Chapter II: Patric Park, Sculptor (8)

The _Gentleman’s Magazine_ for 1740 contains a short and quaint paper by Dr. Johnson, in which he transcribes some supposed fragments of a Roman gazette for the year 168 B.C. These were first published in 1615, and in 1692 were defended by Dodwell, but are now recognized as fifteenth-century forgeries. We have no genuine fragments of the Roman gazettes. None the less, Johnson’s comparison of them with the English newspapers of 1740 may well suggest a reflection. The Roman gazette under the Empire did not give the transactions of the Senate, any more than it admitted political comment. In the newspapers of Johnson’s time, the parliamentary reports were still very irregular and imperfect; while criticism of public men was fain to take the disguise, however thin, of allegory. Thus the _Gentleman’s Magazine_ regaled its readers, from month to month, with “Proceedings and Debates in the Senate of Lilliput.” It was when the House of Commons had ceased to represent the public opinion of the country, that this opinion became resolved to have an outlet in the press. Parliament having ceased to discharge its proper function, the press became the popular court of appeal. The battle for a free press, in the full modern sense, was fought out between 1764 and 1771—beginning in 1764 with the persecution of Wilkes for attacking Bute in the _North Briton_, and ending with the successful resistance, in 1771, to the proclamation by which the Commons had forbidden the publication of their debates. Six printers, who had infringed it, were summoned to the bar of the House; five obeyed; and the messenger of the House was sent to arrest the sixth. The Lord Mayor of London sent the messenger to prison. The House of Commons sent the Lord Mayor to the Tower. But he was followed by cheering crowds. He was released at the next prorogation; and the day on which he left the Tower marked the end of the last attempt to silence the press. The next few years saw the beginning of the first English journals which exercised a great political and social power. The _Times_ dates from 1788. Thus a period memorable for Americans has something of analogous significance for their kinsmen in England. For the English people, also, those years contained a Declaration of Independence; they brought us a title-deed of freedom greater, perhaps, than the barons of the thirteenth century extorted from John—the charter of a complete freedom in the daily utterance of public opinion.

The attempt here has been to indicate some of the partial equivalents for such an utterance which may be traced in classical literature. A student of antiquity must always in one sense, resemble the wistful Florentine who, with Virgil for his guide, explored the threefold realm beyond the grave. His converse is with the few, the spirits signal for good or for evil in their time; the shades of the great soldiers pass before him,—he can scan them closely, and imagine how each bore himself in the hour of defeat or victory on earth; he can know the counsels of statesmen, and even share the meditations of their leisure; the poets and the philosophers are present: but around and beyond these are the nameless nations of the dead, the multitudes who passed through the ancient world and left no memorial. With these dim populations he can hold no direct communion; it is much as if at times the great movements which agitated them are descried by him as the surging of a shadowy crowd, or if the accents of their anguish or triumph are borne from afar as the sound of many waters. So much the more, those few clear voices which still come from the past are never more significant than when they interpret the popular mind of their generation. The modern development of representative institutions has invested the collective sentiment of communities with power of a kind to which antiquity can furnish no proper parallel. But this fact cannot dispense the student of history from listening for the echoes of the market-place. And such attention cannot fail to quicken our sense of the inestimable gain which has accrued to modern life through journalism. It is easy to forget the magnitude of a benefit when its operation has become regular and familiar. The influence of the press may sometimes be abused; its tone may sometimes be objectionable. But take these three things—quickness in seeking and supplying information,—continual vigilance of comment,—electric sympathy of social feeling: where in the ancient world do we find these things as national characteristics, except in so far as they were gifts of nature to the small community of ancient Athens—gifts to which her best literature owes so much of its incomparable freshness and of its imperishable charm? It is mainly due to the agency of the press that these things are now found throughout the world,—these, which, in all lands where man has risen above barbarism, are the surest safeguards of civilization and the ultimate pledges of constitutional freedom.—_Fortnightly Review._

THREE GLIMPSES OF A NEW ENGLAND VILLAGE.

Does the reader chance to know that bit of England round about Haslemere, but an hour and a half’s journey from the heart of London, where three counties meet, and the traveller may see at a glance, from many a hill-top, the most rich and beautiful parts of Sussex, the wildest and most picturesque of Surrey and Hampshire? At his feet lies spread the weald of Sussex, whilst the dark wooded promontories and long purple ridges of Blackdown, Marley, and Ironhill curve round or jut out into this broad sea of fertility, and the distant South Downs close the view with wavy outline and fluted sides, bare of everything save fine turf, nibbling sheep, and the shadows of the clouds. Turning round, Surrey culminates, as it were, in Hind Head, with triple summit—no mere hill, but a miniature mountain in bold individuality of form. And when he climbs this vantage-ground, Hampshire lies unfolded before him as well as Surrey; Wolmer Forest—forest no longer, but brown moorland; ranges of chalk hills, conspicuous among them one with a white scar on its dark flank, which hides Selborne amid its trees; solemn distances seen against the sunset sky, clothed with a deep purple bloom, which haunt the memory like a strain of noble music.

No less beautiful and strikingly similar in general character is that part of Western Massachusetts wherein stands our New England village—Northampton—village in size and rural aspect, though the capital of Hampshire county. But the New England valley has one advantage over the weald of Sussex in its broad and beautiful river, with Indian name, Connecticut—Quonnektacut, the long river—which winds through it. Mount Holyoke and Mount Tom, the Sugar Loaf and the Pelham range are its Blackdown, Marley, Hind Head, and South Downs. These hills are a couple of hundred feet or so higher than their English prototypes, ranging from 1000 to 1300 feet above the sea, and their old ribs are of harder and more ancient stuff than the chalk and greensand of the South Downs and Surrey hills; witness the granite or rather gneiss boulders scattered broadcast over the land, sometimes in rugged upright masses, looking like some grey ruin, sometimes in small rounded fragments, bestrewing the uplands like a flock of sheep, and more rarely the black and still harder blocks of trap. In the museum at Amherst, just over the river, are preserved slabs with the famous bird-tracks—colossal footprints two feet long, found in the trias of this part of the Connecticut valley—all tending to prove that the sun shone down upon dry land here for some ages whilst the mother-country was still mostly a waste of waters; and that, geologically speaking, and so far as these parts at any rate are concerned, New England is old, and old England new, by comparison. Broad, fertile, level meadows border the river, and the hills are richly clothed with chestnut, birch, hemlock (somewhat like the yew in aspect), hickory (a kind of walnut), beech, oak, etc. It is hard to say whether the likeness or the unlikeness to an English landscape strikes the traveller more. There is the all-pervading difference of a dry and brilliant atmosphere, which modifies both form and color, substituting the sharp-edged and definite for the vague and rounded in distant objects, and brilliancy and distinctness of hue for depth and softness. Apart, too, from the brilliant and searching light, the leaves are absolutely of a lighter green, and grow in a less dense and solid mass; the foliage looks more feathery, the tree more spiral. Especially is this so with the American oak, which has neither the dome-like head, the sturdiness of bough, nor the dark bluish-green foliage of the English oak. If it be spring-time, no gorse is to be seen with golden blossom set among matted thorns, perfuming the sunshine; but everywhere abounding masses of the delicate pink-clustered, odorless, warlike kalmia, called there laurel, and growing to the full size of our laurels; and more shyly hidden, the lovely azalea or swamp-pink, as the country people call it. Instead of the daisy, the delicate little Housatonia, like Venus’ looking-glass but growing singly, stars the ground; and for fragrance we must stoop down and seek the pale pink clusters of the trailing arbutus or May-flower, which richly reward the seeker. In July we miss the splendid purpling of the hills with heather blossom; but the pink spikes of the hardhack abound; gay lilies, lady’s earrings, blue-fringed gentians, glowing cardinal flowers (_Lobelia cardinalis_), with slender petals of a deeper crimson than the salvia, and a host more new friends, or old friends with new ways grown democratic as befits them, scatter their beauty freely by the wayside and the margins of the brooks, instead of setting up as exclusives of the garden.

Nor are the differences less marked in the aspect of the cultivated land. The fertile valley has perhaps a look of greater breadth from not being intersected with hedges and having few fences of any kind, one crop growing beside another, and one owner’s beside another’s, like different beds in a nursery-garden. But the effect of these large undivided fields is to dwarf the appearance of the crops themselves. The patches of tall tasselled Indian corn, the white-blossomed buckwheat, and large-leaved tobacco, look diminutive. No haystacks, no wheat-ricks are to be seen; only here and there a lonely, prison-like tobacco barn or drying-house, full of narrow loopholes to let in air without light. Everything else is housed in the big barn that adjoins the farmhouse, which stands, not amid its own fields, but on the outskirts of the nearest town or village. Of wheat little is grown; of root-crops still less, for sheep-farming is not in favor. Tobacco, with its large, glossy dark leaves, like those of the mangel-wurzel, thrives well on the rich alluvial soil of the Connecticut valley; but, fluctuating as it is in value, exhaustive of the soil, and easily damaged by weather, the great gains of one year are often more than counterbalanced by the losses of the next. The Indian corn remains long upon the ground in autumn after it is cut, to ripen in stooks, much as beans do with us; and then come to light the pumpkins which were sown amongst it, and now lie basking and glowing in the sun like giant oranges. Glowing, too, in the splendid sunshine, are the apple-orchards, laden with fruit half as large and quite as red as full-blown peonies. Never, even in the vale of Evesham or Herefordshire, have I seen any so beautiful.

As to the living creatures—feathered, four legged, or no-legged—there are some conspicuous differences which it does not take a naturalist to discover. Ten to one, indeed, if we come upon a rattlesnake; but a few are still left in snug corners of Mount Holyoke and Mount Tom, as anxious to avoid us as we them. The lively little chipmunk, diminutive first cousin to the squirrel, with black stripe along the back, is sure to make our acquaintance, for his kind seems as multitudinous as the rabbit with us, and is a worse foe to the farmer, because he has more audacity and a taste for the kernels of things, instead of merely the leaves. Strange new sounds greet the ear from katydid “working her chromatic reed”; from bull-frog with deep low, almost a roar; from grasshoppers and locusts, whose loud brassy whirr resounds all through the sunny hours with such persistency it seems at last a very part of the hot sunshine. The chirp of our grasshoppers is the mere ghost of a sound in comparison. At night fireflies glance in and out of the darkness; and, if we remain under the trees, mosquitoes soon make us unpleasantly aware of their existence. As to the birds, the flame-colored oriole, the delicately shaped blue-bird, flit by now and then as flashes of surprise and delight from the south; the rose-breasted grossbeak has a sweet note; the robin, not round as a ball and fierce and saucy, but grown tall, and slim, and mild—his breast not so red, his song not so sweet, his eye not so bright—is there. He is indeed a robin only in name,—really a species of thrush. A cheerful twittering, chirping, whistling, the tuning of the orchestra, a short sweet snatch or two of song I heard; but the steady, long-sustained outpour of rich melody from throats never weary, the chorus trilling joyously, with which our woods and hedgerows resound in spring and early summer, I listened for in vain. Perhaps the pathlessness of the woods and hills prevented my penetrating to the secluded haunts of the sweetest singers, such as the hermit-thrush, and I speak only of New England. Remembering what John Burroughs has said on the subject, I will not venture to generalize the comparison.

GLIMPSE THE FIRST.

About two hundred and forty years ago, towards the close of Cromwell’s life, and thirty-four years after the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers, the Boston and Plymouth Settlement found itself vigorous enough to send out offshoots; and having heard from the Dutch settlers of New York of this rich and well-watered valley discovered by them in 1614, the General Court appointed John Pynchon, Elizur Holyoke, and Samuel Chapin of Springfield, settled seventeen years before, to negotiate with the Indians for that tract of land called Nonotuck, where now stand six small towns and villages, chief and first built of which was Northampton. The price paid was a hundred fathoms of wampum (equal to about £20), ten coats, some small gifts, and the ploughing up of sixteen acres on the east side of the river. Wampum (Indian for white) consisted of strings of beads made of white shells and _suckauhock_ black or blue money, of black or purple shells. Both were used for more purposes than trading with the Indians, coin being scarce. Eight white and four black beads were worth a penny; and a man as often took out a string of beads as a purse to pay an innkeeper or a ferryman, or to balance a trading account.

But Nonotuck was paid for with a good deal besides the wampum and the ploughing. For a hundred and twenty-four years there was almost incessant warfare with the Indians. Treacherous ambuscades lay in wait for the trader on his journey, stealthy dark-skinned assassins for the solitary husbandman, and not a few of these fertile fields were watered by the blood of its first tillers. He carried his weapons with him to his work and to the meeting-house, and expressed his gratitude for hair-breadth escapes, Puritan fashion, by the pious names he gave his children. Preserved Clapp, Submit Grout, Comfort Domo, Thankful Medad, are names that figure in the records of this and the neighboring villages; where we read also that one Praise-Ever Turner, and his servant Uzackaby Shakspeare, were killed by the Indians. Within sight of Northampton it was, just over the river, in the sister settlement of Hadley,—that beautiful old village, with street eighteen rods wide, set with a double avenue of superb elms, greensward in the middle and a road on either side, looking more like the entrance to a fine park than a village street,—here it was that a “deliverance” occurred, long believed by the people to have been miraculous. One Sunday, when nearly the whole scant population was gathered for worship in the meeting-house, a large body of Indians fell upon them, and, what with the panic and the want of a leader, all seemed lost, when a majestic, venerable figure, dressed in a strange rich garb, fully armed, appeared suddenly in their midst, assumed the command, rallied their scattered numbers, and led them on to victory; then vanished as suddenly as he had appeared, no man knew where or whence.[61] No man but one—Mr. Russell, the minister. This venerable apparition was Goffe, once a general in Cromwell’s army, and, like Whalley his companion in exile, one of the judges who condemned Charles to death, now forced, even in that far land, to hide for his life, since an active quest was maintained, in obedience to the Home Government for both Goffe and Whalley. For twelve years did good Mr. Russell shelter them, unknown to all but his own family. Whalley died in his house; but Goffe subsequently disappeared, and the rest of his career is unknown.

Altogether the hardy band found ample scope for carrying into practice the noble maxim of the Pilgrim Fathers rehearsed at Leyden: “All great and honorable actions are accompanied with great difficulties, and must be enterprised and overcome with answerable courages.” In order to secure protection from Indians and wolves, the little community built its dwellings, not each isolated on its own farm-lands, but side by side, so as to form at once the main street; each house having its “home lot” or strip of “interval,” as the rich meadow-land stretching down to the river was called, and its “wood-lot” on the hillside. Having chosen her “select men to direct all the fundamental affairs of the town, to prevent anything which they judge shall be of damage, and to order anything which shall be for the good of the town; to hear complaints, arbitrate controversies, lay out highways, see to the scouring of ditches, the killing of wolves, and the training of children,” Northampton proceeded at once to build herself a meeting-house “of sawen timber 26 feet long and 18 feet wide,” for the sum of £14 sterling, to be paid in work or corn. There was no clock in the settlement; so the worshippers were called together, sometimes by a large cow-bell, sometimes by drum, and finally by trumpet, for the blowing of which Jedediah Strong had a salary of eighteen shillings a year. There was no minister for some years; and more finding in themselves a vocation for preaching than for listening, or at any rate for criticising than for meekly imbibing, disputes arose, the General Court was appealed to, and its decision enforced that the service should consist, besides praying and singing, of “the reading aloud of known godly and orthodox books;” and for those who failed to obey with seemly decorum the summons of Mr. Jedediah Strong’s trumpet, severe was the chastisement. Joe Leonard and Sam Harmon, for instance, “who were seen to whip and whisk one another with a stick before the meeting-house door,” were fined five shillings; and Daniel, “for idle watching about and not coming to the ordinances of the Lord,” was adjudged worthy of stripes to the number “of five, _well laid on_.” In 1672 the town voted that there be some sticks set up in the “meeting-house, with fit persons placed near, to use them as occasion shall require, to keep the youth from disorder.” Which staves were fitted with a hare’s foot at one end and his tail at the other; the former to give a hard rap to misbehaving boys, the latter a gentle reminder to sleeping women.

Something besides repression was done, however, for the benefit of the youth of Northampton. The first school was started in 1663,—the master to receive £6 a year and his charges for tuition. Bridges were built and roads made by calling out every man to labor according to his estate; and those who did not labor paid in grain at the rate of half-a-crown a-day for exemption. For more than sixty years Northampton had no doctor, only a “bone-setter”: on the whole, a lucky circumstance, perhaps, considering what were the remedies then chiefly in vogue. Sylvester Judd, from whose “History of Hadley,” and also from Dr. Holland’s “History of Western Massachusetts,” the foregoing details have been gathered, gives a curious list, taken from medical prescriptions of the time:—the fat of a wild cat, blood of a goat, of an ass, of a white pigeon taken from under the wing, the tongue and lungs of a fox, liver of an eel and of a wolf, horns of a bug (beetle), teeth of a sea-horse, bone from the heart of a stag, the left foot of a tortoise, &c.

After the Indian and the French and Indian wars were over, there was but a short interval of rest before the War of Independence began. The long rugged battle with the savage and the wilderness had done its work well in training men for the struggle which was to sunder all bonds, and convert the colony into a new nation, master of its own destiny. Northampton was not the scene of any battles; but bore its part in furnishing some brave and leading men, and money, or money’s worth, to the army. After the war was over, came a time of depression and disorganization in public affairs and in trade, which culminated hereabouts in what is known as Shays’ Rebellion, so named from its leader; but it was soon quelled, and peace and prosperity settled down upon Northampton and upon the whole land.

GLIMPSE THE SECOND.

If we lift a corner of the veil of time at the opening of the present century, we find our handful of settlers become a population of 4000,—there was no immigration in those days to swell the numbers by thousands and tens of thousands at a blow,—and possessed of resources for their social and intellectual welfare pretty much on a par with those of an English country town at that date of the same size: a little behind still in material comforts and luxuries, a little ahead in the amount of mental activity and the spirit of progress generated partly by more complete self-dependence, by the great and stirring times men had just passed through, and by hereditary influence from the parent stock, which was the pick of Old England in these qualities.

The spirit of fellowship thrives where all are fellow-workers. There comes, it would seem, a happy transition time between the struggles, privations, isolation of the pioneers, and the wealth, luxury, and poverty (grim skeleton in the cupboard of advancing prosperity), when there yet remains a good measure of that sense of neighborship necessarily developed, when no man is independent of the free help and good-will of others, no man is born with a silver spoon in his mouth,—a time, in short, when sociability is and “society” is not, and those to whom the lines have fallen in pleasant places can stretch out a friendly hand to the less fortunate without suspicion of condescension or patronage.

For sample, we will take a single group, the door of whose hospitable house has been set open for us by the privately printed memoirs of Mrs Anne Jean Lyman. The inmates are a judge, his wife, and a large family of children of all ages, for he has been twice married. The judge is a genuine product of the soil, his family having for at least three generations back been settled in Northampton. His wife, who is from the neighborhood of Boston, of Scotch ancestry on one side, and on the other descended from Anne Hutchinson (the eloquent woman-preacher, who, banished for heterodoxy from their settlement by the Pilgrim Fathers, was killed by the Indians in 1643), may be taken as a good but typical instance of the New England woman of that day—capable, practical, aspiring, intellectual, friendly above all.

There are no stirring adventures, no record of any achievements of genius in these memoirs, but the unpretending pages reflect a clear image of two fine characters, well adjusted to the social conditions amid which they lived. Both had beauty and dignity of person, warm sympathies, good brains, abundant energy, and a spirit of hospitality which made their home the focus where the worth and intellect of the village were wont to gather and to shine brightest and warmest. Northampton has now its row of thriving stores, to which the people from neighboring villages flock on market-days, making a cheerful bustle. The elms, planted by the pioneers on either side the street, from the boughs of one of which Jonathan Edwards had preached to the Indians, now spread a goodly shade. A four-horse stage from Boston, ninety miles distant, comes in every evening with bugle horn sounding gaily. The driver is the personal friend of the whole town, for his tenacious memory never lets slip a single message or commission—save on one memorable occasion, when he forgot to bring back his wife who had been visiting in Boston, and so furnished the village with a long-enduring joke. The social judge, when he hears the horn, takes his hat and with alert step and cheerful face, glowing in the evening light, hastens to Warner’s Tavern where the coach draws up, to welcome the arrivals and bring any friend who may be among them to his own home—and any stranger too, who seems in ill-health or sorrow, and not likely to be made comfortable at an inn. When the judge and his wife go yearly to Boston, a throng of neighbors flock into the library overnight, where the packing goes on, not only to take an affectionate leave, but to bring parcels of every size and commissions of every variety,—a pattern with request to bring back dresses for a family of five; and “could they go to the orphan asylum and see if a good child of ten could be bound out till she was eighteen? and if so, bring her back.” One requests them to call and see a sick mother at Sudbury, another a sick sister at Ware. Finally, a little boy, with bundle as large as himself, asks “if this would be too big to carry to grandmother?” “I’ll carry anything short of a cooking-stove,” says the kind lady; and wherever the stage stops to change horses, she runs round to hunt up the sick friend or deliver the parcel.

Here is a picture, in brief, of a day of home-life at a later period when the children are mostly grown up and the judge has retired from the Bench. It is the grey dawn of a summer’s day, and the mother is already up and doing, while the rest of her large family, all but the husband, are still asleep. Dressed in short skirt and white _sacque_, she goes with broom and duster to her parlor and dining-room, opens wide the windows to the sweet morning air and the song of the birds, and puts all in order. At six o’clock she calls up her two maids, puts on her morning-dress and white cap, takes the large work-basket that always stands handy in the corner—for she mends not only for the family but for the maids and the hired man—and works till breakfast, when often fifteen or twenty cheerful souls assemble round the table. After which, with help of children and grandchildren, the dishes are swiftly washed, the table cleared, and husband and wife are then wont to take their seat at the front door, that they may greet the passer-by or send messages to neighbors: she with the work-basket and the book that always lay handy under the work—some essay, poem, history, novel (for she is an omnivorous reader, and her letters intelligently discuss current literary topics)—or with the peas and beans to shell and string for dinner; he with the newspaper. Among the passers-by with whom they chat come, at certain seasons of the year, the judges of the Supreme Court and other notable men,—Baron Renné, Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, Emerson, too, while he was yet a young unknown Unitarian minister. Seldom does the large family sit down to dinner without guests, for any one who drops in is asked to stay, or some wearied-looking passer-by is pressed to step in. In the afternoon the mother’s chosen seat is at the window of the west parlor looking towards the hills, and then the young people flock around while she reads aloud through the long summer afternoons. All must share in her enjoyment, and often is the wayfarer, some “good neighbor” or “intellectual starveling,” beckoned in “just to hear this rich passage we are reading—it won’t take long.” If she finds any with a strong desire for knowledge, she never rests till the means to supply the want are found, and more than one youth of promise afterwards fulfilled owed his first good chance in life to this wise, generous-hearted woman.

GLIMPSE THE THIRD.

Northampton to-day carries her two hundred and thirty odd years lightly, and, save for the lofty and venerable elms, looks as young as the youngest of towns. How, indeed, can anything but the trees ever look old in America, since the atmosphere does not furnish old Time with moisture enough to write the record of his flight in grey tones and weather stains, and lichens, and worn and crumbling edges? Hawthorne’s “old manse” at Concord was the only ancient-looking house I saw. Either it had never been painted, or the paint was all worn off, and so the wooden walls had taken a silver-grey color, and, with its picturesque situation close to the Concord river and by the side of the field in which was fought the first battle in the War of Independence, it well deserves the honor and renown that have settled on it, both as associated with Emerson’s ancestors, his own early days, and with Hawthorne’s romance. But in general the yearly fresh coat of paint is a sort of new birth to the old houses, which makes them indistinguishable from modern ones, wood being still the material used in country-places for detached houses. But step inside some one or two of these pretty modest-looking cottages, under the shade of the Northampton elms, and you will find the low ceiling, the massive beams, small doors and windows, corner cupboards, and queer ups and downs along the passages, which tell that they were put up by hands long since mouldered in the grave, and make you feel as if you were at home again in some old Essex village.

Socially, the little town may be regarded as a kind of Cranford—but Cranford with a difference. There is the same preponderance of maiden ladies and widows—for what should the men do there? New England farming is a very slow and unprofitable affair compared with farming in the West, and there are no manufactures of any importance. There are the same tea-parties, with a solitary beau in the centre, “like the one white flower in the middle of a nosegay;” the same modest goodness, kindliness, refinement, making the best of limited means and of restricted interests. But even under these conditions the spirit of enterprise and of public spirit lurks in an American Cranford, and strikes out boldly in some direction or other. What would Miss Jenkyns have said to the notion of a college which should embody the most advanced ideas for giving young women precisely the same educational opportunities as young men? She would justly have felt that it was enough to make Dr. Johnson turn in his grave. Yet such a scheme has been realized by one of the maiden ladies of Northampton or its immediate neighborhood, in Smith College—a really noble institution; where, also, the experiment is being tried of housing the students, not in one large building, but in a cluster of pretty-looking, moderate-sized homes, standing amid lawn and garden, where they are allowed, under certain restrictions, to enter into and receive the society of the village, so that their lives may not be a too monotonous routine and “grind.”

Another maiden lady has achieved a still more remarkable success, for she had no wealth of her own to enable her to carry out her idea—which was, to perfect and to introduce on a large scale the method, devised in Spain some hundred years ago, developed by Heinicke, a German, by Bell of Edinburgh, and by his son, in a system of “visible speech,”—for enabling the deaf and dumb to speak, not with the fingers but the voice, dumb no longer, and to hear with the eyes, so to speak, by reading the movements of the lips. Miss Harriet Rogers, who had never witnessed this method in operation, began by teaching a few pupils privately till her success induced a generous inhabitant of Northampton, Mr. Clarke, to come forward with £10,000 to found a Deaf and Dumb Institution, of which her little school formed the nucleus, and her unwearied devotion and special gifts the animating soul. Step into a class-room in one of these cheerful looking houses, surrounded by gay flower borders and well-kept lawns, standing on a hill just outside the town,—for here, too, the plan of a group of buildings has been adopted. About twenty children, boys and girls, are ranged, their faces eagerly looking towards a lady who stands on a raised platform. Her presence conveys a sense of that gentle yet resistless power which springs from a firm will, combined with a rich measure of sympathy and affection. She raises her hand a little way, and then moves it slowly along in a horizontal direction. The children open their mouths and utter a deep sustained tone, a plaintive, minor, wild, yet not unmusical sound. She raises it a little higher, and again moves it slowly along. The children immediately raise the pitch of their voices and sustain a higher tone. Again the voices, following the hand, sustain a yet higher, almost a shrill note. Then the hand waves up and down rapidly, and the tones faithfully follow its lead in swift transition, till they seem lost in a maze of varying inflexions; but always the voices are obedient to the waving hand. The teacher then makes a round O with thumb and forefinger, gradually parting them like the opening of the mouth. This is the sign for crescendo and diminuendo. The voices begin softly, swell into a great volume of sound, then die away again, still with those peculiar plaintive tones; yet much do the children seem to enjoy the exercise, though, to most of them, remember, the room is all the while soundless as the grave. They learn to vary the pitch of their voices partly by feeling with the hand the vibrations of the throat and chest,—quick and in the throat for high tones, slow and in the chest for low ones—partly by help of Bell’s written signs, which represent the position peculiar to each sound of the various organs of speech—throat, tongue, lips, back of the mouth, &c. This was a class of beginners chiefly learning to develop and control their hitherto unused voices. Inexhaustible is the patience, wonderful the tact employed by Miss Rogers and her able assistants in the far more difficult task of teaching actual speech. A small percentage of the children will prove too slow and blunt of perception ever to master it, and will have to be sent where the old finger alphabet is still the method in use. Some, on the other hand, will succeed so brilliantly that it will be impossible for a stranger to detect that they were once deaf-mutes,—that they seize your words with their eyes, not with their ears, and have never heard the sound of human speech, though they can speak. And the great bulk will return to their homes capable of understanding in the main what is going on around them, and of making themselves intelligible to their friends without recourse to signs.

Our actual Cranford over the sea, then, has a considerable advantage over the Cranford of romance, in that her heroines do not wait for the (in fiction) inevitable, faithful, long-absent, mysteriously-returning-at-the-right-moment lover to redeem their lives from triviality, and renew their faded bloom. And, in the present state of the world’s affairs, what is more needed than the single woman who succeeds in making her life worth living, honorably independent, and of value to others? Through such will certainly be given new scope and impetus to the development of woman generally, and in the long run, therefore, good results for all.

Among the solid achievements of Northampton must also be mentioned an excellent free library, with spacious airy reading-room, such as any city might be proud of. There is also a State lunatic asylum, with large farm attached, which not only supplies the most restorative occupation for those of the inmates who are capable of work, but defrays all the expenses of the institution, with an occasional surplus for improvements.

If I were asked what, after some years spent in America, impressed me most unexpectedly, I should say of the people, as of the New England landscape, So like! yet so different! I speak, of course, not of superficial differences, but of mental physiognomy and temperament. Given new conditions of climate, soil, space, with their subtle, slow, yet deep and sure modifying influences,—new qualities to the pleasures of life, new qualities to its pains and struggles, new social and political conditions, new mixing of old races, different antecedents, the primitive wrestle with nature by a people not primitive but inheriting the habits and characteristics of advanced civilization,—and how can there but result the shaping of a new race out of old world stock, a fresh instrument in the great orchestra of humanity? Indicate these differences, these traits! says the impatient reader. They are too subtle for words, like the perfume of flowers, the flavor of fruit,—too much intermingled with individual qualities also, at any rate for mere descriptive words, though no doubt in time the imaginative literature of America will creatively embody them.

One lesson whoever has lived in, not merely travelled through America, must learn perforce. It is that the swift steamers, bringing a succession of more or less keen observers, the telegrams and newspapers, which we fondly imagine annihilate space and make us fully cognizant of the character and affairs of our far-off kindred are by no means such wonder-workers. In spite of newspapers, and telegrams, and travellers, and a common language and ancestry, we are full of misconceptions about each other. Nay, I found the actual condition of my own country drift slowly out of intelligible sight after a year or two’s absence. Even if every word uttered and printed were true, that which gives them their significance cannot be so transmitted; whilst the great forces that are shaping and building up a people’s life and character work silently beneath the surface, so that truly may it be said of a nation, as of an individual, “The heart knoweth its own bitterness, and a stranger intermeddleth not with its joy.” Save by the help of vital literature—in that, at last, the souls of the nations speak to one another.—_Blackwood’s Magazine._

LAST WORDS ABOUT AGNOSTICISM AND THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY.

BY HERBERT SPENCER.

Those who expected from Mr. Harrison an interesting rejoinder to my reply, will not be disappointed. Those who looked for points skilfully made, which either are, or seem to be, telling, will be fully satisfied. Those who sought pleasure from witnessing a display of literary power, will close his article gratified with the hour they have spent over it. Those only will be not altogether contented who supposed that my outspoken criticism of Mr. Harrison’s statements and views, would excite him to an unusual display of that trenchant style for which he is famous; since he has, for the most part, continued the discussion with calmness. After saying thus much it may seem that some apology is needed for continuing a controversy of which many, if not most, readers, have by this time become weary. But gladly as I would leave the matter where it stands, alike to save my own time and others’ attention, there are sundry motives which forbid me. Partly my excuse must be the profound importance and perennial interest of the questions raised. Partly I am prompted by the consideration that it is a pity to cease just when a few more pages will make clear sundry of the issues, and leave readers in a better position for deciding. Partly it seems to me wrong to leave grave misunderstandings unrectified. And partly I am reluctant on personal grounds to pass by some of Mr. Harrison’s statements unnoticed.

One of these statements, indeed, it would be imperative on me to notice, since it reflects on me in a serious way. Speaking of the _Descriptive Sociology_, which contains a large part (though by no means all) of the evidence used in the _Principles of Sociology_, and referring to the compilers who, under my superintendence, selected the materials forming that work, Mr. Harrison says:—

Of course these intelligent gentlemen had little
difficulty in clipping from hundreds of books about
foreign races sentences which seem to support Mr.
Spencer’s doctrines. The whole proceeding is too much
like that of a famous lawyer who wrote a law book, and
then gave it to his pupils to find the “cases” which
supported his law.

Had Mr. Harrison observed the dates, he would have seen that since the compilation of the _Descriptive Sociology_ was commenced in 1867 and the writing of the _Principles of Sociology_ in 1874, the parallel he draws is not altogether applicable: the fact being that the _Descriptive Sociology_ was commenced seven years in advance for the purpose (as stated in the preface) of obtaining adequate materials for generalizations: sundry of which, I may remark in passing, have been quite at variance with my pre-conceptions.[62] I think that on consideration, Mr. Harrison will regret having made so grave an insinuation without very good warrant; and he has no warrant. Charity would almost lead one to suppose that he was not fully conscious of its implications when he wrote the above passage; for he practically cancels them immediately afterwards. He says:—“But of course one can find in this medley of tables almost any view. And I find facts which make for my view as often as any other.” How this last statement consists with the insinuation that what Mr. Harrison calls a “medley” of tables contains evidence vitiated by special selection of facts, it is difficult to understand. If the purpose was to justify a foregone conclusion, how does it happen that there are (according to Mr. Harrison) as many facts which make against it as there are facts which make for it?

The question here incidentally raised concerns the primitive religious idea. Which is the original belief, fetichism or the ghost-theory? The answer should profoundly interest all who care to understand the course of human thought; and I shall therefore not apologize for pursuing the question a little further.

* * * * *

Having had them counted, I find that in those four parts of the _Descriptive Sociology_ which give accounts of the uncivilized races, there are 697 extracts which refer to the ghost-theory: illustrating the belief in a wandering double which goes away during sleep, or fainting, or other form of insensibility, and deserts the body for a longer period at death,—a double which can enter into and possess other persons, causing disease, epilepsy, insanity, etc., which gives rise to ideas of spirits, demons, etc., and which originates propitiation and worship of ghosts. On the other hand there are 87 extracts which refer to the worship of inanimate objects or belief in their supernatural powers. Now even did these 87 extracts support Mr. Harrison’s view, this ratio of 8 to 1 would hardly justify his statement that the facts “make for my [his] view as often as any other.” But these 87 extracts do not make for his view. To get proof that the inanimate objects are worshipped for themselves simply, instances must be found in which such objects are worshipped among peoples who have no ghost-theory; for wherever the ghost-theory exists it comes into play and originates those supernatural powers which certain objects are supposed to have. When by unrelated tribes scattered all over the world, we find it held that the souls of the dead are supposed to haunt the neighboring forests—when we learn that the Karen thinks “the spirits of the departed dead crowd around him;”[63] that the Society Islanders imagined spirits “surrounded them night and day watching every action;”[64] that the Nicobar people annually compel “all the bad spirits to leave the dwelling;”[65] that an Arab never throws anything away without asking forgiveness of the Efrits he may strike;[66] and that the Jews thought it was because of the multitudes of spirits in synagogues that “the dress of the Rabbins become so soon old and torn through their rubbing;”[67] when we find the accompanying belief to be that ghosts or spirits are capable of going into, and emerging from, solid bodies in general, as well as the bodies of the quick and the dead; it becomes obvious that the presence of one of these spirits swarming around, and capable of injuring or benefiting living persons, becomes a sufficient reason for propitiating an object it is assumed to have entered: the most trivial peculiarity sufficing to suggest possession—such possession being, indeed, in some cases conceived as universal, as by the Eskimo, who think every object is ruled by “its or his, _inuk_, which word signifies “_man_,” and also _owner_ or _inhabitant_.”[68] Such being the case, there can be no proof that the worship of the objects themselves was primordial, unless it is found to exist where the ghost-theory has not arisen; and I know no instance showing that it does so. But while those facts given in the _Descriptive Sociology_ which imply worship of inanimate objects, or ascription of supernatural powers to them, fail to support Mr. Harrison’s view, because always accompanied by the ghost-theory, sundry of them directly negative his view. There is the fact that an echo is regarded as the voice of the fetich; there is the fact that the inhabiting spirit of the fetich is supposed to “enjoy the savory smell” of meat roasted before it; and there is the fact that the fetich is supposed to die and may be revived. Further, there is the summarized statement made by Beecham, an observer of fetichism in the region where it is supposed to be specially exemplified, who says that:—

The fetiches are believed to be spiritual, intelligent
beings, who make the remarkable objects of nature their
residence, or enter occasionally into the images and
other artificial representations, which have been duly
consecrated by certain ceremonies.... They believe that
these fetiches are of both sexes, and that they require
food.

These statements are perfectly in harmony with the conclusion that fetichism is a development of the ghost-theory, and altogether incongruous with the interpretation of fetichism which Mr. Harrison accepts from Comte.

Already I have named the fact that Dr. Tylor, who has probably read more books about uncivilized peoples than any Englishman living or dead, has concluded that fetichism is a form of spirit-worship, and that (to give quotations relevant to the present issue)

To class an object as a fetish, demands explicit
statement that a spirit is considered as embodied in it
or acting through it or communicating by it.[69]

... A further stretch of imagination enables the lower
races to associate the souls of the dead with mere
objects.[70]

... The spirits which enter or otherwise attach
themselves to objects may be human souls. Indeed, one of
the most natural cases of the fetish-theory is when a
soul inhabits or haunts the relics of its former body.[71]

Here I may add an opinion to like effect which Dr. Tylor quotes from the late Prof. Waitz, also an erudite anthropologist. He says:—

“According to his [the negro’s] view, a spirit dwells
or can dwell in every sensible object, and often a
very great and mighty one in an insignificant thing.
This spirit he does not consider as bound fast and
unchangeably to the corporeal thing it dwells in, but it
has only its usual or principal abode in it.”[72]

Space permitting I might add evidence furnished by Sir Alfred Lyall, who, in his valuable papers published in the _Fortnightly Review_ years ago on religion in India, has given the results of observations made there. Writing to me from the North-West provinces under date August 1, in reference to the controversy between Mr. Harrison and myself, he incloses copies of a letter and accompanying memorandum from the magistrate of Gorakhpur, in verification of the doctrine that ghost-worship is the “chief source and origin” of religion. Not, indeed, that I should hope by additional evidences to convince Mr. Harrison. When I point to the high authority of Dr. Tylor as on the side of the ghost-theory, Mr. Harrison says—“If Dr. Tylor has finally adopted it, I am sorry.” And now I suppose that when I cite these further high authorities on the same side, he will simply say again “I am sorry,” and continue to believe as before.

In respect of the fetichism distinguishable as nature-worship, Mr. Harrison relies much on the Chinese. He says:—

The case of China is decisive. There we have a religion
of vast antiquity and extent, perfectly clear and well
ascertained. It rests entirely on worship of Heaven,
and Earth, and objects of Nature, regarded as organized
beings, and not as the abode of human spirits.

Had I sought for a case of “a religion of vast antiquity and extent, perfectly clear and well ascertained,” which illustrates origin from the ghost-theory, I should have chosen that of China; where the State-religion continues down to the present day to be an elaborate ancestor-worship, where each man’s chief thought in life is to secure the due making of sacrifices to his ghost after death, and where the failure of a first wife to bear a son who shall make these sacrifices, is held a legitimate reason for taking a second. But Mr. Harrison would, I suppose, say that I had selected facts to fit my hypothesis. I therefore give him, instead, the testimony of a bystander. Count D’Alviella has published a _brochure_ concerning these questions on which Mr. Harrison and I disagree.[73] In it he says on page 15:—

La thèse de M. Harrison, au contraire,—que l’homme
aurait commencé par l’adoration d’objets matériels
“franchement regardés comme tels,”—nous paraît
absolument contraire au raisonnement et à l’observation.
Il cite, à titre d’exemple, l’antique religion de la
Chine, “entièrement basée sur la vénération de la Terre,
du Ciel et des Ancêtres, considérés objectivement et
non comme la residence d’êtres immatériels.” [This
sentence is from Mr, Harrison’s first article, not
from his second.] C’est là jouer de malheur, car, sans
même insister sur ce que peuvent être des Ancêtres
“considérés objectivement,” il se trouve précisément que
la religion de l’ancien empire Chinois est le type le
plus parfait de l’animisme organise et qu’elle regarde
même les objets matériels, dont elle fait ses dieux,
comme la manifestation inséparable, l’enveloppe ou même
le corps d’esprits invisibles. [Here in a note Count
D’Alviella refers to authorities, notamment Tiele,
_Manuel de l’Histoire des Religions_, traduit par M.
Maurice Vernes, Liv. II, et dans la _Revue de l’Histoire
des Religions_, la _Religion de l’ancien empire Chinois_
par M. Julius Happel (t. IV. no. 6).]

Whether Mr. Harrison’s opinion is or is not changed by this array of counter-opinion, he may at any rate be led somewhat to qualify his original statement that “Nothing is more certain than that man everywhere started with a simple lead worship of natural objects.”

I pass now to Mr. Harrison’s endeavor to rebut my assertion that he had demolished a _simulacrum_ and not the reality.