Chapter I: SPEAK of a country to which all civilized countries are deeply (2)

The salon is an insecure institution; first, because the exclusion of new material, of new men and new ideas, may so girdle such a society that its very perfection shall involve its death. Then, on account of the false ideas and artificial methods which self-limiting society tends to introduce, in time the genuine basis of association disappears from view: the great _name_ is wanted for the reputation of the salon, not the great intelligence for its illumination. The moment that you put the name in place of the individual, you introduce an element of insincerity and failure.

There is a sort of homage quite common in society, which amounts to such flattery as this: "Madam, I assure you that I consider you an eminently brilliant and successful sham. Will you tell me your secret, or shall I, a worker in the same line, tell you mine?" Again, the contradictory objects of our desired salon are its weakness. We wish it to exclude the general public, but we dreadfully desire that it shall be talked about and envied by the general public. These two opposite aims--a severe restriction of membership, and an unlimited extension of reputation--are very likely to destroy the social equilibrium of any circle, coterie, or association.

Such contradictions have deep roots; even the general conduct of neighborhood evinces them. People are often concerned lest those who live near them should infringe upon the rights and reserves of their household. In large cities, people sometimes boast with glee that they have no acquaintance with the families dwelling on either side of them. And yet, in some of those very cities, social intercourse is limited by regions, and one street of fine houses will ignore another, which is, to all appearances, as fine and as reputable. Under these circumstances, some may naturally ask: "Who is my neighbor?" In the sense of the good Samaritan, mostly no one.

Dante has given us pictures of the ideal good and the ideal evil association. The company of his demons is distracted by incessant warfare. Weapons are hurled back and forth between them, curses and imprecations, while the solitary souls of great sinners abide in the torture of their own flame. As the great poet has introduced to us a number of his acquaintance in this infernal abode, we may suppose him to have given us his idea of much of the society of his own time. Such appeared to him that part of the World which, with the Flesh and the Devil, completes the trinity of evil. But, in his Paradiso, what glimpses does he give us of the lofty spiritual communion which then, as now, redeemed humanity from its low discredit, its spite and malice!

Resist as we may, the Christian order is prevailing, and will more and more prevail. At the two opposite poles of popular affection and learned persuasion, it did overcome the world, ages ago. In the intimate details of life, in the spirit of ordinary society, it will penetrate more and more. We may put its features out of sight and out of mind, but they are present in the world about us, and what we may build in ignorance or defiance of them will not stand. Modern society itself is one of the results of this world conquest which was crowned with thorns nearly two thousand years ago. In spite of the selfishness of all classes of men and women, this conquest puts the great goods of life within the reach of all.

I speak of Christianity here, because, as I see it, it stands in direct opposition to the natural desire of privileged classes and circles to keep the best things for their own advantage and enjoyment. "What, then!" will you say, "shall society become an agrarian mob?" By no means. Its great domain is everywhere crossed by boundaries. All of us have our proper limits, and should keep them, when we have once learned them.

But all of us have a share, too, in the good and glory of human destiny. The free course of intelligence and sympathy in our own commonwealth establishes here a social unity which is hard to find elsewhere. Do not let any of us go against this. Animal life itself begins with a cell, and slowly unfolds and expands until it generates the great electric currents which impel the world of sentient beings.

The social and political life of America has passed out of the cell state into the sweep of a wide and brilliant efficiency. Let us not try to imprison this truly cosmopolitan life in cells, going back to the instinctive selfhood of the barbaric state.

Nature starts from cells, but develops by centres. If we want to find the true secret of social discrimination, let us seek it in the study of centres,--central attractions, each subordinated to the governing harmony of the universe, but each working to keep together the social atoms that belong together. There was a time in which the stars in our beautiful heaven were supposed to be kept in their places by solid mechanical contrivances, the heaven itself being an immense body that revolved with the rest. The progress of science has taught us that the luminous orbs which surround us are not held by mechanical bonds, but that natural laws of attraction bind the atom to the globe, and the globe to its orbit.

Even so is it with the social atoms which compose humanity. Each of them has his place, his right, his beauty; and each and all are governed by laws of belonging which are as delicate as the tracery of the frost, and as mighty as the frost itself.

The club is taking the place of the salon to-day, and not without reason. I mean by this the study, culture, and social clubs, not those modern fortresses in which a man rather takes refuge from society than really seeks or finds it. I have just said that mankind are governed by centres of natural attraction, around which their lives come to revolve. In the course of human progress, the higher centres exercise an ever-widening attraction, and the masses of mankind are brought more and more under their influence.

Now, the affection of fraternal sympathy and good-will is as natural to man, though not so immediate in him, as are any of the selfish instincts. Objects of moral and intellectual worth call forth this sympathy in a high and ever-increasing degree, while objects in which self is paramount call forth just the opposite, and foster in one and all the selfish principle, which is always one of emulation, discord, and mutual distrust. While a salon may be administered in a generous and disinterested manner, I should fear that it would often prove an arena in which the most selfish leadings of human nature would assert themselves.

In the club, a sort of public spirit necessarily develops itself. Each of us would like to have his place there,--yes, and his appointed little time of shining,--but a worthy object, such as will hold together men and women on an intellectual basis, gradually wins for itself the place of command in the affections of those who follow it in company. Each of these will find that his unaided efforts are insufficient for the furthering and illustration of a great subject which all have greatly at heart. I have been present at a forge on which the pure gold of thought has been hammered by thinkers into the rounded sphere of an almost perfect harmony. One and another and another gave his hit or his touch, and when the delightful hour was at an end, each of us carried the golden sphere away with him.

The club which I have in mind at this moment had an unfashionable name, and was scarcely, if at all, recognized in the general society of Boston. It was called the Radical Club,--and the really radical feature in it was the fact that the thoughts presented at its meetings had a root, and were, in that sense, radical. These thoughts, entertained by individuals of very various persuasions, often brought forth strong oppositions of opinion. Some of us used to wax warm in the defence of our own conviction; but our wrath was not the wrath of the peacock, enraged to see another peacock unfold its brilliant tail, but the concern of sincere thinkers that a subject worth discussing should not be presented in a partial and one-sided manner, to which end, each marked his point and said his say; and when our meeting was over, we had all had the great instruction of looking into the minds of those to whom truth was as dear as to ourselves, even if her aspect to them was not exactly what it was to us.

Here I have heard Wendell Phillips and Oliver Wendell Holmes; John Weiss and James Freeman Clarke; Athanase Coquerel, the noble French Protestant preacher; William Henry Channing, worthy nephew of his great uncle; Colonel Higginson, Dr. Bartol, and many others. Extravagant things were sometimes said, no doubt, and the equilibrium of ordinary persuasion was not infrequently disturbed for a time; but the satisfaction of those present when a sound basis of thought was vindicated and established is indeed pleasant in remembrance.

I feel tempted to introduce here one or two magic-lantern views of certain sittings of this renowned club, of which I cherish especial remembrance. Let me say, speaking in general terms, that, albeit the club was more critical than devout, its criticism was rarely other than serious and earnest. I remember that M. Coquerel's discourse there was upon "The Protestantism of Art," and that in it he combated the generally received idea that the church of Rome has always stood first in the patronage and inspiration of art. The great Dutch painters, Holbein, Rembrandt, and their fellows, were not Roman Catholics. Michael Angelo was protestant in spirit; so was Dante. I cannot recall with much particularity the details of things heard so many years ago, but I remember the presence at this meeting of Charles Sumner, George Hillard, and Dr. Hedge. Mr. Sumner declined to take any part in the discussion which followed M. Coquerel's discourse. Colonel Higginson, who was often present at these meetings, maintained his view that Protestantism was simply the decline of the Christian religion. Mr. Hillard quoted St. James's definition of religion, pure and undefiled,--to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world. Dr. Hedge, who was about to withdraw, paused for a moment to say: "The word 'religion' is not rightly translated there; it should mean"--I forgot what. The doctor's tone and manner very much impressed a friend, who afterwards said to me: "Did he not go away 'like one who wraps the drapery of his couch about him'?"

Or it might be that John Weiss, he whom a lady writer once described as "four parts spirit and one part flesh," gave us his paper on Prometheus, or one on music, or propounded his theory of how the world came into existence. Colonel Higginson would descant upon the Greek goddesses, as representing the feminine ideals of the Greek mythology, which he held to be superior to the Christian ideals of womanhood,--dear Elizabeth Peabody and I meeting him in earnest opposition. David Wasson, powerful in verse and in prose, would speak against woman suffrage. When driven to the wall, he confessed that he did not believe in popular suffrage at all; and when forced to defend this position, he would instance the wicked and ill-governed city of New York as reason enough for his views. I remember his going away after such a discussion very abruptly, not at all in Dr. Hedge's grand style, but rather as if he shook the dust of our opinions from his feet; for no one of the radicals would countenance this doctrine, and though we freely confessed the sins of New York, we believed not a whit the less in the elective franchise, with amendments and extensions.

Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, one day, if I remember rightly, gave a very succinct and clear statement of the early forms of Calvinistic doctrine as held in this country, and Wendell Phillips lent his eloquent speech to this and to other discussions.

When I think of it, I believe that I had a salon once upon a time. I did not call it so, nor even think of it as such; yet within it were gathered people who represented many and various aspects of life. They were real people, not lay figures distinguished by names and clothes. The earnest humanitarian interests of my husband brought to our home a number of persons interested in reform, education, and progress. It was my part to mix in with this graver element as much of social grace and geniality as I was able to gather about me. I was never afraid to bring together persons who rarely met elsewhere than at my house, confronting Theodore Parker with some archpriest of the old orthodoxy, or William Lloyd Garrison with a decade, perhaps, of Beacon Street dames. A friend said, on one of these occasions: "Our hostess delights in contrasts." I confess that I did; but I think that my greatest pleasure was in the lessons of human compatibility which I learned on this wise. I started, indeed, with the conviction that thought and character are the foremost values in society, and was not afraid nor ashamed to offer these to my guests, with or without the stamp of fashion and position. The result amply justified my belief.

Some periods in our own history are more favorable to such intercourse than others. The agony and enthusiasm of the civil war, and the long period of ferment and disturbance which preceded and followed that great crisis,--these social agitations penetrated the very fossils of the body politic. People were glad to meet together, glad to find strength and comfort among those who lived and walked by solid convictions. We cannot go back to that time; we would not, if we could; but it was a grand time to live and to work in.

I am sorry when I see people build palaces in America. We do not need them. Why should we bury fortune and life in the dead state of rooms which are not lived in? Why should we double and triple for ourselves the dangers of insufficient drainage or defective sanitation? Let us have such houses as we need,--comfortable, well aired, well lighted, adorned with such art as we can appreciate, enlivened by such company as we can enjoy. Similarly, I believe that we should, individually, come much nearer to the real purpose of a salon by restricting the number of our guests and enlarging their variety.

If we are to have a salon, do not let us think too much about its appearance to the outside world,--how it will be reported, and extolled, and envied. Mr. Emerson withdrew from the Boston Radical Club because newspaper reports of its meetings were allowed. We live too much in public to-day, and desire too much the seal of public notice.

There is not room in our short human life for both shams and realities. We can neither pursue nor possess both. I think of this now entirely with application to the theme under consideration. Let us not exercise sham hospitality to sham friends. Let the heart of our household be sincere; let our home affections expand to a wider human brotherhood and sisterhood. Let us be willing to take trouble to gather our friends together, and to offer them such entertainment as we can, remembering that the best entertainment is mutual.

But do not let us offend ourselves or our friends with the glare of lights, the noise of numbers, in order that all may suffer a tedious and joyless being together, and part as those who have contributed to each other's _ennui_, all sincere and reasonable intercourse having been wanting in the general encounter.

We should not feel bound, either, to the literal imitation of any facts or features of European life which may not fit well upon our own. In many countries, the currents of human life have become so deepened and strengthened by habit and custom as to render change very difficult, and growth almost impossible. In our own, on the contrary, life is fresh and fluent. Its boundaries should be elastic, capable even of indefinite expansion.

In the older countries of which I speak, political power and social recognition are supposed to emanate from some autocratic source, and the effort and ambition of all naturally look toward that source, and, knowing none other, feel a personal interest in maintaining its ascendency, the statu quo. In our own broad land, power and light have no such inevitable abiding-place, but may emanate from an endless variety of points and personalities.

The other mode of living may have much to recommend it for those to whom it is native and inherited, but it is not for us. And when we apologize for our needs and deficiencies, it should not be on the ground of our youth and inexperience. If the settlement of our country is recent, we have behind us all the experience of the human race, and are bound to represent its fuller and riper manhood. Our seriousness is sometimes complained of, usually by people whose jests and pleasantries fail to amuse us. Let us not apologize for this, nor envy any nation its power of trifling and of _persiflage_. We have mighty problems to solve; great questions to answer. The fate of the world's future is concerned in what we shall do or leave undone.

We are a people of workers, and we love work--shame on him who is ashamed of it! When we are found, on our own or other shores, idling our life away, careless of vital issues, ignorant of true principles, then may we apologize, then let us make haste to amend.

Aristophanes

WHEN I learned, last season, that the attention of the school[A] this year would be in a good degree given to the dramatists of ancient Greece, I was seized with a desire to speak of one of these, to whom I owe a debt of gratitude. This is the great Aristophanes, the first, and the most illustrious, of comic writers for the stage,--first and best, at least, of those known to Western literature.

In the chance talk of people of culture, one hears of him all one's life long, as exceedingly amusing. From my brothers in college, I learned the "Frog Chorus" before I knew even a letter of the Greek alphabet. Many a decade after this, I walked in the theatre of Bacchus at Athens, and seeing the beauty of the marble seats, still ranged in perfect order, and feeling the glory and dignity of the whole surrounding, I seemed to guess that the comedies represented there were not desired to amuse idle clowns nor to provoke vulgar laughter.

[Note A] Read before the Concord School of Philosophy.

At the foot of the Acropolis, with the Parthenon in sight and the colossal statue of Minerva towering above the glittering temples, the poet and his audience surely had need to bethink themselves of the wisdom which lies in laughter, of the ethics of the humorous,--a topic well worth the consideration of students of philosophy. The ethics of the humorous, the laughter of the gods! "He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh them to scorn." Did not even the gentle Christ intend satire when, after recognizing the zeal with which an ox or an ass would be drawn out of a pit on the sacred day, he asked: "And shall not this woman, whom Satan hath bound, lo! these eighteen years, be loosed from her infirmity on the sabbath day?"

When a Greek tragedy is performed before us, we are amazed at its force, its coherence, and its simplicity. What profound study and quick sense of the heroic in nature must have characterized the man who, across the great gulf of centuries, can so sweep our heart-strings, and draw from them such responsive music! Our praise of these great works almost sounds conceited. It would be more fitting for us to sit in silence and bewail our own smallness. Comedy, too, has her grandeur; and when she walks the stage in robe and buskins, she, too, is to receive the highest crown, and her lessons are to be laid to heart.

I will venture a word here concerning the subjective side of comedy. Is it the very depth and quick of our self-love which is reached by the subtle sting which calls up a blush where no sermonizing would have that effect? Deep satire touches the heroic within us. "Miserable sinners are ye all," says the preacher, "vanity of vanities!" and we sit contentedly, and say Amen. But here comes some one who sets up our meannesses and incongruities before us so that they topple over and tumble down. And then, strange to say, we feel in ourselves this same power; and considering our follies in the same light, we are compelled to deride, and also to forsake them.

The miseries of war and the desirableness of peace were impressed strongly on the mind of Aristophanes. The Peloponnesian War dragged on from year to year with varying fortune; and though victory often crowned the arms of the Athenians, its glory was dearly paid for by the devastation which the Lacedæmonians inflicted upon the territory of Attica. "The Acharnians," "The Knights," and "Peace" deal with this topic in various forms. In the first of these is introduced, as the chief character, Dikæopolis, a country gentleman who, in consequence of the Spartan invasion, has been forced to forsake his estates, and to take shelter in the city. He naturally desires the speedy conclusion of hostilities, and to this end attends the assembly, determined, as he says:

To bawl, to abuse, to interrupt the speakers
Whenever I hear a word of any kind,
Except for an immediate peace.

This method reminds us of the obstructionists in the British Parliament. One man speaks of himself as loathing the city and longing to return

To my poor village and my farm
That never used to cry: "Come buy my charcoal,"
Nor "buy my oil," nor "buy my anything,"
But gave me what I wanted, freely and fairly,
Clear of all cost, with never a word of buying.

After various laughable adventures, Dikæopolis finds it possible to conclude a truce with the invaders on his own account, in which his neighbors, the Acharnians, are not included. He returns to his farm, and goes forth with wife and daughter to perform the sacrifice fitting for the occasion.

DIKÆOPOLIS

Silence! Move forward, the Canephora.
You, Xanthias, follow close behind her there
In a proper manner, with your pole and emblem.

WIFE

Set down the basket, daughter, and begin
The ceremony.

DAUGHTER

Give me the cruet, mother,
And let me pour it on the holy cake.

DIKÆOPOLIS

O blessed Bacchus, what a joy it is
To go thus unmolested, undisturbed,
My wife, my children, and my family,
With our accustomed joyful ceremony,
To celebrate thy festival in my farm.
Well, here's success to the truce of thirty years.

WIFE

Mind your behavior, child. Carry the basket
In a modest, proper manner; look demure;
Mind your gold trinkets, they'll be stolen else.

Dikæopolis now intones a hymn to Bacchus, but is interrupted by the violent threats of his war-loving neighbors, the Acharnians, who break out in injurious language, and threaten the life of the miscreant who has made peace with the enemies of his country solely for his own interests. With a good deal of difficulty, he persuades the enraged crowd to allow him to argue his case before them, and this fact makes us acquainted with another leading trait in Aristophanes; viz., his polemic opposition to the poet Euripides. Dikæopolis, wishing to make a favorable impression upon the rustics, hies to the house of Euripides, whose servant parleys with him in true transcendental language.

DIKÆOPOLIS

Euripides within?

SERVANT

Within, and not within. You comprehend me?

DIKÆOPOLIS

Within and not within! What do you mean?

SERVANT

His outward man
Is in the garret writing tragedy;
While his essential being is abroad
Pursuing whimsies in the world of fancy.

The visitor now calls aloud upon the poet:

Euripides, Euripides, come down,
If ever you came down in all your life!
'Tis I, Dikæopolis, from Chollidæ.

This Chollidæ probably corresponded to the Pea Ridge often quoted in our day. Euripides declines to come down, but is presently made visible by some device of the scene-shifter. In the dialogue that follows, Aristophanes ridicules the personages and the costumes brought upon the stage by Euripides, and reflects unhandsomely upon the poet's mother, who was said to have been a vender of vegetables. Dikæopolis does not seek to borrow poetry or eloquence from Euripides, but prays him to lend him "a suit of tatters from a worn-out tragedy."

For mercy's sake, for I'm obliged to make
A speech in my own defence before the chorus,
A long pathetic speech, this very day,
And if it fails, the doom of death betides me.

Euripides now asks what especial costume would suit the need of Dikæopolis, and calls over the most pitiful names in his tragedies: "Do you want the dress of Oineos?"--"Oh, no! something much more wretched."--"Phoenix? "--"No; much worse than Phoenix."--"Philocletes?"--"No."--"Lame Bellerophon?" Dikæopolis says:

'Twas not Bellerophon, but very like him,
A kind of smooth, fine-spoken character;
A beggar into the bargain, and a cripple
With a grand command of words, bothering and begging.

Euripides by this description recognizes the personage intended, _viz._, Telephus, the physician, and orders his servant to go and fetch the ragged suit, which he will find "next to the tatters of Thyestes, just over Ino's." Dikæopolis exclaims, on seeing the mass of holes and patches, but asks, further, a little Mysian bonnet for his head, a beggar's staff, a dirty little basket, a broken pipkin; all of which Euripides grants, to be rid of him. All this insolence the visitor sums up in the following lines:--

I wish I may be hanged, my dear Euripides,
If ever I trouble you for anything,
Except one little, little, little boon,
A single lettuce from your mother's stall.

This is more than Euripides can bear, and the gates are now shut upon the intruder.

Later in the play, Dikæopolis appears in company with the General Lamachus. A sudden call summons this last to muster his men and march forth to repel a party of marauders. Almost at the same moment, Dikæopolis is summoned to attend the feast of Bacchus, and to bring his best cookery with him. In the dialogue that follows, the valiant soldier and the valiant trencherman appear in humorous contrast.

LAMACHUS

Boy, boy, bring out here my haversack.

DIKÆOPOLIS

Boy, boy, hither bring my dinner service.

LAMACHUS

Bring salt flavored with thyme, boy, and onions.

DIKÆOPOLIS

Bring me a cutlet. Onions make me ill.

LAMACHUS

Bring hither pickled fish, stale.

DIKÆOPOLIS

And to me a fat pudding. I will cook it yonder.

LAMACHUS

Bring me my plumes and my helmet.

DIKÆOPOLIS

Bring me doves and thrushes.

LAMACHUS

Fair and white is the plume of the ostrich.

DIKÆOPOLIS

Fair and yellow is the flesh of the dove.

LAMACHUS

O man! leave off laughing at my weapons.

DIKÆOPOLIS

O man! don't you look at my thrushes.

LAMACHUS

Bring the case that holds my plumes.

DIKÆOPOLIS

And bring me a dish of hare.

LAMACHUS

But the moths have eaten my crest.

Dikæopolis makes some insolent rejoinder, at which the general takes fire. He calls for his lance; Dikæopolis, for the spit, which he frees from the roast meat. Lamachus raises his Gorgon-orbed shield; Dikæopolis lifts a full-orbed pancake. Lamachus then performs a mock act of divination:--

Pour oil upon the shield. What do I trace
In the divining mirror? 'Tis the face
Of an old coward, fortified with fear,
That sees his trial for desertion near.

DIKÆOPOLIS

Pour honey on the pancake. What appears?
A comely personage, advanced in years,
Firmly resolved to laugh at and defy
Both Lamachus and the Gorgon family.

In "The Frogs," god and demigod, Bacchus and Hercules, are put upon the stage with audacious humor. The first has borrowed the costume of the second, in which unfitting garb he knocks at Hercules' door on his way to Hades, his errand being to find and bring back Euripides. The dearth of clever poets is the reason alleged for this undertaking. Hercules suggests to him various poets who are still on earth. Bacchus condemns them as "warblers of the grove; poor, puny wretches!" He now asks Hercules for introductions to his friends in the lower regions, and for

Any communication about the country,
The roads, the streets, the bridges, public houses
And lodgings, free from bugs and fleas, if possible.

Hercules mentions various ways of arriving at the infernal regions: "The hanging road,--rope and noose?"--"That's too stifling."--"The pestle and mortar, then,--the beaten road?"--"No; that gives one cold feet."--"Go, then, to the tower of the Keramicus, and throw yourself headlong." No; Bacchus does not wish to have his brains dashed out. He would go by the road which Hercules took. Of this, Hercules gives an alarming account, beginning with the bottomless lake and the boat of Charon. Bacchus determines to set forth, but is detained by the recalcitrance of his servant, Xanthias, who refuses to carry his bundle any further.

A funeral now comes across the stage. Bacchus asks the dead man if he is willing to carry some bundles to Hell for him. The dead man demands two drachmas for the service. Bacchus offers him ninepence, which he angrily refuses, and is carried out of sight. Charon presently appears, and makes known, like a good ferryman, the points at which he will deliver passengers.

Who wants the ferryman?
Anybody waiting to remove from the sorrows of life?
A passage to Lethe's wharf? to Cerberus' Beach?
To Tartarus? to Tenaros? to Perdition?

Just so, in my youth, sailing on the Hudson, one heard all night the sound of Peekskill landing! Fishkill landing! Rhinebeck landing!--with darkness and swish of steam quite infernal enough.

Charon takes Bacchus on board, but compels him to do his part of the rowing, promising him: "As soon as you begin you shall have music that will teach you to keep time."

This music is the famous "Chorus of the Frogs," beginning, "Brokekekesh, koash, koash," and running through many lines, with this occasional refrain, of which Bacchus soon tires, as he does of the oar. His servant Xanthias is obliged to make the journey by land and on foot, Charon bidding him wait for his master at the Stone of Repentance, by the Slough of Despond, beyond the Tribulations. After encountering the Empousa, a nursery hobgoblin, they meet the spirits of the initiated, singing hymns to Bacchus--whom they invoke as Jacchus--and to Ceres. This part of the play, intended, Frere says, to ridicule the Eleusinian mysteries, is curiously human in its incongruity,--a jumble of the beautiful and the trivial. I must quote from it the closing strophe:--

Let us hasten, let us fly
Where the lovely meadows lie,
Where the living waters flow,
Where the roses bloom and blow.
Heirs of immortality,
Segregated safe and pure,
Easy, sorrowless, secure,
Since our earthly course is run,
We behold a brighter sun.

Such sweet words we to-day could expect to hear from the lips of our own dear ones, gone before.

Very incongruous is certainly this picture of Bacchus, in a cowardly and ribald state of mind, listening to the hymn which celebrates his divine aspect. Jacchus, whom the spirits invoke, is the glorified Bacchus, the highest ideal of what was vital religion in those days. But the god himself is not professionally, only personally, present, and, wearing the disguise of Hercules, in no way notices or responds to the strophes which invoke him. He asks the band indeed to direct him to Pluto's house, which turns out to be near at hand.

Before its door, Bacchus is seized with such a fit of timidity that, instead of knocking, he asks his servant to tell him how the native inhabitants of the region knock at doors. Reproved by the servant, he knocks, and announces himself as the valiant Hercules. Æacus, the porter, now rushes out upon him with violent abuse, reviling him for having stolen, or attempted to steal, the watch-dog, Cerberus, and threatening him with every horror which Hell can inflict. Æacus departs, and Bacchus persuades his servant to don the borrowed garb of Hercules, while he loads himself with the baggage which the other was carrying. Proserpine, however, sends her maid to invite the supposed Hercules to a feast of dainties. Xanthias now assumes the manners befitting the hero, at which Bacchus orders him to change dresses with him once more, and assume his own costume, which he does. Hardly have they done this, when Bacchus is again set upon by two frantic women, who shriek in his ears the deeds of gluttony committed by Hercules in Hades, and not paid for.

There; that's he
That came to our house, ate those nineteen loaves.
Aye; sure enough. That's he, the very man;
And a dozen and a half of cutlets and fried chops,
At a penny ha' penny apiece. And all the garlic,
And the good green cheese that he gorged at once.
And then, when I called for payment, he looked fierce
And stared me in the face, and grinned and roared.

The women threaten the false Hercules with the pains and penalties of swindling. He now pretends to soliloquize: "I love poor Xanthias dearly; that I do."

"Yes," says Xanthias, "I know why; but it's of no use. I won't act Hercules." Xanthias, however, allows himself to be persuaded, and when Æacus, appearing with a force, cries: "Arrest me there that fellow that stole the dog," Xanthias contrives to make an effectual resistance. Having thus gained time, he assures Æacus that he never stole so much as a hair of his dog's tail; but gives him leave to put Bacchus, his supposed slave, to the torture, in order to elicit from him the truth. Æacus, softened by this proposal, asks in which way the master would prefer to have his slave tortured. Xanthias replies:

In your own way, with the lash, with knots and screws,
With the common, usual, customary tortures,
With the rack, with the water torture, any sort of way,
With fire and vinegar--all sorts of ways.

Bacchus, thus driven to the wall, proclaims his divinity, and claims Xanthias as his slave. The latter suggests that if Bacchus is a divinity, he may be beaten without injury, as he will not feel it. Bacchus retorts, "If you are Hercules, so may you." Æacus, to ascertain the truth, impartially belabors them both. Each, in turn, cries out, and pretends to have quoted from the poets. Æacus, unable to decide which is the god and which the impostor, brings them both before Proserpine and Pluto.

In the course of a delicious dialogue between the two servants, Æacus and Xanthias, it is mentioned that Euripides, on coming to the shades, had driven Æschylus from the seat of honor at Pluto's board, holding himself to be the worthier poet. Æschylus has objected to this, and the matter is now to be settled by a trial of skill in which Bacchus is to be the umpire.

The shades of Euripides and Æschylus appear in the next scene, with Bacchus between them. Æschylus wishes the trial had taken place elsewhere. Why? Because while his tragedies live on earth, those of Euripides are dead, and have descended with him to bear him company in Hell. The encounter of wits between the two is of the grandiose comic, each taunting the other with his faults of composition. Euripides says of Æschylus:

He never used a simple word
But bulwarks and scamanders and hippogriffs and Gorgons,
Bloody, remorseless phrases.

Æschylus rejoins:

Well, then, thou paltry wretch, explain
What were your own devices?

Euripides says that he found the Muse

Puffed and pampered
With pompous sentences, a cumbrous huge virago.

In order to bring her to a more genteel figure:

I fed her with plain household phrase and cool familiar salad,
With water gruel episode, with sentimental jelly,
With moral mince-meat, till at length I brought her into compass.
I kept my plots distinct and clear to prevent confusion.
My leading characters rehearsed their pedigrees for prologues.

"For all this," says Æschylus, "you ought to have been hanged." Æschylus now speaks of the grand old days, of the great themes and works of early poetry:

Such is the duty, the task of a poet,
Fulfilling in honor his duty and trust.
Look to traditional history, look;
See what a blessing illustrious poets
Conferred on mankind in the centuries past.
Orpheus instructed mankind in religion,
Reclaimed them from bloodshed and barbarous rites.
Musæus delivered the doctrine of medicine,
And warnings prophetic for ages to come.
Next came old Hesiod, teaching us husbandry,
Rural economy, rural astronomy,
Homely morality, labor and thrift.
Homer himself, our adorable Homer,
What was his title to praise and renown?
What but the worth of the lessons he taught us,
Discipline, arms, and equipment of war.

And here the poet comes to speak of a question which is surely prominent to-day in the minds of thoughtful people. Æschylus, in his argument against Euripides, speaks of the noble examples which he himself has brought upon the stage, reproaches his adversary with the objectionable stories of Sthenobæus and Phædra, with which he, Euripides has corrupted the public taste.

Euripides alleges in his own defence that he did not invent those stories. "Phædra's affair was a matter of fact." Æschylus rejoins:

A fact with a vengeance, but horrible facts
Should be buried in silence, not bruited abroad,
Nor brought forth on the stage, nor emblazoned in poetry.
Children and boys have a teacher assigned them;
The bard is a master for manhood and youth,
Bound to instruct them in virtue and truth
Beholden and bound.

I do not know which of the plays of Aristophanes is considered the best by those who are competent to speak authoritatively upon their merits; but of those that I know, this drama of "The Frogs" seems to me to exhibit most fully the scope and extent of his comic power. Condescending in parts to what is called low comedy,--_i.e._, the farcical, based upon the sense of what all know and experience,--it rises elsewhere to the highest domain of literary criticism and expression.

The action between Bacchus and his slave forcibly reminds us of Cervantes, though master and man alike have in them more of Sancho Panza than of Quixote. In the journey to the palace of Pluto, I see the prototype of what the great mediæval poet called "The Divine Comedy." I find in both the same weird imagination, the same curious interbraiding of the ridiculous and the grandiose. This, of course, with the difference that the Greek poet affords us only a brief view of Hell, while Dante detains us long enough to give us a realizing sense of what it is, or might be. This same mingling of the awful and the grotesque suggests to me passages in our own Hawthorne, similarly at home with the supernatural, which underlies the story of "The Scarlet Letter," and flashes out in "The Celestial Railroad." But I must come back to Dante, who can amuse us with the tricks of demons, and can lift us to the music of the spheres. So Aristophanes can show us, on the one hand, the humorous relations of a coward and a clown; and, on the other, can put into the mouth of the great Æschylus such words as he might fitly have spoken.

Perhaps the very extravagance of fun is carried even further in the drama of "The Birds" than in those already quoted from. Its conceits are, at any rate, most original, and, so far as I know, it is without prototype or parallel in its matter and manner.

The argument of the play can be briefly stated. Peisthetairus, an Athenian citizen, dissatisfied with the state of things in his own country, visits the Hoopoe with the intention of securing his assistance in founding a new state, the dominion of the birds. He takes with him a good-natured simpleton of a friend, Well-hoping, by name. Now the Hoopoe in question, according to the old legend, had been known in a previous state of being as Tereus, King of Thrace, and the metamorphosis which changed him to a bird had changed his subjects also into representatives of the various feathered tribes. These, however, far from sharing the polite and hospitable character of their master, become enraged at the intrusion of the strangers, and propose to attack them in military style. The visitors seize a spit, the lid of a pot, and various other culinary articles, and prepare to make what defence they may, while the birds "present beaks," and prepare to charge. The Hoopoe here interposes, and claims their attention for the project which Peisthetairus has to unfold.

The wily Athenian begins his address with prodigious flattery, calling the feathered folk "a people of sovereigns," more ancient of origin than man, his deities, or his world. In support of this last clause, he quotes a fable of Æsop, who narrates that the lark was embarrassed to bury his father, because the earth did not exist at the time of his death. Sovereignty, of old, belonged to the birds. The stride of the cock sufficiently shows his royal origin, and his authority is still made evident by the alacrity with which the whole slumbering world responds to his morning reveille. The kite once reigned in Greece; the cuckoo in Sidon and Egypt. Jupiter has usurped the eagle's command, but dares not appear without him, while

Each of the gods had his separate fowl,--
Apollo the hawk and Minerva the owl.

Peisthetairus proposes that, in order to recover their lost sovereignty, the birds shall build in the air a strongly fortified city. This done, they shall send a herald to Jove to demand his immediate abdication. If the celestials refuse to govern themselves accordingly, they are to be blockaded. This blockade seems presently to obtain, and heavenly Iris, flying across the sky on a message from the gods, is caught, arraigned, and declared worthy of death,--the penalty of non-observance. The prospective city receives the name of "Nephelococcagia," and this is scarcely decided upon before a poet arrives to celebrate in an ode the mighty Nephelococcagia state.

Then comes a soothsayer to order the appropriate sacrifices; then an astronomer, with instruments to measure the due proportions of the city; then a would-be parricide, who announces himself as a lover of the bird empire, and especially of that law which allows a man to beat his father. Peisthetairus confesses that, in the bird domain, the chicken is sometimes applauded for clapper-clawing the old cock. When, however, his visitor expresses a wish to throttle his parent and seize upon his estate, Peisthetairus refers him to the law of the storks, by which the son is under obligation to feed and maintain the parent. This law, he says, prevails in Nephelococcagia, and the parricide accordingly betakes himself elsewhere.

All this admirable fooling ends in the complete success of the birds. Jupiter sends an embassy to treat for peace, and by a curious juggle, imitating, no doubt, the political processes of those days, Peisthetairus becomes recognized as the lawful sovereign of Nephelococcagia, and receives, on his demand, the hand of Jupiter's favorite queen in marriage.

I have given my time too fully to the Greek poet to be able to make any extended comparison between his works and those of the Elizabethan dramatists. But from the plays which trifle so with the grim facts of nature, I can fly to the "Midsummer Night's Dream," and alight for a moment on one of its golden branches. Shakespeare's Athenian clowns are rather Aristophanic in color. The play of "Pyramus and Thisbe" might have formed one interlude on that very stage which had in sight the glories of the Parthenon. The exquisite poetry which redeems their nonsense has its parallel in the lovely "Chorus of the Clouds," the ode to Peace, and other glimpses of the serious Aristophanes, which here and there look out from behind the mask of the comedian.

I am very doubtful whether good Greek scholars will think my selections given here at all the best that could be made. I will remind them of an Eastern tale in which a party of travellers were led, in the dark, through an enchanted region in which showers of some unknown substance fell around them, while a voice cried: "They that do not gather any will grieve, and they who do gather will grieve that they did not gather more, for these that fall are diamonds." So, of these bright diamonds of matchless Greek wit, I have tried to gather some, but may well say I grieve that I have not gathered more, and more wisely.

These works are to us exquisite pieces of humoristic extravagance, but to the people of the time they were far more than this; _viz._, the lesson of ridicule for what was tasteless and ridiculous in Athenian society, and the punishment of scathing satire for what was unworthy. Annotators tell us that the plays are full of allusions to prominent characters of the day. Some of these, as is well known, the poet sets upon the stage in masquerades which reveal, more than they conceal, their true personality. For the demagogue Cleon, and for the playwright Euripides, he has no mercy.

The patient student of Aristophanes and his commentators will acquire a very competent knowledge of the politics of the wise little city at the time of which he treats, also of its literary personages, pedants or sophists. The works give us, I think, a very favorable impression of the public to whose apprehension they were presented,--a quick-witted people, surely, able to follow the sudden turns and doublings of the poet's fancy; not to be surprised into stupidity by any ambush sprung upon them out of obscurity.

Compare with this the difficulty of commending anything worth thinking of to the attention of a modern theatre audience. It is true that much of this Greek wit must needs have been _caviare_ to the multitude, but its seasoning, no doubt, penetrated the body politic. I remember, a score or more of years ago, that a friend said that it was good and useful to have some public characters Beecherized, alluding to the broad and bold presentment of them given from time to time by our great clerical humorist, Henry Ward Beecher. Very efficacious, one thinks, must have been this scourge which the Greek comic muse wielded so merrily, but so unmercifully.

Although Aristophanes is very severe upon individuals, he does not, I think, foster any class enmities, except, perhaps, against the sophists. Although a city man, he treats the rustic population with great tenderness, and the glimpses he gives us of country life are sweet and genial. In this, he contrasts with the French playwrights of our time, to whom city life is everything, and the province synonymous with all that is dull and empty of interest.

How can I dismiss the comedy of that day without one word concerning its immortal tragedy,--Socrates, the divine man, compared and comparable to Christ, chained in his dungeon and condemned to die? The most blameless life could not save that sacred head. Its illumination, in which we sit here to-day, drew to it the shafts of superstition, malice, and wickedness. The comic poet might present on the stage such pictures of the popular deities as would make the welkin ring with the roar of laughter. This was not impiety. But Socrates, showing no disrespect to these idols of the current persuasion, only daring to discern beyond them God in his divineness, truth in her awful beauty,--_he_ must die the death of the profane.

It is a bitter story, surely, but "it must needs be that offences come." Where should we be to-day if no one in human history had loved high doctrine well enough to die for it? At such cost were these great lessons given us. How can we thank God or man enough for them?

The athletics of human thought are the true Olympian games. Human error is wise and logical in its way. It confronts its antagonist with terrific weapons; it seizes and sways him with a Titanic will force. It knows where to attack, and how. It knows the spirit that would be death to it, could that spirit prevail. It closes in the death grapple; the arena is red with the blood of its victim, but from that blood immortal springs a new world, a new society.

One word, in conclusion, about the Greek language. Valuable as translations are, they can never, to the student, take the place of originals. I have stumbled through these works with the lamest knowledge of Greek, and with no one to help me. I have quoted from admirable renderings of them into English. Yet, even in such delicate handling as that of Frere, the racy quality of the Greek phrase evaporates, like some subtle perfume; while the music of the grand rhythm, which the ear seems able to get through the eye, is lost.

The Greek tongue belongs to the history of thought. The language that gives us such distinctions as _nous_ and _logos_, as _gy_ and _kosmos_, has been the great pedagogue of our race, has laid the foundations of modern thought. Let us, by all means, help ourselves with Frere, with Jowett, and a multitude of other literary benefactors. But let us all get a little Greek on our own account, for the sake of our Socrates and of our Christ. And as the great but intolerant Agassiz had it for his motto that "species do not transmute," let this school have among its mottoes this one: "True learning does not de-Hellenize."

The Halfness of Nature

THE great office of ethics and æsthetics is the reconciliation of God and man; that is, of the divine and disinterested part of human nature with its selfish and animal opposite.

This opposition exists, primarily, in the individual; secondarily, in the society formed out of individuals. Human institutions typify the two, with their mutual influence and contradictions. The church represents the one; the market, the other. The battle-field and the hospital, the school and the forum, are further terms of the same antithesis. Nature does so much for the man, and the material she furnishes is so indispensable to all the constructions which we found upon it, that the last thing a teacher can afford to do is to undervalue her gifts. When critical agencies go so far as to do this, revolution is imminent: Nature reasserts herself.

Equally impotent is Nature where institutions do not supply the help of Art. When this state of things perseveres, she dwindles instead of growing. She becomes meagre, not grandiose. Men hunt, but do not cultivate. Women drudge and bear offspring, but neither comfort nor inspire.

Let us examine a little into what Nature gives, and into what she does not give. In the domain of thought and religion, people dispute much on this head, and are mostly ranged in two parties, of which one claims for her everything, while the other allows her nothing.

In this controversy, we can begin with one point beyond dispute. Nature gives the man, but she certainly does not give the clothes. Having received his own body, he has to go far and work hard in order to cover it.

Nature again scarcely gives human food. Roots, berries, wild fruit, and raw flesh would not make a very luxurious diet for the king of creation. Even this last staple Nature does not supply gratis, and the art of killing is man's earliest discovery in the lesson of self-sustenance. So Death becomes the succursal of life. The sense of this originates, first, the art of hunting; secondly, the art of war.

Nature gives the religious impulse, originating in the further pole of primal thought. The alternation of night and day may first suggest the opposition of things seen and not seen. The world exists while the man sleeps--exists independently of him. Sleep and its dreams are mysterious to the waking man. His first theology is borrowed from this conjunction of invisible might and irrational intellection.

But Nature does not afford the church. Art does this, laboring long and finishing never,--coming to a platform of rest, but coming at the same time to a higher view, inciting to higher effort. Temple after temple is raised. Juggernaut, Jove, Jesus! India does not get beyond Juggernaut. Rome could not get beyond Jove. Christendom is far behind Jesus. In all religions, Art founds on Nature, and aspires to super-nature. In all, Art asserts the superiority of thought over unthought, of measure over excess, of conscience over confidence. The latest evangel alone supplies a method of popularizing thought, of beautifying measure, of harmonizing conscience, and is, therefore, the religion that uses most largely from the race, and returns most largely to it.