Chapter XI: Part II: VI (7)

Upon the subject of religious education "Levana" is finely suggestive. All cobweb-makeshifts which obscure the beautiful substance of a holy life are swept aside. To the young, not what others say, but what they do, is right. Children, like their elders, will resist all mere reasoning upon the disadvantages, whether temporal or spiritual, of actions to which they are tempted. But they are ever ready to absorb the faith of the household, and to be nourished by it. "For those who wish to give anything," exclaims our author, "the first rule is, that they shall have it to give; no one can teach religion who does not himself possess it; hypocrisy and mouth-religion will bring forth only their like." The hardly noticeable habits of unrestrained intercourse, the indulgence of petty selfishness not acknowledged to ourselves,--these are seeds of evil quick to germinate in a virgin soil. No iteration of pedagogical maxims can annul the influence of some little mean or graceless act. Let every parent take heed lest, through his own weakness and folly, he lose the divine privilege of obedience through confidence. In the world, obedience through discipline must indeed come; but let it be unknown in the family as long as it may. And of "mouth-religion" what fatal abundance! To a child, it is no more than the creaking and rattling of a vehicle, which is of a certain worth, doubtless, to the weary, sinful adult,--but to one who feels his life in every limb, incomprehensible, and an offence. Of the vulgar superstition which would confuse the nursery with creeds and vain prayer-repetitions of the heathen there is far too much. We have known parents, reputed pious and church-going, who delighted to pour crushing enigmas into infant ears, and then to make a sorry household jest of the feeble one's grotesque attempts to extend or limit the Unspeakable. As the highest concerns of man can be known only by the spirit, so they can be taught only by the spirit. It is not the words we repeat, but the temper in which we daily live, that moulds the family to honor or dishonor. It is the spirit of the father and mother which produces results mistaken for intuitions by the superficial. And, truly, youth, thus warmly rooted in generosity and nobility, will, in its own good time, stretch tender leaves up to the Higher Light. And when Nature is ready for worship, mark how wisely Richter directs it:--"The sublime is a step to the temple of religion, as the stars are to that of infinity. Let the name of God be heard by the child in connection with all that is great in Nature,--the storm, the thunder, the starry heavens, and death,--a great misfortune,--a great piece of good-fortune,--a great crime,--a greatly noble action: these are the sites on which to build the wandering church of childhood."

In conclusion, we can only repeat, that the greatest charm of "Levana" is its suggestion of a possible household, from what the reader feels was once an actual household. The cheap sentimentalism of parental relations has often been a favorite property with men of imaginative genius. Rousseau and Byron knew how to use it as a fictitious background before which they might posture with effect. But, until the world's literature shall mercifully forget them, the "Enfants Trouvés" and the Venetian bagnio strip these writers of their fine words, and hold them before the generations in scandal and disgrace. No reader of "Levana" can miss the refutation of that poisonous lie, that men of genius, because of their mental endowments, have a natural inaptitude for domestic relations, or are unhappy therein from any other cause than their own foolishness or guilt. We hear the tender strains of a deep poet, privileged by acquired worthiness to return to those divine instincts which were vivid in the simplest condition of the family. To all who can bring the writings of Richter within their range we commend this book. Those who have learned to enjoy his strong-darting language, his complex constructions, his kindly humor, will find these working together with noblest aim. In these times of our country's peril, there is some sanative virtue outside of treatises upon strategy or Union pamphlets. It is well to print and circulate the literature of war. But it is also a sweet and a timely mission to impart a new inspiration into that life of the family to-day which shall become the life of the nation to-morrow.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: See Atlantic Monthly, May Number.]

[Footnote 2: "Clearly a fictitious appellation; for, if we admit the latter of these names to be in a manner English, what is _Leigh_? Christian nomenclature knows no such."]

[Footnote 3: "It is clearly of transatlantic origin."]

[Footnote 4:

"'Imperfectus adhuc infans genetricis ab alvo
Eripitur, patrioque tener (si credere dignum)
Insuitur femori ...
Tutaque bis geniti sunt incunabula Bacchi.'

_Metamorph_. Lib. 3."]

[Footnote 5: It was Philip II. who gave to the Havana a coat of arms, in which was a golden key, to signify that it was the key of the Indies. The house being lost, the key has, oddly enough, become more valuable than ever to Spain.]

[Footnote 6: The "Annual Register" states that but 2,500 of the conquerors were fit for duty when the Havana surrendered. The Boston "Gazette" says 3,000, and that the arrival of reinforcements was critical. Even disease could not break down armies in those days. The Spaniards had 6,000 sick.]

[Footnote 7: The writer is known to the publishers of the "Atlantic Monthly": he is one whose word is not and cannot be called in question; and he pledges his word that the above is exact and _proven_ fact. Horace Mann, years ago, made public some similar cases.]

[Footnote 8: _Constitutional History of England_, Vol. II. p. 340.]

[Footnote 9: Carlyle's _Life of Cromwell_, Part IX. Vol. II. p. 168.]

[Footnote 10: Ludlow's _Memoirs_, p. 559.]

[Footnote 11: Ibid. p. 580.]

[Footnote 12: Ibid. p. 582.]

[Footnote 13: Kent's _Commentaries_, Vol. I. p. 292, note b.]

[Footnote 14: Elliott's _Debates_, Vol. III, p. 22.]

[Footnote 15: Elliott's _Debates_, Vol. III. p. 44.]

[Footnote 16: _Ibid._ p. 29.]

[Footnote 17: Rushworth's _Historical Collections_, Vol. I. p. 609.]

[Footnote 18: See Cushing, _Parliamentary Law_, p. 284.]

[Footnote 19: Phillimore's _International Law_, Vol. I. p. 147.]

[Footnote 20: Burke's _Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs_.]

[Footnote 21: Macaulay's _History of England_, Vol. II. p. 623.]

[Footnote 22: Macaulay's _History of England_, Vol. II. p. 624.]

[Footnote 23: John Adams's _Works_, Vol. II. p. 490.]

[Footnote 24: _Ibid_. Vol. III. pp. 17, 19, 45, 46.]

[Footnote 25: Webster's _Works_, Vol. VI. pp. 225, 226, 227, 228, 231.]

[Footnote 26: The _Gorgias_ of Plato.]

[Footnote 27: _American Insurance Company_ v. _Carter_, 1 Peters, p. 542.]

[Footnote 28: _Democracy in America_, Vol. II. ch. 25, p. 343.]

[Footnote 29: Thirty-Seventh Congress, Second Session, 2d May, 1862,