Chapter V: BOSTON, By R.W. Emerson (1)

CONVERSATIONS ON THE FINE ARTS

YOUTH.

AUTOBIOGRAPHY.

* * * * *

"Aus Morgenduft gewebt und Sonnenklarheit
Der Dichtung Schleir aus der Hand der Wahrheit."

GOETHE.

"The million stars which tremble
O'er the deep mind of dauntless infancy."

TENNYSON.

"Wie leicht ward er dahin gefragen,
Was war dem Glücklichen zu schwer!
Wie tanzte vor des Lebens Wagen
Die luftige Begleitung her!
Die Liebe mit dem süssen Lohne,
Das Glück mit seinem gold'nen Kranz,
Der Ruhm mit seiner Sternenkrone,
Die Wahrheit in der Sonne Glanz."

SCHILLER

What wert thou then? A child most infantine,
Yet wandering far beyond that innocent age,
In all but its sweet looks and mien divine;
Even then, methought, with the world's tyrant rage
A patient warfare thy young heart did wage,
When those soft eyes of scarcely conscious thought
Some tale, or thine own fancies, would engage
To overflow with tears, or converse fraught
With passion o'er their depths its fleeting light had wrought.'

SHELLE

"And I smiled, as one never smiles but once;
Then first discovering my own aim's extent,
Which sought to comprehend the works of God.
And God himself, and all God's intercourse
With the human mind."

BROWNING.

I.

YOUTH.

* * * * *

'Tieck, who has embodied so many Runic secrets, explained to
me what I have often felt toward myself, when he tells of
the poor changeling, who, turned from the door of her adopted
home, sat down on a stone and so pitied herself that she wept.
Yet me also, the wonderful bird, singing in the wild forest,
has tempted on, and not in vain.'

Thus wrote Margaret in the noon of life, when looking back through youth to the "dewy dawn of memory." She was the eldest child of Timothy Fuller and Margaret Crane, and was born in Cambridge-Port, Massachusetts, on the 23d of May, 1810.

Among her papers fortunately remains this unfinished sketch of youth, prepared by her own hand, in 1840, as the introductory chapter to an autobiographical romance.

PARENTS.

'My father was a lawyer and a politician. He was a man largely
endowed with that sagacious energy, which the state of New
England society, for the last half century, has been so well
fitted to develop. His father was a clergyman, settled as
pastor in Princeton, Massachusetts, within the bounds of whose
parish-farm was Wachuset. His means were small, and the great
object of his ambition was to send his sons to college. As a
boy, my father was taught to think only of preparing himself
for Harvard University, and when there of preparing himself
for the profession of Law. As a Lawyer, again, the ends
constantly presented were to work for distinction in the
community, and for the means of supporting a family. To be an
honored citizen, and to have a home on earth, were made the
great aims of existence. To open the deeper fountains of
the soul, to regard life here as the prophetic entrance to
immortality, to develop his spirit to perfection,--motives
like these had never been suggested to him, either by
fellow-beings or by outward circumstances. The result was a
character, in its social aspect, of quite the common sort.
A good son and brother, a kind neighbor, an active man of
business--in all these outward relations he was but one of
a class, which surrounding conditions have made the majority
among us. In the more delicate and individual relations, he
never approached but two mortals, my mother and myself.

'His love for my mother was the green spot on which he
stood apart from the common-places of a mere bread-winning,
bread-bestowing existence. She was one of those fair and
flower-like natures, which sometimes spring up even beside the
most dusty highways of life--a creature not to be shaped into
a merely useful instrument, but bound by one law with the blue
sky, the dew, and the frolic birds. Of all persons whom I
have known, she had in her most of the angelic,--of that
spontaneous love for every living thing, for man, and beast,
and tree, which restores the golden age.'

DEATH IN THE HOUSE.

'My earliest recollection is of a death,--the death of a
sister, two years younger than myself. Probably there is a
sense of childish endearments, such as belong to this tie,
mingled with that of loss, of wonder, and mystery; but these
last are prominent in memory. I remember coming home and
meeting our nursery-maid, her face streaming with tears. That
strange sight of tears made an indelible impression. I realize
how little I was of stature, in that I looked up to this
weeping face;--and it has often seemed since, that--full-grown
for the life of this earth, I have looked up just so, at times
of threatening, of doubt, and distress, and that just so has
some being of the next higher order of existences looked down,
aware of a law unknown to me, and tenderly commiserating the
pain I muse endure in emerging from my ignorance.

'She took me by the hand and led me into a still and dark
chamber,--then drew aside the curtain and showed me my sister.
I see yet that beauty of death! The highest achievements of
sculpture are only the reminder of its severe sweetness. Then
I remember the house all still and dark,--the people in their
black clothes and dreary faces,--the scent of the newly-made
coffin,--my being set up in a chair and detained by a gentle
hand to hear the clergyman,--the carriages slowly going, the
procession slowly doling out their steps to the grave. But
I have no remembrance of what I have since been told I
did,--insisting, with loud cries, that they should not put the
body in the ground. I suppose that my emotion was spent at
the time, and so there was nothing to fix that moment in my
memory.

'I did not then, nor do I now, find any beauty in these
ceremonies. What had they to do with the sweet playful child?
Her life and death were alike beautiful, but all this sad
parade was not. Thus my first experience of life was one of
death. She who would have been the companion of my life was
severed from me, and I was left alone. This has made a
vast difference in my lot. Her character, if that fair face
promised right, would have been soft, graceful and lively: it
would have tempered mine to a gentler and more gradual course.

OVERWORK.

'My father,--all whose feelings were now concentred on
me,--instructed me himself. The effect of this was so far good
that, not passing through the hands of many ignorant and weak
persons as so many do at preparatory schools, I was put at
once under discipline of considerable severity, and, at the
same time, had a more than ordinarily high standard presented
to me. My father was a man of business, even in literature; he
had been a high scholar at college, and was warmly attached
to all he had learned there, both from the pleasure he had
derived in the exercise of his faculties and the associated
memories of success and good repute. He was, beside, well read
in French literature, and in English, a Queen Anne's man. He
hoped to make me the heir of all he knew, and of as much more
as the income of his profession enabled him to give me
means of acquiring. At the very beginning, he made one
great mistake, more common, it is to be hoped, in the last
generation, than the warnings of physiologists will permit
it to be with the next. He thought to gain time, by bringing
forward the intellect as early as possible. Thus I had tasks
given me, as many and various as the hours would allow, and
on subjects beyond my age; with the additional disadvantage
of reciting to him in the evening, after he returned from his
office. As he was subject to many interruptions, I was often
kept up till very late; and as he was a severe teacher, both
from his habits of mind and his ambition for me, my feelings
were kept on the stretch till the recitations were over. Thus
frequently, I was sent to bed several hours too late, with
nerves unnaturally stimulated. The consequence was a premature
development of the brain, that made me a "youthful prodigy" by
day, and by night a victim of spectral illusions, nightmare,
and somnambulism, which at the time prevented the harmonious
development of my bodily powers and checked my growth, while,
later, they induced continual headache, weakness and nervous
affections, of all kinds. As these again re-acted on the
brain, giving undue force to every thought and every feeling,
there was finally produced a state of being both too active
and too intense, which wasted my constitution, and will bring
me,--even although I have learned to understand and regulate
my now morbid temperament,--to a premature grave.

'No one understood this subject of health then. No one knew
why this child, already kept up so late, was still unwilling
to retire. My aunts cried out upon the "spoiled child, the
most unreasonable child that ever was,--if brother could but
open his eyes to see it,--who was never willing to go to bed."
They did not know that, so soon as the light was taken away,
she seemed to see colossal faces advancing slowly towards her,
the eyes dilating, and each feature swelling loathsomely as
they came, till at last, when they were about to close upon
her, she started up with a shriek which drove them away, but
only to return when she lay down again. They did not know
that, when at last she went to sleep, it was to dream of
horses trampling over her, and to awake once more in fright;
or, as she had just read in her Virgil, of being among trees
that dripped with blood, where she walked and walked and could
not get out, while the blood became a pool and plashed over
her feet, and rose higher and higher, till soon she dreamed it
would reach her lips. No wonder the child arose and walked in
her sleep, moaning all over the house, till once, when they
heard her, and came and waked her, and she told what she had
dreamed, her father sharply bid her "leave off thinking of
such nonsense, or she would be crazy,"--never knowing that he
was himself the cause of all these horrors of the night. Often
she dreamed of following to the grave the body of her mother,
as she had done that of her sister, and woke to find the
pillow drenched in tears. These dreams softened her heart too
much, and cast a deep shadow over her young days; for then,
and later, the life of dreams,--probably because there was in
it less to distract the mind from its own earnestness,--has
often seemed to her more real, and been remembered with more
interest, than that of waking hours.

'Poor child! Far remote in time, in thought, from that
period, I look back on these glooms and terrors, wherein I was
enveloped, and perceive that I had no natural childhood.'

BOOKS.

'Thus passed my first years. My mother was in delicate health,
and much absorbed in the care of her younger children. In the
house was neither dog nor bird, nor any graceful animated form
of existence. I saw no persons who took my fancy, and real
life offered no attraction. Thus my already over-excited mind
found no relief from without, and was driven for refuge from
itself to the world of books. I was taught Latin and English
grammar at the same time, and began to read Latin at six years
old, after which, for some years, I read it daily. In this
branch of study, first by my father, and afterwards by a
tutor, I was trained to quite a high degree of precision.
I was expected to understand the mechanism of the language
thoroughly, and in translating to give the thoughts in as
few well-arranged words as possible, and without breaks
or hesitation,--for with these my father had absolutely no
patience.

'Indeed, he demanded accuracy and clearness in everything:
you must not speak, unless you can make your meaning perfectly
intelligible to the person addressed; must not express a
thought, unless you can give a reason for it, if
required; must not make a statement, unless sure of all
particulars--such were his rules. "But," "if," "unless," "I am
mistaken," and "it may be so," were words and phrases excluded
from the province where he held sway. Trained to great
dexterity in artificial methods, accurate, ready, with entire
command of his resources, he had no belief in minds that
listen, wait, and receive. He had no conception of the subtle
and indirect motions of imagination and feeling. His influence
on me was great, and opposed to the natural unfolding of my
character, which was fervent, of strong grasp, and disposed to
infatuation, and self-forgetfulness. He made the common prose
world so present to me, that my natural bias was controlled. I
did not go mad, as many would do, at being continually roused
from my dreams. I had too much strength to be crushed,--and
since I must put on the fetters, could not submit to let them
impede my motions. My own world sank deep within, away from
the surface of my life; in what I did and said I learned to
have reference to other minds. But my true life was only the
dearer that it was secluded and veiled over by a thick curtain
of available intellect, and that coarse, but wearable stuff
woven by the ages,--Common Sense.

'In accordance with this discipline in heroic common sense,
was the influence of those great Romans, whose thoughts and
lives were my daily food during those plastic years. The
genius of Rome displayed itself in Character, and scarcely
needed an occasional wave of the torch of thought to show its
lineaments, so marble strong they gleamed in every light. Who,
that has lived with those men, but admires the plain force of
fact, of thought passed into action? They take up things with
their naked hands. There is just the man, and the block he
casts before you,--no divinity, no demon, no unfulfilled
aim, but just the man and Rome, and what he did for Rome.
Everything turns your attention to what a man can become,
not by yielding himself freely to impressions, not by letting
nature play freely through him, but by a single thought,
an earnest purpose, an indomitable will, by hardihood,
self-command, and force of expression. Architecture was the
art in which Rome excelled, and this corresponds with the
feeling these men of Rome excite. They did not grow,--they
built themselves up, or were built up by the fate of Rome, as
a temple for Jupiter Stator. The ruined Roman sits among
the ruins; he flies to no green garden; he does not look to
heaven; if his intent is defeated, if he is less than he meant
to be, he lives no more. The names which end in "_us_," seem
to speak with lyric cadence. That measured cadence,--that
tramp and march,--which are not stilted, because they indicate
real force, yet which seem so when compared with any other
language,--make Latin a study in itself of mighty influence.
The language alone, without the literature, would give one the
_thought_ of Rome. Man present in nature, commanding nature
too sternly to be inspired by it, standing like the rock
amid the sea, or moving like the fire over the land, either
impassive, or irresistible; knowing not the soft mediums or
fine flights of life, but by the force which he expresses,
piercing to the centre.

'We are never better understood than when we speak of a "Roman
virtue," a "Roman outline." There is somewhat indefinite,
somewhat yet unfulfilled in the thought of Greece, of Spain,
of modern Italy; but ROME! it stands by itself, a clear Word.
The power of will, the dignity of a fixed purpose is what
it utters. Every Roman was an emperor. It is well that the
infallible church should have been founded on this rock, that
the presumptuous Peter should hold the keys, as the conquering
Jove did before his thunderbolts, to be seen of all the world.
The Apollo tends flocks with Admetus; Christ teaches by the
lonely lake, or plucks wheat as he wanders through the fields
some Sabbath morning. They never come to this stronghold; they
could not have breathed freely where all became stone as
soon as spoken, where divine youth found no horizon for its
all-promising glance, but every thought put on, before it
dared issue to the day in action, its _toga virilis_.

'Suckled by this wolf, man gains a different complexion from
that which is fed by the Greek honey. He takes a noble bronze
in camps and battle-fields; the wrinkles of council well
beseem his brow, and the eye cuts its way like the sword. The
Eagle should never have been used as a symbol by any other
nation: it belonged to Rome.

'The history of Rome abides in mind, of course, more than the
literature. It was degeneracy for a Roman to use the pen; his
life was in the day. The "vaunting" of Rome, like that of the
North American Indians, is her proper literature. A man rises;
he tells who he is, and what he has done; he speaks of his
country and her brave men; he knows that a conquering god is
there, whose agent is his own right hand; and he should end
like the Indian, "I have no more to say."

'It never shocks us that the Roman is self-conscious.
One wants no universal truths from him, no philosophy, no
creation, but only his life, his Roman life felt in every
pulse, realized in every gesture. The universal heaven takes
in the Roman only to make us feel his individuality the more.
The Will, the Resolve of Man!--it has been expressed,--fully
expressed!

'I steadily loved this ideal in my childhood, and this is the
cause, probably, why I have always felt that man must know how
to stand firm on the ground, before he can fly. In vain for
me are men more, if they are less, than Romans. Dante was far
greater than any Roman, yet I feel he was right to take the
Mantuan as his guide through hell, and to heaven.

'Horace was a great deal to me then, and is so still. Though
his words do not abide in memory, his presence does: serene,
courtly, of darting hazel eye, a self-sufficient grace, and
an appreciation of the world of stern realities, sometimes
pathetic, never tragic. He is the natural man of the world; he
is what he ought to be, and his darts never fail of their
aim. There is a perfume and raciness, too, which makes life a
banquet, where the wit sparkles no less that the viands were
bought with blood.

'Ovid gave me not Rome, nor himself, but a view into the
enchanted gardens of the Greek mythology. This path I
followed, have been following ever since; and now, life half
over, it seems to me, as in my childhood, that every thought
of which man is susceptible, is intimated there. In those
young years, indeed, I did not see what I now see, but loved
to creep from amid the Roman pikes to lie beneath this great
vine, and see the smiling and serene shapes go by, woven from
the finest fibres of all the elements. I knew not why, at that
time,--but I loved to get away from the hum of the forum, and
the mailed clang of Roman speech, to these shifting shows of
nature, these Gods and Nymphs born of the sunbeam, the wave,
the shadows on the hill.

'As with Rome I antedated the world of deeds, so I lived in
those Greek forms the true faith of a refined and intense
childhood. So great was the force of reality with which these
forms impressed me, that I prayed earnestly for a sign,--that
it would lighten in some particular region of the heavens, or
that I might find a bunch of grapes in the path, when I went
forth in the morning. But no sign was given, and I was left a
waif stranded upon the shores of modern life!

'Of the Greek language, I knew only enough to feel that the
sounds told the same story as the mythology;--that the law
of life in that land was beauty, as in Rome it was a stern
composure. I wish I had learned as much of Greece as of
Rome,--so freely does the mind play in her sunny waters, where
there is no chill, and the restraint is from within out; for
these Greeks, in an atmosphere of ample grace, could not be
impetuous, or stern, but loved moderation as equable life
always must, for it is the law of beauty.

'With these books I passed my days. The great amount of study
exacted of me soon ceased to be a burden, and reading became a
habit and a passion. The force of feeling, which, under other
circumstances, might have ripened thought, was turned to learn
the thoughts of others. This was not a tame state, for the
energies brought out by rapid acquisition gave glow enough. I
thought with rapture of the all-accomplished man, him of the
many talents, wide resources, clear sight, and omnipotent
will. A Cæsar seemed great enough. I did not then know that
such men impoverish the treasury to build the palace. I kept
their statues as belonging to the hall of my ancestors, and
loved to conquer obstacles, and fed my youth and strength for
their sake.

* * * * *

'Still, though this bias was so great that in earliest years I
learned, in these ways, how the world takes hold of a powerful
nature, I had yet other experiences. None of these were
deeper than what I found in the happiest haunt of my childish
years,--our little garden. Our house, though comfortable,
was very ugly, and in a neighborhood which I detested,--every
dwelling and its appurtenances having a _mesquin_ and huddled
look. I liked nothing about us except the tall graceful elms
before the house, and the dear little garden behind. Our back
door opened on a high flight of steps, by which I went down
to a green plot, much injured in my ambitious eyes by the
presence of the pump and tool-house. This opened into a little
garden, full of choice flowers and fruit-trees, which was my
mother's delight, and was carefully kept. Here I felt at home.
A gate opened thence into the fields,--a wooden gate made of
boards, in a high, unpainted board wall, and embowered in the
clematis creeper. This gate I used to open to see the sunset
heaven; beyond this black frame I did not step, for I liked to
look at the deep gold behind it. How exquisitely happy I
was in its beauty, and how I loved the silvery wreaths of my
protecting vine! I never would pluck one of its flowers at
that time, I was so jealous of its beauty, but often since I
carry off wreaths of it from the wild-wood, and it stands in
nature to my mind as the emblem of domestic love.

'Of late I have thankfully felt what I owe to that garden,
where the best hours of my lonely childhood were spent. Within
the house everything was socially utilitarian; my books told
of a proud world, but in another temper were the teachings of
the little garden. There my thoughts could lie callow in the
nest, and only be fed and kept warm, not called to fly or sing
before the time. I loved to gaze on the roses, the violets,
the lilies, the pinks; my mother's hand had planted them, and
they bloomed for me. I culled the most beautiful. I looked at
them on every side. I kissed them, I pressed them to my bosom
with passionate emotions, such as I have never dared express
to any human being. An ambition swelled my heart to be as
beautiful, as perfect as they. I have not kept my vow. Yet,
forgive, ye wild asters, which gleam so sadly amid the fading
grass; forgive me, ye golden autumn flowers, which so strive
to reflect the glories of the departing distant sun; and ye
silvery flowers, whose moonlight eyes I knew so well, forgive!
Living and blooming in your unchecked law, ye know nothing of
the blights, the distortions, which beset the human being;
and which at such hours it would seem that no glories of free
agency could ever repay!

* * * * *

'There was, in the house, no apartment appropriated to the
purpose of a library, but there was in my father's room a
large closet filled with books, and to these I had free access
when the task-work of the day was done. Its window overlooked
wide fields, gentle slopes, a rich and smiling country, whose
aspect pleased without much occupying the eye, while a range
of blue hills, rising at about twelve miles distance, allured
to reverie. "Distant mountains," says Tieck, "excite the
fancy, for beyond them we place the scene of our Paradise."
Thus, in the poems of fairy adventure, we climb the rocky
barrier, pass fearless its dragon caves, and dark pine
forests, and find the scene of enchantment in the vale behind.
My hopes were never so definite, but my eye was constantly
allured to that distant blue range, and I would sit, lost in
fancies, till tears fell on my cheek. I loved this sadness;
but only in later years, when the realities of life had taught
me moderation, did the passionate emotions excited by seeing
them again teach how glorious were the hopes that swelled my
heart while gazing on them in those early days.

'Melancholy attends on the best joys of a merely ideal life,
else I should call most happy the hours in the garden, the
hours in the book closet. Here were the best French writers
of the last century; for my father had been more than half a
Jacobin, in the time when the French Republic cast its glare
of promise over the world. Here, too, were the Queen Anne
authors, his models, and the English novelists; but among
them I found none that charmed me. Smollett, Fielding, and the
like, deal too broadly with the coarse actualities of life.
The best of their men and women--so merely natural, with the
nature found every day--do not meet our hopes. Sometimes the
simple picture, warm with life and the light of the common
sun, cannot fail to charm,--as in the wedded love of
Fielding's Amelia,--but it is at a later day, when the mind is
trained to comparison, that we learn to prize excellence like
this as it deserves. Early youth is prince-like: it-will bend
only to "the king, my father." Various kinds of excellence
please, and leave their impression, but the most commanding,
alone, is duly acknowledged at that all-exacting age.

'Three great authors it was my fortune to meet at this
important period,--all, though of unequal, yet congenial
powers,--all of rich and wide, rather than aspiring
genius,--all free to the extent of the horizon their eye took
in,--all fresh with impulse, racy with experience; never to
be lost sight of, or superseded, but always to be apprehended
more and more.

'Ever memorable is the day on which I first took a volume of
SHAKSPEARE in my hand to read. It was on a Sunday.

'--This day was punctiliously set apart in our house. We had
family prayers, for which there was no time on other days. Our
dinners were different, and our clothes. We went to church. My
father put some limitations on my reading, but--bless him for
the gentleness which has left me a pleasant feeling for the
day!--he did not prescribe what was, but only what was _not_,
to be done. And the liberty this left was a large one. "You
must not read a novel, or a play;" but all other books, the
worst, or the best, were open to me. The distinction was
merely technical. The day was pleasing to me, as relieving me
from the routine of tasks and recitations; it gave me freer
play than usual, and there were fewer things occurred in its
course, which reminded me of the divisions of time; still the
church-going, where I heard nothing that had any connection
with my inward life, and these rules, gave me associations
with the day of empty formalities, and arbitrary restrictions;
but though the forbidden book or walk always seemed more
charming then, I was seldom tempted to disobey.--

'This Sunday--I was only eight years old--I took from the
book-shelf a volume lettered SHAKSPEARE. It was not the first
time I had looked at it, but before I had been deterred from
attempting to read, by the broken appearance along the page,
and preferred smooth narrative. But this time I held in my
hand "Romeo and Juliet" long enough to get my eye fastened to
the page. It was a cold winter afternoon. I took the book to
the parlor fire, and had there been 'seated an hour or two,
when my father looked up and asked what I was reading so
intently. "Shakspeare," replied the child, merely raising her
eye from the page. "Shakspeare,--that won't do; that's no book
for Sunday; go put it away and take another." I went as I was
bid, but took no other. Returning to my seat, the unfinished
story, the personages to whom I was but just introduced,
thronged and burnt my brain. I could not bear it long; such a
lure it was impossible to resist. I went and brought the book
again. There were several guests present, and I had got half
through the play before I again attracted attention. "What
is that child about that she don't hear a word that's said to
her?" quoth my aunt. "What are you reading?" said my father.
"Shakspeare" was again the reply, in a clear, though somewhat
impatient, tone. "How?" said my father angrily,--then
restraining himself before his guests,--"Give me the book and
go directly to bed."

'Into my little room no care of his anger followed me. Alone,
in the dark, I thought only of the scene placed by the
poet before my eye, where the free flow of life, sudden and
graceful dialogue, and forms, whether grotesque or fair,
seen in the broad lustre of his imagination, gave just what
I wanted, and brought home the life I seemed born to live.
My fancies swarmed like bees, as I contrived the rest of the
story;--what all would do, what say, where go. My confinement
tortured me. I could not go forth from this prison to ask
after these friends; I could not make my pillow of the dreams
about them which yet I could not forbear to frame. Thus was
I absorbed when my father entered. He felt it right, before
going to rest, to reason with me about my disobedience, shown
in a way, as he considered, so insolent. I listened, but could
not feel interested in what he said, nor turn my mind
from what engaged it. He went away really grieved at my
impenitence, and quite at a loss to understand conduct in me
so unusual.

'--Often since I have seen the same misunderstanding between
parent and child,--the parent thrusting the morale, the
discipline, of life upon the child, when just engrossed by
some game of real importance and great leadings to it. That is
only a wooden horse to the father,--the child was careering to
distant scenes of conquest and crusade, through a country of
elsewhere unimagined beauty. None but poets remember
their youth; but the father who does not retain poetical
apprehension of the world, free and splendid as it stretches
out before the child, who cannot read his natural history, and
follow out its intimations with reverence, must be a tyrant in
his home, and the purest intentions will not prevent his doing
much to cramp him. Each new child is a new Thought, and has
bearings and discernings, which the Thoughts older in date
know not yet, but must learn.--

'My attention thus fixed on Shakspeare, I returned to him
at every hour I could command. Here was a counterpoise to my
Romans, still more forcible than the little garden. My author
could read the Roman nature too,--read it in the sternness of
Coriolanus, and in the varied wealth of Cæsar. But he viewed
these men of will as only one kind of men; he kept them in
their place, and I found that he, who could understand the
Roman, yet expressed in Hamlet a deeper thought.

'In CERVANTES, I found far less productive talent,--'indeed,
a far less powerful genius,--but the same wide wisdom, a
discernment piercing the shows and symbols of existence, yet
rejoicing in them all, both for their own life, and as signs
of the unseen reality. Not that Cervantes philosophized,--his
genius was too deeply philosophical for that; he took things
as they came before him, and saw their actual relations and
bearings. Thus the work he produced was of deep meaning,
though he might never have expressed that meaning to himself.
It was left implied in the whole. A Coleridge comes and calls
Don Quixote the pure Reason, and Sancho the Understanding.
Cervantes made no such distinctions in his own mind; but he
had seen and suffered enough to bring out all his faculties,
and to make him comprehend the higher as well as the lower
part of our nature. Sancho is too amusing and sagacious to
be contemptible; the Don too noble and clear-sighted towards
absolute truth, to be ridiculous. And we are pleased to see
manifested in this way, how the lower must follow and serve
the higher, despite its jeering mistrust and the stubborn
realities which break up the plans of this pure-minded
champion.

'The effect produced on the mind is nowise that described by
Byron:--

"Cervantes smiled Spain's chivalry away," &c.

'On the contrary, who is not conscious of a sincere reverence
for the Don, prancing forth on his gaunt steed? Who would not
rather be he than any of the persons who laugh at him?--Yet
the one we would wish to be is thyself, Cervantes,
unconquerable spirit! gaining flavor and color like wine from
every change, while being carried round the world; in whose
eye the serene sagacious laughter could not be dimmed by
poverty, slavery, or unsuccessful authorship. Thou art to us
still more the Man, though less the Genius, than Shakspeare;
thou dost not evade our sight, but, holding the lamp to thine
own magic shows, dost enjoy them with us.

'My third friend was MOLIÉRE, one very much lower, both in
range and depth, than the-others, but, as far as he goes, of
the same character. Nothing secluded or partial is there about
his genius,--a man of the world, and a man by himself, as he
is. It was, indeed, only the poor social world of Paris that
he saw, but he viewed it from the firm foundations of
his manhood, and every lightest laugh rings from a clear
perception, and teaches life anew.

'These men were all alike in this,--they loved the _natural
history_ of man. Not what he should be, but what he is,
was the favorite subject of their thought. Whenever a noble
leading opened to the eye new paths of light, they rejoiced;
but it was never fancy, but always fact, that inspired them.
They loved a thorough penetration of the murkiest dens, and
most tangled paths of nature; they did not spin from the
desires of their own special natures, but reconstructed the
world from materials which they collected on every side. Thus
their influence upon me was not to prompt me to follow out
thought in myself so much as to detect it everywhere, for each
of these men is not only a nature, but a happy interpreter of
many natures. They taught me to distrust all invention which
is not based on a wide experience. Perhaps, too, they taught
me to overvalue an outward experience at the expense of inward
growth; but all this I did not appreciate till later.

'It will be seen that my youth was not unfriended, since those
great minds came to me in kindness. A moment of action in
one's self, however, is worth an age of apprehension through
others; not that our deeds are better, but that they produce
a renewal of our being. I have had more productive moments and
of deeper joy, but never hours of more tranquil pleasure than
those in which these demi-gods visited me,--and with a smile
so familiar, that I imagined the world to be full of such.
They did me good, for by them a standard was early given
of sight and thought, from which I could never go back, and
beneath which I cannot suffer patiently my own life or that of
any friend to fall. They did me harm, too, for the child
fed with meat instead of milk becomes too soon mature.
Expectations and desires were thus early raised, after which I
must long toil before they can be realized. How poor the scene
around, how tame one's own existence, how meagre and faint
every power, with these beings in my mind! Often I must cast
them quite aside in order to grow in my small way, and not
sink into despair. Certainly I do not wish that instead of
these masters I had read baby books, written down to children,
and with such ignorant dulness that they blunt the senses and
corrupt the tastes of the still plastic human being. But I do
wish that I had read no books at all till later,--that I had
lived with toys, and played in the open air. Children should
not cull the fruits of reflection and observation early, but
expand in the sun, and let thoughts come to them. They should
not through books antedate their actual experiences, but
should take them gradually, as sympathy and interpretation are
needed. With me, much of life was devoured in the bud.

FIRST FRIEND.

'For a few months, this bookish and solitary life was invaded
by interest in a living, breathing figure. At church, I used
to look around with a feeling of coldness and disdain, which,
though I now well understand its causes, seems to my wiser
mind as odious as it was unnatural. The puny child sought
everywhere for the Roman or Shakspeare figures, and she was
met by the shrewd, honest eye, the homely decency, or the
smartness of a New England village on Sunday. There was
beauty, but I could not see it then; it was not of the kind I
longed for. In the next pew sat a family who were my especial
aversion. There were five daughters, the eldest not above
four-and-twenty,--yet they had the old fairy, knowing
look, hard, dry, dwarfed, strangers to the All-Fair,--were
working-day residents in this beautiful planet. They looked
as if their thoughts had never strayed beyond the jobs of the
day, and they were glad of it. Their mother was one of those
shrunken, faded patterns of woman who have never done anything
to keep smooth the cheek and dignify the brow. The father
had a Scotch look of shrewd narrowness, and entire
self-complacency. I could not endure this family, whose
existence contradicted all my visions; yet I could not forbear
looking at them.

'As my eye one day was ranging about with its accustomed
coldness, and the proudly foolish sense of being in a shroud
of thoughts that were not their thoughts, it was arrested by
a face most fair, and well-known as it seemed at first
glance,--for surely I had met her before and waited for her
long. But soon I saw that she was a new apparition foreign to
that scene, if not to me. Her dress,--the arrangement of
her hair, which had the graceful pliancy of races highly
cultivated for long,--the intelligent and full picture of
her eye, whose reserve was in its self-possession, not in
timidity,--all combined to make up a whole impression, which,
though too young to understand, I was well prepared to feel.

'How wearisome now appears that thorough-bred _millefleur_
beauty, the distilled result of ages of European culture! Give
me rather the wild heath on the lonely hill-side, than such a
rose-tree from the daintily clipped garden. But, then, I had
but tasted the cup, and knew not how little it could satisfy;
more, more, was all my cry; continued through years, till I
had been at the very fountain. Indeed, it was a ruby-red,
a perfumed draught, and I need not abuse the wine because I
prefer water, but merely say I have had enough of it. Then,
the first sight, the first knowledge of such a person was
intoxication.

'She was an English lady, who, by a singular chance, was cast
upon this region for a few months. Elegant and captivating,
her every look and gesture was tuned to a different pitch
from anything I had ever known. She was in various ways
"accomplished," as it is called, though to what degree I
cannot now judge. She painted in oils;--I had never before
seen any one use the brush, and days would not have been too
long for me to watch the pictures growing beneath her hand.
She played the harp; and its tones are still to me the heralds
of the promised land I saw before me then. She rose, she
looked, she spoke; and the gentle swaying motion she made
all through life has gladdened memory, as the stream does the
woods and meadows.

'As she was often at the house of one of our neighbors, and
afterwards at our own, my thoughts were fixed on her with all
the force of my nature. It was my first real interest in my
kind, and it engrossed me wholly. I had seen her,--I should
see her,--and my mind lay steeped in the visions that flowed
from this source. My task-work I went through with, as I have
done on similar occasions all my life, aided by pride that
could not bear to fail, or be questioned. Could I cease from
doing the work of the day, and hear the reason sneeringly
given,--"Her head is so completely taken up with ---- that
she can do nothing"? Impossible.

'Should the first love be blighted, they say, the mind loses
its sense of eternity. All forms of existence seem fragile,
the prison of time real, for a god is dead. Equally true is
this of friendship. I thank Heaven that this first feeling was
permitted its free flow. The years that lay between the woman
and the girl only brought her beauty into perspective, and
enabled me to see her as I did the mountains from my window,
and made her presence to me a gate of Paradise. That which
she was, that which she brought, that which she might have
brought, were mine, and over a whole region of new life I
ruled proprietor of the soil in my own right.

'Her mind was sufficiently unoccupied to delight in my warm
devotion. She could not know what it was to me, but the light
cast by the flame through so delicate a vase cheered and
charmed her. All who saw admired her in their way; but she
would lightly turn her head from their hard or oppressive
looks, and fix a glance of full-eyed sweetness on the child,
who, from a distance, watched all her looks and motions. She
did not say much to me--not much to any one; she spoke in her
whole being rather than by chosen words. Indeed, her proper
speech was dance or song, and what was less expressive did
not greatly interest her. But she saw much, having in its
perfection the woman's delicate sense for sympathies and
attractions. We walked in the fields, alone. Though others
were present, her eyes were gliding over all the field and
plain for the objects of beauty to which she was of kin.
She was not cold to her seeming companions; a sweet courtesy
satisfied them, but it hung about her like her mantle that she
wore without thinking of it; her thoughts were free, for these
civilized beings can really live two lives at the same moment.
With them she seemed to be, but her hand was given to the
child at her side; others did not observe me, but to her I
was the only human presence. Like a guardian spirit she led
me through the fields and groves, and every tree, every bird
greeted me, and said, what I felt, "She is the first angel of
your life."

'One time I had been passing the afternoon with her. She
had been playing to me on the harp, and I sat listening in
happiness almost unbearable. Some guests were announced. She
went into another room to receive them, and I took up her
book. It was Guy Mannering, then lately published, and the
first of Scott's novels I had ever seen. I opened where her
mark lay, and read merely with the feeling of continuing our
mutual existence by passing my eyes over the same page where
hers had been. It was the description of the rocks on the
sea-coast where the little Harry Bertram was lost. I had never
seen such places, and my mind was vividly stirred to
imagine them. The scene rose before me, very unlike reality,
doubtless, but majestic and wild. I was the little Harry
Bertram, and had lost her,--all I had to lose,--and sought her
vainly in long dark caves that had no end, plashing through
the water; while the crags beetled above, threatening to fall
and crush the poor child. Absorbed in the painful vision,
tears rolled down my cheeks. Just then she entered with light
step, and full-beaming eye. When she saw me thus, a soft cloud
stole over her face, and clothed every feature with a lovelier
tenderness than I had seen there before. She did not question,
but fixed on me inquiring looks of beautiful love. I laid my
head against her shoulder and wept,--dimly feeling that I
must lose her and all,--all who spoke to me of the same
things,--that the cold wave must rush over me. She waited till
my tears were spent, then rising, took from a little box a
bunch of golden amaranths or everlasting flowers, and gave
them to me. They were very fragrant. "They came," she said,
"from Madeira." These flowers stayed with me seventeen years.
"Madeira" seemed to me the fortunate isle, apart in the blue
ocean from all of ill or dread. Whenever I saw a sail passing
in the distance,--if it bore itself with fulness of beautiful
certainty,--I felt that it was going to Madeira. Those
thoughts are all gone now. No Madeira exists for me now,--no
fortunate purple isle,--and all these hopes and fancies are
lifted from the sea into the sky. Yet I thank the charms that
fixed them here so long,--fixed them till perfumes like those
of the golden flowers were drawn from the earth, teaching me
to know my birth-place.

'I can tell little else of this time,--indeed, I remember
little, except the state of feeling in which I lived. For I
_lived_, and when this is the case, there is little to tell in
the form of thought. We meet--at least those who are true
to their instincts meet--a succession of persons through our
lives, all of whom have some peculiar errand to us. There is
an outer circle, whose existence we perceive, but with whom we
stand in no real relation. They tell us the news, they act
on us in the offices of society, they show us kindness and
aversion; but their influence does not penetrate; we are
nothing to them, nor they to us, except as a part of the
world's furniture. Another circle, within this, are dear and
near to us. We know them and of what kind they are. They are
to us not mere facts, but intelligible thoughts of the divine
mind. We like to see how they are unfolded; we like to meet
them and part from them: we like their action upon us and the
pause that succeeds and enables us to appreciate its quality.
Often we leave them on our path, and return no more, but we
bear them in our memory, tales which have been told, and whose
meaning has been felt.

'But yet a nearer group there are, beings born under the same
star, and bound with us in a common destiny. These are not
mere acquaintances, mere friends, but, when we meet, are
sharers of our very existence. There is no separation; the
same thought is given at the same moment to both,--indeed,
it is born of the meeting, and would not otherwise have been
called into existence at all. These not only know themselves
more, but _are_ more for having met, and regions of their
being, which would else have laid sealed in cold obstruction,
burst into leaf and bloom and song.

'The times of these meetings are fated, nor will either party
be able ever to meet any other person in the same way. Both
seem to rise at a glance into that part of the heavens where
the word can be spoken, by which they are revealed to one
another and to themselves. The step in being thus gained, can
never be lost, nor can it be re-trod; for neither party will
be again what the other wants. They are no longer fit to
interchange mutual influence, for they do not really need
it, and if they think they do, it is because they weakly pine
after a past pleasure.

'To this inmost circle of relations but few are admitted,
because some prejudice or lack of courage has prevented the
many from listening to their instincts the first time they
manifested themselves. If the voice is once disregarded
it becomes fainter each time, till, at last, it is wholly
silenced, and the man lives in this world, a stranger to its
real life, deluded like the maniac who fancies he has attained
his throne, while in reality he is on a bed of musty straw.
Yet, if the voice finds a listener and servant the first time
of speaking, it is encouraged to more and more clearness. Thus
it was with me,--from no merit of mine, but because I had the
good fortune to be free enough to yield to my impressions.
Common ties had not bound me; there were no traditionary
notions in my mind; I believed in nothing merely because
others believed in it; I had taken no feelings on trust. Thus
my mind was open to their sway.

'This woman came to me, a star from the east, a morning star,
and I worshipped her. She too was elevated by that worship,
and her fairest self called out. To the mind she brought
assurance that there was a region congenial with its
tendencies and tastes, a region of elegant culture and
intercourse, whose object, fulfilled or not, was to gratify
the sense of beauty, not the mere utilities of life. In our
relation she was lifted to the top of her being. She had known
many celebrities, had roused to passionate desire many hearts,
and became afterwards a wife; but I do not believe she ever
more truly realized her best self than towards the lonely
child whose heaven she was, whose eye she met, and whose
possibilities she predicted. "He raised me," said a woman
inspired by love, "upon the pedestal of his own high thoughts,
and wings came at once, but I did not fly away. I stood there
with downcast eyes worthy of his love, for he had made me so."

'Thus we do always for those who inspire us to expect from
them the best. That which they are able to be, they become,
because we demand it of them. "We expect the impossible--and
find it."

'My English friend went across the sea. She passed into her
former life, and into ties that engrossed her days. But she
has never ceased to think of me. Her thoughts turn forcibly
back to the child who was to her all she saw of the really
New World. On the promised coasts she had found only cities,
careful men and women, the aims and habits of ordinary life
in her own land, without that elegant culture which she,
probably, over-estimated, because it was her home. But in the
mind of the child she found the fresh prairie, the untrodden
forests for which she had longed. I saw in her the storied
castles, the fair stately parks and the wind laden with
tones from the past, which I desired to know. We wrote to one
another for many years;--her shallow and delicate epistles did
not disenchant me, nor did she fail to see something of the
old poetry in my rude characters and stammering speech. But we
must never meet again.