Chapter II: Philip II and the Netherlands20

Of those important political events which make the sixteenth century to take rank among the brightest of the world's epochs, the foundation of the freedom of the Netherlands appears to me one of the most remarkable. If the glittering exploits of ambition and the pernicious lust of power claim our admiration, how much more so should an event in which opprest humanity struggled for its noblest right, where with the good cause unwonted powers were united, and the resources of resolute despair triumphed in unequal contest over the terrible arts of tyranny.

[Footnote 20: From the introduction to the "History of the Revolt of the Netherlands." Translated by A. J. W. Morrison. This work was translated by J. Horne in 1807, and again by E. B. Eastwick in 1844.]

Great and encouraging is the reflection that there is a resource left us against the arrogant usurpations of despotic power; that its best-contrived plans against the liberty of mankind may be frustrated; that resolute opposition can weaken even the outstretched arm of tyranny; and that heroic perseverance can eventually exhaust its fearful resources.

Never did this truth affect me so sensibly as in tracing the history of that memorable rebellion which forever severed the United Netherlands from the Spanish crown. Therefore I thought it not unworth the while to attempt to exhibit to the world this grand memorial of social union, in the hope that it may awaken in the breast of my reader a spirit-stirring consciousness of his own powers, and give a new and irrefragable example of what in a good cause men may both dare and venture, and what by union they may accomplish. It is not the extraordinary or heroic features of this event that induce me to describe it. The annals of the world record perhaps many similar enterprises, which may have been even bolder in the conception, and more brilliant in the execution. Some states have fallen after a nobler struggle, others have risen with more exalted strides. Nor are we here to look for eminent heroes, colossal talents, or those marvelous exploits which the history of past times presents in such rich abundance. Those times are gone, such men are no more. In the soft lap of refinement, we have suffered the energetic powers to become enervated which those ages called into action and rendered indispensable. With admiring awe, we wonder at these gigantic images of the past, as a feeble old man gazes on the athletic sports of youth.

Not so, however, in the history before us. The people here presented to our notice were the most peaceful in our quarter of the globe, and less capable than their neighbors of that heroic spirit which stamps a lofty character even on the most insignificant actions. The pressure of circumstances with its peculiar influence surprized them and forced a transitory greatness upon them, which they never could have possest, and perhaps will never possess again. It is, indeed, exactly this want of heroic grandeur which renders this event peculiarly instructive; and while others aim at showing the superiority of genius over chance, I shall here paint a scene where necessity creates genius, and accident makes heroes.

If, in any case, it be allowable to recognize the intervention of Providence in human affairs, it is certainly so in the present history, its course appears so contradictory to reason and experience. Philip II, the most powerful sovereign of his time--whose dreaded supremacy menaced the independence of Europe--whose treasures surpassed the collective wealth of all the monarchs of Christendom besides--whose ambitious projects were backed by numerous and well-disciplined armies--whose troops, hardened by long and bloody wars, and confident in past victories and in the irresistible prowess of this nation, were eager for any enterprise that promised glory and spoil, and ready to second with prompt obedience the daring genius of their leaders--this dreaded potentate here appears before us obstinately pursuing one favorite project, devoting to it the untiring efforts of a long reign, and bringing all these terrible resources to bear upon it; but forced, in the evening of his days, to abandon it--here we see the mighty Philip II engaging in combat with a few weak and powerless adversaries, and retiring from it at last with disgrace.

And with what adversaries? Here, a peaceful tribe of fishermen and shepherds, in an almost forgotten corner of Europe, which with difficulty they had rescued from the ocean; the sea their profession, and at once their wealth and their plague; poverty with freedom their highest blessing, their glory, their virtue. There, a harmless, moral commercial people, reveling in the abundant fruits of thriving industry, and jealous of the maintenance of laws which had proved their benefactors. In the happy leisure of affluence, they forsake the narrow circle of immediate wants, and learn to thirst after higher and nobler gratifications. The new views of truth whose benignant dawn now broke over Europe cast a fertilizing beam on this favored clime, and the free burgher admitted with joy the light which opprest and miserable slaves shut out. A spirit of independence, which is the ordinary companion of prosperity and freedom, lured this people on to examine the authority of antiquated opinions and to break an ignominious chain. But the stern rod of despotism was held suspended over them; arbitrary power threatened to tear away the foundation of their happiness; the guardian of their laws became their tyrant. Simple in their statecraft no less than in their manners, they dared to appeal to ancient treaties, and to remind the lord of both Indies of the right of nature. A name decides the whole issue of things. In Madrid that was called rebellion which in Brussels was simply styled a lawful remonstrance. The complaints of Brabant required a prudent mediator, Philip II sent an executioner. The signal for war was given. An unparalleled tyranny assailed both property and life. The despairing citizens, to whom the choice of deaths was all that was left, chose the nobler one on the battle-field. A wealthy and luxurious nation loves peace, but becomes warlike as soon as it becomes poor. Then it ceases to tremble for a life which is deprived of everything that had made it desirable. In an instant, the contagion of rebellion seized at once the most distant provinces; trade and commerce are at a standstill, the ships disappear from the harbors, the artizan abandons his workshop, the rustic his uncultivated fields. Thousands fled to distant lands, a thousand victims fell on the bloody field, and fresh thousands prest on. Divine, indeed, must that doctrine be for which men could die so joyfully. All that was wanting was the last finishing hand, the enlightened, enterprising spirit, to seize on this great political crisis, and to mold the offspring of chance into the ripe creation of wisdom. William the Silent, like a second Brutus, devoted himself to the great cause of liberty. Superior to all selfishness, he resigned honorable offices which entailed on him objectionable duties, and magnanimously divesting himself of all his princely dignities, he descended to a state of voluntary poverty, and became but a citizen of the world. The cause of justice was staked upon the hazardous game of battle; but the newly raised levies of mercenaries and peaceful husbandmen were unable to withstand the terrible onset of an experienced force. Twice did the brave William lead his dispirited troops against the tyrant, twice was he abandoned by them, but not by his courage.

Philip II sent as many reenforcements as the dreadful importunity of his viceroy demanded. Fugitives, whom their country rejected, sought a new home on the ocean, and turned to the ships of their enemy to satisfy the cravings both of vengeance and of want. Naval heroes were now formed out of corsairs, and a marine collected out of piratical vessels: out of morasses arose a republic. Seven provinces threw off the yoke at the same time, to form a new, youthful state, powerful by its waters and its union and despair. A solemn decree of the whole nation deposed the tyrant, and the Spanish name was erased from all its laws.

For such acts no forgiveness remained; the republic became formidable, only because it was impossible for her to retrace her steps. But factions distracted her within; without, her terrible element, the sea itself, leaguing with her oppressors, threatened her very infancy with a premature grave. She felt herself succumb to the superior force of the enemy, and cast herself a suppliant before the most powerful thrones of Europe, begging them to accept a dominion which she herself could no longer protect. At last, but with difficulty--so despised at first was this state, that even the rapacity of foreign monarchs spurned her opening bloom--a stranger deigned to accept their importunate offer of a dangerous crown. New hopes began to revive her sinking courage; but in this new father of his country destiny gave her a traitor, and in the critical emergency, when the implacable foe was in full force before her very gates, Charles of Anjou invaded the liberties which he had been called to protect. In the midst of the tempest, too, the assassin's hand tore the steersman from the helm, and with William of Orange the career of the infant republic was seemingly at an end, and all her guardian angels fled. But the ship continued to scud along before the storm, and the swelling canvas carried her safe without the pilot's help.

Philip II missed the fruits of a deed which cost him his royal honor, and perhaps, also, his self-respect. Liberty struggled on still with despotism, in obstinate and dubious contest; sanguinary battles were fought; a brilliant array of heroes succeeded each other on the field of glory; and Flanders and Brabant were the schools which educated generals for the coming century. A long, devastating war laid waste the open country; victor and vanquished alike waded through blood; while the rising republic of the waters gave a welcome to fugitive industry, and out of the ruins of despotism erected the noble edifice of its own greatness. For forty years lasted the war whose happy termination was not to bless the dying eye of Philip; which destroyed one paradise in Europe, to form a new one out of its shattered fragments; which destroyed the choicest flower of military youth, and while it enriched more than a quarter of the globe, impoverished the possessor of the golden Peru. This monarch, who could expend nine hundred tons of gold without oppressing his subjects, and by tyrannical measure extorted far more, heaped moreover on his exhausted people a debt of one hundred and forty millions of ducats. An implacable hatred of liberty swallowed up all these treasures, and consumed on the fruitless task the labor of a royal life. But the Reformation throve amidst the devastations of the sword, and over the blood of her citizens the banner of the new republic floated victorious.

AUGUST WILHELM VON SCHLEGEL

Born in 1767, died in 1845; educated at Göttingen; a tutor
for three years in Amsterdam; made professor of literature
and esthetics at Jena in 1798; founded a critical journal to
represent the Romantic school; lectured in Berlin in
1803-04; traveled with Madame de Staël, a tutor to her
children afterward at Coppet; became secretary to the Crown
Prince Bernadotte and ennobled; professor at Bonn in 1818;
visited England in 1823; wrote romances, sonnets, odes and
criticisms, and translated Shakespeare.

SHAKESPEARE'S MACBETH[21]

Of "Macbeth" I have already spoken once in passing; and who could exhaust the praises of this sublime work? Since the "Eumenides" of Æschylus nothing so grand and terrible has ever been written. The witches are not, it is true, divine Eumenides, and are not intended to be; they are ignoble and vulgar instruments of hell. A German poet, therefore, very ill understood their meaning when he transformed them into mongrel beings, a mixture of fates, furies, and enchantresses, and clothed them with tragic dignity. Let no man venture to lay hand on Shakespeare's works thinking to improve anything essential: he will be sure to punish himself. The bad is radically odious, and to endeavor in any manner to ennoble it, is to violate the laws of propriety. Hence, in my opinion, Dante, and even Tasso, have been much more successful in their portraiture of demons than Milton.

[Footnote 21: From the "Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature." Translated by John Black, the translation being revised by A. J. W. Morrison. Madame de Staël heard these lectures delivered in Vienna, and in her work on Germany says she was "astonished to hear a critic as eloquent as an orator."]

Whether the age of Shakespeare still believed in ghosts and witches is a matter of perfect indifference for the justification of the use which in "Hamlet" and "Macbeth" he has made of preexisting traditions. No superstition can be widely diffused without having a foundation in human nature: on this the poet builds; he calls up from their hidden abysses that dread of the unknown, and presage of a dark side of nature, and a world of spirits, which philosophy now imagines it has altogether exploded. In this manner he is in some degree both the portrayer and the philosopher of superstition; that is, not the philosopher who denies and turns it into ridicule, but, what is still more difficult, who distinctly exhibits its origin in apparently irrational and yet natural opinions. But when he ventures to make arbitrary changes in these popular traditions he altogether forfeits his right to them, and merely holds up his idle fancies to our ridicule. Shakespeare's picture of the witches is truly magical: in the short scenes where they enter he has created for them a peculiar language, which, altho composed of the usual elements, still seems to be a collection of formulæ of incantation. The sound of the words, the accumulation of rimes, and the rhythm of the verse form, as it were, the hollow music of a dreary witch-dance. He has been abused for using the names of disgusting objects; but he who fancies the kettle of the witches can be made effective with agreeable aromatics is as wise as those who desire that hell should sincerely and honestly give good advice. These repulsive things, from which the imagination shrinks, are here emblems of the hostile powers which operate in nature; and the repugnance of our senses is outweighed by the mental horror. With one another the witches discourse like women of the very lowest class; for this was the class to which witches were ordinarily supposed to belong: when, however, they address Macbeth they assume a loftier tone: their predictions, which they either themselves pronounce, or allow their apparitions to deliver, have all the obscure brevity, the majestic solemnity, of oracles.

We here see that the witches are merely instruments; they are governed by an invisible spirit, or the operation of such great and dreadful events would be above their sphere. With what intent did Shakespeare assign the same place to them in his play which they occupy in the history of Macbeth as related in the old chronicles? A monstrous crime is committed: Duncan, a venerable old man, and the best of kings, is, in defenseless sleep, under the hospitable roof, murdered by his subject, whom he has loaded with honors and rewards. Natural motives alone seem inadequate, or the perpetrator must have been portrayed as a hardened villain. Shakespeare wished to exhibit a more sublime picture--an ambitious but noble hero yielding to a deep-laid hellish temptation, and in whom all the crimes to which, in order to secure the fruits of his first crime, he is impelled by necessity, can not altogether eradicate the stamp of native heroism. He has, therefore, given a threefold division to the guilt of that crime. The first idea comes from that being whose whole activity is guided by a lust of wickedness.

The weird sisters surprize Macbeth in the moment of intoxication of victory, when his love of glory has been gratified; they cheat his eyes by exhibiting to him as the work of fate what in reality can be accomplished only by his own deed, and gain credence for all their words by the immediate fulfilment of the first prediction. The opportunity of murdering the King immediately offers; the wife of Macbeth conjures him not to let it slip; she urges him on with a fiery eloquence which has at command all those sophisms that serve to throw a false splendor over crime.

Little more than the mere execution falls to the share of Macbeth; he is driven into it, as it were, in a tumult of fascination. Repentance immediately follows, nay, even precedes, the deed, and the stings of conscience leave him rest neither night nor day. But he is now fairly entangled in the snares of hell; truly frightful is it to behold that same Macbeth, who once as a warrior could spurn at death, now that he dreads the prospect of the life to come, clinging with growing anxiety to his earthly existence the more miserable it becomes, and pitilessly removing out of the way whatever to his dark and suspicious mind seems to threaten danger. However much we may abhor his actions, we can not altogether refuse to compassionate the state of his mind; we lament the ruin of so many noble qualities, and even in his last defense we are compelled to admire the struggle of a brave will with a cowardly conscience. We might believe that we witness in this tragedy the overruling destiny of the ancients represented in perfect accordance with their ideas: the whole originates in a supernatural influence, to which the subsequent events seem inevitably linked. Moreover, we even find here the same ambiguous oracles which, by their literal fulfilment, deceive those who confide in them.

Yet it may be easily shown that the poet has, in his work, displayed more enlightened views. He wishes to show that the conflict of good and evil in this world can only take place by the permission of Providence, which converts the curse that individual mortals draw down on their heads into a blessing to others. An accurate scale is followed in the retaliation.

Lady Macbeth, who of all the human participators in the King's murder is the most guilty, is thrown by the terrors of her conscience into a state of incurable bodily and mental disease; she dies, unlamented by her husband, with all the symptoms of reprobation. Macbeth is still found worthy to die the death of a hero on the field of battle. The noble Macduff is allowed the satisfaction of saving his country by punishing with his own hand the tyrant who had murdered his wife and children. Banquo, by an early death, atones for the ambitious curiosity which prompted the wish to know his glorious descendants, as he thereby has roused Macbeth's jealousy; but he preserved his mind pure from the evil suggestions of the witches: his name is blest in his race, destined to enjoy for a long succession of ages that royal dignity which Macbeth could only hold for his own life. In the progress of the action, the piece is altogether the reverse of "Hamlet": it strides forward with amazing rapidity, from the first catastrophe (for Duncan's murder may be called a catastrophe) to the last. "Thought, and done!" is the general motto; for, as Macbeth says,

"The flighty purpose never is o'ertook
Unless the deed go with it."

In every feature we see an energetic heroic age, in the hardy north which steels every nerve. The precise duration of the action can not be ascertained--years, perhaps, according to the story--but we know that to the imagination the most crowded time appears always the shortest. Here we can hardly conceive how so very much could ever have been comprest into so narrow a space; not merely external events, the very inmost recesses of the minds of the dramatic personages are laid open to us. It is as if the drags were taken from the wheels of time and they roll along without interruption in their descent. Nothing can equal the picture in its power to excite terror. We need only allude to the circumstances attending the murder of Duncan, the dagger that hovers before the eyes of Macbeth, the vision of Banquo at the feast, the madness of Lady Macbeth: what can possibly be said on the subject that will not rather weaken the impression they naturally leave? Such scenes stand alone, and are to be found only in this poet; otherwise the tragic muse might exchange her mask for the head of Medusa.

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT

Born in Berlin in 1769, died in 1859; educated at Frankfurt
and Göttingen; a mining engineer in 1792; resigning his
position in 1797, he traveled in Switzerland, Italy and
France; made a scientific journey to South America and
Mexico in 1799-1804; lived in Paris in 1809-27; settled in
Berlin in 1827; went to Siberia and the Caspian Sea at the
instance of the Emperor of Russia in 1829; several
scientific works based on his travels appeared before 1845;
in 1845-58 published his masterpiece, "Cosmos"; a brother of
Frederick von Humboldt, who was a philologist.

AN ESSAY ON MAN[22]

The general picture of nature which I have endeavored to delineate would be incomplete if I did not venture to trace a few of the most marked features of the human race, considered with reference to physical gradations--to the geographical distribution of contemporaneous types--to the influence exercised upon man by the forces of nature, and the reciprocal, altho weaker action which he, in his turn, exercises on these natural forces. Dependent, altho in a lesser degree than plants and animals, on the soil, and on the meteorological processes of the atmosphere with which he is surrounded--escaping more readily from the control of natural forces by activity of mind and the advance of intellectual cultivation no less than by his wonderful capacity of adapting himself to all climates--man everywhere becomes most essentially associated with terrestrial life. It is by these relations that the obscure and much-contested problem of the possibility of one common descent enters into the sphere embraced by a general physical cosmography. The investigation of this problem will impart a nobler, and, if I may so express myself, more purely human interest to the closing pages of this section of my work.

[Footnote 22: From his "General Review of Natural Phenomena" in Volume I of "Cosmos." The translation by E. C. Otté and W. S. Dallas, which came out in 1849-59. A version by Mrs. Sabine appeared in 1846; and one by Prichard in 1845-48.]

The vast domain of language, in whose varied structure we see mysteriously reflected the destinies of nations, is most intimately associated with the affinity of races; and what even slight differences of races may effect is strikingly manifested in the history of the Hellenic nations in the zenith of their intellectual cultivation. The most important questions of the civilization of mankind are connected with the ideas of races, community of language, and adherence to one original direction of the intellectual and moral faculties.

As long as attention was directed solely to the extremes in varieties of color and of form, and to the vividness of the first impression of the senses, the observer was naturally disposed to regard races rather as originally different species than as mere varieties. The permanence of certain types in the midst of the most hostile influences, especially of climate, appeared to favor such a view, notwithstanding the shortness of the interval of time from which the historical evidence was derived. In my opinion, however, more powerful reasons can be advanced in support of the theory of the unity of the human race, as, for instance, in the many intermediate gradations in the color of the skin and in the form of the skull, which have been made known to us in recent times by the rapid progress of geographical knowledge--the analogies presented by the varieties in the species of many wild and domesticated animals--and the more correct observations collected regarding the limits of fecundity in hybrids. The greater number of the contrasts which were formerly supposed to exist have disappeared before the laborious researches of Tiedemann on the brain of negroes and of Europeans, and the anatomical investigations of Vrolik and Weber on the form of the pelvis.

On comparing the dark-colored African nations, on whose physical history the admirable work of Prichard has thrown so much light, with the races inhabiting the islands of the South Indian and West Australian archipelago, and with the Papuas and Alfourous (Haroforas, Endamenes), we see that a black skin, woolly hair, and a negro-like cast of countenance are not necessarily connected together. So long as only a small portion of the earth was known to the Western nations, partial views necessarily predominated, and tropical heat and a black skin consequently appeared inseparable. "The Ethiopians," said the ancient tragic poet Theodectes of Phaselis, "are colored by the near sun god in his course with a sooty luster, and their hair is dried and crisped with the heat of his rays." The campaigns of Alexander, which gave rise to so many new ideas regarding physical geography, likewise first excited a discussion on the problematical influence of climate on races. "Families of animals and plants," writes one of the greatest anatomists of the day, Johannes Müller, in his noble and comprehensive work, "Physiologie des Menschen," "undergo, within certain limitations peculiar to the different races and species, various modifications in their distribution over the surface of the earth, propagating these variations as organic types of species.

"The present races of animals have been produced by the combined action of many different internal as well as external conditions, the nature of which can not in all cases be defined, the most striking varieties being found in those families which are capable of the greatest distribution over the surface of the earth. The different races of mankind are forms of one sole species, by the union of two of whose members descendants are propagated. They are not different species of a genus, since in that case their hybrid descendants would remain unfruitful. But whether the human races have descended from several primitive races of men, or from one alone, is a question that can not be determined from experience."

Geographical investigations regarding the ancient seat, the so-called cradle of the human race, are not devoid of a mythical character. "We do not know," says Wilhelm von Humboldt, in an unpublished work, "On the Varieties of Languages and Nations," "either from history or from authentic tradition, any period of time in which the human race has not been divided into social groups. Whether the gregarious condition was original, or of subsequent occurrence, we have no historic evidence to show. The separate mythical relations found to exist independently of one another in different parts of the earth appear to refute the first hypothesis, and concur in ascribing the generation of the whole human race to the union of one pair. The general prevalence of this myth has caused it to be regarded as a traditionary record transmitted from primitive man to his descendants. But this very circumstance seems rather to prove that it has no historical foundation, but has simply arisen from an identity in the mode of intellectual conception, which has everywhere led man to adopt the same conclusion regarding identical phenomena; in the same manner as many myths have doubtless arisen, not from any historical connection existing between them, but rather from an identity in human thought and imagination.

"Another evidence in favor of the purely mythical nature of this belief is afforded by the fact that the first origin of mankind--a phenomenon which is wholly beyond the sphere of experience--is explained in perfect conformity with existing views, being considered on the principle of the colonization of some desert island or remote mountainous valley at a period when mankind had already existed for thousands of years. It is in vain that we direct our thoughts to the solution of the great problem of the first origin, since man is too intimately associated with his own race and with the relations of time to conceive of the existence of an individual independently of a preceding generation and age. A solution of those difficult questions, which can not be determined by inductive reasoning or by experience--whether the belief in this presumed traditional condition be actually based on historical evidence, or whether mankind inhabited the earth in gregarious associations from the origin of the race--can not, therefore, be determined from philological data, and yet its elucidation ought not to be sought from other sources."

The distribution of mankind is, therefore, only a distribution into varieties, which are commonly designated by the somewhat indefinite term races. As in the vegetable kingdom, and in the natural history of birds and fishes, a classification into many small families is based on a surer foundation than where large sections are separated into a few but large divisions, so it also appears to me that in the determination of races a preference should be given to the establishment of small families of nations. Whether we adopt the old classification of my master, Blumenbach, and admit five races (the Caucasian, Mongolian, American, Ethiopian, and Malayan), or that of Prichard, into seven races (the Iranian, Turanian, American, Hottentots and Bushmen, Negroes, Papuas, and Alfourous), we fail to recognize any typical sharpness of definition, or any general or well-established principle in the division of these groups. The extremes of form and color are certainly separated, but without regard to the races, which can not be included in any of these classes, and which have been alternately termed Scythian and Allophyllic. Iranian is certainly a less objectionable term for the European nations than Caucasian; but it may be maintained generally that geographical denominations are very vague when used to express the points of departure of races, more especially where the country which has given its name to the race, as, for instance, Turan (Mawerannahr), has been inhabited at different periods by Indo-Germanic and Finnish, and not by Mongolian tribes.

Languages, as intellectual creations of man, and as closely interwoven with the development of mind, are, independently of the national form which they exhibit, of the greatest importance in the recognition of similarities or differences in races. This importance is especially owing to the clue which a community of descent affords in treading that mysterious labyrinth in which the connection of physical powers and intellectual forces manifests itself in a thousand different forms. The brilliant progress made within the last half-century, in Germany, in philosophical philology, has greatly facilitated our investigations into the national character of languages and the influence exercised by descent. But here, as in all domains of ideal speculation, the dangers of deception are closely linked to the rich and certain profit to be derived.

Positive ethnographical studies, based on a thorough knowledge of history, teach us that much caution should be applied in entering into these comparisons of nations, and of the languages employed by them at certain epochs. Subjection, long association, the influence of a foreign religion, the blending of races, even when only including a small number of the more influential and cultivated of the immigrating tribes, have produced, in both continents, similarly recurring phenomena; as, for instance, in introducing totally different families of languages among one and the same race, and idioms, having one common root, among nations of the most different origin. Great Asiatic conquerors have exercised the most powerful influence on phenomena of this kind.

But language is a part and parcel of the history of the development of mind; and, however happily the human intellect, under the most dissimilar physical conditions, may unfettered pursue a self-chosen track, and strive to free itself from the dominion of terrestrial influences, this emancipation is never perfect. There ever remains, in the natural capacities of the mind, a trace of something that has been derived from the influences of race or of climate, whether they be associated with a land gladdened by cloudless azure skies, or with the vapory atmosphere of an insular region. As, therefore, richness and grace of language are unfolded from the most luxuriant depths of thought, we have been unwilling wholly to disregard the bond which so closely links together the physical world with the sphere of intellect and of the feelings by depriving this general picture of nature of those brighter lights and tints which may be borrowed from considerations, however slightly indicated, of the relations existing between races and languages....

Let me close this general description of the natural phenomena of the universe. From the remotest nebulæ and from the revolving double stars, we have descended to the minutest organisms of animal creation, whether manifested in the depths of ocean or on the surface of our globe, and to the delicate vegetable germs which clothe the naked declivity of the ice-crowned mountain summit; and here we have been able to arrange these phenomena according to partially known laws; but other laws of a more mysterious nature rule the higher spheres of the organic world in which is comprized the human species in all its varied conformation, its creative intellectual power, and the languages to which it has given existence. A physical delineation of nature terminates at the point where the sphere of intellect begins, and a new world of mind is open to our view. It marks the limit, but does not pass it.

HEINRICH HEINE

Born in Prussia in 1799, died in Paris in 1856; of Hebrew
descent; with assistance from an uncle, studied
jurisprudence at Bonn, Berlin, and Göttingen; embraced
Christianity in 1825; lived alternately in Hamburg, Berlin
and Munich; settled in Paris after 1831, where he spent his
remaining years; receiving, 1837-48, an annuity from the
department of foreign affairs; his first collection of poems
published in 1822; his most notable prose work, "Pictures of
Travel," in 1826-31; his complete works comprize twenty-one
volumes.

REMINISCENCES OF NAPOLEON[23]

The professor was dancing about the platform with the agility of an elephant and working himself into a passion for a set tirade against the Emperor Napoleon, when those accurst feet of mine--no, poor feet, I can not blame you for drumming then, nay, I could not have blamed you had your dumb instinct thus outraged exprest itself in a yet more forcible fashion. How can I, a pupil of Le Grand, hear the Emperor abused? The Emperor! the great Emperor!

[Footnote 23: From Chapter VII, VIII and IX, of "Travel-Pictures." Translated by Francis Storr.]

When I think of the great Emperor, in my mind's eye it is summer again, all gold and green. A long avenue of lime-trees in blossom rises up before me; on the leafy branches sit nightingales singing; the waterfall ripples; in the borders are flowers dreamily waving their fair heads.

Between me and the flowers there was a strange communion; the painted tulips bowed to me with the pride that apes humility, the sickly lilies nodded to me with tender sensibility, the roses with wine-flushed cheeks laughed a welcome from afar, the night-stocks sighed--with myrtles and laurels I was not then acquainted, for they had no bright blossoms to attract me, but with mignonette (we have since quarreled) I was then on the most intimate terms. I am speaking of the palace gardens at Düsseldorf, where I used to lie on the grass reverently listening to Monsieur Le Grand as he told me of the great Emperor's heroism, and beat the marches to which those heroic exploits were performed, so that my eyes and ears drank in the very life of it all. I saw the march across the Simplon--the Emperor in front and the brave grenadiers climbing up behind, while the startled eagles screamed and the glaciers thundered in the distance; I saw the Emperor clasping the standard on the bridge of Lodi; I saw the Emperor in his gray cloak at Marengo; I saw the Emperor on horseback at the battle of the Pyramids--nothing but smoke and Mamelukes--I saw the Emperor at Austerlitz--twing! how the bullets whizzed over the smooth ice--I saw, I heard the battle of Jena--dum, dum, dum--I saw, I heard the battle of Eilau, of Wagram--no, I could hardly stand it! Monsieur Le Grand drummed till my own eardrum was nearly cracked.

But what were my feelings when I saw him at last with my own eyes--O beatific vision!--himself, the Emperor.

It was in the alley of the same palace gardens at Düsseldorf. As I shouldered my way through the gaping crowd I thought of the deeds and battles which Monsieur Le Grand had portrayed to me with his drum; my heart beat the grand march--and yet I thought at the same time of the police regulations which ordered that no one should ride through the alley under a penalty of five thalers. And the Emperor with his retinue rode right through the alley! The shuddering trees bowed down to him as he passed; the sunbeams peeped timidly through the green foliage, and in the blue heavens above there sailed in sight a golden star. He wore his plain green uniform, and his small world-famous cap. He rode a white palfrey, which stept with such calm pride, such assurance and dignity--had I been the Crown Prince of Prussia, I should still have envied that pony. Carelessly, with a loose seat, the Emperor held up the reins in one hand, and with the other patted good-temperedly his horse's neck. It was a sunlit marble hand, a mighty hand, one of those two hands that had tamed the hydra of anarchy, and quelled the feud of nations; and now it patted good-temperedly his horse's neck. His face, too, was of the same hue that we see in marble busts of Greeks and Romans; the features wore the same expression of calm dignity that the ancients have, and on it was written, "Thou shalt have none other gods but me." A smile that warmed and calmed every heart played about his lips, and yet we know that those lips had only to whistle and--"_la Prusse n'existait plus_"; those lips had only to whistle, and clericalism died like an echo; those lips had only to whistle to set dancing the Holy Roman Empire. And now those lips smiled, and his eye smiled--an eye clear as heaven, an eye that read men's hearts, an eye that at a glance embraced all earthly things, while we mortals see them only one by one, and only the painted shadows. The brow was not so clear; it was haunted by the ghosts of coming battles, and at times a frown passed across it; these frowns were the creative thoughts, seven-league-boot thoughts, with which the Emperor's mind strode invisible over the world--and I fancy each of these thoughts would have furnished a German writer with materials to employ his whole life.

The Emperor rode calmly down the alley; no policeman stopt his way; behind him, on snorting chargers, bedizened with gold and jewels, rode his retinue; the drums beat, the trumpets blared; at my side mad Aloysius spun round and round, and clattered out the names of his generals; close by drunken Gumpertz bellowed, and the people shouted with a thousand voices, "Long live the Emperor!"

The Emperor is dead. On a desolate island in the Atlantic is his lonely grave, and he for whom the earth was all too narrow rests peacefully beneath the hillock where five weeping willows droop their green tresses in agonized despair, and a tender-hearted rivulet ripples by with melancholy plaint. There is no inscription on the tombstone, but Clio has graven thereon, in invisible letters, her just sentence that will echo through the centuries like spirit voices.

Britannia! thou art queen of the ocean, but all great Neptune's ocean can not wash from thee the stain that the dead Emperor bequeathed thee on his deathbed. Not that windbag Sir Hudson, but thou thyself wast the Sicilian sbirro whom the allied sovereigns suborned to avenge in secret on the man of the people what the people had once done openly to one of thy sovereigns. And he was thy guest, and had seated himself at thy hearth.

To the end of all time the boys of France will talk and sing of the fell hospitality of the _Bellerophon_, and when their songs of bitter mockery are heard across the Channel the cheeks of all honorable Britons will blush with shame. But a day will come when this song will be wafted across the Straits, but not to Britain; the British nation is humbled in the dust, the tombs of the abbey are in ruins, the royal ashes they hold are forgotten; and St. Helena is the Holy Sepulcher to which the peoples of the East and of the West make pilgrimages in scarfed barks, and comfort their hearts with the great memories of the savior of the world who suffered under Hudson Lowe, as it is written in the gospels of Las Casas, of O'Meara, and of Autommarchi.

Strange, the three greatest adversaries of the Emperor have already found an awful fate. Londonderry cut his throat; Louis XVIII rotted on his throne; and Professor Sealfeld is still professor at Göttingen.

ITALY

1254-1803

MARCO POLO

Born in Venice in 1254, died in 1324; his father and uncle
mercantile men whom he accompanied in 1271, when seventeen
years of age, on a journey to Central Asia by way of Bagdad,
and thence to the court of Kublai Khan; in 1275 entered the
public service of Kublai Khan and was employed by him on
important missions; left China in 1292, returning to Venice
by way of India; at a battle between Venetians and Genoese,
1298, made a prisoner and confined for a year, during which
he dictated in the French language to a fellow captive his
book of travels; he and his father and uncle first-known
Europeans to visit China.

A DESCRIPTION OF JAPAN[24]

Zipangu is an island in the Eastern Ocean, situated at the distance of about fifteen hundred miles[25] from the mainland, or coast of Manji. It is of considerable size; its inhabitants have fair complexions, are well made, and are civilized in their manners. Their religion is the worship of idols. They are independent of every foreign power, and governed only by their own kings. They have gold in the greatest abundance, its sources being inexhaustible, but, as the king does not allow of its being exported, few merchants visit the country, nor is it frequented by much shipping from other parts. To this circumstance we are to attribute the extraordinary richness of the sovereign's palace, according to what we are told by those who have access to the place. The entire roof is covered with a plating of gold, in the same manner as we cover houses, or more properly churches, with lead. The ceilings of the halls are of the same precious metal; many of the apartments have small tables of pure gold, of considerable thickness; and the windows have also golden ornaments. So vast, indeed, are the riches of the palace that it is impossible to convey an idea of them. In this island there are pearls also, in large quantities, of a red (pink) color, round in shape, and of great size, equal in value to, or even exceeding that of the white pearls. It is customary with one part of the inhabitants to bury their dead, and with another part to burn them. The former have a practise of putting one of these pearls into the mouth of the corpse. There are also found there a number of precious stones.

[Footnote 24: From the "Travels." The text of this, the most famous perhaps of all books of travel, has come down to us in an extremely corrupt state. Written as it was about 250 years before the invention of printing, innumerable copies in manuscript form were put into circulation, some in French, some in Italian, some in German and some in Latin. French is believed to be the language in which it originally was composed, but this has not been definitely proven. More than eighty copies in manuscript are still extant. A Latin version was printed in Basel in 1532. The first English translation appears to be one that was made by John Frampton, published in London in 1579. An English version by W. Marsden appeared in 1818.]

[Footnote 25: Chinese miles are here meant.]

Of so great celebrity was the wealth of this island that a desire was excited in the breast of the grand Khan Kublai, now reigning, to make the conquest of it and to annex it to his dominions. In order to effect this he fitted out a numerous fleet, and embarked a large body of troops, under the command of two of his principal officers, one of whom was named Abbacatan and the other Vonsancin. The expedition sailed from the ports of Zai-tun and Kin-sai [probably Amoy and Ningpo], and, crossing the intermediate sea, reached the island in safety; but in consequence of a jealousy that arose between the two commanders, one of whom treated the plans of the other with contempt and resisted the execution of his orders, they were unable to gain possession of any city or fortified place, with the exception of one only, which was carried by assault, the garrison having refused to surrender. Directions were given for putting the whole to the sword, and in obedience thereto the heads of all were cut off, excepting of eight persons, who, by the efficacy of a diabolical charm, consisting of a jewel or amulet introduced into the right arm between the skin and the flesh, were rendered secure from the effects of iron, either to kill or to wound. Upon this discovery being made, they were beaten with a heavy wooden club, and presently died.

It happened, after some time, that a north wind began to blow with great force, and the ships of the Tatars which lay near the shore of the island were driven foul of each other. It was determined, therefore, in a council of the officers on board, that they ought to disengage themselves from the land; and accordingly, as soon as the troops were reembarked, they stood out to sea. The gale, however, increased to so violent a degree that a number of the vessels foundered. The people belonging to them, by floating on pieces of the wreck, saved themselves upon an island lying about four miles from the coast of Zipangu. The other ships, which, not being so near to the land, did not suffer from the storm, and in which the two chiefs were embarked, together with the principal officers, or those whose rank entitled them to command a hundred thousand or ten thousand men, directed their course homeward, and returned to the grand khan. Those of the Tatars who remained upon the island where they were wrecked, and who amounted to about thirty thousand men, finding themselves left without shipping, abandoned by their leaders, and having neither arms nor provisions, expected nothing less than to become captives or to perish; especially as the island afforded no habitations where they could take shelter and refresh themselves. As soon as the gale ceased, and the sea became smooth and calm, the people from the main island of Zipangu came over with a large force, in numerous boats, in order to make prisoners of these shipwrecked Tatars and, having landed, proceeded in search of them, but in a straggling, disorderly manner. The Tatars, on their part, acted with prudent circumspection, and being concealed from view by some high land in the center of the island, while the enemy were hurrying in pursuit of them by one road, made a circuit of the coast by another, which brought them to the place where the fleet of boats was at anchor. Finding these all abandoned, but with their colors flying, they instantly seized them, and pushing off from the island, stood for the principal city of Zipangu, into which, from the appearance of the colors, they were suffered to enter unmolested. Here they found few of the inhabitants, besides women, whom they retained for their own use, and drove out all others.

When the King was apprized of what had taken place, he was much afflicted, and immediately gave directions for a strict blockade of the city, which was so effectual that not one person was permitted to enter or to escape from it during six months that the siege continued. At the expiration of this time, the Tatars, despairing of succor, surrendered upon the condition of their lives being spared. These events took place in the course of the year 1264 [properly 1284]. The grand khan, having learned some years after that the unfortunate issue of the expedition was to be attributed to the dissensions between the two commanders, caused the head of one of them to be cut off, and the other be sent to the savage island of Zorza, where it is the custom to execute criminals in the following manner. They are wrapt round both arms in the hide of a buffalo fresh taken from the beast, which is sewed tight. As this dries, it compresses the body to such a degree that the sufferer is incapable of moving or in any manner helping himself, and thus miserably perishes.

DANTE ALIGHIERI

Born in Florence in 1265, died in Ravenna in 1321; of an
ancient family attached to the Guelph party; first saw
Beatrice in his ninth year; married Gemma Donati two years
after the death of Beatrice; fought with the Guelphs;
entrusted with foreign missions; endeavored to reconcile
Guelphs and Ghibellines; while on an embassy to Rome his
house in Florence destroyed in a riot, and he condemned to
exile; his life thenceforth one of wandering; settled in
Ravenna in 1320, where he died a year later; all his works
except "Vita Nuova" written in exile; his "Divine Comedy" in
three parts written in 1300-18.