and perfection to any other. Effects must have causes, and such an effect seems to me fairly to indicate such a cause.

But there are those who cannot take this view; who look upon the gospel as simply the best exposition of national religion ever given, without any other breath of inspiration upon the record than such as was breathed upon the pages of Plato or Epictetus. Now, if they went further, and disowned the very spirit of Jesus, rejected the very essence of the gospel, certainly they would not be Christians. But this they do not; on the contrary, they reverently and heartily accept it, and seek to frame their lives upon this model. Am I to hold such persons as outcasts from the Christian fold, to refuse them my sympathy, to accord them only my "pity "? Certainly, I can take no such ground.

The peculiarities of certain individuals--the "cold abstractions" of one, and the rash utterances of another--have nothing essentially to do with the case; nor has the hurt they may be thought to do to our Unitarian cause anything to do with the essential truth of things. Nor do I know that extreme Radicalism does us any more harm than extreme Conservatism. I belong to neither extreme; and my business is, without regard to public cause or private reputation, to keep, as far as I can, my own mind right.

The fact is, you are so conservative on every subject,--society, politics, medicine, religion,--that it is very difficult for you to do justice to the radical side. But consider that such men as Martineau, Bartol, Stebbins, [296] Ames, and Abbot are mainly on that side, and that it will not do to cast about scornful or pitying words concerning such. As to __ I give him up to you, for I don't like his writing any better than you do.

I think the great Exposition which you are soon to see may give you a liberalizing hint. There, the industry of all nations will be exhibited. All are bent, honestly and earnestly, upon one point,--the development of the human energies in that direction. And it will infer nothing against their good character, or their titles to sympathy and respect, that they differ more or less with regard to the modes and means of arriving at the end.

Well, you will go before I come to New York. God bless and keep you, and bring you safely back!

Ever your friend,

ORVILLE DEWEY.

There are some passages in an unpublished sermon, preached by my father at Church Green, in 1858, which I will quote presently, as illustrative of the same tone of thought shown in these letters. His clinging to the miraculous element in the life of Jesus, while refusing to base any positive authority upon it, is equally characteristic of him, arising from the caution, at once reverent and intellectual, which made him extremely slow to remove any belief, consecrated by time and affection, till it was proved false and dangerous, and from his thorough conviction that every man stands or falls by so much of the Infinite Light and Love as he is able to receive directly into his being. He was conservative by [297] feeling, and radical by thought, and the two wrought in him a grand charity of judgment, far above what is ordinarily called toleration.

These are the extracts referred to:

"Society as truly as nature, nay, as truly as the holy church, is a grand organism for human culture. I say emphatically,--as truly as the holy church; for we are prone to take a narrow view of man's spiritual growth, and to imagine that there is nothing to help it, out of the pale of Christianity. We make a sectarism of our Christian system, even as the Jews did of the Hebrew, though ours was designed to break down all such narrow bounds; so that I should not wonder if some one said to me,--Are you preaching the Christian religion when you thus speak of nature and society?' And I answer, 'No; I am speaking of a religion elder than the Christian.' . . .

"There was a righteousness, then, before and beside the Christian. Am I to be told that Socrates and Plato, and Marcus Antoninus and Boethius, had no right culture, no religion, no rectitude? and they were cast upon the bosom of nature and of society for their instruction, and of that light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.'"

To his Daughter Mary.

ST. DAVID'S, Sept. 20, 1867.

. . . THINK of my having read the whole of Voltaire's "Henriade" last week! But think especially of eminent French critics, and Marmontel among them (in the preface), praising it to the stars, saying that some of the [298] passages are superior to Homer and Virgil! However, it is really better than I expected, and I read on, partly from curiosity and partly for the history. The French would have been very glad to find it an epic worthy of the name, for they have n't one. Voltaire frankly confesses that the French have not a genius for great poetry,--too much in love, he says, with exactness and elegance.

I have--read--through--"Very Hard Cash;" and very hard it is to read. Reade has some pretty remarkable powers,--powers of description and of characterization; but the moment he touches the social relations, and should be dramatic, he is struck with total incapacity. Indeed, what one novelist has been perfect in dialogue, making each person say just what he should and nothing else, but glorious Sir Walter?

To the Same.

SHEFFIELD, Sept. 20, 1867.

DEAR MARY,--"Live and learn." Next time, if it ever come, I shall put up peaches in a little box by themselves. But the fact is, peaches can't travel, unless they are plucked so early as nearly to spoil them of all their "deliciarunz,"--which we are enjoying in those we eat here. And Bryant with us,--fruity fellow that he is!--I am glad we have some good fruit to give him. Yesterday we had a very good cantelope, and pears are on hand all the while. I am sorry that I could not get the pears to you just in eating condition, and the Hurlbut apples too; but they'll all come right.

Yes, fruity,--that 's what Bryant is; but rather of the quality of dried fruits,--not juicy, still less gushing, but [299] with a good deal of concentrated essence in him (rather "frosty, but kindly "), exuding often in little bits of poetical quotations, fitly brought in from everywhere, and of which there seems to be no end in his memory.

The woods are beginning to show lovely bits of color, but the great burden of leaves remains untouched. Bryant and I walked out to the Pine Grove, and on to Sugar-Maple Hill. Your mother admires him for his much walking; but I insist that he is possessed and driven about by a demon. . . . By the bye, just keep that "article" for me; I have no other copy. Bryant commended it, and said he thought the argument against the Incomprehensible's being totally unintelligible, was new.

To his Daughter, Mrs. C.

ST. DAVID'S, July 22, 1868.

DEAR KATE,--I am going to have no more to do with the weather. You need n't expostulate with me. It 's no use talking. My mind is made up. You may tell M. so. It will be hardest for her to believe it. She has partaken with me in that infirmity of noble minds,--a desire to look through the haze of this mundane atmospheric environment, and predict the future. But, alas I there is an infirmity of vision; we see through a glass darkly. We can't see through a millstone. The firmament has been very like that, for some days,--all compact with clouds. We thought something was grinding for us. "Now it is coming!" we said last evening. But no. It was no go,--or no come, rather. And this morning, at the breakfast table, sitting up [300] there, clothed, and in my right mind, I said to my sister, "I am not a-going to predict about the weather any more!"

Ask my dear M., pray her, to try to come up to the height of that great resolution. I know the difficulty,-the strain to which it will put all her faculties; but ask her, implore her, to try.

To his Daughters, then living in London Terrace, New York.

1868.

ST. DAVID'S sends a challenge to all the Terrace birds.

Show us a bird that sings in the night. We have a nightingale,--a bird that has sung, for two evenings past, between ten and twelve, as gayly as the nightingales of Champel. It is the cat-bird, the same that comes flying and pecking at our windows. What has come over the little creature? I suppose the season of nest-building and incubation is one of great excitement,--the bird's honeymoon. And then, the full moon shining down, and the nights warm as summer, and thoughts of the nice new house and the pretty eggs, and the chicks that are coming,--it could not contain itself.

Well, as I sit in my porch and look at the birds, they seem to me a revelation, as beautiful, if not so profound, as the Apocalypse. What but Goodness could have made a creature at once so beautiful and so happy? Mansel and Spencer may talk about the incomprehensibility of the First Cause; I say, here is manifestation. The little Turdus Felivox,--oho! ye ignorant children, that is he of the cat,--it sits on the bough, ten feet from me, and sings and trills and whistles, and sends [301] out little jets of music, little voluntaries, as if it were freely and irrepressibly singing a lovely hymn.

This morning there is the slightest little drizzle, a mere tentative experimenting towards rain, no more,-I keep to facts. Well, all the township is saying, no doubt, "Now it is coming!" Catch me a-doing so! I was left to say, in an unguarded moment, "If C. had mowed his meadow two or three days ago, he would have got it all in dry." I feel a little guilty. I am afraid that incautious observation was the nuance of the shadow of an intimation of an opinion, bearing the faintest adumbration of a prediction: I am sorry for it. I am very sorry. I ought to have kept my lips shut. I ought to have put sealing-wax upon them the moment I got up. I won't,--I won't speak one word again.

Yours, wet or dry,

O. D

To William Cullen Bryant, Esq.

ST. DAVID'S, July 27, 1868.

FRIEND BRYANT,--I am a Quaker. I have just joined the sect. Thee won't believe it, because thee will think I lack the calmness and staidness that fit me for it. But I am a Quaker of the Isaac T. Hopper sort; though, alas! here the resemblance fails also, for I do no good. Dear me! I wish sometimes that I could have been one of the one-sided men; it is so easy to run in one groove! and it 's all the fashion in these days. But, avaunt expediency! Let me stick to my principles, and be a rounded mediocrity, pelted on every hand, and pleasing [302] nobody. By the bye, Mrs. Gibbons [Mrs. James Gibbons of New York, daughter of Isaac T. Hopper] I has just sent me a fine medallion of her, father, beautifully mounted. It is a remarkable face, for its massive strength and the fun that is lurking in it. Hopper might have been a great man in any other walk,--the statesman's, the lawyer's; he was, in his own.

. . . I want to say something, through the "Post," of the abominable nuisance of the railroad whistle. I wrote once while you were gone, and Nordhoff (how do you spell him?) did n't publish my letter, but only introduced some of it in a paragraph of his own. If I write again, I shall want your imprimatur. This horrible shriek, which tears all our nerves to pieces, and the nerves of all the land, except Cummington and such lovely retirements, is altogether unnecessary; a lower tone would answer just as well. It does on the Hudson River Road.

To his Daughters.

ST. DAVID'S, Oct. 15, 1868.

. . . YOUR letter came yesterday, and was very satisfactory in the upshot; that is, you got there. But, pest on railroad cars I they are mere torture-chambers, with the additional chance, as Johnson said of the ship, of being land-wrecked. Some people like 'em, though. And there are dangers everywhere. The other day-a high windy day--a party went to the mountain, and had like to have been blown off from the top. But they said it was beautiful. I don't doubt, if the whole bunch had been tumbled over and rolled down to the bottom, they would all have jumped up, exclaiming, "Beautiful! [303] beautiful!" People so like to have it thought they have had a good time. One day they went up and all got as wet as mountain--no, as marsh--rats; and that was the most "lovely time" they have had this summer.

Girls, I have a toothache to-day! It 's easier now, or I should not be writing. But pain, what a thing it is! The king of all misery, I think, is pain. It is a part of you, and does n't lie outside; a thing to be met and mastered with healthy faculties. You can't fight with it, as you can with poverty, bankruptcy, mosquitoes, a smoky chimney, and the like. I can't be thankful enough that I have had, through my life, so little pain. What I shall do with it, if it comes, I don't know. Perhaps I need it for what Heine speaks of; that is, to make me "a man." I am afraid I am a chicken-hearted fellow. But I cannot help thinking that different constitutions take that visitation very differently.

To Rev. Henry W. Bellows, D.D.

ST. DAVID'S, Jan. 18, 1869.

MY DEAR FRIEND,--. . . It is the audible, the uttered prayer, to which I feel myself unequal. The awfulness of prayer to me inclines me more and more to make it silent, speechless. It is so overwhelming, that I am losing all fluency, all free utterance. What it is fit for a creature to say to the Infinite One--to that uncomprehended Infinitude of Being--makes me hesitate. My mind addressing a fellow mind is easy; and yet addressing the highest mind in the world would cause me anxiety. I should feel that my thoughts were too poor to express to him. But my mind addressing itself, its [304] thought and feeling, to the Infinite, Infinite Mind,--I faint beneath it. It is higher than heaven; what can I do? I am often moved to say with Abraham, "Lo! now I, who am but dust, have taken upon me to speak unto God. Oh! let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak." And indeed, so much praying,-this imploring the love and care of the Infinite Providence and Love, of which the universe is the boundless and perpetual evolution,--can that be right and fit? I often recall what Mrs. Dwight, of Stockbridge, said of the public devotions of old Dr. West,--one of the most saintly beings I ever knew,--that she had observed that they consisted less and less of prayers, and more and more of thanksgivings.

Last evening my wife read to us your article on the Mission of America. It is a grand, full stream of thought, and original, too, and ought to have a wider flow than through the pages of the "Examiner." It ought to be read not by two thousand, but by two million persons. I wish there were a popular organ, like the "Ledger" (in circulation), for the diffusion of the best thoughts, where the best minds among us could speak of the country to the country, for never was there a people that more needed to be wisely spoken to. And you are especially fitted to speak to it. Your conservative position in our Unitarian body, however it may fare among us, would help you with the people.

As to your position, I don't know but I am as conservative as you are. That is, I don't know but I believe in the miracles as much as you do. The difference between us is, that I do not feel the miraculous to be so essential a part of Christianity. Yet I see and feel the force of what you say about it. And the argument is [305] put in that article of yours with great weight and power. For myself, I cannot help feeling that at length the authority of Jesus will be established on clearer, higher, more indisputable and impregnable grounds than any historic, miraculous facts.

To William Cullen Bryant, Esq.

ST. DAVID'S, Jan. 26, 1869.

. . . I AM thankful, every day of my life, that I have my own roof over me, and can keep it from crumbling to the ground. Do not be proud, Sir, when you read this, nor look down from your lordliness,--of owning a dozen houses, and three of them your own to live in,--down, I say, upon my humble gratitude. Can it be, by the bye, that Cicero had fourteen villas? I am sure Middleton says so. I should think they must have been fourteen of what Buckminster, in a sermon, called "bundles of cares and heaps of vexations."

. . . I read a letter of Cicero's to his friend Valerius, this morning, in which he urges him to come and see him, saying that he wants to have a pleasant time with him,--tecum jocari,-and says, "When you come this way, don't go down to your Apulia,"--to wit, Cummington. Nam si illo veneris, tanquam Ulysses, cognosces tuorum neminem. Now don't quote Homer to me when you answer, for I am nearly overwhelmed with my own learning.

I wish you could have seen the world here for the last three weeks. Never was such a splendid winter season. I think it 's something great and inspiring to see the whole broad, bright, white, crystal world, and the whole [306] horizon round, instead of looking upon brick houses. But you will say, the human horizon widens in cities. Yes; but if there are six bright points in it you are fortunate, while here, the whole horizon round is sapphire and purple and gold.

Well, peace be with you wherever you are, and with your house. My wife and Mary send love to you all, as I do, [who] am, as ever.

Yours faithfully,

ORVILLE DEWEY.

To his Daughters.

ST. DAVID'S, Feb. 23, 1869.

. . . WE are going on very nicely, neither sick nor sad. Our winter evening readings have been very fortunate this season. First, "Lord Jeffrey's Life and Letters," and now, "Draper's Intellectual Development in Europe." I had read it before, but it is a greater book than I had thought. I must say that I had rather pass my evenings as we do,--some writing, some reading, then a quiet game, and then at my desk again,--than to take the chances of society, in town or country. If I can get you to think as I do, we shall pass a happy life here. Heaven grant that I may not fall into a life of pain! With our good spirits, as they now are, we every day fall into a quantity of dramatic capers that are enough to make a cat laugh,--no bigger animal.

Hoping you may have as much folly, for what saith Paley? "He that is not a fool sometimes, is always one,"--and wishing you all merry, I am as ever,

Your loving father,

ORVILLE DEWEY.

[307] Nothing can be imagined more peaceful than the retirement of Sheffield. Removed from the main lines of traffic and travel, even now that a railroad passes through it, the village remains, as it has been for a hundred and fifty years, the quiet centre of the quiet farms spread for four or five miles about it. The Housatonic wanders at its own sweet and lazy will among the meadows, turning and returning upon itself till it has loitered twenty miles in crossing the eight-mile township, but never turning a mill or offering encouragement to any industry but that of the muskrats who burrow in its banks, or the kingfishers who break its glassy surface in pursuit of their prey. No busy factories are there; no rattle of machinery or feverish activity of commerce disturbs the general placidity; and the still valley lies between its enclosing hills as if it were, indeed, that happy Abyssinian vale my father fancied it in his childhood.

The people share the calm of the landscape. Like many New England towns where neither water-power nor large capital offers opportunity for manufactures, and where farming brings but slow returns, the village has been gradually drained of the greater part of its active and enterprising younger population, and is chiefly occupied by retired and quiet persons who maintain a very gentle stir of social life, save for a month or two in summer, when the streets brighten with the influx of guests from abroad.

[308] It must have been very different seventy years ago. Instead of three slenderly attended churches, divided by infinitesimal differences of creed, and larger variations of government and discipline, all the people then were accustomed to meet in one well-filled church; and the minister, a life resident, swayed church and congregation with large and unquestioned rule. There were several doctors with their trains of students, and lawyers of county celebrity, each with young men studying under his direction; and all these made the nucleus of a society that was both gay and thoughtful, and that received a strong impulse to self-development from the isolated condition of a small village in those days. Railroads and telegraphs have changed all this, and scarcely a hamlet is now so lonely as not to feel the great tides of the world's life sweep daily through it, bringing polish and general information with them, but washing away much of the racy individuality and concentrated mental action which formerly made the pith of its being. Sheffield has gained in external beauty and refinement year by year, but, judging from tradition, has lost in intellectual force. There is more light reading and less hard reading, much more acquaintance with newspapers and magazines, and less knowledge of great poets, than in my father's youth; but his love for his birthplace remained unchanged, and his eyes and his heart drank repose from its peaceful and familiar beauty.

[309] To William Cullen Bryant, Esq.

ST. DAVID'S, Oct. 6, 1869.

DEAR BRYANT, THE BOUNTIFUL,--You are something like grapes yourself. By the bye, it 's no matter what you call me; "my dear Doctor" is well enough, if you can't do better; only "my dear Sir" I do hate, between good old friends such as we are, as much as Walter Scott did. But, as I was saying, you are like grapes yourself,--fair, round, self-contained, hanging gracefully upon the life-vine, still full of sap; shining under the covert of leaves, but more clearly seen, now that the frosts of age are descending, and causing them to fall away; while I am more like--but I have so poor an opinion of myself, that I won't tell you what. This is no affected self-depreciation. I can't learn to be old, but am as full of passion, impatience, foolishness, blind reachings after wisdom, as ever. Instance: I am angry with the expressman because he did not bring the grapes to-day; angry with the telegraph because it did not bring a despatch to tell how a sick boy was, under nine hours. . . .

Here I am, Thursday morning, on a second sheet, waiting for the grapes. What else, in the mean time, shall I entertain you with? The flood! It has been prodigious, the highest known for many years; water, water all around, from beside the road here to the opposite hill. It is curious to see men running like rats from the deluge, up to their knees in water, on returning from a common walk (fact, happened to the S--s), trying to drive home one way and could n't,--going round to a bridge and finding that swept away,--dams torn down and mills toppled over, and half the "sure and firm-set earth" turned into water-courses and flood-trash. . . .

[310] The afternoon train has arrived, and no grapes. Very angry.

The faithless express, you see, is a great plague to you as well as me; for not only does it not bring me the grapes, but is the cause of your having this long dawdling letter. Why don't you show up its iniquities? What is a "Post" made and set up for, if not, among other things, to bear affiches testifying to the people of their wickedness? The express is the most slovenly agent and the most irresponsible tyrant in the country. What it brings is perhaps ruined by delay,--plants, for instance. No help. "Pay," it says to the station-master, "or we don't leave it." Oh, if I had the gift and grace to send articles to the "Post," from time to time, upon abuses!

Friday. No grapes. More angry.

Saturday. No grapes. I 'm furious.

This last was the record of the afternoon; but in the evening, at half-past nine, they were sent down from the station,--and in remarkably good order, considering, and in quantity quite astonishing. The basket seemed like the conjurer's hat, out of which comes a half-bushel of flowers, oranges; and what not. We are all very much obliged to you; and, judging from the appearance of the six heaped-up plates, I am sure, when we come to eat them, that every tooth will testify, if it does not speak.

To the Same.

ST. DAVID'S, Feb. 28, 1870.

MY DEAR BRYANT,--The volume has not come, but the kindness has, and I will acknowledge the one without [311] waiting for the other; especially as it is not a case where one feels it expedient to give thanks for a book before he has read it. We all know the quality of this, from passages of the work printed in advance. It will be the translation into English of the Iliad, I think, though not professing to be learned in translations of Homer, still less in the original.

I read your preface in the "Post." Nothing could be better, unless it is your speech at the Williams dinner, which was better, and better than any occasional speech you have given, me judice.

Great changes are projected in Sheffield,--you will have to come and see them and us,--a widening of the village on the east, towards the meadow and pine knoll, and--what do you think?--a railroad to the top of Taghkonic! 'T is even so-proposed. An eastern company has bought the Egremont Hotel, and the land along the foot of the mountain down as far as Spurr's ( a mile), and they talk seriously of a railroad. So the Taghkonic is to be made a watering-place, if the thing is feasible, in quite another sense than that in which it has long sent its streams and cast its lonely shadows upon our valley.

We are having winter at last, and our ice-houses filled with the best of ice, and the prospect is fair for the wood-piles. The books you sent are turning to great account with us. In that and in every way I am obliged to you; and am, as ever,

Yours truly,

ORVILLE DEWEY.

[312] To Mrs. David Lane.

ST. DAVID'S, Dec. 20, 1870.

DEAR FRIEND,--I think I must take you into council,--not to sit upon the case, nor to get up a procession, nor to have the bells rung, if we win; but just to sympathize, so far as mid-life vigor can, with an aged couple, who have lived together half a century, and would much rather live it over again than not to have lived it at all; who have lived in that wonderful connection, which binds and blends two wills into one; who do not say that no differences or difficulties have disturbed them, an attainment beyond human reach,--but who have grown in the esteem and love of each other to this day (at least one of them has); one of whom finds his mate more beautiful than when he married her, though the other's condition, in that respect, does n't admit of more or less, being a condition of obstinate mediocrity; and who, both of them, look with mingled wonder and gratitude to their approaching Golden Wedding Day.

So you can look upon us with pleasure, on the day after Christmas, and think of us as surrounded by all our children and grandchildren. And that is all we shall make, except in our thoughts, of our great anniversary.

Adieu. I shall not descend in this letter to meaner themes, but with our love to you all, am ever,

Your friend,

ORVILLE DEWEY.

From a Note-Book.

April 13, 1871.

FATHER TAYLOR, of Boston, has just died,-a very remarkable person. He was a sailor, and more than [313] forty years ago he came from before the mast into the pulpit. He brought with him, I suppose, something of the roughness of his calling; for I remember hearing of his preaching in the neighborhood of New Bedford when I first went there, and of his inveighing against paid preachers as wretched hirelings, "rocked upon five feather-beds to hell." This, I was told, was meant for me, as I had just been settled upon the highest salary ever paid in those parts. In after years I became acquainted with him, and a very pleasant and cordial acquaintance it was. His preaching improved in every way as he went on; the pulpit proved the best of rhetorical schools for him, and he became one of the most powerful and impressive preachers in the country. He was one of nature's orators, and one of the rarest. It was said of him that he showed what Demosthenes meant by "action." The whole man, body and soul, was not only in action, but was an action concentrated into speech. His strongly built frame,--every limb, muscle, and fibre,--his whole being, spoke.

Waldo Emerson took me to his chapel the first time I ever heard him preach. As we went along, speaking of his pathos, he said, "You 'll have to guard yourself to keep from crying." So warned, I thought myself safe enough. But I was taken down at the very beginning of the service. The prayers of the congregation were asked by the family of a young man,--a sailor, who had been destroyed by a shark on the coast of Africa. In' the prayer, the scene was touchingly depicted,--how the poor youth went down to bathe in the summer sea, thoughtless, unconscious of any danger, when he was seized by the terrible monster that lay in wait for him. And then the preacher prayed that none of us, going [314]down into the summer sea of pleasure, might sink into the jaws of destruction that were opened beneath. I think the prayer left no dry eyes.

Father Taylor was a man of large, warm-hearted liberality. He was a Methodist; but no sect could hold him. He often came to our Unitarian meetings and spoke in them. In addressing one of our autumnal conventions in New York, I recollect his congratulating us on our freedom from all trammels of prescription, creed, and church order, and exhorting us to a corresponding wide and generous activity in the cause of religion. He was always ready with an illustration, and for his purpose used this: "We have just had a visit in Boston," he said, "from an Indian chief and some of his people. They were invited to the house of Mr. Abbot Lawrence. As Mr. Lawrence received them in his splendid parlor, the chief, looking around upon it, said, It is very good; it is beautiful; but I--I walk large; I go through the woods and hunting-grounds one day, and I rise up in the morning and go through them the next,--I walk large. "Brethren," said the speaker, "walk large."

Taylor's great heart was not chilled by bigotry; neither was it by theology, nor by philosophy. His prayer was the breathing of a child's heart to an infinitely loving father; it was strangely free and confiding. I remember being in one of the early morning prayer-meetings of an anniversary week in Boston, and Taylor was there. As I rose to offer a prayer, I spoke a few words upon the kind of approach which we might make to the Infinite Being. Something like this I said,--that as we were taught to believe that we were made in the image of God, and were his children, emanations from the Infinite Perfection, [315]partakers of the divine nature; as the Infinite One had sent forth a portion of His own nature to dwell in these forms of frail mortality and imperfection, and no darkness, no sorrow, nor erring of ours could reach to Him; might we not think,--God knows, I said, that I would be guilty of no irreverence or presumption,-but might we not think that with infinite consideration and pity he looks down upon us struggling with our load; upon our weakness and trouble, upon our penitence and aspiration?

As the congregation was retiring, and I was passing in the aisle, I saw Father Taylor sitting by the pulpit, and he beckoned me aside. "Brother Dewey," he said, in his emphatic way, "did you ever know any one to say what you have been saying this morning?"-"Why," I replied, "does not every one say it?"--"No," he answered; "I have talked with a thousand ministers, and no one of them ever said that."

To William Cullen Bryant, Esq.

ST. DAVID'S, Sept. 12, 1871.