Chapter III: Book I: Practical (2)

Men follow what they love, and the love of rural enjoyments is almost universal. Every one likes the country whose tastes are cultivated in the least, and who enjoys what is primitive and pure. The citizen tires of city pleasures. He soon finds that there is no freedom comparable to that which the country affords; for though he dwell in the city for advantages of libraries, and social entertainments, he seeks the country for inspiration when these lose their attractions, his spirits as his friendships, crave refreshment and renewal.

"Who in sad cities dwell,
Are of the green trees fully sensible."

We see how this appetite declares itself in the general swarming during the summer season from the cities to the suburban towns, if not to the hill countries, for the freedom, the health, found there; and how to gratify and meet the demand for more natural satisfactions, our Guide Books have become, not only the most attractive geographies of the territories therein described, but works of taste, combining some of the choicest illustrations of poetry and prose in our literature: sketches of such scenes and parties are sure of an eager reading. The rustic books, too, are beginning to be inquired after; translations of the ancient authors, which bring the sentiment of the originals within the grasp of the plainest minds. And we look forward to the time, when, according to the recommendation of Cowley and Milton,--poets who did so much for the culture of their time,--these authors will be studied in our schools and universities, as Virgil and Horace have been so long, for cultivating the love of nature, of rural pursuits, beauty of sentiment, the graces of style, without an acquaintance with which, the epithet of a liberal and elegant culture were misapplied on any graduate. Nor need the students be restricted to Greek and Roman pastoral poets, when some of our own authors have given charming examples of treating New England life and landscape in their pages. A people's freshest literature springs from free soil, tilled by free men. Every man owes primary duty to the soil, and shall be held incapable by coming generations if he neglect planting an orchard at least, if not a family, or book, for their benefit.

"Agriculture, for an honorable and high-minded man," says Xenophon, "is the best of all occupations and arts by which men procure the means of living. For it is a pursuit that is most easy to learn and most pleasant to practise; it puts the bodies of men in the fairest and most vigorous condition, and is far from giving such constant occupation to their minds as to prevent them from attending to the interests of their friends or their country. And it affords some incitement to those who pursue it to become courageous, as it produces and sustains what is necessary for human life without the need of walls or fortresses. A man's home and fireside are the sweetest of all human possessions."

I have always admired the good sense and fine ambition of a friend of mine, who, on quitting College, with fair prospects of winning respect in any of the learned professions, chose rather to step aside into the quiet retreat of a cottage, and there give himself to the pleasures and duties of cultivating his family and grounds. And this he did from a sense of its suitableness to promote the best ends and aims; esteeming his gifts and accomplishments due to pursuits which seemed the natural means of securing self-respect and independence. His first outlay was moderate--a sequestered field, on which he erected a comfortable dwelling, planned for convenience and hospitality. His grounds were laid out and planted with shrubbery, the slopes dotted with evergreens and shapely trees. A nursery was set; a conservatory, with suitable outbuildings and ornaments. As he gave himself personally to the work, everything prospered that he touched. A few years' profits paid for his investment, and his thrift soon enabled him to add an adjoining orchard to his first purchase. And so successful was his adventure, that his most sceptical neighbors, the old farmers, confessed him to be the better husbandman; his gold was ruddier than theirs; his fields the neater. Nor did our Evelyn disgrace social engagements. His friendships were kept in as good plight as his grounds. He was none the worse citizen for being the better neighbor and gentleman they found him to be, nor the less worthy of the honors of his college. "'Tis impossible that he who is a true scholar, and has attained besides the felicity of being a good gardener, should give jealousy to the State in which he lives." Civilization has a deeper stake in the tillage of the ground than in the other arts, since its roots are fast planted therein, and it thrives only as this flourishes. Omit the garden, degrade this along with the orchard to mere material uses, treat these as of secondary importance, and the State falls fast into worldliness and decay.

"Oh blessed shades! oh gentle, cool retreat
From all the immoderate heat
In which the frantic world does burn and sweat!
This does the Lion-star, Ambition's rage;
This Avarice, the Dog-star's thirst assuage;
Everywhere else their fatal power we see,
They make and rule man's wretched destiny;
They neither set, nor disappear,
But tyrannize o'er all the year,--
Whilst we ne'er feel their heat nor influence here.
The birds that dance from bough to bough,
And sing above in every tree,
Are not from fears and cares more free,
Than we who muse or toil below,
And should by right be singers too.
What Prince's quire of music can excel
That which within this shade does dwell?
To which we nothing pay or give?
They, like all other poets, live
Without reward or thanks for their obliging pains;
'Tis well if they become not prey:
The whistling winds add their less ardent strains,
And a grave bass the murmuring fountains play.
Nature does all this harmony bestow;
But, to our plants, arts, music, too,
The pipe, theorbo, and guitar, we owe,
The lute itself, which once was green and mute;
When Orpheus struck the inspired lute
The trees danced round and understood,
By sympathy, the voice of wood."

Methinks I see great Dioclesian walk
In the Salonian garden's noble shade,
Which by his own imperial hands was made;
I see him smile, methinks, as he does talk
With the ambassadors, who come in vain
To entice him to a throne again.
"If I, my friends," said he, "should to you show
All the delights that in these gardens grow,
'Tis likelier much that you should with me stay,
Than 'tis that you should carry me away;
And trust me not, my friends, if every day
I walk not here with more delight
Than ever, after the most happy fight,
In triumph to the capitol I ride,
To thank the gods, and to be thought myself almost a god."

Do we ask, on viewing the rural pictures which the Pastoral Poets afford us,--Whither is our modern civilization tending? What solid profits has it gained on the state of things they describe, seeing the primitive virtues and customs, once enjoyed by our ancestors, are fading,--the generosity, the cheer, the patriotism, the piety, the republican simplicity and heartiness of those times? Machinery is fast displacing the poetry of farm and fireside; the sickle, the distaff, the chimney-piece, the family institution, being superseded by prose powers; and, with their sway, have come slavery, pusillanimity, dishonor. I know there are reconciling compensations for all risks of revolution. For while the Demos thus takes his inch, Divinity secures his ell; so the garment of mankind comes the fuller from the loom in this transfer of labors. The fig leaf thus cunningly woven, costs fair honors, nevertheless, and we covet in our hearts the florid simplicity of times of sturdier virtues and unassailable integrity.[B]

[Footnote B: Evelyn draws a lively picture of those old
times, though not without sadness at the contrast with his
own. "The style and method of life are quite changed as well
as the language, since the days of our ancestors, simple and
plain as they were, courting their wives for their modesty,
frugality, keeping at home, good housewifery, and other
economical virtues then in reputation. And when the young
damsels were taught all these at home in the country at
their parents' houses; the portion they brought being more
in virtue than money, she being a richer match than any one
who could bring a million and nothing else to commend her.
The presents then made when all was concluded, were a ring,
a necklace of pearls, and perhaps the fair jewel, the
paraphernalia of her prudent mother, whose nuptial kirtle,
gown and petticoat, lasted as many anniversaries as the
happy couple lived together, and were at last bequeathed
with a purse of old gold, as an heir-loom to her
granddaughter. The virgins and young ladies of that golden
age, put their hands to the spindle, nor disdained the
needle; were obsequious and helpful to their parents,
instructed in the management of the family, and gave presage
of making excellent wives. Their retirements were devout and
religious books, their recreations in the distillery and
knowledge of plants, and their virtues for the comfort of
their poor neighbors, and use of the family, which wholesome
diet and kitchen physic preserved in health. Nor were the
young gentlemen, though extremely modest, at all melancholy,
or less gay and in good humor. They could touch the lute and
virginal, sing

"Like to the damask rose,"

and their breath was as sweet as their voices. Then things
were natural, plain and wholesome; nothing was superfluous,
nothing necessary wanting. Men of estate studied the public
good, and gave examples of true piety, loyalty, justice,
sobriety, charity; and the good of the neighborhood composed
most differences. Laws were reasons, not craft; men's
estates were secure: they served their generation with
honor, left patrimonial estates improved to a hopeful heir,
who, passing from the free school to the college, and thence
to Inns of Court, acquainting himself with a competent
tincture of the laws of his country, followed the example of
his worthy ancestors. And if he travelled abroad, it was not
to count steeples, and bring home feather and ribbon and the
sins of other nations, but to gain such experience as
rendered him useful to his Prince and his countrymen upon
occasion, and confirmed him in the love of both of them
above any other. Hospitality was kept up in town and
country, by which the tenants were enabled to pay their
landlords at punctual day. The poor were relieved
bountifully, and charity was as warm as the kitchen, where
the fire was perpetual."]

II.

RECREATION.

"Thou who wouldst know the things that be,
Bathe thy heart in the sunrise red,
Till its stains of earthly dross are fled."
GOETHE.

RECREATION.

I.--THE FOUNTAINS.

Nature is wholesome. Without her elixirs daily taken we perish of lassitude and inanity. The fountains must be stirred to their depths and their torrents sent bounding along their sluices, else we sink presently into the pool of inertia, victims of indecision and slaves of fate. "Thy body, O well disposed man, is a meadow through which flow three hundred and sixty-five rivulets." Every pulse pushes nature's quaternion along life's currents recreating us afresh; the morn feeding the morn, Memnon's music issuing from every stop, as if the Orient itself had sung.

Nature is virtuous. Imparting sanity and sweetness, it spares from decay, giving life with temperance and a continency that keeps our pleasures chaste and perennial. Nothing short of her flowing atmosphere suffices to refill our urns. Neither books, company, conversation,--not Genius even, the power present in persons, nature's nature pouring her floods through mind,--not this is enough. Nature is the good Baptist plunging us in her Jordan streams to be purified of our stains, and fulfil all righteousness. And wheresoever our lodge, there is but the thin casement between us and immensity. Nature without, mind within, inviting us forth into the solacing air, the blue ether, if we will but shake our sloth and cares aside, and step forth into her great contentments.

As from himself he fled,
Possessed, insane,
Tormenting demons drove him from the gate:
Away he sped,
Casting his woes behind,
His joys to find,
His better mind.

'Tis passing strange,
The glorious change,
The pleasing pain!

Recovered,
Himself again
Over his threshold led,
Peace fills his breast,
He finds his rest;
Expecting angels his arrival wait.

If we cannot spin our tops briskly as boys do theirs, the wailers may chant their dirges over us. Enthusiasm is existence; earnestness, life's exceeding great reward. How busy then, and above criticism. Our cup runs over. But a parted activity, divorcing us from ourselves, degrades our noblest parts to the sway of the lowest and renders our task a drudgery and shame. For what avails, if while one's mind hovers about Olympus, his members flounder in Styx, and he is drawn asunder in the conflict? Let the days deify the days, the work the workman, giving the joyous task that leaves pleasant memories behind, and ennobles in the performance:

Tasked days
Above delays;
Hours that borrow
Speed of the morrow,
Light from sorrow:
Business bate not,
Want nor wait not,
Doubt nor date not;
Life from limb forbid to sever,
Recreate in rapt endeavor.

We come as a muse to our toil and find amusement in it; to a taskmaster whose company never tires. 'Tis life, the partaking of immortality. A day lived so, glorifies all moments afterwards. Long postponed, perhaps, the hours wearisome, till broke this immortal morning with engagements that time can complete never, nor compel, and whose importunity outlasts the hours.

Sleep, too, having the keys of life in its keeping. How we rise from its delectable divinations with eyes sovereign and anointed for the day's occupations. All our powers are touched with flame, all things are possible. But last night, the world had come to an end; the floods ebbed low, as if the fates were reversing the torch. How we blazed all the morning, to be cinders yesternight. Then came the god to re-kindle our faded embers, the Phoenix wings her way to meet the rising dawn and embrace the young world once more. Sleep took the sleep out of us. From forth the void there rises a roseate morn upon us.

The flattering East her gates impearled,
We hunt the morning round the world.

Nor is a day lived if the dawn is left out of it, with the prospects it opens. Who speaks charmingly of nature or of mankind, like him who comes bibulous of sunrise and the fountains of waters?

"Mornings are mysteries, the first world's youth,
Man's resurrection, and the future's bud
Shown in their birth; they make us happy,
Make us rich."

Rise in the morning, rise
While yet the streaming tide
Flames o'er the blue acclivities,
And pours its splendors wide;
Kindling its high intent
Along the firmament,
Silence and sleep to break,
Imaginations wake,
Ideas insphere
And bring them here.
Loiter nor play
In soft delay;
Speed glad thy course along
The orbs and globes among,
And as yon toiling sun
Attain thy high meridian:
Radiant and round thy day;--
Speed, speed thee on thy way.

"Every day is a festival, and that which makes it the more splendid is gladness. For as the world is a spacious and beautiful temple, so is life the most perfect institution that introduces us into it. And it is but just that it should be full of cheerfulness and tranquillity." Our dispositions are the atmosphere we breathe, and we carry our climate and world in ourselves. Good humor, gay spirits are the liberators, the sure cure for spleen and melancholy. Deeper than tears, these irradiate the tophets with their glad heavens. Go laugh, vent the pits, transmuting imps into angels by the alchymy of smiles. The satans flee at the sight of these redeemers. And he who smiles never is beyond redemption. Once clothed in a suit of light we may cast aside forever our sables. Our best economist of this flowing estate is good temper, without whose presidency life is a perplexity and disaster. Luck is bad luck and ourselves a disappointment and vexation. Victims of our humors, we victimize everybody. How the swift repulsions play: our atoms all insular, insulating; demonized, demonizing, from heel to crown; at the mercy of a glance, a gesture, a word, and ourselves overthrown. Equanimity is the gem in Virtue's chaplet and St. Sweetness the loveliest in her calendar. "On beholding thyself, fear," says the oracle. Only the saints are sane and wholesome.

II.--THE CHEAP PHYSICIAN.

"That which makes us have no need
Of physic, that's physic indeed.
Hark, hither, reader, wilt thou see
Nature her own physician be?
Wilt see a man all his own wealth,
His own music, his own health,--
A man whose sober soul can tell
How to wear her garments well:
Her garments that upon her sit,
As garments should do, close and fit;
A well-clothed soul that's not oppressed,
Nor choked with what she should be dressed;
A soul sheathed in a crystal shrine,
Through which all her bright features shine,
As when a piece of wanton lawn,
A thin, aerial veil is drawn
O'er beauty's face, seeming to hide,
More sweetly shows the blushing bride:
A soul, whose intellectual beams
No mists do mask, no lazy streams:
A happy soul that all the way
To heaven rides in a summer's day?
Wouldst see a man whose well-warmed blood
Bathes him in a genuine flood,--
A man whose tuned humors be
A seat of rarest harmony?
Wouldst see blithe looks, fresh cheeks beguile
Age; wouldst see December smile?
Wouldst see nests of new roses grow
In a bed of reverend snow?
Warm thought, free spirits flattering
Winter's self into a spring?
In sum, wouldst see a man that can
Live to be old, and still a man
Whose latest and most leaden hours
Fall with soft wings, stuck with soft flowers;
And when life's sweet fable ends,
Soul and body part like friends;
No quarrels, murmurs, no delay,
A kiss, a sigh,--and so away,--
This rare one, reader, wouldst thou see?
Hark within, and thyself be he."

III.

FELLOWSHIP.

"Health is the first good lent to men,
A gentle disposition then,
Next competence by no by ways,
Lastly with friends to enjoy one's days."
HERRICK.

FELLOWSHIP.

I.--HOSPITALITY.

Evelyn writes of the manners and architecture of his times: "'Tis from the want of symmetry in our buildings, decorum in our houses, that the irregularity of our humors and affections may be shrewdly discerned." But not every builder is gifted with the genius and personal qualities to harmonize the apartments to the dispositions of the inmates. I confess to a partiality for the primitive style of architecture commended by Evelyn, and question whether in our refinements on these we have not foregone comforts and amenities essential to true hospitality. What shall make good to us the ample chimney-piece of his day, with the courtesies it cherished, the conversation, the cheer, the entertainments? Very welcome were the spacious yards and hospitable door-knockers on those ancestral mansions, fast disappearing from our landscape, supplanted by edifices and surroundings more showy and pretentious; yet, with all their costliness, looking somewhat asquint on the visitor, as if questioning his right to enter them; and, when admitted, seem unfamiliar, solitary, desolate, with their elaborate decorations and furnishings. Can we not build an elegant comfort, convenience, ease, into the walls and apartments, rendering the mansion an image of the nobilities becoming the residence of noblemen? To what end the house, if not for conversation, kindly manners, the entertainment of friendships, the cordialities that render the house large, and the ready receptacle of hosts and guests? If one's hospitalities fail to bring out the better qualities of his company, he fails of being the noble host, be his pretensions what they may. Let him entertain the dispositions, the genius, of his guests, the conversation being the choicer banquet; for, without baits for these, what were the table but a manger, alike wanting in elegancy as in hospitality, and the feast best taken in silence as an animal qualification, and no more.

What solitude like those homes where no home is, no company, no conversation, into which one enters with dread, and from which he departs with sadness, as from the sight of hostile tribes bordering on civilization, strangers to one another, and of mixed bloods! Civility has not completed its work if it leave us unsocial, morose, insultable. Sympathy wanting, all is wanting; its personal magnetism is the conductor of the sacred spark that lights our atoms, puts us in human communion, and gives us to company, conversation, and ourselves.

"Oh wretched and too solitary, he
Who loves not his own company;
He'll find the weight of it many a day,
Unless he call in sin and vanity,
To help to bear it away."

The surest sign of age is loneliness. While one finds company in himself and his pursuits, he cannot be old, whatever his years may number.

Perhaps those most prize society who find the best in solitude, being equal to either; strong enough to enjoy themselves aside from companies they would gladly meet and repay by a freedom from prejudices and scruples in which these share and pride themselves, yet whose exclusiveness thrusts them out of their own houses and themselves also.

"It ever hath been known,
They others' virtues scorn who doubt their own."

If solitude makes us love ourselves, society gives us to others, peopling what were else a solitude. It takes us out of ourselves as from a multitude to partake of closer intimacies and satisfactions. Alone and apart, however well occupied, we lose the elasticity and dignity that come from sympathy with the aims and prospects of others. Nor has any been found equal to uninterrupted solitude. Our virtues need the enamel of intercourse. Exalting us above our private piques, prejudices, egotisms, into the commonwealth of charities, good company makes us catholic, courteous, sane; we retire from it with a new estimate of ourselves and of mankind. If intercourse have not this wholesome effect, it is dissipating and best shunned. Nor is fellowship possible without a certain delicacy and respect of diffidence. There hides a natural piety in this personal grace, while nothing good comes of brass, from whose embrasures there vollies forth but impudence, insolence, defiance. But the more influential powers are attended by a bashful genius, and step forth from themselves with a delicacy of boldness alike free from any blemishes of egotism or pretence. Nor do we accept as genuine the person not characterized by this blushing bashfulness, this youthfulness of heart, this sensibility to the sentiment of suavity and self-respect. Modesty is bred of self-reverence. Fine manners are the mantle of fair minds. None are truly great without this ornament. A fine genius has the timidity, the graces of a virgin nature, whose traits are as transparent in the boldest flights of imagination as discernible in the stateliest tread of reason, the play of fancy: a pleasing hesitancy, a refrain, setting off the more boldly by such graceful carriage, the natural graces due to beauty and truth; and bearing down all else by its charming persuasions.

Affinities tell. Every one is not for every one; nor any one good enough to flatter or scorn any; the kindly recognition being due to the meanest; even the humblest conferring a certain respect by his call. Yet one might as properly entertain every passing vagary in the presence chamber of his memory as every vagrant visitor seeking his acquaintance. Introductions are of small account. What are one's claims, a glance detects; if ours, he stays, and house and heart are his by silent understanding. If not ours, nor we his, the way is plain. He leaves presently as a traveller the innkeeper's door, an inmate for his meal only and the night.

The heroic bearing is always becoming. Egotists of the amiable species, one kindly considers. But the sour malcontents, devastators of one's time and patience,--what to do with such? Summon your fairest sunshine forthwith: give your visitor's humors no quarters from the shafts; smite him with the kindly radiance for dissipating his melancholy, and so send him away the wholesomer, the sweeter for the interview, if not a convert to the sun's catholicism, the courtesies due to civility and good fellowship. So when X, your worst sample approaches, meet him blandly at your door, and ask him civilly to leave his dog outside. But if he persist in bringing him along into your parlor, never hesitate on setting the cur forthwith upon his master though you should find him at your throat straightways. It were giving your visitor the warmest reception possible under the circumstances, and an interview very memorable to all parties. One need not fear dealing his compliments short and significant on the occasion; the deer running down the dogs for a wonder.

Does it seem cold and unhandsome, this specular survey of persons? Yet all hearts crave eyes whereby to measure themselves. And what better foil for one's egotism than this reflection of himself in the mirror of another's appreciation? The frank sun withholds his beams from none for any false delicacy. Nor till one rejoices in being helped to discern excellence in another, desiring to comprehend and compliment his own therein, is he freed from the egotism that excludes him from the best benefits one can bestow. Happy if we have dissolved our individualism in the fluent affections, and so made intercourse possible and delightful between us.

"We have three friends most useful to us; a sincere friend, a faithful friend, a friend that hears every thing, examines what is told him, and speaks little. But we have three also whose friendship is pernicious; a hypocrite, a flatterer, and a great talker. Contract friendship with the man whose heart is upright and sincere, who loves to learn and can teach you something in his turn. And in what part of the world soever thou chance to spend thy life, correspond with the wisest and associate with the best."

II.--CONVERSATION.

Good humor, flowing spirits, a sprightly wit, are essentials of good discourse. Add genial dispositions, graceful elocution, and to these accomplishments diffidence as the flower of the rest. There can be no eloquence where these are wanting. Any amount of sense, of logic, matter, leaves the discourse incomplete, interest flags, and disappointment ensues. None has command of himself till he can wield his powers sportfully, life sparkling from all his gifts and taking captive alike speaker and hearer, as they were docile children of his genius and surprised converts for the moment. "And I," says Socrates, "through my youth often change my mind, but looking to you and apprehending that you speak the things that are divine, I think so too." If one cannot inspire faith in what he says, no arts avail. Earnestness, sincerity, are orators whose persuasions are irresistible; they hold all gifts in fusion, magnetize, divinize, harmonize all. Good conversation is lyrical: a pentecost of tongues, touching the chords of melody in all minds, it prompts to the best each had to give, to better than any knew they had, what none claims as his own, as if he were the organ of some invisible player behind the scenes. What abandonments, reserves, which no premeditation, no cunning could have checked or called forth. What chasms are spanned with a trope, what pits forded, summits climbed, prospects commanded, perspectives gained,--the tour of the spheres made at a glance, a sitting; the circle coming safely out of the adventure. All men talk, few converse; of gossip we have enough, of argument more than enough, rhetoric, debate--omit these, speak from the heart to the heart underlying all differences, and we have conversation. For disputing there is the crowd; for ruminating, the woods; the clubs for wit and the superficial fellowship.

Companionableness comes by nature. For though culture may mellow and refine, it cannot give the flush of nobility to the current wherein ride our credentials for the posts of persuasion and of power. We meet magically, and pass with sounding manners; else encounter repulses, strokes of fate; temperament telling against temperament, precipitating us into vortices from which the nimblest finds no escape. We pity the person who shows himself unequal to the occasion; the scholar, for example, whose intellect is so exacting, so precise, that he cannot meet his company otherwise than critically; cannot descend to meet, through the senses or the sentiments, that common level where intercourse is possible with most. We pity him the more, who, from caprice or confusion can meet through these only. Still more, the case of him who can meet neither as sentimentalist nor idealist, or, rather, not at all in a human way. Intellect interblends with sentiment in the companionable mind, wit with humor. We detain the flowing tide at the cost of lapsing out of perception into memory, into the limbo of fools. Excellent people wonder why they cannot meet and converse. They cannot. No. Their wits have ebbed away, and left them helpless. Why, but because of hostile temperaments, states of animation? The personal magnetism finds no conductor. One is individual, the other is individual no less. Individuals repel. Persons meet. And only as one's personality is sufficiently overpowering to dissolve the other's individualism, can the parties flow together and become one. But individuals have no power of the sort. They are two, not one, perhaps many. Prisoned within themselves by reason of their egotism, like animals, they stand aloof, are separate even when they touch; are solitary in any company, having none in themselves. But the freed personal mind meets all, is apprehended by all, by the least cultivated, the most gifted; magnetizes all; is the spell-binder, the liberator of every one. We speak of sympathies, antipathies, fascinations, fates, for this reason.

IV.

FRIENDSHIP.

"So great a happiness do I esteem it to be loved, that I
really fancy every blessing both from gods and men ready to
descend spontaneously upon him who is loved."--XENOPHON.

FRIENDSHIP.

I.--PERSONS.

It was a charming fancy of the Pythagoreans to exchange names when they met that so they might partake of the virtues each admired in the other. And knowing the power of names they used only such as were musical and pleasing. The compliment thus bestowed upon the sentiment of friendship is most deserved, and suggestive of the magic of its influence at every age, throughout every period of our existence; our life, properly speaking, opening with the birth of fancy and the affections, and maintaining its freshness only as we are under their sway. A friendship formed in childhood, in youth,--by happy accident at any stage of rising manhood,--becomes the genius that rules the rest of life. What aspirations it awakens! what prospects! To what advantages, adventures, sacrifices, successes, does it not lead its votaries! What if these early unions are sometimes less tempered with discretion than those formed later, if they maintain their freshness and open out sure prospects of an endless future? He surely has no future who is without friends to share it with him, and is wasting an existence meant to give him that assurance. With this sentiment there comes every felicity into the breasts of those who partake of it. How large the dividend of delight! how diffusive! We are the richer for every outlay. We dip our pitchers in these fountains to come away overspilling with satisfaction. And had we a thousand friends, every spring within us would gush forth at the touch of these wands of tenderness, and the days pass as uncounted moments in their company.

"O friend, the bosom said,
Through thee alone the sky is arched,
Through thee the rose is red;
All things through thee take nobler form,
And look beyond the earth,
And is the millround of our fate
A sunpath in thy worth:
Me, too, thy nobleness has taught
To master my despair;
The fountains of my hidden life,
Are through thy friendship fair."

How handsome our friends are! Say they were not moulded at the celestial potteries, we paint them fair behind the plain exterior they wear to indifferent eyes, and as they appear in our gallery of enamels. For who has not seen the plainest features light with a beauty the eyes had not conceived at the rise of a tender sentiment? a lively thought, the recollection of a noble deed, effacing every trace of ancestral meanness; the friend we love all there without blemish or spot, the image we clasp to our breast and cannot forget.

Spectral and cold, indeed, were life surveyed from the senses alone, not from the soul, wanting the enthusiasm that persons inspire, the faith which exalts us above ourselves, giving us friends to love, and a God to adore. We enter heaven through the gates of friendship. 'Tis by some supreme fellowship that we complete ourselves, and are united to our kind.

I esteem friendship the fairest as the eldest of religious faiths, being the worship of the unseen through the seen, and excusing many superstitions coloring the need of a personal object of worship. The love and service rendered to persons symbolizes love and service due the Supreme Person; and he must be pronounced deficient in piety who fails of winning the noblest of victories,--a friend. A need of the heart, the best of our life is embosomed in others, much of it taken upon trust in some one or more whom we call by tender names, and whose words accost us with persuasions irresistible. How affectionately one name is pronounced throughout a revering Christendom, because it symbolizes man's friend,--that fairest word in the human vocabulary.

"Fair flowery name, in none like thee
And thy nectareal fragrancy,
Hourly there meets
A universal synod of all sweets,
By whom it is defined thus:
That no perfume
May yet presume
To pass for odoriferous,
But such alone whose sacred pedigree
Can prove itself some kin, sweet name, to thee."

We crave objects abreast and above us. And are bereft of ourselves without such. Friends are the leaders of the bosom, being more ourselves than we are, and we complement our affections in theirs. The passionless laws that sway our unseen Personality are not made lovely to us till thus clothed in human attributes and brought near to our hearts, person embracing person. Not some _It_ in our friends, but the sentiment that transfigures the _It_ into _Him_, into _Her_,--this alone makes them ours personally and beloved. Theists in our faith, we pay our vows to the Friend in our friend, thus becoming personally One with the Three, and alone no longer.

Nor elsewise man shall fellow meet,
In public place, in converse sweet,
In holy aisles, at market gate,
In learning's halls, or courts of state,
Nor persons properly shall find,
Save in the commonwealth of Mind;
Fair forms herein their souls intrude,
Peopling what else were solitude.

Persons are love's world. Our Paradise is too fair to be planted out of our breasts. We chase the fleeing beauty all our lives long;

"Nor is there near so brisk a fire
In fruition, as desire;
The niggard sense, too poor for bliss,
Pays us but dully with what is."

On, onwards, ever onwards are we led. Our Edens abreast of us journeying with ever-opening prospects in the distance.

THE CHASE.

O'er earth and seas,
In sunshine, shade,
Blest Beauty crossed,
Nor stopt nor stayed,
Nor temples took,
Nor idols hewed,
Apart she dwelt
In solitude.

In solitude, Heart said:
"Where find the maid?
My bride's a fugitive,
From sight doth live,
And hearts are hunters of the game,
Pursuers of the same
Through every passing form,
The Beauty that all eyes do seek,
All eyes do but deform;
The love our faithless lips would speak
Dies on the listless air,
Nature befriends us not,
Nor hearthside doth prepare
In all her ample plot;
Life's but illusion,
Cunning confusion;
Flings shadows pale about our path,
She shadow is, and nothing hath;
Eyes are divorced from seeing,
Hearts cloven clean from being;
My bride I cannot find,
My love I cannot bind;
The thousand fair ones of our sphere,
Fond, false ones all, nor mine, nor dear;
The Paradise
I would surprise,
From all my following flies,
And I'm a thousand infidelities;
There's none for me
In all I see;
Surely the Fair One bides not here,
Where dwells she, where, in any sphere?"

"In any sphere?"
Love whispered: "Where, where, if not here?
Here in thy breast the maiden find,
Ideas sole imparadise the mind;
Here heart's hymeneals begin,
Here's ours and only ours housed here within:
Through parting gates of human kind
Enter thou blest the Unseen Mind."

II.--WOMAN.

"Virtue sure
Were blind as fortune, should she choose the poor
Rough cottage man to live in, and despise
To dwell in woman's stately edifice;
Woman's approved the fairer sex, and we
Mean men repent our pedigree.
Why choose the father's name, when we may take
The mother's a more honor'd blood to make,
Woman's of later, though of nobler birth,
For she of man was made, man made of earth,
The son of dust, and though her sin did breed
His fall, again she raised him in her seed;
Who had he not her blest creation seen,
An Anchorite in Paradise had been."

Pythagoras said that only good things were to be predicted of women, since they were the mothers of ornaments, of conversation and of confidence, and that he who invented names, perceiving that women were adapted to piety and friendship, gave to each of their ages the name of some Deity--to a maiden, Core, or Proserpine, to a bride Nymphe, to a mother, Mater, to a grandmother, according to the Dorian dialect, Maia. And in accordance with the like persuasion the oracles were always unfolded into light by women. Tacitus tells us that the Northern nations also held women in high esteem, "believing ladies had something divine about them." And this faith has descended to men of the Saxon name, the best regarding her as endowed with magical properties, the type of the highest culture the advanced nations have attained. Endowed with magnetic gifts; by necessity of sex, a realist and diviner, she lives nearest the cardinal facts of existence, instinct with the mysteries of love and fate; a romance ever attaching itself to her name and destiny. Entering the school of sensibility with life, she seizes personal qualities by a subtlety of logic overleaping all deductions of the slower reason; her divinations touching the quick of things as if herself were personally part of the chemistry of life itself. We cannot conceive her as distinct, distant, unrelated, she seems so personal, concrete, so near; yet can never come quite up to her discernments, nor gainsay their delicacy and truthfulness. Then constancy, fidelity, fortitude, kindness, gratitude, grace, courtesy, discretion, taste, conversation, the adornments of life, were bare names without the splendor of illustration of which the history of the sex affords so many brilliant examples. It seems as if in moulding his world the Creator reserved his choicest work till the last, and consummated his art in her endowments. Shall our sex confess to some slight in not having been mingled more freely of her essence, that so we too might have had access to the crypts into which she is privileged by birthright to enter? Hers is the way of persuasion, of service, forbearance:

"If thou dost anything confer that's sweet,
In me a grateful relish it shall meet,
But if thy bounties thou dost take away,
The least repining word I will not say."

As there was only solitude till she brought company, conversation, civility, so stooping still to conquer, she is fast gaining ascendancy over passions and prejudices that have held her subservient and their victim. Can we doubt the better rule will be furthered indefinitely by a partnership in power thus intimate and acknowledged by States? What ideal republics have fabled, ours is to be. Nor need we fear the boldest experiments which the moral sense of the best women conceive and advocate. Certainly liberty is in danger of running into license while woman is excluded from exercising political as well as social restraint upon its excesses. Nor is the state planted securely till she possess equal privileges with man of forming its laws and taking a becoming part in their administration. No jury of men, however honorable or wise, are equal to pronounce upon questions relating to woman; questions involving considerations that concern the whole structure, not only of society, but of humanity itself. The public morals are insecure till the family is chastely planted, the state guarded by the continency of its male members.

A man defines his standing at the court of chastity by his views of women. He cannot be any man's friend nor his own if not hers. Either nature dealt coldly by him in his descent, else he is the victim of vices which his passions have inflamed till they have their own way with him.

"They meet but with unwholesome springs,
And summers which infectious are;
They hear but when the mermaid sings,
And only see the falling star
Who ever dare
Affirm no woman chaste and fair."

The very name of woman becomes soiled if we seek to be related to her by the coarse ties of appetite, instead of the tender threads of affection, the charm of ideas. There are pleasures for keeping as enjoying,--for using delicately, the zest lasting long, the more affluent when tasted with moderation and seldom.

"Who can to love more rich gift make
Than to love's self, for love's own sake?
Love, that imports in every sense delight,
Is fancied in the soul, not appetite:
Why love among the virtues is scarce known
Is that love is them all contract in one."

III.--FAMILY.

"How fruitful may the smallest circle grow
When we the secret of its culture know."

Here is room enough, however humble and unfurnished, for the most expansive friendships, the purest delights, the noblest labors; for where women are, there open forth all possibilities of culture.

Here high o'er head of spiteful fate,
Jove cradles safe the ideal state.

"A married life is most beautiful. For what other thing can be such an ornament to a family as the association of husband and wife? For it must not be said that sumptuous edifices, walls covered with pictures, and piazzas adorned with stones,--so admired by those who are ignorant of the Good; nor yet painted windows, myrtle walks; nor anything else which is the subject of astonishment to the stupid,--are the ornaments of a family. But the beauty of a household consists in the conjunction of man and wife who are united to each other by destiny, are consociated to the gods who preside over nuptials, births, and houses; and who accord, indeed, with each other, and have all things in common as far as to their bodies, or rather their souls themselves;--who exercise a becoming authority over their house and servants, are properly solicitous about the education of their children and pay an attention to the necessaries of life, which is neither expensive nor negligent, but moderate and appropriate. For what can be better and more excellent, as the most admirable Homer says,

'Than when at home the husband and the wife
Unanimously live.'"

THE GOBLET.

I drank delights from every cup,
Arts, institutions, I drank up;
Athirst, I quaffed life's flowing bowls,
And sipped the flavors of all souls.

A sparkling cup remained for me,
The brimming fount of Family;
This I am still drinking,
Since, to my thinking,
Good wine beads here,
Flagons of cheer,
Nor laps the soul
In Lethe's bowl.

Wine of immortal power
Into my chalice now doth pour;
Prevailing wine,
Juice of the Nine,
Flavored of sods,
Vintage of gods;
Joyance benign
This wondrous wine
Ever at call;--
Wine maddening none,
Wine saddening none,
Wine gladdening all,
Makes love's cup ruddier glow,
Genius and grace its overflow.

I drained the drops of every cup,
Times, institutions I drank up:
Still Beauty pours the enlivening wine,
Fills high her glass to me and mine;
Her cup of sparkling youth,
Of love first found, and loyal truth:
I know, again I know,
Her fill of life and overflow.

When I find my friends are not of the same age as when I first knew them, I may conclude myself, not them, to be decaying and losing flavor. Still youth and innocency are the sole solvents of all doubts and infidelities; the faiths of women and children in friendship, ever fresh demonstrations of life's sufficiency and imperishableness. Families never die, since they trace their pedigree to Adam the First, who is of immortal ancestry. First suckled at our mother's breast our faiths survive all subsequent modifications; embrace the friendships we form, and color the whole of life. Our intellectual creed may change; temperament, calling, social position, fortune, sect, may phrase differently the delightful lay she sang to us--its tone still lingers in the memory of our affections, holding the heart loyal, and if trusted to the end takes us triumphantly through life. "Ever the feminine leadeth us on." Every prospect the mother gains is soon commanded by her children: our comforts and satisfactions life-long having the voice and countenance of woman.

IV.--CHILDREN.

"Heaven lies about us in our infancy."

Our notion of the perfect society embraces the family as its centre and ornament. Nor is there a paradise planted till the children appear in the foreground to animate and complete the picture. Without these, the world were a solitude, houses desolate, hearts homeless; there were neither perspectives, nor prospects; ourselves were not ourselves, nor were there a future for us:

In their good gifts we hopeful see
The fairer selves we fain would be.

Socrates comprised all objects of his search in

"Whate'er of good or ill can man befall
In his own house,"

rightly conceiving this to be the seminary of the virtues and foundation of states. There it stands, the ornament of the landscape, and for the human hospitalities: we cannot render it too attractive. Let it be the home of beauty, the haunt of affection, of ideas. Let its chambers open eastward admitting the sunshine for our own and children's sake. Do they not covet the clear sky, delighting in the blue they left so lately, nay cannot wholly leave in coming into nature, whereof they are ever asking news? These gay enthusiasts must run eagerly, and never have enough of it. How soon the clouds clear away from their faces! How sufficient they are to the day, and the joy it brings them! Their poise and plenitude rebuke us.

"Happy those early days when I
Shined in my angel infancy;
Before I taught my soul to wound
My conscience with a sinful sound,
Or taught my soul to fancy aught
But a white celestial thought,
Or had the black art to dispense
A several sin to every sense,
But felt through all this fleshly dress
Bright shoots of everlastingness."

Charming pictures these bright boys, confiding girls, as full of promise to themselves as we were at their age; are still, if faithful to the beautiful vision. Why else should the flame pale as we come up into life, we pleasing ourselves nor others more, perhaps despair of maintaining the virtues we espoused so eagerly in our youth? Must we

"When we've enjoyed our ends then lose them,
And all our appetites be but as dreams
To laugh at in our ages?"

If this fresh score of years did not deceive us, shall a life of threescore, with its deeper glances into the mystery, lead us to doubt the longevity of a sentiment of whose imperishableness that life itself is the best evidence we need ask? Are we to be left orphans when taken from nature's arms, robbed of all that made life desirable before? Nature cared for us; Persons failed us, and all unawares we lapsed out of our paradise, its gates barred against us.

"I cannot reach it; and my striving eye
Dazzles at it, as at eternity.
Were now that chronicle alive,
Those white designs which children drive,
And the thoughts of each harmless hour,
With their content too in my power,
Quickly would I make my path even,
And by mere playing go to heaven.

Dear harmless age, the short, swift span
Where weeping virtue parts with man;
Where love without lust dwells, and bends
What way we please, without self-ends:
An age of mysteries! which he
Must live twice that would God's face see;
Where angels guard, and with it play,
Angels, which foul men drive away."

'Tis sad to consider how long time is consumed in wiping away the stains which had been insinuated into the breast during these earlier years and up to coming manhood,--to what we call the maturity of our powers. Life is too much for most. So much of age, so little youth; living for the most part in the moment, and dating existence by the memory of its burdens. Men think they once were not, and fear the like fate may overtake them, as if time were older than their minds. 'Tis because we always were that we cannot trace our beginnings to the atheism of no-being and resolve ourselves into nothing. Children save us. Rather are we saved by remaining children, as Christ said.

Have we forgotten how things looked to us when we were young; how the dull world the old people lived in seemed to us? 'Twas not ours, nor their dry theism; and our fresh hearts whispered reverently:

"Is not your paradise an Inferno? Please never name it. While in Heaven I speak not of it: I hum that song to myself. Will you spoil my paradise too? Come with me, come, and I will show you Elysium; I know all about it; I am not deceived. I feel it to be solid, safe. It makes good its pledges always. I have a home of all delights--am admitted when I please, while you seem vagabonds and woebegones, bereft of friends, the Friend of friends. Am I to quit my present satisfactions for your promised joys. Unkind! this taking me from my paradise, unless you conduct me to a happier."

V.

CULTURE.

"O for the coming of that glorious time,
When, prizing knowledge as their noblest wealth
And best protection, liberal states shall own
An obligation on their part to teach
Them, who are born to serve her and obey;
Binding themselves by statute to secure
For all the children whom their soil maintains
The rudiments of letters; and to inform
The mind with moral and religious truth
Both understood and practised--so that none
However destitute, be left to drop
By timely culture unsustained, or run
Into a wild disorder; or be forced
To drudge through life without the aid
Of intellectual implements and tools;
A savage horde among the civilized,
A servile band among the lordly free."
WORDSWORTH.

CULTURE.

I.--MODERN TEACHING.

Saxon Alfred decreed that every man who had so much as two hides of land, should bring up his children to learning till they were fifteen years of age at least, that they might be religious and live happily; else, he said, they were but beasts and sots, dangerous to themselves and the state. And the state's true glory lies in its calling forth into fullest exercise and giving scope and right direction to the gifts of its children; seeking out especially and fostering the best born as they rise, and training these for educators of the coming generations. The Parent of parents, the guardian of all gifts born into it, society should neglect none, sequester none from places and honors to which they are entitled by birthright of genius or acquirement. Every child, the gifted by divine right, is sent to cherish and redeem the race; whom to neglect or divert from its aim were base oversight and abuse of the race itself. Far too noble, too precious be any to be used for ends merely secondary, secular, and thus spoiled for their own and God's intents.

Yet simple as this duty seems, society with all its aims and appliances, has not as yet attained the refinement of culture needful to the receiving of a child into its bosom, and of educating it to the full demands of its endowments. With the child comes the seed of states; the family being the nursery of the citizen, the measure of a people's civilization. As the homes, so the state; as the parents, so the children. Nor has society fathered its functions till all children, befriended from the first, are fashioned into the image each is capable of attaining. Other goods are but aids to this end; all are necessary for educating the human being, since the child is the summary of all gifts, and the most precious of all trusts committed to the state for trial and training.