Chapter XVIII: Canto XXXIII: The Beatific Vision (10)

The nurse knew and explained to us the chief differences in Oriental climates; and all these differences (as it happens) express themselves in the great varieties of summer. The cloudless sun-lights of Syria--those seemed to argue everlasting summer; the disciples plucking the ears of corn--that _must_ be summer; but above all, the very name of Palm Sunday (a festival in the English Church) troubled me like an anthem. "Sunday!" what was _that_? That was the day of peace which masked another peace, deeper than the heart of man can comprehend. "Palms!" what were they? _That_ was an equivocal word; palms in the sense of trophies expressed the pomps of life; palms as a product of nature expressed the pomps of summer. Yet still, even this explanation does not suffice; it was not merely by the peace and by the summer, by the deep sound of rest below all rest, and of ascending glory, that I had been haunted. It was also because Jerusalem stood near to those deep images both in time and in place. The great event of Jerusalem was at hand when Palm Sunday came; and the scene of that Sunday was near in place to Jerusalem. Yet what then was Jerusalem? Did I fancy it to be the _omphalos_ (navel) of the earth? That pretension had once been made for Jerusalem, and once for Delphi; and both pretensions had become ridiculous as the figure of the planet became known. Yes, but if not of the earth, for earth's tenant Jerusalem was the _omphalos_ of mortality. Yet how? There on the contrary it was, as we infants understood, that mortality had been trampled under foot. True; but for that very reason, there it was that mortality had opened its very gloomiest crater. There it was indeed that the human had risen on wings from the grave; but for that reason, there also it was that the Divine had been swallowed up by the abyss; the lesser star could not rise before the greater would submit to eclipse. Summer therefore had connected itself with death, not merely as a mode of antagonism, but also through intricate relations to Scriptural scenery and events.

Out of this digression, which was almost necessary for the purpose of showing how inextricably my feelings and images of death were entangled with those of summer, I return to the bedchamber of my sister. From the gorgeous sunlight I turned round to the corpse. There lay the sweet childish figure, there the angel face; and as people usually fancy, it was said in the house that no features had suffered any change. Had they not? The forehead indeed,--the serene and noble forehead,--_that_ might be the same; but the frozen eyelids, the darkness that seemed to steal from beneath them, the marble lips, the stiffening hands laid palm to palm as if repeating the supplications of closing anguish,--could these be mistaken for life? Had it been so, wherefore did I not spring to those heavenly lips with tears and never-ending kisses? But so it was _not_. I stood checked for a moment; awe, not fear, fell upon me; and whilst I stood, a solemn wind began to blow,--the most mournful that ear ever heard. Mournful! that is saying nothing. It was a wind that had swept the fields of mortality for a hundred centuries. Many times since, upon a summer day, when the sun is about the hottest, I have remarked the same wind arising and uttering the same hollow, solemn, Memnonian, but saintly swell; it is in this world the one sole _audible_ symbol of eternity. And three times in my life I have happened to hear the same sound in the same circumstances; namely, when standing between an open window and a dead body on a summer day.

Instantly, when my ear caught this vast AEolian intonation, when my eye filled with the golden fullness of life, the pomps and glory of the heavens outside, and, turning, when it settled upon the frost which overspread my sister's face, instantly a trance fell upon me. A vault seemed to open in the zenith of the far blue sky a shaft which ran up forever. I in spirit rose, as if on billows that also ran up the shaft forever, and the billows seemed to pursue the throne of God; but _that_ also ran before us and fled away continually. The flight and the pursuit seemed to go on for ever and ever. Frost, gathering frost, some Sarsar wind of death, seemed to repel me; I slept--for how long I cannot say; slowly I recovered my self-possession, and found myself standing as before, close to my sister's bed.

O flight of the solitary child to the solitary God--flight from the ruined corpse to the throne that could not be ruined!--how rich wert thou in truth for after years! Rapture of grief that, being too mighty for a child to sustain, foundest a happy oblivion in a heaven-born dream, and within that sleep didst conceal a dream; whose meaning, in after years, when slowly I deciphered, suddenly there flashed upon me new light; and even by the grief of a child, as I will show you, reader, hereafter, were confounded the falsehoods of philosophers.

In the 'Opium Confessions' I touched a little upon the extraordinary power connected with opium (after long use) of amplifying the dimensions of time. Space also it amplifies, by degrees that are sometimes terrific. But time it is upon which the exalting and multiplying power of opium chiefly spends its operation. Time becomes infinitely elastic, stretching out to such immeasurable and vanishing termini that it seems ridiculous to compute the sense of it, on waking, by expressions commensurate to human life. As in starry fields one computes by diameters of the earth's orbit, or of Jupiter's, so in valuing the _virtual_ time lived during some dreams, the measurement by generations is ridiculous--by millennia is ridiculous; by aeons, I should say, if aeons were more determinate, would be also ridiculous. On this single occasion, however, in my life, the very inverse phenomenon occurred. But why speak of it in connection with opium? Could a child of six years old have been under that influence? No, but simply because it so exactly reversed the operation of opium. Instead of a short interval expanding into a vast one, upon this occasion a long one had contracted into a minute. I have reason to believe that a _very_ long one had elapsed during this wandering or suspension of my perfect mind. When I returned to myself, there was a foot (or I fancied so) on the stairs. I was alarmed; for I believed that if anybody should detect me, means would be taken to prevent my coming again. Hastily, therefore, I kissed the lips that I should kiss no more, and slunk like a guilty thing with stealthy steps from the room. Thus perished the vision, loveliest amongst all the shows which earth has revealed to me; thus mutilated was the parting which should have lasted forever; thus tainted with fear was the farewell sacred to love and grief, to perfect love and perfect grief.

O Ahasuerus, everlasting Jew! fable or not a fable, thou, when first starting on thy endless pilgrimage of woe,--thou, when first flying through the gates of Jerusalem and vainly yearning to leave the pursuing curse behind thee,--couldst not more certainly have read thy doom of sorrow in the misgivings of thy troubled brain, than I when passing forever from my sister's room. The worm was at my heart; and confining myself to that state of life, I may say, the worm that could not die. For if when standing upon the threshold of manhood, I had ceased to feel its perpetual gnawings, _that_ was because a vast expansion of intellect,--it was because new hopes, new necessities, and the frenzy of youthful blood, had translated me into a new creature. Man is doubtless _one_ by some subtle _nexus_ that we cannot perceive, extending from the new-born infant to the superannuated dotard; but as regards many affections and passions incident to his nature at different stages, he is _not_ one: the unity of man in this respect is coextensive only with the particular stage to which the passion belongs. Some passions, as that of sexual love, are celestial by one half of their origin, animal and earthly by the other half. These will not survive their own appropriate stage. But love which is _altogether_ holy, like that between two children, will revisit undoubtedly by glimpses the silence and the darkness of old age; and I repeat my belief--that unless bodily torment should forbid it, that final experience in my sister's bedroom, or some other in which her innocence was concerned, will rise again for me to illuminate the hour of death.

LEVANA AND OUR LADIES OF SORROW

From 'Confessions of an English Opium-Eater'

Oftentimes at Oxford I saw Levana in my dreams. I knew her by her Roman symbols. Who is Levana? Reader, that do not pretend to have leisure for very much scholarship, you will not be angry with me for telling you. Levana was the Roman goddess that performed for the new-born infant the earliest office of ennobling kindness,--typical, by its mode, of that grandeur which belongs to man everywhere, and of that benignity in powers invisible which even in pagan worlds sometimes descends to sustain it. At the very moment of birth, just as the infant tasted for the first time the atmosphere of our troubled planet, it was laid on the ground. _That_ might, bear different interpretations. But immediately, lest so grand a creature should grovel there for more than one instant, either the paternal hand as proxy for the goddess Levana, or some near kinsman as proxy for the father, raised it upright, bade it look erect as the king of all this world, and presented its forehead to the stars, saying perhaps in his heart, "Behold what is greater than yourselves!" This symbolic act represented the function of Levana. And that mysterious lady, who never revealed her face (except to me in dreams), but always acted by delegation, had her name from the Latin verb (as still it is the Italian verb) _levare_, to raise aloft.

This is the explanation of Levana. And hence it has arisen that some people have understood by Levana the tutelary power that controls the education of the nursery. She that would not suffer at his birth even a prefigurative or mimic degradation for her awful ward, far less could be supposed to suffer the real degradation attaching to the non-development of his powers. She therefore watches over human education.

Therefore it is that Levana often communes with the powers that shake man's heart: therefore it is that she dotes upon grief. "These ladies," said I softly to myself, on seeing the ministers with whom Levana was conversing, "these are the Sorrows; and they are three in number, as the _Graces_ are three, who dress man's life with beauty; the _Parcae_ are three, who weave the dark arras of man's life in their mysterious loom always with colors sad in part, sometimes angry with tragic crimson and black; the _Furies_ are three, who visit, with retributions called from the other side of the grave, offenses that walk upon this; and once even the _Muses_ were but three, who fit the harp, the trumpet, or the lute, to the great burdens of man's impassioned creations. These are the Sorrows, all three of whom I know." The last words I say _now_; but in Oxford I said, "One of whom I know, and the others too surely I _shall_ know." For already in my fervent youth I saw (dimly relieved upon the dark background of my dreams) the imperfect lineaments of the awful sisters. These sisters--by what name shall we call them?

If I say simply "The Sorrows," there will be a chance of mistaking the term; it might be understood of individual sorrow,--separate cases of sorrow,--whereas I want a term expressing the mighty abstractions that incarnate themselves in all individual sufferings of man's heart; and I wish to have these abstractions presented as impersonations; that is, as clothed with human attributes of life, and with functions pointing to flesh. Let us call them therefore _Our Ladies of Sorrow_.

The eldest of the three is named _Mater Lachrymarum_, Our Lady of Tears. She it is that night and day raves and moans, calling for vanished faces. She stood in Rama, where a voice was heard of lamentation.--Rachel weeping for her children, and refusing to be comforted. She it was that stood in Bethlehem on the night when Herod's sword swept its nurseries of Innocents, and the little feet were stiffened forever, which, heard at times as they tottered along floors overhead, woke pulses of love in household hearts that were not unmarked in heaven.

Her eyes are sweet and subtile, wild and sleepy, by turns; oftentimes rising to the clouds, oftentimes challenging the heavens. She wears a diadem round her head. And I knew by childish memories that she could go abroad upon the winds, when she heard that sobbing of litanies, or the thundering of organs, and when she beheld the mustering of summer clouds. This sister, the elder, it is that carries keys more than papal at her girdle, which open every cottage and every palace. She, to my knowledge, sate all last summer by the bedside of the blind beggar, him that so often and so gladly I talked with: whose pious daughter, eight years old, with the sunny countenance, resisted the temptations of play and village mirth to travel all day long on dusty roads with her afflicted father. For this did God send her a great reward. In the springtime of the year, and whilst yet her own spring was budding, he recalled her to himself. But her blind father mourns forever over _her_; still he dreams at midnight that the little guiding hand is locked within his own; and still he wakens to a darkness that is _now_ within a second and a deeper darkness. This _Mater Lachrymarum_ also has been sitting all this winter of 1844-5 within the bedchamber of the Czar, bringing before his eyes a daughter (not less pious) that vanished to God not less suddenly, and left behind her a darkness not less profound. By the power of her keys it is that Our Lady of Tears glides, a ghostly intruder, into the chambers of sleepless men, sleepless women, sleepless children, from Ganges to the Nile, from Nile to Mississippi. And her, because she is the first-born of her house, and has the widest empire, let us honor with the title of "Madonna."

The second sister is called _Mater Suspiriorum_, Our Lady of Sighs. She never scales the clouds, nor walks abroad upon the winds. She wears no diadem. And her eyes, if they were ever seen, would be neither sweet nor subtile; no man could read their story; they would be found filled with perishing dreams, and with wrecks of forgotten delirium. But she raises not her eyes; her head, on which sits a dilapidated turban, droops forever, forever fastens on the dust. She weeps not. She groans not. But she sighs inaudibly at intervals. Her sister Madonna is oftentimes stormy and frantic, raging in the highest against Heaven, and demanding back her darlings. But Our Lady of Sighs never clamors, never defies, dreams not of rebellious aspirations. She is humble to abjectness. Hers is the meekness that belongs to the hopeless. Murmur she may, but it is in her sleep. Whisper she may, but it is to herself in the twilight. Mutter she does at times, but it is in solitary places that are desolate as she is desolate, in ruined cities, and when the sun has gone down to his rest. This sister is the visitor of the Pariah; of the Jew; of the bondsman to the oar in the Mediterranean galleys; of the English criminal in Norfolk Island, blotted out from the books of remembrance in sweet far-off England; of the baffled penitent reverting his eyes forever upon a solitary grave, which to him seems the altar overthrown of some past and bloody sacrifice, on which altar no oblations can now be availing, whether towards pardon that he might implore, or towards reparation that he might attempt. Every slave that at noonday looks up to the tropical sun with timid reproach, as he points with one hand to the earth, our general mother, but for _him_ a stepmother,--as he points with the other hand to the Bible, our general teacher, but against _him_ sealed and sequestered; every woman sitting in darkness, without love to shelter her head or hope to illumine her solitude, because the heaven-born instincts kindling in her nature germs of holy affections, which God implanted in her womanly bosom, having been stifled by social necessities, now burn sullenly to waste like sepulchral lamps among the ancients; every nun defrauded of her unreturning May-time by wicked kinsmen, whom God will judge; every captive in every dungeon; all that are betrayed, and all that are rejected; outcasts by traditionary law, and children of _hereditary_ disgrace:--all these walk with Our Lady of Sighs. She also carries a key; but she needs it little. For her kingdom is chiefly amongst the tents of Shem, and the houseless vagrant of every clime. Yet in the very highest ranks of man she finds chapels of her own; and even in glorious England there are some that, to the world, carry their heads as proudly as the reindeer, who yet secretly have received her mark upon their foreheads.

But the third sister, who is also the youngest--! Hush! whisper whilst we talk of _her_! Her kingdom is not large, or else no flesh should live; but within that kingdom all power is hers. Her head, turreted like that of Cybele, rises almost beyond the reach of sight. She droops not; and her eyes rising so high _might_ be hidden by distance. But being what they are, they cannot be hidden; through the treble veil of crape which she wears, the fierce light of a blazing misery, that rests not for matins or for vespers, for noon of day or noon of night, for ebbing or for flowing tide, may be read from the very ground. She is the defier of God. She also is the mother of lunacies, and the suggestress of suicides. Deep lie the roots of her power; but narrow is the nation that she rules. For she can approach only those in whom a profound nature has been upheaved by central convulsions; in whom the heart trembles and the brain rocks under conspiracies of tempest from without and tempest from within. Madonna moves with uncertain steps, fast or slow, but still with tragic grace. Our Lady of Sighs creeps timidly and stealthily. But this youngest sister moves with incalculable motions, bounding, and with a tiger's leaps. She carries no key; for though coming rarely amongst men, she storms all doors at which she is permitted to enter at all. And _her_ name is _Mater Tenebrarum_,--Our Lady of Darkness.

These were the _Semnai Theai_, or Sublime Goddesses, these were the _Eumenides_, or Gracious Ladies (so called by antiquity in shuddering propitiation) of my Oxford dreams. Madonna spoke. She spoke by her mysterious hand. Touching my head, she beckoned to our Lady of Sighs; and _what_ she spoke, translated out of the signs which (except in dreams) no man reads, was this:--

"Lo! here is he whom in childhood I dedicated to my altars. This is he that once I made my darling. Him I led astray, him I beguiled, and from heaven I stole away his young heart to mine. Through me did he become idolatrous; and through me it was, by languishing desires, that he worshiped the worm, and prayed to the wormy grave. Holy was the grave to him; lovely was its darkness; saintly its corruption. Him, this young idolator, I have seasoned for thee, dear gentle Sister of Sighs! Do thou take him now to _thy_ heart, and season him for our dreadful sister. And thou,"--turning to the _Mater Tenebrarum_, she said,--"wicked sister, that temptest and hatest, do thou take him from _her_. See that thy sceptre lie heavy on his head. Suffer not woman and her tenderness to sit near him in his darkness. Banish the frailties of hope, wither the relenting of love, scorch the fountains of tears, curse him as only thou canst curse. So shall he be accomplished in the furnace, so shall he see the things that ought _not_ to be seen, sights that are abominable, and secrets that are unutterable. So shall he read elder truths, sad truths, grand truths, fearful truths. So shall he rise again _before_ he dies. And so shall our commission be accomplished which from God we had,--to plague his heart until he had unfolded the capacities of his spirit."

SAVANNAH-LA-MAR

From 'Confessions of an English Opium-Eater'

God smote Savannah-la-mar, and in one night by earthquake removed her, with all her towers standing and population sleeping, from the steadfast foundations of the shore to the coral floors of ocean. And God said:--"Pompeii did I bury and conceal from men through seventeen centuries; this city I will bury, but not conceal. She shall be a monument to men of my mysterious anger, set in azure light through generations to come; for I will enshrine her in a crystal dome of my tropic seas." This city therefore, like a mighty galleon with all her apparel mounted, streamers flying, and tackling perfect, seems floating along the noiseless depths of ocean; and oftentimes in glassy calms, through the translucid atmosphere of water that now stretches like an air-woven awning above the silent encampment, mariners from every clime look down into her courts and terraces, count her gates, and number the spires of her churches. She is one ample cemetery, and has been for many a year; but in the mighty calms that brood for weeks over tropic latitudes, she fascinates the eye with a _Fata Morgana_ revelation as of human life still subsisting, in submarine asylums sacred from the storms that torment our upper air.

Thither, lured by the loveliness of cerulean depths, by the peace of human dwellings privileged from molestation, by the gleam of marble altars sleeping in everlasting sanctity, oftentimes in dreams did I and the Dark Interpreter cleave the watery veil that divided us from her streets. We looked into the belfries, where the pendulous bells were waiting in vain for the summons which should awaken their marriage peals; together we touched the mighty organ keys, that sang no _jubilates_ for the ear of Heaven, that sang no requiems for the ear of human sorrow; together we searched the silent nurseries, where the children were all asleep, and had been asleep through five generations. "They are waiting for the heavenly dawn," whispered the Interpreter to himself: "and when that comes, the bells and the organs will utter a _jubilate_ repeated by the echoes of Paradise." Then turning to me he said:--"This is sad, this is piteous; but less would not have sufficed for the purpose of God. Look here. Put into a Roman clepsydra one hundred drops of water; let these run out as the sands in an hour-glass, every drop measuring the hundredth part of a second, so that each shall represent but the three-hundred-and-sixty-thousandth part of an hour. Now count the drops as they race along; and when the fiftieth of the hundred is passing, behold! forty-nine are not, because already they have perished; and fifty are not, because they are yet to come. You see therefore how narrow, how incalculably narrow, is the true and actual present. Of that time which we call the present, hardly a hundredth part but belongs either to a past which has fled, or to a future which is still on the wing. It has perished, or it is not born. It was, or it is not. Yet even this approximation to the truth is _infinitely_ false. For again subdivide that solitary drop, which only was found to represent the present, into a lower series of similar fractions, and the actual present which you arrest measures now but the thirty-six-millionth of an hour; and so by infinite declensions the true and very present, in which only we live and enjoy, will vanish into a mote of a mote, distinguishable only by a heavenly vision. Therefore the present, which only man possesses, offers less capacity for his footing than the slenderest film that ever spider twisted from her womb. Therefore also even this incalculable shadow from the narrowest pencil of moonlight is more transitory than geometry can measure, or thought of angel can overtake. The time which _is_, contracts into a mathematic point; and even that point perishes a thousand times before we can utter its birth. All is finite in the present; and even that finite is infinite in its velocity of flight towards death. But in God there is nothing finite; but in God there is nothing transitory; but in God there _can_ be nothing that tends to death. Therefore it follows that for God there can be no present. The future is the present of God, and to the future it is that he sacrifices the human present. Therefore it is that he works by earthquake. Therefore it is that he works by grief. Oh, deep is the plowing of earthquake! Oh, deep"--(and his voice swelled like a _sanctus_ rising from the choir of a cathedral)--"Oh, deep is the plowing of grief! But oftentimes less would not suffice for the agriculture of God. Upon a night of earthquake he builds a thousand years of pleasant habitations for man. Upon the sorrow of an infant he raises oftentimes from human intellects glorious vintages that could not else have been. Less than these fierce plowshares would not have stirred the stubborn soil. The one is needed for earth, our planet,--for earth itself as the dwelling-place of man; but the other is needed yet oftener for God's mightiest instrument,--yes" (and he looked solemnly at myself), "is needed for the mysterious children of the earth!"

THE BISHOP OF BEAUVAIS AND JOAN OF ARC

From 'Miscellaneous Essays'

Bishop of Beauvais! thy victim died in fire upon a scaffold--thou upon a down bed. But for the departing minutes of life, both are oftentimes alike. At the farewell crisis, when the gates of death are opening, and flesh is resting from its struggles, oftentimes the tortured and torturer have the same truce from carnal torment; both sink together into sleep; together both, sometimes, kindle into dreams. When the mortal mists were gathering fast upon you two, bishop and shepherd girl,--when the pavilions of life were closing up their shadowy curtains about you,--let us try, through the gigantic glooms, to decipher the flying features of your separate visions.

The shepherd girl that had delivered France--she from her dungeon, she from her baiting at the stake, she from her duel with fire, as she entered her last dream saw Domremy, saw the fountain of Domremy, saw the pomp of forests in which her childhood had wandered. That Easter festival which man had denied to her languishing heart, that resurrection of springtime which the darkness of dungeons had intercepted from her, hungering after the glorious liberty of forests, were by God given back into her hands, as jewels that had been stolen from her by robbers. With those, perhaps (for the minutes of dreams can stretch into ages), was given back to her by God the bliss of childhood. By special privilege, for _her_ might be created in this farewell dream, a second childhood, innocent as the first; but not, like that, sad with the gloom of a fearful mission in the rear. The mission had now been fulfilled. The storm was weathered, the skirts even of that mighty storm were drawing off. The blood that she was to reckon for had been exacted; the tears that she was to shed in secret had been paid to the last. The hatred to herself in all eyes had been faced steadily, had been suffered, had been survived.

Bishop of Beauvais! because the guilt-burdened man is in dreams haunted and waylaid by the most frightful of his crimes; and because upon that fluctuating mirror, rising from the fens of death, most of all are reflected the sweet countenances which the man has laid in ruins; therefore I know, bishop, that you also, entering your final dream, saw Domremy. That fountain of which the witnesses spoke so much, showed itself to your eyes in pure morning dews; but neither dews nor the holy dawn could cleanse away the bright spots of innocent blood upon its surface. By the fountain, bishop, you saw a woman seated, that hid her face. But as _you_ draw near, the woman raises her wasted features. Would Domremy know them again for the features of her child? Ah, but _you_ know them, bishop, well! Oh mercy! what a groan was _that_ which the servants, waiting outside the bishop's dream at his bedside, heard from his laboring heart, as at this moment he turned away from the fountain and the woman, seeking rest in the forests afar off. Yet not _so_ to escape the woman, whom once again he must behold before he dies. In the forests to which he prays for pity, will he find a respite? What a tumult, what a gathering of feet is there! In glades where only wild deer should run, armies and nations are assembling; towering in the fluctuating crowd are phantoms that belong to departed hours. There is the great English Prince, Regent of France. There is my lord of Winchester, the princely cardinal that died and made no sign. There is the Bishop of Beauvais, clinging to the shelter of thickets. What building is that which hands so rapid are raising? Is it a martyr's scaffold? Will they burn the child of Domremy a second time? No; it is a tribunal that rises to the clouds; and two nations stand around it, waiting for a trial. Shall my Lord of Beauvais sit upon the judgment seat, and again number the hours for the innocent? Ah! no; he is the prisoner at the bar. Already all is waiting; the mighty audience is gathered, the Court are hurrying to their seats, the witnesses are arrayed, the trumpets are sounding, the judge is taking his place. Oh! but this is sudden. My lord, have you no counsel?--"Counsel I have none; in heaven above, or on earth beneath, counselor there is none now that would take a brief from _me_; all are silent." Is it indeed come to this? Alas! the time is short, the tumult is wondrous, the crowd stretches away into infinity; but yet I will search in it for somebody to take your brief: I know of somebody that will be your counsel. Who is this that cometh from Domremy? Who is she in bloody coronation robes from Rheims? Who is she that cometh with blackened flesh from walking the furnaces of Rouen? This is she, the shepherd girl, counselor that had none for herself, whom I choose, bishop, for yours. She it is, I engage, that shall take my lord's brief. She it is, bishop, that would plead for you: yes, bishop, SHE--when heaven and earth are silent.

PAUL DEROULEDE

(1848-)

Paul Deroulede received his education in Paris, where he was born. In accordance with the wishes of his friends, he was educated for the law; but before even applying for admission to the bar he yielded to the poetic instinct that had been strong in him since boyhood, and began, under the name of Jean Rebel, to send verses to the Parisian periodicals. When only twenty-three years of age he wrote for the Academie Francaise a one-act drama in verse, 'Juan Strenner,' which however was not a success. The outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war in the same year roused his martial spirit; he enlisted, and at once entered active service, in which he distinguished himself by acts of signal bravery. A wound near the close of the hostilities took him from the field; and it was during the retirement thus enforced that he wrote the lyrics, 'Songs of the Soldier,' that first made him famous throughout his native country.

Not since the days of the 'Marseillaise' had the fighting spirit of the French people found such sympathetic expression; his songs were read and sung all over the country; they received the highest honor of the Academy, and their popularity continued after peace was declared, nearly one hundred and fifty editions having been exhausted up to 1895. Deroulede now devoted himself to literature and politics. 'New Songs of the Soldier' and a volume of 'Songs of the Peasant,' almost as popular as the war songs, were interspersed with two more dramatic works, also in verse, one of which, 'L'Hetman,' was received on the stage with great favor. A cantata, 'Vive la France,' written in 1880, was set to music by Gounod. He also wrote a novel and some treatises dealing with armies and fighting, but his prose works did not attract much attention.

Deroulede's best verses are distinguished for their inspiration and genuine enthusiasm. Careless of form and finish, not always stopping to make sure of his rhymes or perfect his metre, he gave the freest vent to his emotions. Some of the heart-glow which makes the exhilaration of Burns's poems infectious is found in his songs, but they are generally so entirely French that its scope is limited in a way that the Scotch poet's, despite his vernacular, was not. The Frenchman's sympathy is always with the harder side of life. In the 'Songs of the Soldier' he plays on chords of steel. These verses resound with the blast of the bugle, the roll of the drum, the flash of the sword, the rattle of musketry, the boom of the cannon; and even in the 'Songs of the Peasant' it is the corn and the wine, as the fruit of toil, that appeal to him, rather than the grass and the flowers embellishing the fields.

THE HARVEST

From 'Chants du Paysan'

The wheat, the hardy wheat is rippling on the breeze.
'Tis our great mother's sacred mantle spread afar,
Old Earth revered, who gives us life, in whom we are,
We the dull clay the living God molds as he please.

The wheat, the hardy wheat bends down its heavy head,
Blessed and consecrate by the Eternal hand;
The stalks are green although the yellow ears expand:
Keep them, O Lord, from 'neath the tempest's crushing tread!

The wheat, the hardy wheat spreads like a golden sea
Whose harvesters--bent low beneath the sun's fierce light,
Stanch galley-slaves, whose oar is now the sickle bright--
Cleave down the waves before them falling ceaselessly.

The wheat, the hardy wheat ranged in its serried rows,
Seems like some noble camp upon the distant plain.
Glory to God!--the crickets chirp their wide refrain;
From sheaf to sheaf the welcome bread-song sweeping goes.

Translated for 'A Library of the World's Best Literature,' by Thomas Walsh.

IN GOOD QUARTERS

From 'Poemes Militaires'

MIREBEAU, 1871

Good old woman, bother not.
Or the place will be too hot:
You might let the fire grow old--
Save your fagots for the cold:
I am drying through and through.

But she, stopping not to hear,
Shook the smoldering ashes near:
"Soldier, not too warm for you!"

Good old woman, do not mind;
At the storehouse I have dined:
Save your vintage and your ham,
And this cloth--such as I am
Are not used to--save it too.

But she heard not what I said--
Filled my glass and cut the bread:
"Soldier, it is here for you!"

Good old woman--sheets for me!
Faith, you treat me royally:
And your stable? on your hay?
There at length my limbs to lay?
I shall sleep like monarchs true.

But she would not be denied
Of the sheets, and spread them wide:
"Soldier, it is made for you!"

Morning came--the parting tear:
Well--good-by! What have we here?
My old knapsack full of food!
Dear old creature--hostess good--
Why indulge me as you do?

It was all that she could say,
Smiling in a tearful way:
"I have one at war like you!"

Translated for 'A Library of the World's Best Literature,' by Thomas Walsh.

"GOOD FIGHTING!"

From 'Poemes Militaires'

The Kroumirs leave their mountain den;
Sing, bullets, sing! and bugles, blow!
Good fighting to our gallant men,
And happy they who follow, when,
Brothers in arms so dear, these go.

Yea, happy they who serve our France,
And neither pain nor danger fly;
But in the front of war's advance
Still deem it but a glorious chance,
To be among the brave who die!

No splendid war do we begin,
No glory waits us when 'tis past;
But marching through the fiery din,
We see our serried ranks grow thin,
And blood of Frenchmen welling fast.

French blood!--a treasure so august,
And hoarded with such jealous care,
To crush oppression's strength unjust,
With all the force of right robust,
And buy us back our honor fair:--

We yield it now to duty's claim,
And freely pour out all our store;
Who judges, frees us still from blame;
The Kroumirs' muskets war proclaim:--
In answer let French cannon roar!

Good fighting! and God be your shield,
Our pride's avengers, brave and true!
France watches you upon the field.
Who wear her colors never yield,
For 'tis her heart ye bear with you!

Translated for 'A Library of the World's Best Literature,' by Katharine Hillard.

LAST WISHES

From 'Poemes Militaires'

A grave for me--a grave--and why?
I do not wish to sleep alone:
Let me within the trenches lie,
Side by side with my soldiers thrown.

Dear old comrades of wars gone by,
Come, 'tis our final "halt" is nigh:
Clasp your brave hearts to my own.

A sheet for me--a sheet--and why?
Such is for them on their beds who moan:
The field is the soldier's place to die,
The field of carnage, of blood and bone.

Dear old comrades of wars gone by,
This is the prayer of my soul's last sigh:
Clasp your brave hearts to my own.

Tears for me--these tears--and why?
Knells let the vanquished foe intone!
France delivered!--I still can cry,
France delivered--invaders flown!

Dear old comrades of wars gone by,
Pain is nothing, and death--a lie!
Clasp your brave hearts to my own!

Translated for 'A Library of the World's Best Literature,' by Thomas Walsh.

RENE DESCARTES

(1596-1650)

The broad scope of literature is illustrated by its inclusion of the writings of Rene Descartes (Latinized, Renatus Cartesius). Deliberately turning away from books, and making naught alike of learned precedent and literary form, he yet could not but avail himself unconsciously of the heritage which he had discarded.

This notable figure in seventeenth-century philosophy was born of ancient family at La Haye, in Touraine, France, March 31st, 1596; and died at Stockholm, Sweden, February 11th, 1650. From a pleasant student life of eight years in the Jesuit college at La Fleche, he went forth in his seventeenth year with unusual acquirements in mathematics and languages, but in deep dissatisfaction with the long dominant scholastic philosophy and the whole method prescribed for arriving at truth. In a strong youthful revolt, his first step was a decision to discharge his mind of all the prejudices into which his education had trained his thinking. As a beginning in this work he went to Paris, for observation of facts and of men. There, having drifted through a twelvemonth of moderate dissipation, he secluded himself for nearly two years of mathematical study, as though purposing to reduce his universe to an equation in order to solve it. The laws of number he could trust, since their lines configured the eternal harmony.

At the age of twenty-one he entered on a military service of two years in the army of the Netherlands, and then of about two years in the Bavarian army. From 1621, for about four years, he was roaming as an observer of men and nature in Germany, Belgium, and Italy, afterward sojourning in Paris about three and a half years. In 1629 he began twenty years of study and authorship in practical seclusion in Holland. His little work, 'Discours de la Methode' (Leyden, 1637), is often declared to have been the basis for a reconstitution of the science of thought. It would now perhaps be viewed by the majority of critics rather as a necessary clearing of antiquated rubbish from the ground on which the new construction was to rise. Next to it among his works are usually ranked 'Meditationes de Prima Philosophia,' and 'Principia Philosophiae.'

The long sojourn in Holland was ended in September 1649, in response to an urgent invitation from the studious young Queen Christina of Sweden, who wanted the now famous philosopher as an ornament to her court. After some hesitancy he sailed for Stockholm, where only five months afterward he died.

It has been said of Descartes that he was a spectator rather than an active worker in affairs. He was no hero, no patriot, no adherent of any party. He entered armies, but not from love of a cause; the army was a sphere in which he could closely observe the aspects of human life. He was never married, and probably had little concern with love. His attachment to a few friends seems to have been sincere. For literature as such he cared little. Erudition, scholarship, historic love, literary elegance, were nothing to him. Art and aesthetics did not appeal to him. Probably he was not a great reader, even of philosophic writers. He delighted in observing facts with a view to finding, stating, and systematizing their relations in one all-comprehending scheme. He never allowed himself to attack the Church in either its doctrine or its discipline. As a writer, though making no attempt at elegance in style, he is deemed remarkably clear and direct when the abstruseness of his usual themes is considered.

Descartes's method in philosophy gives signs of formation on the model of a process in mathematics. In all investigations he would ascertain first what must exist by necessity; thus establishing axioms evidenced in all experience, because independent of all experience. The study of mathematics for use in other departments drew him into investigations whose results made it a new science. He reformed its clumsy nomenclature, also the algebraic use of letters for quantities; he introduced system into the use of exponents to denote the powers of a quantity, thus opening the way for the binomial theorem; he was the first to throw clear light on the negative roots of equations; his is the theorem by use of which the maximum number of positive or negative roots of an equation can be ascertained. Analytical geometry originated with his investigation of the nature and origin of curves.

His mathematical improvements opened the way for the reform of physical science and for its immense modern advance. In his optical investigations he established the law of refraction of light. His ingenious theory of the vortices--tracing gravity, magnetism, light, and heat, to the whirling or revolving movements of the molecules of matter with which the universe is filled--was accepted as science for about a quarter of a century.

In mental science Descartes's primary instrument for search of truth was Doubt: everything was to be doubted until it had been proved. This was provisional skepticism, merely to provide against foregone conclusions. It was not to preclude belief, but to summon and assure belief as distinct from the inane submission to authority, to prejudice, or to impulse. In this process of doubting everything, the philosopher comes at last to one fact which he cannot doubt--the fact that he exists; for if he did not exist he could not be thinking his doubt. _Cogito, ergo sum_ is one point of absolute knowledge; it is a clear and ultimate perception.

The first principle of his philosophy is, that our consciousness is truthful in its proper sphere, also that our thought is truthful and trustworthy under these two conditions--when the thought is clear and vivid, and when it is held to a theme utterly distinct from every other theme; since it is impossible for us to believe that either man who thinks, or the universe concerning which he thinks, is organized on the basis of a lie. There are "necessary truths," and they are discoverable.

A second principle is, the inevitable ascent of our thought from the fragmentary to the perfect, from the finite to the infinite. Thus the thought of the infinite is an "innate idea," a part of man's potential consciousness. This principle (set forth in one of the selections given herewith) is the Cartesian form of the _a priori_ argument for the Divine existence, which like other _a priori_ forms is viewed by critics not as a proof in pure logic, but as a commanding and luminous appeal to man's entire moral and intellectual nature.

A third principle is, that the material universe is necessarily reduced in our thought ultimately to two forms, extension and local movement--extension signifying matter, local movement signifying force. There is no such thing as empty space; there are no ultimate indivisible atoms; the universe is infinitely full of matter.

A fourth principle is, that the soul and matter are subsistences so fundamentally and absolutely distinct that they cannot act in reciprocal relations. This compelled Descartes to resort to his strained supposition that all correspondence or synchronism between bodily movements and mental or spiritual activities is merely reflex or automatic, or else is produced directly by act of Deity. For relief from this violent hypothesis, Leibnitz modified the Cartesian philosophy by his famous theory of a pre-established harmony.

Descartes did a great work, but it was not an abiding reconstruction: indeed, it was not construction so much as it was a dream--one of the grandest and most suggestive in the history of thought. Its audacious disparagement of the whole scholastic method startled Europe, upon the dead air of whose philosophy it came as a refreshing breath of transcendental thought. Its suggestions and inspirations are traceable as a permanent enrichment, though its vast fabric swiftly dissolved. The early enthusiasm for it in French literary circles and among professors in the universities of Holland scarcely outlasted a generation. Within a dozen years after the philosopher's death, the Cartesian philosophy was prohibited by ecclesiastical authorities and excluded from the schools. In the British Isles and in Germany the system has been usually considered as an interesting curiosity in the cabinet of philosophies. Yet the unity of all truth through relations vital, subtle, firm, and universal, though seen only in a vision of the night, abides when the night is gone.

With the impressive and noteworthy 'Discours de la Methode' (Leyden, 1637), were published three essays supporting it: 'La Dioptrique,' 'Les Meteores,' 'La Geometrie.' Of his other works, the most important are 'Meditationes de Prima Philosophia' (Paris, 1641; Amsterdam, 1642), and 'Principia Philosophiae' (Amsterdam, 1644). A useful English translation of his most important writings, with an introduction, is by John Veitch, LL.D.,--'The Method, Meditations, and Selections from the Principles' (Edinburgh, 1853; 6th ed., Blackwoods, Edinburgh and London, 1879). See also, English translations of portions of his philosophical works, by W. Cunningham (1877), Lowndes (1878), Mahaffy (1880), Martineau (1885), Henry Rogers, Huxley, and L. Stephen.

For his Life, see 'Vie de Descartes,' by Baillet (2 vols. 1691); 'Descartes sa Vie,' etc., by Millet (2 vols. 1867-71); 'Descartes and his School,' by Kuno Fischer (English translation, 1887).

OF CERTAIN PRINCIPLES OF ELEMENTARY LOGICAL THOUGHT

From the 'Discourse on Method'

As a multitude of laws often only hampers justice, so that a State is best governed when, with few laws, these are rigidly administered; in like manner, instead of the great number of precepts of which Logic is composed, I believed that the four following would prove perfectly sufficient for me, provided I took the firm and unwavering resolution never in a single instance to fail in observing them.

The _first_ was never to accept anything for true which I did not clearly know to be such; that is to say, carefully to avoid precipitancy and prejudice, and to comprise nothing more in my judgment than what was presented to my mind so clearly and distinctly as to exclude all ground of doubt.

The _second_, to divide each of the difficulties under examination into as many parts as possible, and as might be necessary for its adequate solution.

The _third_, to conduct my thoughts in such order that, by commencing with objects the simplest and easiest to know, I might ascend by little and little, and as it were step by step, to the knowledge of the more complex; assigning in thought a certain order even to those objects which in their own nature do not stand in a relation of antecedence and sequence.

And the _last_, in every case to make enumerations so complete, and reviews so general, that it might be assured that nothing was omitted.

The long chains of simple and easy reasonings by means of which geometers are accustomed to reach the conclusions of their most difficult demonstrations, had led me to imagine that all things to the knowledge of which man is competent are mutually connected in the same way, and that there is nothing so far removed from us as to be beyond our reach, or so hidden that we cannot discover it, provided only we abstain from accepting the false for the true, and always preserve in our thoughts the order necessary for the deduction of one truth from another. And I had little difficulty in determining the objects with which it was necessary to commence, for I was already persuaded that it must be with the simplest and easiest to know, and, considering that of all those who have hitherto sought truth in the Sciences, the mathematicians alone have been able to find any demonstrations,--that is, any certain and evident reasons,--I did not doubt but that such must have been the rule of their investigations. I resolved to commence, therefore, with the examination of the simplest objects, not anticipating, however, from this any other advantage than that to be found in accustoming my mind to the love and nourishment of truth, and to a distaste for all such reasonings as were unsound. But I had no intention on that account of attempting to master all the particular sciences commonly denominated Mathematics: but observing that however different their objects, they all agree in considering only the various relations or proportions subsisting among those objects, I thought it best for my purpose to consider these proportions in the most general form possible; without referring them to any objects in particular, except such as would most facilitate the knowledge of them, and without by any means restricting them to these, that afterwards I might thus be the better able to apply them to every other class of objects to which they are legitimately applicable. Perceiving, further, that in order to understand these relations I should sometimes have to consider them one by one, and sometimes only to bear them in mind, or embrace them in the aggregate, I thought that in order the better to consider them individually, I should view them as subsisting between straight lines, than which I could find no objects more simple, or capable of being more distinctly represented to my imagination and senses; and on the other hand, that in order to retain them in the memory, or embrace an aggregate of many, I should express them by certain characters the briefest possible. In this way I believed that I could borrow all that was best both in geometrical analysis and in algebra, and correct all the defects of the one by help of the other.

AN ELEMENTARY METHOD OF INQUIRY

From the 'Discourse on Method'

Seeing that our senses sometimes deceive us, I was willing to suppose that there existed nothing really such as they presented to us; and because some men err in reasoning and fall into paralogisms, even on the simplest matters of geometry, I, convinced that I was as open to error as any other, rejected as false all the reasonings I had hitherto taken for demonstrations; and finally, when I considered that the very same thoughts (presentations) which we experience when awake may also be experienced when we are asleep, while there is at that time not one of them true, I supposed that all the objects (presentations) that had ever entered into my mind when awake had in them no more truth than the illusions of my dreams. But immediately upon this I observed that whilst I thus wished to think that all was false, it was absolutely necessary that I, who thus thought, should be somewhat; and as I observed that this truth,--"_I think, hence I am,_"--was so certain and of such evidence that no ground of doubt, however extravagant, could be alleged by the skeptics capable of shaking it, I concluded that I might without scruple accept it as the first principle of the philosophy of which I was in search.