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Title: Home Life of Great Authors

Author: Hattie Tyng Griswold

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HOME LIFE OF
GREAT AUTHORS ***

HOME LIFE
OF
GREAT AUTHORS
BY

HATTIE TYNG GRISWOLD
SEVENTH EDITION

CHICAGO
A. C. McCLURG & CO.
1902
Copyright
By A. C. McClurg and Co.
A.D. 1886.

PREFACE.
The author of these sketches desires to say that they were written, not for
the special student of literary biography, who is already familiar with the
facts here given, but rather for those busy people who have little time for
reading, yet wish to know something of the private life and personal history
of their favorite authors. The sketches are not intended to be critical, or to
present anything like complete biographies. They are devoted chiefly to the
home life of the various authors,—which, though an instructive and
fascinating study, seems commonly neglected in popular biographies.
It should be added that a few of these sketches have already appeared in
print, but they have been rewritten to adapt them to their present purpose.
H. T. G.
Columbus, Wis., October, 1886.

CONTENTS.
PAGE
Goethe 9
Robert Burns 24
Madame de Staël 34
William Wordsworth 43
Thomas De Quincey 54
Walter Scott 64
Charles Lamb 75
Christopher North 85
Lord Byron 94
Shelley 102
Washington Irving 112
William Cullen Bryant 122
Ralph Waldo Emerson 133
Thomas Carlyle 142
Victor Hugo 150
George Sand 164
Thomas Babington Macaulay 177
Edward Bulwer Lytton 188
Alfred Tennyson 197
Nathaniel Hawthorne 207
Henry W. Longfellow 220
John G. Whittier 238
Oliver Wendell Holmes 251
James Russell Lowell 262
Robert and Elizabeth Browning 274
Charlotte Bronté 286
Margaret Fuller 302
Edgar Allen Poe 312
William Makepeace Thackeray 322

Charles Dickens 335
George Eliot 351
Charles Kingsley 363
John Ruskin 372

Home Life of Great Authors.

GOETHE.

In an old, many-cornered, and gloomy house at Frankfort-on-the-Main,
upon the 28th of August, 1749, was born the greatest German of his day,
Wolfgang Goethe. The back of the house, from the second story,
commanded a very pleasant prospect over an almost immeasurable extent
of gardens stretching to the walls of the city, but the house itself was
gloomy, being shut in by a high wall. Over these gardens beyond the walls
and ramparts of the city, stretched a long plain, where the young Wolfgang,
serious and thoughtful, was wont to wander and to learn his lessons. He had
the sort of superstitious dread which is usually the inheritance of children
with a poetic nature, and suffered greatly in childhood from fear. He was
obliged by his father, who was a stern and somewhat opinionated old man,
to sleep alone, as a means of overcoming this fear; and if he tried to steal
from his own bed to that of his brothers, he was frightened back by his
father, who watched for him and chased him in some fantastic disguise.
That this did not tend to quiet his nerves may well be imagined, and it was
only through time and much suffering that he overcame his childish terrors.

His mother was a gay, cheerful woman, much younger than his father, and
as she was only eighteen years old when Wolfgang was born, always said
that they were young together. She had married with little affection for her
elderly husband, and it was in her favorite son that she found all the
romance and beauty of her life. She was a woman of strong character, and
presents one of the pleasantest pictures in German literature. With a warm,
genial nature, full of spirit and enthusiasm, she retained to the last days of
her life an ardent interest in all the things which delighted her in youth. She
read much, thought much, and observed much, for one in her sphere of life,
and many great people who came to know her through her son learned to
value her very highly for herself alone. She corresponded long with the
Duchess Amalia, and her letters were much enjoyed at the Court of Weimar.
Princes and poets delighted to honor her in later life, and her son was
enthusiastic in his devotion to her till the last. She comforted him through
his rather fanciful and fantastic childhood as much as she could without
directly interfering with the discipline of the didactic father. Goethe and his
mother were both taught by this father, who considered her almost as much
of a child as the boy himself. She was kept busy with writing, playing the
clavichord, and singing, as well as with the study of Italian, in which the
father much delighted; and the boy had grammar, and the Latin classics, and
a geography in memory-verses. The boy soon got beyond his teacher, but
without being well-grounded in anything, and learned, as such children are
apt to do, much more from his own desultory reading than from any
instruction which was given him. In the library were the beautiful Dutch
editions of the Latin classics and many works relating to Roman antiquities
and jurisprudence. There were also the Italian poets, and many books of
travel, and many dictionaries of various languages, and encyclopædias of
science and art. Through all these the boy searched for himself, and took
what was suited to his taste, astonishing the slow father very much by his
readiness, and soon becoming famous in the neighborhood for his
acquirements. Of course he wrote poetry from the earliest age, and of
course many people predicted his future greatness. Most of all, his mother
believed in him, and watched him with adoring solicitude. His love for art
showed itself very early, and he made friends with artists, and visited their
studios frequently when a mere boy. His father had a fondness for pictures,
and had some good views of Italian scenery and art in his own house; and it
was probably from him that the boy derived his earliest liking for such

things. His passion for the theatre also made itself known at the earliest age,
and gave him his most intense youthful pleasures.
His taste for natural science was also very strong in early childhood, and he
analyzed flowers, to see how the leaves were inserted into the calyx, and
plucked birds to see how the feathers were inserted in the wings, when a
mere infant, as it appeared to his mother. Indeed, all the strong tastes of the
man showed themselves in a decided manner in this precocious child, and
his hap-hazard training allowed his genius to develop along its own natural
lines in a healthy manner.
He even exhibited at a very youthful period his fatal facility for falling in
love, and naturally enough, with a girl older than himself, named Gretchen.
He was cured of his first passion only by finding out that the girl regarded
him as a child, which filled him with great indignation. He says:—

"My judgment was convinced, and I thought I must cast her away; but
her image!—her image gave me the lie as often as it again hovered
before me, which indeed happened often enough.
"Nevertheless, this arrow with its barbed hooks was torn out of my
heart; and the question then was, how the inward sanative power of
youth could be brought to one's aid. I really put on the man; and the
first thing instantly laid aside was the weeping and raving, which I
now regarded as childish in the highest degree. A great stride for the
better! For I had often, half the night through, given myself up to this
grief with the greatest violence; so that at last, from my tears and
sobbing, I came to such a point that I could scarcely swallow any
longer; eating and drinking become painful to me; and my chest,
which was so nearly concerned, seemed to suffer. The vexation I had
constantly felt since the discovery made me banish every weakness.
"It seemed to me something frightful that I had sacrificed sleep,
repose, and health for the sake of a girl who was pleased to consider
me a babe, and to imagine herself, with respect to me, something very
like a nurse."

Poor Goethe! but many a man since has fallen in love with a woman older
than himself, and has afterward felt himself fortunate if he has been treated

as Goethe was. The real unfortunates are the ones who have been for some
reason encouraged in their passion, and married by these mature women
while mere boys. Taking into consideration the welfare of both parties,
there is scarcely a more unfortunate occurrence in life than such a marriage.
Soon after this first love episode Goethe went up to Leipsic to enter the
University. He was sixteen years old, well-favored by nature, even
handsome, and full of sensibility and enthusiasm. But he appeared to the
inhabitants of Leipsic like a being from another world, on account of the
grotesqueness of his costume. His father, who was of an economical turn of
mind, always bought his own cloth, and had his servants make the clothing
for the family. He usually bought good but old-fashioned materials, and
trimmings from some forgotten epoch in the world's history. These
trimmings, of the Paleozoic period or some still remoter date, together with
the unprofessional and antiquated cut of the garments, made up such a
grotesque appearance that Goethe was received with undisguised mirth
wherever he went in Leipsic, until he discovered what was the matter with
his dress. He had not been noticed at home on this account, and he thought
himself very well dressed when he first arrived in the city; but his chagrin
and mortification knew no bounds when he discovered how he had been
laughed at. It was not until he had visited the theatre and seen a favorite
actor throw the audience into convulsions of laughter by appearing in a
costume almost identical with his own, that he begun to suspect that he was
ill-dressed. He went out and sacrificed his entire wardrobe, in the first
tumult of his feelings, remorselessly leaving no vestige of it remaining, and
supplying himself with a complete new outfit, not so ample as the old but
much more satisfactory. In this act also he will find many sympathizers.
Few things are recalled with more acute mortification than the outfit in
which people leave their early homes, if they are in the country, and make
their first visit to the city. Hundreds of men groan in spirit as they bring up
before themselves the appearance they presented upon that momentous day.
Comparatively few are able to do as Goethe did, and get rid of the whole
vile accoutrement at one stroke. The majority are obliged, suffer as they
may, to wear the obnoxious garments long after they have discovered their
true character. When Goethe had clothed himself anew he was received
with more favor at his boarding-house, and proceeded immediately to fall in
love with the landlady's daughter. The thought of Gretchen was buried away
out of sight, and the thought of Annette filled his whole heart. This Annette

was young, handsome, sprightly, loving, and agreeable, and he saw her
daily in the most unrestrained manner.
He says of her:—

"But since such connections, the more innocent they are, afford the
less variety in the long run, I was seized with that wicked distemper
which seduces us to derive amusement from the torment of a beloved
one, and to domineer over a girl's devotedness with wanton and
tyrannical caprice. By unfounded and absurd fits of jealousy I
destroyed our most delightful days, both for myself and her. She
endured it for a time with incredible patience, which I was cruel
enough to try to its utmost. But to my shame and despair, I was at last
forced to remark that her heart was alienated from me, and that I might
now have good ground for the madness in which I had indulged
without necessity and without cause. There were terrible scenes
between us, in which I gained nothing; and I then first felt that I had
truly loved her, and could not bear to lose her. My passion grew and
assumed all the forms of which it is capable under the circumstances;
nay, I at last took up the rôle which the girl had hitherto played. I
sought everything possible in order to be agreeable to her, even to
procure her pleasure by means of others; for I could not renounce the
hope of winning her again. But it was too late. I had lost her really; and
the frenzy with which I revenged my fault upon myself, by assaulting
in various frantic ways my physical nature, in order to inflict some hurt
on my moral nature, contributed very much to the bodily maladies
under which I lost some of the best years of my life: indeed, I should
perchance have been completely ruined by this loss, had not my poetic
talent here shown itself particularly helpful with its healing power."

His next adventure was with the daughters of his dancing-master, both of
whom seemed inclined to draw unwarranted conclusions from the freedom
of his intercourse with them. The closing scene of this little drama must be
given in Goethe's own words:—

"Emilia was silent, and had sat down by her sister, who became
constantly more and more excited in her discourse, and let certain
private matters slip out which it was not exactly proper for me to

know. Emilia, on the other hand, who was trying to pacify her sister,
made me a sign from behind to withdraw; but as jealousy and
suspicion see with a thousand eyes, Lucinda seemed to have noticed
this also. She sprang up and advanced to me, but not with vehemence.
She stood before me and seemed to be thinking of something. Then
she said, 'I know that I have lost you; I make no further pretensions to
you. But neither shall you have him, sister.' So saying, she took a
thorough hold of my head, thrusting both her hands into my locks and
pressing my face to hers, and kissed me repeatedly on the mouth.
'Now,' cried she, 'fear my curse! Woe upon woe, for ever and ever, to
her who kisses these lips for the first time after me! Dare to have
anything more to do with him! I know Heaven hears me this time. And
you, sir, hasten now, hasten away as fast as you can.' I flew down the
stairs, with a firm determination never again to enter the house."

This conclusion, though doubtless very trying to an ardent young man who
enjoyed the adoration of women, seems to have been an eminently wise one
under the circumstances, and we believe the resolve was faithfully kept.
The dramatic Lucinda appears no more in his reminiscences.
Quite different was the next occupant of his heart. Frederika was the
daughter of a country clergyman whom Goethe was taken to visit by his
friend Weyland. The hospitality and agreeableness of the family had been
highly praised by this friend, also the beauty and charms of the daughters.
And indeed this Frederika does seem to have been a most beautiful and
charming girl. Goethe constantly compares the family to that of the Vicar of
Wakefield, and the daughters to Olivia and Sophia. The affection which
Goethe conceived for this beautiful and innocent maiden was one of the
strongest and most enduring of his life, and even on into old age he was
fond of talking of her and their youthful romance. Why he ever left
Frederika at all has never been made clear, for it is plain that at last he truly
loved,—the other passions being mere boyish episodes, soon forgotten,
while this one exerted a lasting influence upon his life. He writes:—

"Frederika's answer to my farewell letter rent my heart. It was the
same hand, the same tone of thought, the same feeling, which had
formed itself for me and by me. I now for the first time felt the loss
which she suffered, and saw no means to supply it, or even to alleviate

it. She was completely present to me; I always felt that she was
wanting to me; and what was worst of all, I could not forgive myself
for my own misfortune. Gretchen had been taken away from me,
Annette had left me; now for the first time I was guilty. I had wounded
the most lovely heart to its very depths; and the period of a gloomy
repentance, with the absence of a refreshing love to which I had grown
accustomed, was most agonizing, nay, insupportable."

Even after eight years he revisits Frederika, with much of the old feeling
still alive, although he had in the mean time had at least two new loves. One
of these was the Charlotte immortalized in "Werther." She was already
engaged when he made her acquaintance, but this did not preclude the
possibility of his devoting himself assiduously to her, and her betrothed
seems to have laid no obstacles in the way. She was married in due time,
and read "Werther" after its publication, not seeming to object to the part
she is there made to play. She retained her friendship for Goethe throughout
life; and to her husband the poet wrote many, many years after: "God bless
you, dear Kustner, and tell Lottie that I often believe I can forget her, but
then I have a relapse, and it is worse with me than ever."
Immediately following his infatuation with Lottie came the connection with
Lili, which reconciled him to Lottie's marriage. It was of Lottie that he said,
in the language of "The New Heloïse," "And sitting at the feet of his
beloved, he will break hemp; and he will wish to break hemp to-day, to-
morrow, and the day after,—nay, for his whole life." Whether he would
have been as willing to break hemp with Lili we are not told; but he wrote a
great deal of poetry addressed to her,—more perhaps than to any of his
other loves,—much of which he reproduces in the "Autobiography."
"Heart, my heart, oh, what hath changed thee?
What doth weigh on thee so sore?
What hath thus from me estranged thee,
That I know thee now no more?
Gone is all which once seemed dearest,
Gone the care which once was nearest,
Gone thy toils and tranquil bliss!
Ah! how could'st thou come to this?

"Does that bloom, so fresh and youthful,
That divine and lovely form,
That sweet look, so good and truthful,
Bind thee with unbounded charm?
If I swear no more to see her,
If I man myself to flee her,
Soon I find my efforts vain,
Back to her I'm led again."
But even this love affair, which went as far as a betrothal, came to nothing,
—Goethe drawing back at the last through a pretended or real fear that he
could not support the lady in the style she had been accustomed to; though
it is more reasonable to believe that his usual repugnance to marriage
overcame all the fervor of his love, and made him feel a real relief when the
whole affair was over. This was just previous to his removal to Weimar at
the invitation of Carl August, and it was there that the remainder of his life-
drama was enacted.
Soon after his arrival there he made the acquaintance of the Frau Von Stein.
She was the wife of the Master of Horse at Weimar, and Goethe, who had
now passed thirty years of age, for the first time loved a mature woman.
She was the mother of seven children and was thirty-three years old. With
moral deficiencies which were securely covered up, she was a thoroughly
charming woman, and retained her charm even to old age. She was said to
have remarked when asked if she would be presented to Goethe, "With all
my heart. I have heard as much about him as I ever did about Heaven, and I
feel a deal more curiosity about him." She completely ensnared his heart,
and held it in undisputed sway for more than ten years; which, considering
his proverbial inconstancy, speaks very highly for her charms.
The connection was well known and perfectly understood at Weimar, and
appears to have caused no scandal. The love on Goethe's part seemed to
have begun even before seeing her; as it is recorded that at Pyrmont he first
saw her portrait, and was three nights sleepless in consequence. And when
he came to see her, instead of a raw girl such as he had hitherto fancied, he
found an elegant woman of the world, whose culture and experience had a
singular fascination for him, tired as he was of immaturity and
overfondness. She sang well, played well, sketched well, talked well, and

showed her appreciation of the poet, not like a gushing girl, but with the
delicate tact of a woman of the world. Some years after her first
acquaintance with Goethe, Schiller thus writes to his friend Körner:—

"She is really a genuinely interesting person, and I quite understand
what has attached Goethe to her. Beautiful she can never have been,
but her countenance has a soft earnestness and a quite peculiar
openness. A healthy understanding, truth, and feeling lie in her nature.
She has more than a thousand letters from Goethe, and from Italy he
writes her every week. They say the connection is perfectly pure and
blameless."

Even before he went away from Weimar at all, the letters were incessant,
often trivial, and sometimes made up of homely details of eating and
drinking, but loving always. The reader who remembers Charlotte cutting
bread and butter will not be shocked at the poet eloquently begging his true
love to send him a sausage. All the years of his life in the Gartenhaus are
intimately associated with her. The whole spot speaks of her. She was
doubtless the grand passion of his life. But even this wore itself out, and
after his absence in Italy he never seemed to feel the full ardor of his former
love. He returned to Weimar still grateful to her for the happiness she had
given, still feeling for her a sincere affection, but retaining little of the
passion which for ten years she had inspired. The feeling seemed to have
died a natural death. It is not recorded that she had ever really shared his
fervor, but she greatly resented his defection, and considered him ungrateful
and disloyal to the end.
It was about this time that he first made the acquaintance of Christine
Vulpius, who afterwards became his wife. She was the daughter of one of
those men whose drunkenness slowly but surely brings a whole family to
want. She was at this time very young. He thought her beautiful, and,
although uneducated, she had a quick wit, a lively spirit, a loving heart, and
great aptitude for domestic duties. She had no social position, and is often
spoken of as his servant. Although never really occupying that position, her
standing was not much above that plane. She fascinated Goethe as so many
young faces had done before, and it seemed to be a thraldom of the mind as
well as of the senses. There are few poems in any language which approach

the passionate gratitude of those in which he recalls the happiness she gave
him.
George Henry Lewes in his life of the poet has this passage, which will be
read with peculiar interest, considering his own relations with the highest
genius of her day, George Eliot. He says:—

"Why did he not marry her at once? His dread of marriage has already
been shown; and to this abstract dread must be added the great
disparity of station,—a disparity so great that it not only made the
liaison scandalous, but made Christine herself reject the offer of
marriage. There are persons now living who have heard her declare
that it was her own fault that the marriage was so long delayed. And
certain it is that when she bore him a child, he took her, with her
mother and sister, to live in his house, and always regarded the
connection as marriage. But, however he may have regarded it, public
opinion has not forgiven this defiance of its social laws. The world
blamed him loudly; even his admirers cannot think of the connection
without pain. But let us be just. While no one can refrain from
deploring that Goethe, so eminently needing a pure domestic life,
should not have found a wife whom he could avow, no one who knows
the circumstances can refrain from confessing that there is also a bright
light to this dark episode."

He goes on to say:—

"The judgments of men are curious. No action in Goethe's life has
excited more scandal than his final marriage with Christine. It is
thought disgraceful enough for him to have taken her into his home,
but for the great poet to actually complete such an enormity as to
crown his connection with her by marriage was, indeed, more than
society could tolerate. I have already expressed my opinion of this
unfortunate connection, but I most emphatically declare my belief that
the redeeming point in it is precisely this which caused the scandal.
Better far had there been no connection at all; but if it was to be, the
nearer it approached real marriage, and the further it was removed
from a fugitive indulgence, the more moral and healthy it became."

He was in his fifty-eighth year when he married her. She had changed much
in the passing years. From the bright, lively, pleasure-loving girl, she had
grown into a coarse and almost repulsive woman. Her father, as we know,
had ruined himself by intemperance, her brother also, and she herself had
not escaped the fatal appetite. She was not restrained by the checks which
refined society imposes, for in Weimar she had no society, and as the years
went by she became openly and shamelessly given over to intemperance.
This tragedy in Goethe's life would have been little suspected by those who
saw how calmly he bore himself in public. The mere mention of the fact,
however, tells its own tale of humiliation and woe. It is often asked why
Goethe did not part from her at once. In answer we might ask, Why do not
all the noble and right-principled women who wear out wretched lives as
drunkards' wives part at once from their debauched husbands? The answer
would no doubt be similar in the two cases. He was too weak to alter his
position, he was strong enough to bear it. And he did bear it to the bitter
end. And when that end came he mourned for her with sincere affection.
Says Lewes:—

"She who had for twenty-eight years loved and aided him; who,
whatever her faults, had been to him what no other woman had been,
could not be taken from him without his feeling her loss. His self-
mastery was utterly shaken. He knelt by her bedside, taking her cold
hands in his, and exclaiming, 'Thou wilt not forsake me, thou must not
forsake me,' and sobbing aloud. He had been to her the most tender of
devoted husbands throughout all those weary years."

Many accounts of her vulgarity and repulsiveness have been circulated; but
in making up our estimate of her, the fact that she held Goethe in loyal
bonds for eight and twenty years must not be passed over lightly. Fickle as
he was in youth, and admiring as he did brilliant women in his manhood,
Christine Vulpius must have had charms, and not of a light order, to have
held him thus her willing slave. No mere fat and vulgar Frau without mind
or sensibility could have done this. It is not in the nature of things. We often
see men of brilliant minds in our own day choosing to marry women who
are not intellectual or cultured,—women who have only beauty, or style and
social elegance; but they are women who have some charm, and if the
charm remains, the attraction holds indefinitely. But sad indeed is the case

of the man of mind who has married a mere doll, and who, when youth has
flown, finds he has a wife who is not capable of being companion or friend
to him. Many a man holds himself steadfast to duty under these
circumstances through a long life, but if the woman whom his maturity
would have chosen—the sweet, companionable woman, with a mind that
can sympathize with and appreciate his own—chances to dawn upon him,
too late, there is apt to be a struggle which is long and hard.
Indeed, it is never the part of wisdom for the intellectual man or woman to
marry one who is consciously an inferior. He or she who does this makes a
high bid for an unhappy life. As regards Christine Vulpius, it is certain that,
although not an intellectual woman, she was not without some taste for
pursuits in consonance with those of Goethe. It was for her that he wrote the
"Metamorphoses of Plants," and in her company he pursued his optical and
botanical researches. Had she shown no comprehension of these things,
assuredly Goethe would never have persisted in instructing her in them. It
was for her, too, that he wrote the "Roman Elegies," which shows that he
did not esteem her a mere drudge.
Whatever may be our general estimate of Goethe's character, it will
certainly be conceded that he showed great capacity for domestic love and
domestic happiness in continuing loyal for so many years to one who
degraded herself as did Christine. He certainly cannot be counted among
the sons of genius with whom it is found difficult, almost impossible even,
to live. Rather must we rank him high among those genial and warm-
hearted men who love too much, rather than too little, and who are easily
led by the women to whom they give their devotion. Irregular and faulty,
even immoral as he was, he yet possessed the redeeming domestic virtues in
a large degree. Away beyond his seventieth year we find women still madly
loving him, and him capable of reciprocating their affections. And well was
it that this should be so, for otherwise he would have stood alone and
friendless. One by one the companions of his youth and his manhood were
taken from him, until, upon the death of Carl August, he could truthfully
exclaim, "Nothing now remains." It was well that the end drew near.
When one can say, "Nothing now remains," it is surely time for the angel
with the brazen trumpet to proclaim, "For him let time be no more."

Lightly let the silver cord be loosed and the golden bowl broken, rather than
that the lonely life linger on, with its eyes fixed only on the past, which has
become but a dim mirage where ghostly figures are seen walking but from
which all warmth and light have fled. Happy indeed is he who, when the
allotted years have been passed, and he lingers waiting on the stage for the
signal which shall cause the curtain to fall forever on his little life drama,
has something which to him is real and tangible to look forward to in the
near future. The bitterness of a lingering death must be in all old age
without this hope.
Let us trust that after that last low cry of Goethe for "more light," the
morning dawned upon the great intellect and great heart which had been
watching for it so long. Let us hope, also, that the world may yet learn to
see him as did Emerson, who found him "a piece of pure nature, like an oak
or an apple, large as morning or night, and virtuous as a brier-rose."

ROBERT BURNS.

"Oh, ye wha are sae guid yoursel',
Sae pious and sae holy,
Ye've nought to do but mark and tell
Your neebors' fauts and folly,—
Whase life is like a weel-gaun mill,
Supplied wi' store o' water,
The heapèd happer's ebbing still,
And still the clap plays clatter,—

"Hear me, ye venerable core,
As counsel for poor mortals,
That frequent pass douce Wisdom's door
For glaikit Folly's portals!
I, for their thoughtless, careless sakes,
Would here propone defences,
Their donsie tricks, their black mistakes,
Their failings and mischances."
Alas for it! we must all say, in dwelling upon the life of poor Burns, that he
so frequently needed to appear as counsel for poor mortals—in his own
behoof; and that "their donsie tricks, their black mistakes, their failings and
mischances" should form so large a portion of the record of that life, which
under other circumstances might have been one of the most brilliant and
beautiful of all in the annals of genius. For Burns, although born to such a
lowly life, and having in his youth so few advantages of education or
general culture, might by sheer force of genius have attained as proud a
position as any man of his time, had he but learned to rule over himself in

his youth, and not given full rein to those passions which his "veins
convulsed," and which "still eternal galloped."
Could he but have governed himself—
"When social life and glee sat down
All joyous and unthinking,
Till, quite transmogrify'd, they've grown
Debauchery and drinking,"—
there would have been a far different story to have told of the life of Robert
Burns.
What ripe fruits of his genius we might have had, had he not burned out the
torch of that brilliant intellect at the early age of thirty-eight. What poems
he might have written—he who did immortal work with all his drawbacks
—had he kept his brain clear and his life sweet even for the short span of
life allotted him! How high might he have soared in the years which he
might have hoped from life, had he but moved at a slower pace, in those
reckless years, the record of which is so painful to the great world of
admiring and pitying friends, who cherish his memory so tenderly. Yet there
is in his case everything to mitigate a severe judgment upon his youthful
follies; and the great world has always judged him leniently, knowing the
story of his early life, and the temptations which at that day must have
surrounded a youth of his temperament among the peasants of Scotland. Of
the strength of those temptations we probably can form but a slight idea.
"What's done we partly may compute,
But know not what's resisted."
And surely, there must have been much that was worthy of honor and
esteem, even of reverence, in the heart of the man, to have brought the
whole world to his feet, in spite of the faults and follies to which we allude
in passing, but upon which we have no disposition to dwell. As a friendly
hand long ago wrote, after visiting his poor, mean home and his unhonored
burial place:—

"We listened readily enough to this paltry gossip, but found that it
robbed the poet's memory of some of the reverence that was its due.

Indeed, this talk over his grave had very much the same effect as the
home-scene of his life, which we had been visiting just previously.
Beholding his poor, mean dwelling and its surroundings, and picturing
his outward life and earthly manifestations from these, one does not so
much wonder that the people of that day should have failed to
recognize all that was admirable and immortal in a disreputable,
drunken, shabbily-clothed, and shabbily-housed man, consorting with
associates of damaged character, and as his only ostensible occupation
gauging the whiskey which he too often tasted. Siding with Burns, as
we needs must, in his plea against the world, let us try to do the world
a little justice too. It is far easier to know and honor a poet when his
fame has taken shape in the spotlessness of marble, than when the
actual man comes staggering before you, besmeared with the sordid
stains of his daily life. For my part, I chiefly wonder that his
recognition dawned as brightly as it did while he was still living. There
must have been something very grand in his immediate presence, some
strangely impressive characteristic in his natural behavior, to have
caused him to seem like a demigod so soon."

To do even faintest justice to the memory of the poet, we must go to Ayr,
and look upon the humble cottage which was his birthplace. It consisted of
but two small rooms paved with flag-stones, and with but one window of
four small panes, while the thatched roof formed the only ceiling. The
whole place is inconceivably small for the dwelling of a family, for there is
not even an attic-room, or any other spot where children could have been
hidden away. In such a hut as this it is hard to conceive of a family being
reared in purity and delicacy, even though the parents should have done
their best by their children, and been, like the father of Burns, prudent and
well-disposed.
This housing of the poor is of immense moral significance in all cases; and
it is growing to be a recognized fact that no help which can be rendered
them is of much avail, when they are left in these little, one or two room
dwellings.
There were seven children in the Burns household, and during the
childhood of Robert the family were very poor; and he and his brother were
expected to do the work of men, at the age of thirteen. He had some

schooling before that age, and must have improved his time, for he could
read and spell well, and had some knowledge of English grammar.
Near by the cottage flows the beautiful Bonny Doon, through deep wooded
banks, and across it is an ancient ivy-covered bridge with a high arch,
making a very picturesque object in the landscape, which is one of great
loveliness. Kirk Alloway is not far away,—the smallest church that ever
filled so large a place in the imagination of the world. The one-mullioned
window in the eastern gable might have been seen by Tam O'Shanter
blazing with devilish light as he approached it along the road from Ayr, and
there is a small square one on the side next the road; there is also an odd
kind of belfry, almost the smallest ever made, with a little bell in it,—and
this is all. But no grand and storied cathedral pile in all Europe is better
known, and to no shrine of famous minster do more pilgrims journey than
to this wee kirk immortalized by the pen of Burns.
The father of Burns has been thus described by one who knew him well:—

"He was a tender and affectionate father; he took pleasure in leading
his children in the path of virtue, not in driving them as some parents
do to the performance of duties to which they are themselves averse.
He took care to find fault but seldom; and therefore when he did
rebuke, he was listened to with a kind of reverential awe. A look of
disapprobation was felt; a reproof was severely so; and a stripe even
on the skirt of the coat, gave heartfelt pain."

He was, indeed, a frugal, industrious, and good man, and his wife seems to
have been a woman of good report; so that the little group of children, in
spite of their poverty, were really happily situated in life, compared with
many of their neighbors. There was always a tinge of melancholy in
Robert's disposition, however, and in his earliest youth he used to embody it
in verse. The sensibility of genius was his by birthright, and the depressions
and exaltations of spirit which marked his later life began at a very early
day. He himself describes his earliest years thus:—

"I was by no means a favorite with anybody. I was a good deal noted
for a retentive memory, a stubborn, sturdy something in my
disposition, and an enthusiastic, idiot piety."

Again he says:—

"This kind of life—the cheerless gloom of a hermit, with the unceasing
toil of a galley-slave—brought me to my sixteenth year; a little before
which period I first committed the sin of rhyme."

It was at this time that he first fell in love, and it may be added that after
this he was never out of that interesting state. He says:—

"My scarcity of English denies me the power of doing her justice in
that language; but you know the Scottish idiom,—she was a bonnie,
sweet, sonsie lass. In short, she, altogether unwittingly to herself,
initiated me into that delicious passion, which in spite of acid
disappointment, gin-horse prudence, and book-worm philosophy, I
hold to be the first of human joys, our dearest blessing here below! I
did not know myself why I liked so much to loiter behind with her
when returning in the evening from our labors; why the tones of her
voice made my heartstrings thrill like an Æolian harp; and particularly,
why my pulse beat such a furious rattan, when I looked and fingered
over her little hand to pick out the cruel nettle-stings and thistles. Thus
with me began love and poetry, which at times have been my only, and
till within the last twelve months, have been my highest enjoyment."

To a later period than this belongs the episode of Highland Mary, of which
the
"Banks and braes and streams around
The castle of Montgomery"
still whisper to the lovers of Burns, as they keep a solemn tryst with old-
time recollections there.
"How sweetly bloomed the gay green birk,
How rich the hawthorn's blossom,
As underneath their fragrant shade
I clasped her to my bosom!
The golden hours on angel wings
Flew o'er me and my dearie;

For dear to me as light and life
Was my sweet Highland Mary."
It was the sweetest and tenderest romance of his life; and it is with
unbidden tears that the world still remembers that there
"fell death's untimely frost,
That nipt my flower sae early!
Now green's the sod and cauld's the clay
That wraps my Highland Mary."
After a hundred years there are still hearts that take a tender interest in poor
Mary's fate, and that feel for poor Robbie as he wrote:—
"Oh, pale, pale now those rosy lips
I aft hae kissed sae fondly,
And closed for aye the sparkling glance
That dwelt on me sae kindly!
And mouldering now in silent dust
That heart that lo'ed me dearly!
But still within my bosom's core
Shall live my Highland Mary."
In the monument to Burns, near his old home, are deposited the two
volumes of the little pocket Bible which Burns gave to Mary when they
pledged their faith to one another. It is poorly printed on coarse paper. A
verse of Scripture is written within each cover by the poet's hand, and
fastened within is a lock of Mary's golden hair. It is fitting that some
memorial of her should find a place in that splendid monument which the
Scottish people erected to his memory, after his life of poverty and sorrow
had been brought to an untimely end.
Burns in his twenty-third year took the farm at Mossgiel, where he first
became acquainted with Jane Armour. This lady was the daughter of a
respectable mason in the village of Mauchline, where she was the reigning
beauty and belle. It was almost love at first sight upon the part of both, and
a close intimacy soon sprung up between them. Burns was very handsome
at this time, gay and fascinating in manners, and a more experienced and
highly-placed woman than Jane Armour might have been excused for

loving the wild young poet. For wild he undoubtedly was, even at this time,
—so much so that her parents objected to the friendship. He was nearly six
feet high, with a robust yet agile frame, a finely formed head, and an
uncommmonly interesting countenance. His eyes were large, dark, and full
of ardor and animation. His conversation was full of wit and humor. He was
very proud, and would be under pecuniary obligation to no one. He was
also very generous with his own money. Of the first five hundred pounds
which he received for his poems, he immediately gave two hundred to his
brother Gilbert to help toward the support of their mother; and he was
always as ready to share whatever sum he had with those he loved.
The consequences of the intimacy between the poet and Jane Armour were
soon such as could not be concealed, and the farm having been a disastrous
speculation in the hands of Burns, he was not in a situation to marry,
although extremely anxious to do so. It was therefore agreed upon between
them that he should give her a written acknowledgment of marriage, and
then sail for Jamaica, and push his fortunes there. This arrangement,
however, did not suit the lady's father, who had a very poor opinion of
Burns's general character, and he prevailed upon Jane to destroy this
document. Under these circumstances she became the mother of twins, and
great scandal followed Burns even to Edinburgh, where he had been
induced to stop instead of sailing for Jamaica. But his poems, which he
succeeded in publishing at this time, gave him a name and some money, and
he returned to Mossgiel, and getting her father to consent, married Jane, and
moved on to a farm six miles from Dumfries. He had become a lion, and the
tables of the neighboring gentry were soon open to him, as the houses of the
great had been in Edinburgh. Those were the days of conviviality, and
Burns took his part in the hilarity of the table, soon with very direful
consequences to himself and his family. He made many resolutions of
amendment; but temperance was a very rare virtue in those days, and
Burns, who could not bear it, was expected to drink just as much as those
who could bear it, and who could afford it. His genius suffered from this
irregular life, and in a little while he was not capable of doing justice to
himself in his writings; but he continued to be good company at table, and
to be invited with the local magnates, long after he had become a confirmed
drunkard. The farm was given up, and he soon depended entirely upon his
seventy pounds a year, the pay of an exciseman. He felt his degradation

very deeply, and had fearful struggles with his temptation, but was always
overborne. The horrible sufferings of genius in such thraldom have never
been adequately represented, nor indeed can they ever be. When the will
has become so enfeebled that no real resistance can be made, while yet
pride and kind-heartedness survive, the agony of such a man is appalling.
He loves his family, he knows better than any other all they suffer for his
sake; he determines a thousand times to reform, only to find himself
powerless to do so. He strives with more than the heroism of a martyr many
times, but he is beaten. We often blame him for his defeat, but there comes
a time to such a man when defeat is inevitable. Happy he who makes his
manful struggle while there is yet time. Poor Burns, alas, did not. He went
from bad to worse, while his wife and five small children suffered as the
families of such men always suffer. From October, 1795, to the January
following, an accident confined him to his house. A few days after he began
to go out, he dined at a tavern, and returned home about three o'clock of a
very cold morning, benumbed and intoxicated. This was followed by
rheumatism. He was never well again, though he lived until the end of June.
His mind during all this time was wrung with the most poignant agony in
regard to the family he must leave,—for he knew he should not recover. It
is heart-rending to read of his sufferings and remorse, and to know that on
the morning of her husband's funeral Mrs. Burns gave birth to another child.
It is pleasant to learn that a subscription was immediately taken up for the
destitute family, which placed them in comparative comfort.
"Fight who will," says Byron, "about words and forms, Burns's rank is in
the first class of his art;" and this has long been the deliberate judgment of
the world. No finer flower of genius than that of Robert Burns has ever
blossomed, and it will be long before the world will see another as fair. But,
as Mr. Lockhart observes, "To accumulate all that has been said of Burns,
even by men like himself, of the first order, would fill a volume." Not even
the most carping critic has ever questioned his genius. The "Cotter's
Saturday Night," and "Tam O'Shanter," and "Highland Mary," would stand
before the world to refute such a critic; and it would be a venturesome man
indeed who would care to contend for such a proposition as that Robert
Burns was not a great poet. That he was a great wit is also as well
established, and that he might have been a great master of prose is equally
unquestionable. That he was great in his life we dare not affirm, but that his

life has a great claim upon our charity we will gladly allow. Few writers
have been better loved than he. There is a personal warmth in all that he
wrote, and we feel that we knew him in a sort of personal way, as if we had
shaken hands with him, and heard his voice; and we always have a feeling
that he is addressing us in our own person. All of the many pilgrims who
visit the places he made immortal have something of this feeling, and the
banks of Doon are as classic now as the lovely Avon. And whenever we are
tempted to look upon the darker sides of his life-picture, we may well
refrain, and repeat his words:—
"Then gently scan your brother man,
Still gentler, sister woman;
Though they may gang a kennin' wrang,
To step aside is human;
One point must still be greatly dark,—
The moving why they do it;
And just as lamely can ye mark
How far perhaps they rue it."

MADAME DE STAËL.

That must indeed have been a thrilling life—a life of startling dramatic
interest—which covered the period occupied by the career of Madame de
Staël, even had the person living the life been but an obscure observer of
passing events. For the time was big with the most astounding things the
world has known in these later centuries. But to a person like the daughter
of Necker, with intellect to comprehend the prodigious events, and with the
power oftentimes to influence them to a greater or less extent, the
wonderful drama which was then enacted upon the stage of France must
have appeared as of even overwhelming importance. It must have dwarfed
individual life, until one's own personal affairs, if they would press upon the
attention, seemed impertinence, to be disposed of as quickly as possible,
that one might give every thought and every emotion to one's country. She
saw the commencement and the close of that great social earthquake which
overthrew the oldest dynasty in Europe; she saw the rise, the culmination,
and the setting of Napoleon's meteor-star; she witnessed the return of the
Bourbons after their long absence, and the final death in defeat and exile of
her dreaded enemy—the great soldier-Emperor—on the rocky ocean isle.
This series of events is not to be paralleled for magnitude and meaning in
any period of modern time, and Madame de Staël was something more than
a spectator during much of the great miracle-play.
Her father, Necker, was the Controller-General of Finances under Louis
XVI., and a man worthy of honor and long remembrance, although he was
called during those perilous times to a work he was unable to do, and which
perhaps no man could have done. The corrupt and meretricious court had
brought France, financially as well as morally, to a point where no one man,
had he been ever so great and so noble, could save her—could even retard
the period of her ruin. Necker made a noble struggle, but was overborne by
fate; and had his genius been even more commanding than it was, he would
doubtless have been thus overborne. History tells us of many greater

statesmen than he, but of few better men. Disinterested almost to a fault,
stainless in his private character as well as unquestioned in his public
integrity, truly religious in a time given over to atheism and impiety,
conscientious even to the smallest matters in public as well as private life,
and moderate when everything about him was in extremes,—well might
Madame de Staël be proud of her father, and fond to effusion of his
memory.
Her mother was a woman to be held in reverent remembrance. She was
both beautiful and accomplished, possessed of fine talents, as well as
spotless character. She had been engaged to Gibbon in her youth, and the
attachment between them was a strong one. But the marriage was prevented
by his father; and, after a long period of mournful constancy, she married
M. Necker, and took her place among the great ones of the earth. The
friendship between herself and Gibbon was afterwards very tender and
sacred, although she was a faithful and devoted wife to Necker, and really
warmly attached to him. Necker, on his part, was her worshipping lover to
the end of his life.
The daughter of such parents could scarcely fail to be remarkable in some
way. It is not from such sources that the mediocrities are recruited. But the
child was utterly unlike her parents, and never showed much likeness to
either in after life. Her genius was unquestioned even from her precocious
babyhood, and she was the wonder and admiration of all the brilliant circle
of her father's friends. Her temperament was most vehement and impulsive,
and her vivacity a wonder even to the Parisians. She seemed to know
everything by intuition, and made light of the hardest tasks which could be
given her. The streams of her childish eloquence seemed to flow from some
exhaustless fountain. The celebrated men who were her father's guests were
never weary of expressing their astonishment at her powers of conversation.
Gibbon, the Abbé Raynal, Baron Grimm and Marmontel were among these
friends, and they undoubtedly did much to stimulate the childish intellect,
although Madame Necker, troubled at the precocity of her darling, frowned
upon all attempts to unduly excite her mind. But great themes were
constantly discussed in her presence; the frivolity of the old régime was
being rapidly displaced by the intense earnestness of the men of the new
era, and the most momentous questions of life and death, of time and

eternity, were the subjects of the conversations to which the young genius
listened with such rapt attention. Doubtless it was in listening to these
profound discussions in her earliest years that she acquired that confidence
which in after years never deserted her, but which always led her to believe
that she could save both her country and the world, if people would only let
her manage things in her own way. Charles X. used to tell the story of her
calling upon him, after the return of the Bourbons to France, and offering
him a constitution ready-made, and insisting upon his accepting it. He says:
—

"It seemed like a thing resolved—an event decided upon,—this
proposal of inventing a constitution for us. I kept as long as I could
upon the defensive; but Madame de Staël, carried away by her zeal and
enthusiasm, instead of speaking of what presumably concerned herself,
knocked me about with arguments and crushed me with threats and
menaces; so, tired to death of entertaining, instead of a clever, humble
woman, a roaring politician in petticoats, I finished the audience,
leaving her as little satisfied as myself with the interview."

Perhaps something of this kind may have influenced Napoleon in banishing
her from the Empire.
Necker himself idolized his daughter, and was naturally very proud of her
youthful triumphs, while she in turn made him her one hero among men.
Throughout life her devotion to him continued, and she wrote of him as one
might write of a god. She frequently lamented that he had been her father
and not one of her own generation, that there might have been a man of her
time worthy of the love which she could have lavished upon him. The
fervor of this devotion, although it seems unnatural, belonged to her
intensely impulsive temperament, and in her case we must make some
allowance for the excesses of her passionate expressions of affection.
Although she talked much and in the grandest manner of love, even when
young and unmarried,—which is a very indelicate thing to do in the eyes of
the French,—she did not appear to have any youthful romance of a serious
sort. She had a great reputation as a wit and a genius, but few admirers who
could be classed as lovers. Many men were her friends, and she was much
sought after; but she was far from beautiful, which goes a great way in
matters of the heart, and many disliked the manner in which she trampled

upon the conventionalities, while doubtless many others objected to her
strong-mindedness and the aggressiveness of her opinions.
She made a marriage de convenance at the age of twenty, apparently
without much thought of love upon either side, and entered upon her new
career with all the confidence which characterized her. Baron de Staël was a
man of good character and noble birth, an attaché of the Swedish Embassy,
and, as she had money enough for both, the match was regarded favorably
by her friends. Although the Baron was a handsome man and of pleasing
address, one, it seems, who might have touched a maiden's heart,
Mademoiselle Necker, it is said, never made even a pretence of love, but
took the whole affair as a matter of business. It was necessary that she
should be married,—it is only thus that French women achieve their
independence,—and this man would do as well as another; that seemed to
be all there was of this remarkable occurrence. Remarkable in our eyes, but
of the usual sort in the eyes of the French. For domestic happiness she
seemed to care little. The excitement of Parisian society was her heaven,
and into this she entered with all the ardor of her nature. Her marriage had
given her every freedom, although it does not appear that she was much
restrained before,—for a French girl; and she dashed into the whirlpool of
the gayest society in the world with a sort of intoxication. Her vivacity and
enthusiasm knew no bounds, and she held her own little court in every
assembly, at which the envious and unnoticed looked askance. She was
regarded as a dangerously fascinating woman, although personally she was
so entirely unattractive.
For three years she enjoyed her triumphs to the utmost. Then came the
earthquake which dissolved the fair fabric of her dreams. The Reign of
Terror began, and Paris was in the wildest ferment. Of course, she was in
the very midst of those exciting events, and her influence was of moment in
the terrific crisis. Her position gave her influence, and she worked with all
the strength and enthusiasm of her nature to aid the escape of her friends
and to succor the endangered. All the powers of her remarkable mind were
put into active service, and she seems never to have thought of herself. To
be sure, she was as inviolable as any one could be considered in that fearful
time, but she had a rare courage and unbounded fortitude, and would have
worked as she did even at personal hazard. She prevailed upon the ferocious
Revolutionists to show mercy in some cases where they were bound to have

blood. She concealed her friends and even strangers in her house, and she
used all the powers of her marvellous eloquence to turn the tide of
revolution backward. But it was in vain. Her father was deposed, her friends
were murdered, her king was slain, all of her society were under
surveillance, she herself everybody thought in danger, but she would not
leave her beloved Paris. Her husband was in Holland, and thought she was
subjecting her children to needless peril; but she still had hope that
somehow she might be useful to her country. The sublime confidence which
she had in her own powers did not desert her. She saw the streets flow with
blood, one might say,—for the murders of the Revolutionists were of daily
occurrence,—but it was not until all hope of being of use was gone that she
took her children to England.
Here a little colony of French exiles were already established, and she
became at once the centre of the group. She pined in the exile and mourned
with ever-increasing sorrow for her country. Her interest in the events of the
time was cruelly intense, and burned out her life. M. de Narbonne, whose
life she had saved, was one of her consolations in the dreadful exile, as was
the friendship of Talleyrand and of Benjamin Constant.
She returned to France after quiet was restored, and lived in Paris
something after the old way. Then came Napoleon, whom she hated with all
the ardor of her nature, and who returned her hate with interest. He
banished her from France, and would not permit her return during his entire
reign. "She carries a quiver full of arrows," he said, "which would hit a man
were he seated upon a rainbow." It was a purely personal dislike on his part,
and a piece of his most odious despotism to allow his personal feelings to
influence him in such a matter. There are few things recorded of him more
utterly inexcusable than this. She passed fourteen years in exile,—the best
years of her life,—and exile to her had all the bitterness of death; she could
never really live except in Paris. We hear little of her husband during all this
time, but it is not likely that she derived much consolation from domestic
life. She had no taste for it, and found it the supreme bore. She consoled
herself as much as she could with literature, and wrote those books which,
wonderful and brilliant as they are, all who knew her personally unite in
saying, never did justice to her genius. The gloom of exile was over them
all. She suffered a great variety of petty persecutions at the hands of

Napoleon during all those years, and these added to the inevitable miseries
of her lot.
After the fall of the Napoleonic empire she returned to Paris, and there
passed the remainder of her life. It was at this time that she presented the
constitution to Charles X. She was never remarkable for her taste in dress,
and that Prince thus describes her on that occasion:—

"She wore a red satin gown embroidered with flowers of gold and silk,
a profusion of diamonds, rings enough to stock a pawnbroker's shop;
and I must add that I never before saw so low cut a corsage display
less inviting charms. Upon her head was a large turban, constructed on
the pattern of that worn by the Cumean sybil, which put the finishing
touch to a costume so little in harmony with the style of her face. I
scarcely can understand how a woman of genius can have such a false,
vulgar taste."

It can be easily comprehended how she might have bored the Prince by
pressing upon him at such length her ideas of the reconstruction of the
empire, for she often bored even those who really admired and appreciated
her by the torrents of her talk. She was not witty, but full of rhetorical
surprises, and had boundless stores of information upon every subject.
People do not like to be instructed, nor do they like to be preached to, even
by eloquent lips, and her great conversational powers often made her
dreaded rather than admired in general society. While she was in Germany
Goethe, who must be allowed the capability of appreciating her, was wont
to run away from her whenever he could, and bore up under her eloquence
with rather an ill grace when he could not escape it. Schiller also, in whom
she much delighted, was ungallant enough to dislike her extremely. On the
contrary, Talleyrand and many other famous Frenchmen seemed never to
weary of her, and have handed down the tradition of her wonderful
eloquence to a later generation. It is probable that her excessive vivacity
was more pleasing to the French mind than to that of the English and
Germans, and her lack of repose did not weary them to the same extent. She
retained her friends to the end of her life, and they were the source of her
greatest satisfaction. She was loyal and devoted in the extreme to all whom
she favored with her friendship, and all such loved her with deep affection.
Indeed, it may be said that human nature was the only thing which much

interested her. She had no love for Nature, and would scarcely take the
trouble to see the Alps when in Switzerland, and said that if she were left to
her own feelings she would not open her window to see the bay of Naples
for the first time, but that she would travel five hundred leagues at any time
to see a great man she had not met before. She cared little for art, and not
much for literature as such, though she had a passion for ideas. Her ideal
life was a life of intellectual excitement,—constant intercourse with minds
of her own order. The improvisations of Corinne give one a little idea what
her conversation was like. Still she has been quoted as saying that she
would have exchanged all her talent for the one gift of beauty which was
denied her.
In the life of William Cullen Bryant we find the following passage relating
to Madame de Staël, occurring in one of his letters; it gives the last glimpse
that we get of the close of her career, and is interesting also as showing his
estimate of a great but faulty woman. He says:—

"What a life! Passionate, for she was brought up not to control her
passions; almost always unhappy; marrying an old man whom she did
not care for, after being twice refused by young men whom she did
love, and to whom she offered herself, if not formally yet in a manner
not to be misunderstood; forming, after her marriage, intimate relations
with Benjamin Constant, to her father's great grief; and when he
deserted her, marrying, after her husband's death, a half-dead Italian
named Rocca; and finally wearing out her life by opium-eating."

This marriage with Albert Jean-Michel de Rocca took place at Geneva, and
was for a time concealed from the world, causing some scandal. But her
children and intimate friends knew of it, although much opposed to it.
Rocca was a young Italian officer, just returned from the war in Spain, with
a dangerous wound. He was of a poetic temperament and exceedingly
romantic, and fell violently in love with Madame de Staël, although she was
forty-five years old and he but twenty-three. During the years of her first
marriage she used to say that she would force her own daughter to marry
for love if that were necessary, and it is supposed that at last she herself
made a marriage of real affection. Despite the disparity of their years, they
seemed to be really happy in this marriage, and her friends were at last

reconciled to it. But her new-found happiness was of short duration,—she
being but fifty years old at the time of her death.

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.

Mr. Swinburne quotes the following passage from a description given by
one of the daily papers of a certain murderer who at the time was attracting
great attention in London:—

"He has great taste for poetry, can recite long passages from popular
poets,—Byron's denunciations of the pleasures of the world having for
him great attraction as a description of his own experiences.
Wordsworth is his favorite poet. He confesses himself a villain."

At this day the two latter facts will not necessarily be supposed to have any
logical connection; but there was a time when the violence of the opponents
of Wordsworth's claim to be a poet might have suggested the most intimate
relation between these two statements. For many years he was looked upon
as an "inspired idiot" by a large part of the reading world; and his place in
literature has not been definitely settled to this day. Such extravagant claims
have always been made for him by his friends that they have called forth
just as extravagant denunciations from those who do not admire his works;
and violent controversies arise concerning his merits among first-class
scholars and critics. It is always noticeable, however, in these discussions
that his panegyrists always quote his best efforts, those sublime passages to
which no one denies transcendent merit, and that his opponents never get
much beyond "Peter Bell," and other trivialities and absurdities, which his
best friends must admit that he wrote in great numbers. That his best work
ranks next to Shakespeare, Milton, and Shelley, can scarcely be doubted by
any true lover of poetry; and he certainly has the right to be judged by his
best, rather than by his inferior work.
Wordsworth was born in 1770, in Cumberland, and received his early
education there, being noted for his excellence in classical studies and for
his thoughtful disposition. He graduated from St. John's College,
Cambridge, and immediately after began his literary labors, which were
continued through a long and most industrious life.
In 1803 he married Miss Mary Hutchinson of Penrith, and settled at
Grasmere, in Westmoreland, where he passed the remainder of his life, and
where he lies buried in the little churchyard where so many of his family
had preceded him. He helped to make the Lake district famous the world
over, and himself never wearied of its charms. He was pre-eminently the
poet of Nature, and it was from the unrivalled scenery of this part of
England that he caught much of his inspiration. Mrs. Wordsworth, who was
as fond of it as her husband, used to say in extreme old age, that the worst
of living in the Lake region was that it made one unwilling to die when the
time came. The poet's marriage was an eminently happy one, although Miss
Martineau hints that it was not first love on his part, but that the lines, "She
was a phantom of delight," so often quoted as relating to Mrs. Wordsworth,
were really meant to indicate another person who had occupied his thoughts
at an early day. At any rate, he did address the following lines to his wife

after thirty-six years of married life, which is certainly a far higher
compliment to her:—
"Morn into noon did pass, noon into eve,
And the old day was welcome as the young,
As welcome, and as beautiful,—in sooth, more beautiful,
As being a thing more holy."
The other poems, "Let other bards of angels sing," and "Oh, dearer far than
life and light are dear," were also addressed to her.
It was through her early friendship for Wordsworth's sister that she first
came to know the poet, and she was not at that time a person whom a poet
would be supposed to fancy. She was the incarnation of good-sense as
applied to the concerns of the every-day world, and in no sense a dreamer,
or a seeker after the ideal. Her intellect, however, developed by contact with
higher minds, and her tastes after a time became more in accordance with
those of her husband. She learned to passionately admire the outward
world, in which he took such great delight, and to admire his poetry and
that of his friends. She was of a kindly, cheery, generous nature, very
unselfish in her dealings with her family, and highly beloved by her friends.
She was the finest example of thrift and frugality to be found in her
neighborhood, and is said to have exerted a decidedly beneficial influence
upon all her poorer neighbors. She did not give them as much in charity as
many others did, but she taught them how to take care of what they had, and
to save something for their days of need. Miss Martineau, who was a
neighbor, says: "The oldest residents have long borne witness that the
homes of the neighbors have assumed a new character of order and comfort
and wholesome economy, since the poet's family lived at Rydal Mount."
She took the kindest and tenderest care of Wordsworth's sister Dorothy, who
was for many years a helpless charge upon her hands. This sister had ruined
her health, and finally dethroned her reason, by trying to accompany her
brother on his long and tiresome rambles among the lakes and up the
mountains. She has been known to walk with him forty miles in a single
day. Many English women are famous walkers, but her record is beyond
them all. Such excessive exercise is bad for a man, as was proved in the
case of Dickens, who doubtless injured himself much by such long
pedestrian trips after brain labor; but no woman can endure such a strain as

this, and the adoring sister not only failed to be a companion to her idolized
brother, but became a care and burden for many years. She lies now by her
brother's side in the crowded little churchyard, and doubtless the "sweet
bells jangled" are in tune again. A lovely group of children filled the
Wordsworth home, some of whom died in childhood; but one daughter and
two sons lived, as loving companions for their parents, until near the end of
the poet's life, when the daughter Dora preceded him a little into the silent
land. Wordsworth was utterly inconsolable for her loss; and used to spend
the long winter evenings in tears, week after week, and month after month.
Mrs. Wordsworth was much braver than he, and bore her own burdens
calmly, while trying to cheer his exaggerated gloom. He was old and broken
at this time, and never recovered from the shock of his daughter's death.
Mrs. Wordsworth survived him for several years, being over ninety at the
time of her death, and having long been deaf and blind. But she was very
cheerful and active to the last, and not unwilling to live on, even with her
darkened vision. The devotion of the old poet to his wife was very touching,
and she who had idolized him in life was never weary of recounting his
virtues when he was gone.
The character of Wordsworth is getting to be understood as we recede from
the prejudices of the time in which he lived, and begins to assume
something like a consistent whole, compared to the contradictions which at
one time seemed to be inherent in it. He says of his own childhood:—

"I was of a stiff, moody, and violent temper; so much so that I
remember going once into the attic of my grandfather's house at
Penrith, upon some indignity having been put upon me, with an
intention of destroying myself with one of the foils which I knew were
kept there. I took the foil in my hand, but my heart failed."

De Quincey says of his boyhood:—

"I do not conceive that Wordsworth could have been an amiable boy;
he was austere and unsocial, I have reason to think, in his habits; not
generous; and above all, not self-denying. Throughout his later life,
with all the benefits of a French discipline, in the lesser charities of
social intercourse he has always exhibited a marked impatience of
those particular courtesies of life. . . . Freedom,—unlimited, careless,

insolent freedom,—unoccupied possession of his own arms,—absolute
control over his own legs and motions,—these have always been so
essential to his comfort that in any case where they were likely to
become questionable, he would have declined to make one of the
party."

Wordsworth has been accused of excessive penuriousness, of overwhelming
conceit, and of being slovenly and regardless of dress. For the first
accusation there seems little warrant, other than that he was prudent and
thrifty, and knew the value of money. His most intimate friends exonerate
him from meanness of any sort, and often praise his kindness to the poor
and dependent. As regards conceit there can probably be no denial, though
doubtless the stories told of it are much exaggerated. He is said never to
have read any poetry but his own, and to have been exceedingly ill-natured
and contemptuous in his estimate of his contemporaries. His estimate of
Dickens is well known:—

"I will candidly avow that I thought him a very talkative, vulgar young
person,—but I dare say he may be very clever. Mind, I don't want to
say a word against him, for I have never read a word he has written."

He greeted Charles Mackay thus, when the latter called upon him:—

"I am told you write poetry. I never read a line of your poems and don't
intend to. You must not be offended with me; the truth is, I never read
anybody's poetry but my own."

Even James T. Fields, whose opinion of the poet was high, remarks:—

"I thought he did not praise easily those whose names are indissolubly
connected with his own in the history of literature. It was languid
praise, at least; and I observed that he hesitated for mild terms which
he could apply to names almost as great as his own."

Carlyle testifies on the same point:—

"One evening, probably about this time, I got him upon the subject of
great poets, who I thought might be admirable equally to us both; but

was rather mistaken, as I gradually found. Pope's partial failure I was
prepared for; less for the narrowish limits visible in Milton and others.
I tried him with Burns, of whom he had sung tender recognition; but
Burns also turned out to be a limited, inferior creature, any genius he
had a theme for one's pathos rather; even Shakespeare himself had his
blind sides, his limitations. Gradually it became apparent to me that of
transcendent unlimited, there was to this critic probably but one
specimen known,—Wordsworth."

As regards eccentricities of dress, we will give but a single testimony.
William Jordan says:—

"On his visits to town the recluse of Rydal Mount was quite a different
creature. To me it was demonstrated, by his conduct under every
circumstance, that De Quincey had done him gross injustice in the
character he loosely threw upon him in public, namely, 'that he was not
generous or self-denying, . . . and that he was slovenly and regardless
in dress.' I must protest that there was no warrant for this caricature;
but on the contrary, that it bore no feature of resemblance to the slight
degree of eccentricity discoverable in Cumberland, and was utterly
contradicted by the life in London. In the mixed society of the great
Babylon, Mr. Wordsworth was facile and courteous; dressed like a
gentleman, and with his tall commanding figure no mean type of the
superior order, well-trained by education, and accustomed to good
manners. Shall I reveal that he was often sportive, and could even go
the length of strong expressions, in the off-hand mirth of his
observations and criticisms?"

Wordsworth had the fondness of many poets for reading his poetry to his
friends, and even of reciting it like a schoolboy. When Emerson visited him
he was already an old man, and it struck the philosopher so oddly, as he
tells us in his "English Traits," to see "the old Wordsworth, standing apart,
and reciting to me in a garden walk, like a schoolboy declaiming, that I at
first was near to laugh; but recollecting myself, that I had come thus far to
see a poet, and he was chanting poems to me, I saw that he was right and I
was wrong, and gladly gave myself up to hear."

Another story is told of his being in a large company, and seeing for the first
time a new novel by Scott, with a motto taken from his poems; and of his
going immediately and getting the poem, and reading it entire to the
assembled company, who were waiting for the reading of the new novel.
Literary biography is full of such anecdotes as these, going to show his
absorption in himself, and his comparative indifference to the works of
others; but they prove at most only a trifling weakness in a great man's
character; such weaknesses being so common as to cause no surprise to
those familiar with the lives of men of genius. He was a strong man,
massive in his individuality, full of profound feeling and deep spirituality,
and dominated by a powerful will. He was no mere sentimentalist and
versifier, but a student at first hand of Nature and all her mysteries,—a man
whose profound meditations had pierced to the centre of things, and who
held great thoughts in keeping for a waiting and expectant world. His
outward life was full of proofs of the wide and deep benevolence of his
nature; and it was only shallow minds who dwelt upon some petty defects
of his character. The deep wisdom gained by contemplation comes forth
whenever he talks of childhood. This subject always possesses inspiration
for him, as when he says:—
"Our birth is but a sleep and forgetting;
The soul that rises with us, our life's star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar.
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God who is our home.
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing boy,
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,—
He sees it in his joy.
The youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature's priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;

At length the man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day."
This conception of the nearness of the child to the unseen made all children
sacred in his eyes, and he always felt that he learned more from them than
he could teach them. He expresses this thought often, as thus:—
"Oh dearest, dearest boy; my heart
For better lore would seldom yearn,
Could I but teach the hundredth part
Of what from thee I learn."
And again:—
"Dear child; dear girl; thou walkest with me here;
If thou appear untouched by solemn thought,
Thy nature is not therefore less divine;
Thou liest in Abraham's bosom all the year;
And worship'st at the Temple's inner shrine,
God being with thee when we know it not."
His own children he loved almost to idolatry, and after the lapse of forty
years, would speak with the deepest emotion of the little ones who had died.
Indeed, he was a man of profound feeling, passionate and intense in his
loves, though outwardly calm and self-contained. He himself says:—

"Had I been a writer of love-poetry, it would have been natural for me
to write it with a degree of warmth which could hardly have been
approved by my principles, and which might have been undesirable for
the reader."

His sister Dorothy frequently refers to the intensity of his passionate
affection for the members of his family, and of the full and free expression
he gave it. Greatly indeed have they erred who have imagined him as by
nature cold or even tranquil. "What strange workings," writes one, "are
there in his great mind! how fearfully strong are all his feelings and
affections! If his intellect had been less powerful they would have destroyed
him long ago." Indeed, no one who had ever known him well could doubt
this intensity of nature, this smothered fire. It leaped out in bursts of anger

at the report of evil doings; in long and violent tramps over the mountains,
in exaggerated grief at the death of loved ones; and in almost unnatural
intensity of devotion, to his sister first, and his daughter Dora afterwards. It
took the form of passionate adoration of Nature in his poems, and of
passionate patriotism as well, and it gave strength and fire to the best of all
his literary work.
Let us dwell for a moment more upon the married life of the poet,—that
calm and quiet and happy life which made it possible that he should be the
poet he was, unvexed by worldly cares or vanities. His late biographer, Mr.
Myers, tells us:—

"The life which the young couple led was one of primitive simplicity.
In some respects it was even less luxurious than that of the peasants
about them. They drank water, and ate the simplest fare. Miss
Wordsworth had long rendered existence possible for her brother, on
the narrowest of means, by her unselfish energy and skill in household
management; and plain living and high thinking were equally
congenial to the new inmate of the frugal home. Wordsworth gardened;
and all together, or oftenest the poet and his sister, wandered almost
daily over the neighboring hills. Narrow means did not prevent them
from offering a generous welcome to their few friends, especially
Coleridge and his family, who repeatedly stayed for months under
Wordsworth's roof. Miss Wordsworth's letters breathe the very spirit of
hospitality in their naïve details of the little sacrifices gladly made for
the sake of the presence of these honored guests. But for the most part
the life was solitary and uneventful. Books they had few, neighbors
none, and their dependence was almost entirely upon external nature."

The cottage in which they lived was very small, but they covered it with
roses and honeysuckles, and had a little garden around it. Inside, all was the
perfection of simplicity, but the soul of neatness and thrift pervaded
everything, and love glorified it all. They had a little boat upon the lake, and
rowing and walking were their pleasures.
They lived in this simple fashion that the poet might pursue his high
vocation, and not be put into the treadmill of any steady work. In after
years, through bequests from friends and a pension from Government, they

were made more prosperous, and their declining years were cheered by an
assured abundance. Rydal Mount has been described so often that it is
familiar to most readers. The house stands looking southward, on the rocky
side of Nab Scar above Rydal Lake. The garden is terraced, and was full of
flowering alleys in the poet's time. There was a tall ash-tree in which the
thrushes always sung, and a laburnum in which the osier cage of the doves
was hung. There were stone steps, in which poppies and wild geraniums
filled the interstices; and rustic seats here and there, where they all sat all
day during the pleasant weather. The poet spent very little time in-doors. He
lived constantly in the open air, composing all his poems there, and
committing them to paper afterwards. Their friends grew more numerous in
later life, and Wordsworth much enjoyed their companionship, being
himself very bright and delightful company when in the mood for talk. Here
that strange being, Thomas De Quincey, came and lived, purposely to be
near the poet. Coleridge was always at call, genial Kit North paid loyal
court to the great man from the first, and loving and gentle Charles Lamb
came at times, sadly missing the town, and almost afraid of the mountains.
Here Dr. Arnold of Rugby came often from Fox How, his own house in the
neighborhood; hither Harriet Martineau walked over from Ambleside, with
some new theory of the universe to expound; and here poor Hartley
Coleridge passed the happiest hours of his unfortunate life. Wordsworth's
kindness and tenderness to this poor son of his great friend were well
known to his little world, and show some of the most pleasing traits of his
character. This amiable and gifted man, Hartley Coleridge, ruined himself
through the weakness of his will, finding it utterly impossible to leave wine
alone, even when he knew it was ruining his life, and so sorely afflicting his
friends. Wordsworth dealt with him like a father, recognizing the weakness
of his character, and perhaps being able to trace it to inherited tendencies,—
the elder Coleridge's devotion to opium being well known. Poor Hartley lies
with Wordsworth's own family in the little churchyard at Grasmere, and we
trust in that quiet retreat sleeps well, at the foot of his friend and master.
Wordsworth's last years were of great solemnity and calm. He lived in
retrospection, and dwelt much upon the unseen world. The deep spirituality
of his nature was shown in all his later life. He was absorbed, as it were, in
thoughts of God, and of the ultimate destiny of man. All worldly interests
died out, and he was able to write even of his fame:—

"It is indeed a deep satisfaction to hope and believe that my poetry will
be, while it lasts, a help to the cause of virtue and truth, especially
among the young. As for myself, it seems now of little moment how
long I may be remembered. When a man pushes off in his little boat
into the great seas of Infinity and Eternity, it surely signifies little how
long he is kept in sight by watchers from the shore."

THOMAS DE QUINCEY.

The Florentines used to point Dante out to strangers in these words: "There
goes the man who has been in hell." With much truth could these words
have been spoken of Thomas De Quincey, at any time after he began to
suffer from his excess in opium eating, which was while he was still a
young man,—and especially would these words have been true of him, after
he began his struggles to free himself from the thraldom of that most
seductive vice. James Payn thus describes his appearance:—

"Picture to yourself a very diminutive man, carelessly—very carelessly
—dressed; a face lined, care-worn, and so expressionless that it
reminded one of 'that dull, changeless brow, where cold Obstruction's
apathy appalls the gazing mourner's heart,'—a face like death in life.
The instant he began to speak, however, it lit up as though by electric
light; this came from his marvellous eyes, brighter and more intelligent
(though by fits) than I have ever seen in any other mortal."

Another writes:—

"Conceive a little, pale-faced, woe-begone, and attenuated man, with
short indescribables, no coat, check shirt, and a neck-cloth twisted like
a wisp of straw, opening his door, and advancing toward you with
hurried movement and half-recognizing glance, saluting you in low
and hesitating tones, and without looking at you, beginning to pour
into your willing ear a stream of learning and wisdom, as long as you
are content to listen. . . . His head is small; how can it carry all he
knows? His brow is singular in shape, but not particularly large or
prominent; where has nature expressed his majestic intellect? His eyes
—they sparkle not, they shine not, they are lustreless; there is not even
the glare which lights up sometimes dull eyes into eloquence; and yet,
even at first, the tout ensemble, strikes you as that of no common man,
and you say, ere he has opened his lips, 'He is either mad or inspired.'"

In all literary history there is scarcely a man about whose life and character
hang so peculiar an interest and fascination as about De Quincey. He has
himself given a most vivid account of his childhood, in his "Autobiographic
Sketches," and in the "Opium Eater." From these we learn that he was born
in Manchester, August 15, 1785. His father was a very wealthy merchant of
that city, who was inclined to pulmonary consumption, and lived mostly
abroad, in the West Indies and other warm climates. Thomas had several
brothers and sisters, all of whom seem to have been rather peculiar and
remarkable children. He was a very precocious child himself, sensitive,
excitable, and given to dreams and visions,—living largely in a world of
imagination, and for many years ruled over with absolute despotism by an
older brother. The loss of a favorite sister in very early childhood seems to

have been a blow from which it took him years to recover. He writes of it
thus:—

"Inevitable sometimes it is, in solitude, that this should happen to
minds morbidly meditative,—that when we stretch out our arms in
darkness, vainly striving to draw back the sweet faces that have
vanished, slowly arises a new stratagem of grief, and we say, 'Be it that
they no more come back to us, yet what hinders but we should go to
them?' Perilous is that crisis for the young. In its effect perfectly the
same as the ignoble witchcraft of the poor African Obeah, his sublimer
witchcraft of grief will, if left to follow its own natural course,
terminate in the same catastrophe of death. Poetry, which neglects no
phenomena that are interesting to the heart of man, has sometimes
touched a little
'On the sublime attractions of the grave.'
But you think that these attractions, existing at times for the adult,
could not exist for the child. Understand that you are wrong.
Understand that these attractions do exist for the child; and perhaps as
much more strongly than they can exist for the adult by the whole
difference between the concentration of a childish love and the
inevitable distraction upon multiplied objects of any love that can
affect any adult. . . . Could the Erl-king's Daughter have revealed
herself to me, and promised to lead me where my sister was, she might
have wiled me by the hand into the dimmest forests upon earth."

But a beatific vision rose before him, one day in church, and he saw the
beautiful sister borne away in the clouds of heaven on a bed of filmy
whiteness, surrounded by a celestial throng; and he was somewhat
comforted. After twelve years, while he was a student at Oxford, the vision
returned to him, and he writes of it:—

"Once again, the nursery of my childhood expanded before me; my
sister was moaning in bed; I was beginning to be restless with fears not
intelligible to myself. Once again the nurse, but now dilated to colossal
proportions, stood as upon some Grecian stage with her uplifted hand,
and, like the superb Medea towering amongst her children in the

nursery at Corinth, smote me senseless to the ground. Again I am in
the chamber with my sister's corpse, again the pomps of life rise up in
silence, the glory of summer, the Syrian sunlights, the frost of death.
Dream forms itself mysteriously within dream; within these Oxford
dreams remoulds itself continually the trance in my sister's chamber,—
the blue heavens, the everlasting vault, the soaring billows, the throne
steeped in the thought (but not the sight) of 'Who might sit thereon;' the
flight, the pursuit, the irrecoverable steps of my return to earth. Once
more the funeral procession gathers; the priest, in his white surplice,
stands waiting with a book by the side of an open grave; the sacristan
is waiting with his shovel; the coffin has sunk; the dust to dust has
descended. Again I was in the church on a heavenly Sunday morning.
The golden sunlight of God slept amongst the heads of his apostles, his
martyrs, his saints; the fragment from the litany, the fragment from the
clouds, awoke again the lawny beds that went up to scale the heavens,
—awoke again the shadowy arms that moved downward to meet them.
Once again arose the swell of the anthem, the burst of the Hallelujah
chorus, the storm, the trampling movement of the choral passion, the
agitation of my own trembling sympathy, the tumult of the choir, the
wrath of the organ. Once more I, that wallowed in the dust, became he
that rose up to the clouds. And now all was bound up into unity; the
first state and the last were melted into each other as in some sunny,
glorifying haze. For high in heaven hovered a gleaming host of faces,
veiled with wings, around the pillows of the dying children. And such
beings sympathize equally with sorrow that grovels and with sorrow
that soars. Such beings pity alike the children that are languishing in
death, and the children that live only to languish in tears."

This extract is important as showing that when a mere child, knowing
nothing of the fatal drug, he had visions similar to those which filled his
after years. At Oxford he had begun the use of opium—but his first vision
was a repetition of one of his childish years, and it leads us to infer that his
own vivid imagination bore an important part in the brilliant dreams which
followed his taking of opium. No person of ordinary mind could induce
those gorgeous and bewildering dreams by its use. In his case the drug acted
upon a mind fitted to see visions and dream dreams even without its use;

and the result was that gorgeous and bewildering phantasmagoria which he
so eloquently describes.
The causes of his first indulging in opium may be briefly glanced at here. At
seventeen, he ran away from the school at which he had been placed by his
guardians, his father now being dead. He wished to enter college at once,
and it appears was well prepared to do so, and had made earnest
representations to his guardians upon the subject, as he was unhappy where
he was, and under a very unsuitable master. But they would not consent,
and, like one of his brothers who ran away from school and went to sea, he
borrowed a little money and stole quietly away to Wales.
The brother had left school, it appears, with good reason, being brutally
treated; but in the case of Thomas there seems to have been no complaint of
real ill-usage. It was simply one of the wilful freaks of a precocious and
fantastic boy. He wandered in Wales for a few weeks, until his money was
nearly spent, and then contrived to get to London, where he suffered the
cruellest pangs of poverty, although he was a young gentleman of
independent fortune. It is difficult for a matter-of-fact and well-balanced
mind to conceive of an experience just like that of De Quincey. Why he
should have allowed himself to starve rather than communicate with his
friends, we are not told,—it could scarcely have been pride, for he accepted
help even from strangers when it was offered,—and why he did not seek
some of the friends of his family in the city we are not informed, but such
was the fact.
He tells the story thus:—

"And now began the later and fiercer stage of my long sufferings;
without using a disproportionate expression, I might say of my agony.
For I now suffered for upwards of sixteen weeks the physical anguish
of hunger in various degrees of intensity, but as bitter, perhaps, as ever
any human being can have suffered who has survived it. I would not
needlessly harass my readers' feelings by a detail of all that I endured;
for extremities such as these, under any circumstances of heaviest
misconduct or guilt, cannot be contemplated, even in description,
without a rueful pity that is painful to the natural goodness of the
human heart. Let it suffice to say that a few fragments of bread from

the breakfast table of one individual, and these at uncertain intervals,
constituted my whole support. . . . I was houseless, and seldom slept
under a roof."

After a time, however, he slept in an unoccupied house, or unoccupied save
by a child of ten years,—as forlorn as himself. She slept here, and was
much tormented by the fear of ghosts. She hailed his advent with great
pleasure as a protection from supernatural visitants; and when the weather
became cold, he used to hold her in his arms that she might gain the
additional comfort of a little warmth. He says they lay upon the floor "with
a bundle of cursed law papers for a pillow, and no covering save an old
cloak." He slept only from exhaustion, and could hear himself moaning in
his sleep; but his little companion, relieved of fear, and perhaps a little
better fed than he, slept soundly and well at all times. He learned to love the
poor child as his partner in wretchedness. He made also one other friend, a
girl of the streets, named Ann, who was kind to him, and whom he
remembered with gratitude to the end of his life. He says of her:—

"This person was a young woman, and one of that unhappy class who
subsist upon the wages of prostitution. . . . Yet, no! let me not class
thee, O noble-minded Ann, with that order of women; let me find, if it
be possible, some gentler name to designate the condition of her to
whose bounty and compassion—ministering to my necessities when
all the world had forsaken me—I owe it that I am at this time alive. . . .
She was not as old as myself. . . . O youthful benefactress! how often
in succeeding years, standing in solitary places and thinking of thee
with grief of heart and perfect love,—how often have I wished that, as
in ancient times the curse of a father was believed to have a
supernatural power, and to pursue its object with a fatal necessity of
self-fulfilment,—even so the benediction of a heart oppressed with
gratitude might have a like prerogative,—might have power given it
from above to chase, to haunt, to waylay, to overtake, to pursue thee
into the central darkness of a London brothel, or (if it were possible)
into the darkness of the grave, there to awaken thee with an authentic
message of peace and forgiveness and final reconciliation!"

The youthful wanderer was finally discovered by his friends, and placed by
his wish at Oxford, where about a year after, in 1804, he began the
occasional use of opium. He did this merely as a means of pleasure at first,
like the drinking of wine, and took it only at stated intervals for a period of
eight years. He seemed to experience no harm from its use in this way; but
a very severe neuralgic affection of the stomach (caused, it is supposed, by
his privations in London primarily) developed itself at the end of that time,
and he resorted to the habitual use of opium as a relief from pain.
He was married in 1816 to Miss Margaret Simpson, and lived with her in a
cottage at Grasmere. Of this wife, with whom he lived for twenty-one years,
he thus writes:—

"But watching by my pillow, or defrauding herself of sleep to bear me
company through the heavy watches of the night, sat my Electra; for
thou, beloved M., dear companion of my later years, thou wast my
Electra! and neither in nobility of mind nor in long-suffering affection
would'st permit that a Grecian sister should excel an English wife. For
thou thoughtest not much to stoop to humble offices of kindness, and
to servile ministrations of tenderest affection; to wipe away for years
the unwholesome dews upon the forehead, or to refresh the lips when
parched and baked with fever; nor even when thy own peaceful
slumbers had by long sympathy become infected with the spectacle of
my dread contest with phantoms and shadowy enemies that oftentimes
bade me 'sleep no more'—not even then did'st thou utter a complaint or
any murmur, nor withdraw thy angelic smiles, nor shrink from thy
service of love, more than did Electra of old. For she too, though she
was a Grecian woman, and the daughter of the king of men, yet wept
sometimes, and hid her face in her robe!"

Hard indeed, no doubt, was the wife's lot through all those years; but the
world will never have more than this mere glimpse of her sorrow and her
devotion. Yet to a person gifted with imagination, it is enough. He can
reconstruct from it that long period of patient watchfulness and unwearied
devotion; he can share her hopes when her loved one makes a battle with
his enemy, her tears when he is defeated, her rapture when he makes a
seeming conquest, the bitterness of her anguish when he again falls. For all
this was gone through, not once, but three times, in the course of De

Quincey's life. It was not until he felt that death was inevitable if he
continued the use of opium (which he was then taking in enormous
quantities) that he ever resolved to give up its use. He knew he must die if
he kept on, he thought he should die if he gave it up, but he determined to
make the effort. His studies had long been abandoned; he could not even
read. For two years he had read but one book; he shrank from study with a
sense of infantine powerlessness that gave him great anguish when he
remembered what his mind had formerly been. From misery and suffering,
he might almost be described as being in a dormant state. His wife managed
all the affairs of the household, and attended to necessary business. He did
not lose his moral sensibilities or aspirations, as so many opium eaters do,
but his intellect seemed dead. His brain had become a theatre, which
presented spectacles of more than earthly splendor, but as often painful as
pleasurable. He had no control now of the dreams which haunted him. He
learned now the awful tyranny of the human face.

"Upon the rocking waters of the ocean, the human face began to
appear: the sea appeared paved with innumerable faces, upturned to
the heavens,—faces imploring, wrathful, despairing, surged upwards
by thousands, by myriads, by generations, by centuries; my agitation
was infinite, my mind tossed and surged with the ocean. . . . I was
buried for a thousand years in stone coffins, with mummies and
sphinxes, in narrow chambers at the heart of eternal pyramids. I was
kissed with cancerous kisses by crocodiles; and laid confounded with
all unutterable slimy things, among reeds and Nilotic mud. . . . The
cursed crocodile became to me the object of more horror than almost
all the rest. I was compelled to live with him for centuries."

The struggle was a long and hard one, and of it he says:—

"Jeremy Taylor conjectures that it may be as painful to be born as to
die. I think it probable; and during the whole period of my diminishing
opium I had the torments of a man passing out of one mode of
existence into another. . . . One memorial of my former condition still
remains; my dreams are not yet perfectly calm; the dread swell and
agitation of the storm have not wholly subsided. My dreams are still

tumultuous, and like the gates of Paradise to our first parents when
looking back from afar, it is still, in the tremendous line of Milton,
'With dreadful faces thronged, and fiery arms.'"

It is sad to learn that after all his struggles he never really succeeded in
freeing himself from the spell of opium. We learn that "after having at one
time abstained wholly for sixty-one days, he was compelled to return to its
moderate use, as life was found to be insupportable; and there is no record
of any further attempt at total abstinence." His indulgence was, however,
very limited in his later years. Weakly as he was, and with a stomach which
could digest but the smallest quantity of food, he lived in tolerable health
until he was seventy-four years old. His wife died over twenty years before
he passed away; and his daughters made a home for him during that time,
and cared for him, as his wife had done. He could never be trusted with any
practical matters whatever. He had a nervous horror of handling money, and
would give away bank-notes to get them out of his way. He was very
generous when young, and gave Coleridge three hundred pounds at one
time, insisting upon making it five hundred, which was not allowed. He
never had a friend who was not welcome to his purse. While he had no care
whatever about his dress, and would frequently enter the drawing-room,
even when company was there, with but one stocking on, or minus some
other very necessary adjunct of dress, he was very dainty and neat about
many things. The greasy, crumpled, Scotch one-pound notes annoyed him.
He did his best to smooth and cleanse them, before parting with them, and
he washed and polished shillings up to their pristine brightness before
giving them away. He used to complain of Wordsworth, because of a lack of
neatness, and describes somewhere his agony at seeing the old poet cut the
leaves of a new book with a knife taken from the supper-table, where
buttered toast had been eaten. Coleridge was also distressed over
Wordsworth's treatment of books, and says that one would as soon trust a
bear in a tulip-garden as Wordsworth in a library.
De Quincey was a very charming companion and a most brilliant talker. He
says of himself and Lamb, that they both had a childish love of nonsense,—
headlong nonsense. While much given to reverie, and somewhat shy, he had
a great fund of humor, drollery, and effervescent wit, which made his
society much liked by all fortunate enough to be acquainted with him. He

was a very abstemious man, and his tastes were of the simplest. His whole
manner and speech were imbued with a high-bred courtesy, though he
sometimes loved to run counter to the ordinary conventionalities of life. He
could never be depended upon for keeping any sort of engagement, and if a
friend wanted him to dinner, he must go for him with his carriage, and take
him away. His manner to his daughters was the perfection of chivalrous
respect, as well as affection.
What he might have been had he never contracted his fatal habit of opium
eating, it is perhaps useless to conjecture; but in his youth he was thought to
be one who might do anything,—all things. What he really did do, of
permanent value, is very little compared to the expectations of his friends.
Blameless as was his life in every other respect, the pity of this weakness
seems infinitely great, and we mourn over his lot with the same unavailing
sorrow with which we weep over the graves of other men of great gifts, but
some fatal defect of will, which allows them to be bound and held captive
all their lives in the chains of some darling vice. Mingled with the rosemary
of our remembrance for such, must be the fennel and the rue.

WALTER SCOTT.

"Day set on Norham's castled steep,
And Tweed's fair river, broad and deep,
And Cheviot's mountains lone.
The battled towers, the donjon keep,

The loop-hole grates, where captives weep,
The flanking walls that round it sweep,
In yellow lustre shone.
The warriors on the turrets high,
Moving athwart the evening sky,
Seemed forms of giant height;
Their armor, as it caught the rays,
Flashed back again the western blaze,
In lines of dazzling light."
Who does not remember the ring of the opening lines of "Marmion,"—
pronounced by Horace Greeley to be the finest verse of descriptive writing
in the language? How often were they declaimed from the school rostrums
in the days, dear reader, when you and I were young! What do school boys
and girls declaim now, we wonder, equal to the selections from Scott, which
formed the greatest part of our stock in trade? Have "Marmion," and "The
Lady of the Lake," and the immortal "Lay" been superseded by the
trivialities and inanities of modern poetasters? or do the good old lines still
hold their own? Does the orator of the class still rise and electrify the whole
school, as in the former days, by drawing his cloak around him, like the
noble Douglas, and declaring:—
"My manors, halls, and bowers shall still
Be open to my Sovereign's will,—
To each one whom he lists, howe'er
Unmeet to be the owner's peer.
My castles are my King's alone,
From turret to foundation-stone:
The hand of Douglas is his own;
And never shall in friendly grasp
The hand of such as Marmion clasp."
And is the whole school lost in breathless admiration still as he continues:
—
"Burned Marmion's swarthy cheek like fire,
And shook his very frame for ire,
And—'This to me!' he said;

'An 'twere not for thy hoary beard,
Such hand as Marmion's had not spared
To cleave the Douglas' head!'"
We wonder does the—
"Minstrel come once more to view
The eastern ridge of Benvenue."
And if he still sees—
"the dagger-crest of Mar,
Still sees the Moray's silver star,
Wave o'er the cloud of Saxon war,
That up the lake comes winding far!"
And does the blood of the youthful listener still thrill as he thinks of the
glory of that cavalcade, till he feels, as we used of old, that—
"'Twere worth ten years of peaceful life,
One glance at their array."
And does he still throw the old pathos into the lines,—
"Where, where was Roderick then!
One blast upon his bugle horn
Were worth a thousand men."
Probably he does not. This is all doubtless very old-fashioned, and we doubt
if the modern school would quite rise to the situation, even when Roderick
makes himself known to Fitz-James, "And, stranger, I am Roderick Dhu;"
but in the days we wot of, you and I, this was the most thrilling climax in all
literature. Have the boys outgrown "Ivanhoe" too? And do they prefer to
hear Du Chaillu tell about the gorillas he invented, or go with Jules Verne
twenty thousand leagues under the sea? We hope not, for their sakes, but
wish that they may enjoy the tournament as we did, and delight in the
"clang of the armor," "the lifting of the vizor," and everything connected
with "the lists." We trust, too, that they will walk with Sir Walter
everywhere throughout the Highlands, until every mount and loch and
ruined castle has become their own; that they will follow poor Jeanie Deans

through the "Heart of Mid-Lothian;" that they will shed true, heartfelt tears
over "Kenilworth," and love as did the older generations the "Bride of
Lammermoor."
Let us be steadfast in our love of the old books; let us never grow weary of
the world-read classics. Who cares for the books of the year? Next
twelvemonth we shall not know whether we have read them or not; but
what a fadeless possession is the memory of one of the world-books! Life is
too brief to be spent upon ephemera; let us go back from our wanderings in
the wilderness of new books, and draw nearer to the wells of English
undefiled.
To this end let us study this man "than his brethren taller and fairer,"—this
kingly Sir Walter of the ancient line.
He says that "every Scotchman has a pedigree." It is a national prerogative,
as inalienable as his pride and his poverty. Sir Walter's pedigree was gentle,
he being connected, though remotely, with ancient families upon both sides
of the house. He was lineally descended from Auld Watt, an ancient
chieftain whose name he often made ring in border ballads. He was one of
twelve children, and was not specially distinguished through childhood;
though, being lame, he got much comfort from books. He took the usual
amount of Latin, but obstinately rebelled at the Greek, and even in his
college days would have none of it. He was distinguished there by the name
of "The Greek Blockhead," and even his excellent professor was betrayed
into saying that "dunce he was and dunce he would remain,"—"an opinion,"
says Scott, "which my excellent and learned friend lived to revoke over a
bottle of Burgundy after I had achieved some literary distinction." He read
everything he could lay hands on, in English, all through his youth, and his
reading seems to have been entirely undirected. He tells about discovering
"some odd volumes of Shakspeare," and adds: "Nor can I forget the rapture
with which I sat up in my shirt reading them by the light of a fire in my
mother's apartment, until the bustle of the family rising from supper warned
me it was time to creep back to my bed, where I was supposed to have been
safely deposited since nine o'clock." He soon after became enamoured of
Ossian and Spenser, whom he thought he could have read forever.

His first acquaintance with the Highlands he was to immortalize was made
in his fifteenth year. The same year he became apprenticed to the law in his
father's office. The Highland visits were repeated nearly every year
thereafter, and from the first afforded him the greatest delight. Of this first
visit he says: "Since that hour the recollection of that inimitable landscape
has possessed the strangest influence over my mind and retained its place as
a memorable thing, while much that was influential on my own fortunes has
fled from my recollections."
His appearance at this time was very engaging. He had outgrown his early
sallowness and had a fresh, brilliant complexion. His eyes were clear, open,
and well set, with a changeful expression; his teeth were dazzling white,
and his smile delightful. In very early youth he formed a strong attachment
for a young lady very highly connected, and of position far above his own,
and of great personal attractions. Their acquaintance began in the Grey
Friars Churchyard, where, rain beginning to fall one Sunday as the
congregation were dispersing, Scott happened to offer his umbrella, and, the
offer being accepted, he escorted her to her residence. The acquaintance
proved pleasant to both, and they met frequently, until it became an
understood thing that he should escort her home from church. When Scott's
father learned of it he deemed it his duty to warn the young lady's father of
the interest the young pair were taking in each other, but the gentleman did
not think it necessary to interfere. This affection was nourished through
several years, and Scott had no thought but that marriage would be its final
result, as the young lady warmly reciprocated his attachment, and the
parents apparently threw no obstacles in the way. But the little romance,
like so many other youthful dreams, was destined to be rudely broken, and
the lady was married in due time, by her friends, to a gentleman of high
rank and character, who later in life acted the part of a generous patron to
his early rival. His hopes of marriage with this lady had rendered him very
industrious and devoted to business, and kept him from all youthful follies.
These things were certainly clear gains to the young man from the
connection, if we say nothing of the pleasant store of memories with which
it furnished his whole after-life. But the blow was a severe one when the
parting came, and Scott could not refer to it without emotion even after
many years. But he was still quite young—not over twenty-five years of age
—and he soon saw a lady in whom he grew much interested. Riding,

Lockhart tells us, "one day with Ferguson, they met, some miles from
Gilsland, a young lady taking the air on horseback, whom neither of them
had previously remarked, and whose appearance instantly struck them both
so much they kept her in view until they had satisfied themselves that she
also was one of the party at Gilsland. The same evening there was a ball, at
which Captain Scott appeared in regimentals, and Ferguson also thought
proper to be equipped in the uniform of the Edinburgh Volunteers. There
was no little rivalry among the young travellers as to who should first get
presented to the unknown beauty of the morning's ride; but though both the
gentlemen in scarlet had the advantage of being her dancing-partners,
young Walter succeeded in handing the fair stranger to supper; and such
was his first introduction to Charlotte Margaret Carpenter." She was very
beautiful,—a complexion of clearest and lightest olive, eyes large, deep-set,
and dazzling, of the finest Italian brown, and a profusion of black hair. Her
manners had the well-bred reserve of an Englishwoman, and something of
the coquetry of the French from whom she was descended. She spoke with
a slight accent, and with much vivacity. Madame Charpentier had made her
escape to England during the Revolution,—her husband having been a
devoted Royalist and Government officer,—and she had brought up her
children as Protestants. No lovelier vision than that of Margaret had ever
dazzled the eyes of our young hero, and he became her devoted cavalier at
once.
He thus describes her to his mother when announcing his engagement:—

"Without flying into raptures,—for I must assure you that my
judgment as well as my affections are consulted upon this occasion,—
without flying into raptures, then, I may safely assure you that her
temper is sweet and cheerful, her understanding good, and, what I
know will give you pleasure, her principles of religion very serious.
Her fortune is five hundred pounds a year."

These are a few extracts from Miss Carpenter's letters:—

"Before I conclude this famous epistle I will give you a little hint,—
that is, not to put so many 'musts' in your letters, it is beginning rather
too soon; and another thing is that I take the liberty not to mind them
much, but I expect you to mind me. You must take care of yourself;

you must think of me and believe me yours sincerely. . . . I am very
glad that you don't give up the cavalry, as I love anything that is
stylish. Don't forget to find a stand for the old carriage, as I shall like
to keep it in case we have to go a journey; it will do very well until we
can keep our carriage. What an idea of yours was that to mention
where you wish to have your bones laid! If you were married I should
think you had tired of me. A pretty compliment before marriage! If you
always have those cheerful thoughts, how very pleasant and gay you
must be. Adieu, my dearest friend. Take care of yourself if you love
me, as I have no wish that you should visit that beautiful and romantic
scene, the burial place! . . . Arrange it so that we shall see none of your
family the night of our arrival. I shall be so tired, and such a fright, I
should not be seen to advantage."

All of which reads as though the young ladies of 1797 were not very
different from those of our own day. After the marriage they went to reside
in Edinburgh, and enjoyed some of the gayeties of that time. They were
most particularly attracted by the theatres. Mrs. Scott had a great fondness
for the shows and pomps of the world, as she had not concealed from him
before marriage, and she never recovered from such fondness; but she
accommodated herself well to her surroundings, and the young couple were
very happy.
In 1814 "Waverley" was published, and received with wonder and delight
by the whole reading world. "Guy Mannering" followed closely upon it,
and was said to have been written in six weeks' time. It intensified the
interest already aroused, and made men wonder anew who this great new
light could be. The tragical "Bride of Lammermoor" composed at white
heat in a fortnight, added greatly to the sensation, and the whole country
was in a fever of excitement over the creations of this enchanted pen. The
secret of the authorship of the novels was kept for a long time even from
Scott's intimate friends. During the great success of these works, Scott
began the building of his house at Abbotsford, and put into the vast and
imposing structure so much money that he became very much embarrassed
in his finances, and the serious troubles of his life began. The extravagance
of his outlay upon his estate, together with liabilities he had assumed for
others, led finally to financial ruin, to overwork, and probably to premature

death. Let us make a few extracts from his diary written when these
misfortunes were fresh upon him.

"What a life mine has been! Half-educated, almost wholly neglected or
left to myself; stuffing my head with most nonsensical trash, and
undervalued by the most of my companions for a time; getting
forward, and held to be a bold and clever fellow, contrary to the
opinion of all who had held me a mere dreamer; broken-hearted for
two years, my heart handsomely pieced again,—but the crack will
remain till my dying day. Rich and poor four or five times; once on the
verge of ruin, yet opened a new source of wealth almost overflowing.
Now to be broken in my pitch of pride and nearly winged (unless good
news should come) because London chooses to be in an uproar, and in
the tumult of bulls and bears a poor, inoffensive lion like myself is
pushed to the wall. Nobody in the end can lose a penny by me, that is
one comfort. I have the satisfaction to recollect that my prosperity has
been of advantage to many, and to hope that some at least will forgive
my transient wealth on account of the innocence of my intentions, and
my real wish to do good to the poor. . . . How could I tread my hall
again with such a diminished crest? How live a poor, indebted man,
where I was once the wealthy, the honored? I was to have gone there
Saturday in joy and prosperity to receive my friends. My dogs will
wait for me in vain. It is foolish, but the thoughts of parting from these
dumb creatures have moved me more than any of the painful
reflections I have put down. Poor things, I must get them kind masters.
I must end these gloomy forebodings, or I shall lose the tone of mind
with which men should meet distress. I feel my dogs' feet on my
knees; I hear them whining and seeking me everywhere. . . .
"I feel neither dishonored nor broken down by the bad—now really
bad—news I have received. I have walked my last on the domains I
have planted; sat the last time in the halls I have built. But death would
have taken them from me if misfortune had spared them. My poor
people whom I loved so well! There is just another die to turn up
against me in this run of ill-luck,—that is, if I should break my magic
wand in the fall from the elephant, and lose my popularity with my
fortune.

"Read again and for the third time Miss Austen's story of 'Pride and
Prejudice.' That young lady has a talent for describing the
involvements, the feelings, and characters of ordinary life which is to
me the most wonderful I ever met with. The Big Bow-wow strain I can
do myself like any now going, but the exquisite touch which renders
ordinary commonplace things interesting is denied to me."

Troubles had indeed come thick and fast upon poor Scott, and the heaviest
blow was yet to fall. In 1826 Lady Scott was taken from him, and about the
same time a number of his old friends. He felt his desolation extremely, but
kept up bravely for the most part, and worked prodigiously for many
months. There is a grandeur about the way he bore his misfortunes which
casts into shade all that was fine in his character during his prosperous
years. Most men, even of brave and noble natures, would have been
overcome by misfortunes so overwhelming as were his, and would never
have thought of extricating themselves; but he seemed to rise to the
occasion in a quite unexampled manner, and to fight with the utmost
bravery and fortitude to the last. The wound to his affections was, however,
very hard to recover from, and he broke more rapidly after Lady Scott's
death than ever before. He writes:—

"A kind of cloud of stupidity hangs about me, as if all were unreal that
men seem to be doing and talking about."

After the burial he writes:—

"The whole scene floats as a sort of dream before me,—the beautiful
day, the gray ruins covered and hidden among clouds of foliage, where
the grave even in the lap of beauty lay lurking and gaping for its prey.
Then the grave looks, the hasty, important bustle of the men with
spades and mattocks, the train of carriages, the coffin containing the
creature that was so long the dearest on earth to me, and whom I was
to consign to the very spot which in pleasure parties we so frequently
visited. It seems still as if it could not be really so. But it is so, and
duty to God and to my children must teach me patience."

His pecuniary troubles were greeted with the liveliest sympathy from all
quarters. The Earl of Dudley but voiced the general thought when he

exclaimed, on first hearing of them: "Scott ruined! the author of 'Waverley'
ruined! Good God! Let every man to whom he has given months of delight
give him a sixpence, and he will rise to-morrow morning richer than
Rothschild." When, after a time, he rallied and went on a journey to
London, the deep sympathy with which he was received, and the kindness
of all with whom he associated, cheered his heart a great deal, and he went
back to his unparalleled labors quite refreshed. But he had set himself a task
which it was impossible that any man could do, and although he worked
himself mercilessly to the end, he failed of accomplishing it. His nervous
system became completely shattered, and he had several strokes of
paralysis; but it was not until his mind also began to fail in serious fashion
that he would give over his work. He seemed determined to die a free man,
but the task was too prodigious. He labored like a giant, but he failed.
The record of those closing days is very sad. The pity they excite is too
deep even for tears. One turns from them with a heavy burden at the heart,
which nothing can for a time relieve. The only comfort is that he was
surrounded by the kindest and tenderest friends, and that he bore everything
which came to him with unflinching fortitude and the kindliest spirit. His
last words spoken to Lockhart are characteristic of the man: "Be a good
man, my dear; be virtuous, be religious, be a good man. Nothing else will
give you any comfort when you come to lie here." There is nothing in the
record of Sir Walter's life which any friend would wish to blot. One can but
be pained to excess by the record of his business troubles, so hopeless in
their entanglements, but through all these even, his character glows with
undiminished brightness, and we love him ever more and more. He was a
man built on a large scale, both in intellect and heart, and, although he
doubtless had his failings, there is little that is recorded of him that detracts
in any way from his innate nobility. Such a funeral as his has seldom been
witnessed.

"The court-yard and all the precincts of Abbotsford were crowded with
uncovered spectators as the procession was arranged; and as it
advanced through Darnick and Melrose, and the adjacent villages, the
whole population appeared at their doors in like manner,—almost all
in black. The train of carriages extended more than a mile; the
yeomanry followed in great numbers on horseback, and it was late in
the day ere we reached Dryburg. Some accident, it was observed, had

caused the hearse to halt for several minutes on the summit of the hill
at Bemerside,—exactly where a prospect of remarkable richness
opens, and where Sir Walter had always been accustomed to rein up
his horse. The day was dark and lowering, and the wind high. The
wide enclosure at the Abbey of Dryburg was thronged with old and
young; and when the coffin was taken from the hearse and again laid
on the shoulders of the afflicted serving-men, one deep sob burst from
a thousand lips."

The heart of Scotland was broken at her great loss. And well might she
mourn. The sceptre which the great Wizard of the North had so long held
was broken, and no successor has yet risen to uphold the fame of Auld
Scotia. Nor will a successor arise. No hand like his will ever touch the harp
of his native land; no strains such as he evoked ever again sound through
the rocky glens and passes, and echo from the mountain-heights of
Scotland.

CHARLES LAMB.

If there is a tender and touching story in all the annals of genius, it is surely
the life-history of Charles Lamb. Search where we will, there is nothing to
equal the pathos of this gentle and lovable life. Nowhere else can we find a
record of such deep devotion, such heroic endurance, such uncomplaining
suffering, such geniality and cheerfulness under almost unbearable burdens.
The world admires many of its men of letters,—it loves Charles Lamb.
Save Carlyle's, no voice among all his literary brethren has ever said a bitter
or an unkind word of the gentle humorist. And when we compare the lives
of the two men, how brightly glows the page whereon is written the record
of Lamb's untiring and unselfish love, exacting nothing for himself, but
giving all with lavish prodigality, compared with the pages given to the
account of the selfish and exacting life which Carlyle lived with the woman
who was his wife, and whom he really loved, but over whom he tyrannized
in so petty a manner! Carlyle's characterization of Lamb is really the most
damaging thing to himself of the many bitter and biting sarcasms which he

has left in regard to the men and women of his day. That he did not know
Lamb—had not the slightest appreciation of the man—is evident at a
glance. And perhaps this is not to be so much wondered at, for there was
very little in common between the two; but it does seem that some hint of
the heroism of Lamb's apparently commonplace and perhaps vulgar life
might have penetrated even to the heart of the crusty Scotchman, for he
could not have been ignorant of the tragic life-story of gentle Elia.
They were very humble people, the Lambs,—poor and obscure, and
unfortunate to a degree. No pretensions to gentility had ever been in the
family, but an acceptance of their commonplace lot, with little striving for
higher things. There was something more, too, than poverty and obscurity
and vulgarity in their antecedents; a fearful curse was in the family, the
heritage of almost every generation,—the curse of madness. What the
contemplation of this frightful inheritance must have been to a youth like
Charles Lamb, gifted with the fatal sensibility of genius, and endowed with
that imagination which can conceive of a horror before it falls, we can form
some sort of conception, but probably a very vague and inadequate one
indeed.
The family were very poor, living in humble lodgings. The father was in his
dotage, the mother was a paralytic, and Charles with his pen, and his sister
Mary with her needle, worked to support the family. They both overworked
themselves fearfully, and lived in apprehension of the doom which hung
over them. They were very fondly attached to each other, and the only
pleasure they had in their cheerless youth was their intercourse. They were
both gifted, and of gentle and kind disposition, and their affection for each
other was more sympathetic and filled with a deeper insight into each
other's characters and feelings than is common between brothers and sisters.
In little intervals between their varied labors they wrote and read to each
other many things which would have a rare value in these days had they
been preserved; and this, with wandering together through the streets in the
evenings and looking at the outside of the theatres, seems to have
constituted their only youthful pleasure. At the age of twenty-one Charles
showed symptoms of the family curse, and his sister herself almost lost her
reason in unavailing sorrow over his condition. So young, so gifted, and
threatened with such dread disaster,—his loving Mary could not have it so.
She even rebelled against Heaven in the extreme of her agony, and called

upon God to relieve them both from such ill-fated life. But all her prayers
and tears and rebellious risings up against destiny did not avail, and Charles
was placed in a mad-house, where he passed a portion of the year 1796. In
one of his lucid intervals he wrote a sonnet, "Mary, to thee, my sister, and
my friend," which is a touching and tender tribute to her love. Long
afterward he was able to write of the experience quite cheerfully:—

"I look back upon it at times with a gloomy kind of envy; for while it
lasted I had many, many hours of pure happiness. Dream not,
Coleridge, of having tasted all the grandeur and wildness of fancy till
you have gone mad!"

But there is a painful commentary upon the bitterness of after-life to him in
the thought that he could look back upon this dreadful season as a period
when he had some happiness. The attack in his case was of brief duration,
and it never recurred, which, considering all the sorrows and all the
irregularities of his life, seems remarkable. He had not been long in a
condition to be responsible when the tragedy took place which cast its
blight upon his life. In September of the year 1796 Mary Lamb, "worn
down to a state of extreme nervous misery by attention to needle-work all
day and by watching with her mother at night, broke into uncontrollable
insanity, and seizing a knife from the table spread for dinner, stabbed her
mother to the heart. The coroner's jury brought in a verdict of lunacy."
Charles writes to Coleridge:—

"With me the former things are passed away, and I have something
more to do than to feel. God Almighty has us well in his keeping."

The horror of the event made so deep an impression upon his mind that he
thought he never fully recovered from it. For many, many years it hung over
him like a pall, casting a sort of despairing darkness over all that might have
been bright in life. Think of that tender and sensitive soul in the awful
solitude of the nights which followed the tragedy: the sister he loved
removed from him to an asylum; the mother sleeping in her unhonored
grave; the father, worse than dead, in almost drivelling idiocy, to be cared
for at his hands; the awful doom of the family ever hanging over his own
head,—what depths of passionate sorrow must he have waded through in

those bitter hours, what unavailing tears he must have shed, what rebellious
thoughts may there not have been in his heart!
But he kept a cheerful front, and went about his daily toil, as he needs must,
with as little outward show of pain as possible.
Mary soon grew better, and he exerted himself to have her released from
confinement. He succeeded in doing so by entering into a solemn
agreement to make her his charge for life, and to watch over her that she
should do no harm. When she was returned to him he was almost happy
again, in spite of the shadow caused by the memory of what had happened,
as well as by the uncertainty of the future. He had but one hundred pounds a
year from his clerkship, and there was a maiden aunt as well as the father to
be cared for. But he says cheerfully:—

"If my father, my aunt, my sister, and an old maid servant cannot live
comfortably on one hundred and twenty or one hundred and thirty
pounds a year, we ought to burn by slow fires; and I almost would, that
Mary might not go to a hospital."

And he hoped to earn the twenty or thirty pounds by literature. His father
had to be amused by cribbage; and many were the weary hours that Charles
would sit playing with him, to the neglect of his correspondence, his
friends, the thousand-and-one private interests which filled up his little
leisure. Sometimes he would try to be let off, but the old man would say,
reproachfully, "If you won't play with me, you might as well not come
home at all;" and the dutiful son set to afresh. There is a sort of heroism in
this which only those people can appreciate who really value their time.
These people will give all else cheerfully,—money, strength, the heart's
deep devotion,—but they give very grudgingly their precious moments;
they feel as though they were being robbed in every hour thus lost. Oh, the
agony of impatience! oh, the restlessness of the fever which consumes them
when they feel the moments fleeing away, and the unconscious thief
perhaps deriving little pleasure or profit from the loss! Rebellion against
fate is often a virtue under such circumstances; and we are inclined to think
it would have been so in the case of poor Elia, even though the poor old
man should have gone to his grave with a few less games of cribbage
recorded against him.

Think of the delicious essays which might have been written in those
misspent hours, in those days of youth when Elia was at his best, before the
sorrowful touches of Time had been left upon his genius; think of the
exquisite letters his friends might have received, and which would have
enriched all the coming time; think of the inimitable drolleries which would
have sent a smile over the face of the world; think of the little pathetic
touches he would have given in sketches of characteristic humor, all with
the freshness of his dawn upon them,—and mourn, O world of letters, for
your loss! But the old man,—he for whom the light had gone out in
darkness; over whose brain the cobwebs had been woven; who had no joy
in the great things of this life; who saw no beauty or splendor in the outer
world; who had no treasure in the world of thought; who could not be
stirred again by any of the absorbing passions of life; who knew no love, no
hate, no ambition, no great impulse to do or to dare; who could not enter
into the realm of books or art or music; who had not even a friend in all the
universe of God; think of the old man who had only this one thing,—cards,
—and pause a moment before you say that gentle Elia did not well.
Finally the old man, too, went his way, and there were only Charles and
Mary left. He had long since given up the hope of there being a third in
their life-drama, although there had been one to whom his heart was given,
and whose presence had been with him always, even in his days of
madness,—sweet Alice W., as he always called her, but of whom the world
has lost all trace save this, that she was Charles Lamb's early and only love,
and that he treasured her memory until all were gone, "the old familiar
faces." Long after she was married to another, Lamb used to be seen at
evening pacing up and down in front of her house, hoping to catch a
glimpse of her through the windows. But after he had taken Mary to be his
charge it was impossible to think of marriage. He could not ask another to
share his sad vigils with the afflicted sister, nor hope that another would
look upon her with his eyes; so he buried his romance out of sight, and
never turned to that phase of a man's life again. At twenty-two one does not
easily give up the thoughts of love, or the hopes of home with wife and
children,—and Charles had his struggle, as any strong man would have had;
but he conquered himself once again, and went bravely on. Day by day he
toiled at the India House, never losing time, never taking a vacation, ever at
his post till he was fifty years old, when he "came home forever."

During those thirty years of steady toil he went through many sad
experiences with Mary; but he must earn their daily bread, and he never left
his post. Many were the nights he spent in anxious watchings with her,—for
she had periodical returns of her insanity during all this time,—when,
sleepless and harassed to the point of exhaustion with her dangerous
vagaries, he must still rise in the morning and go to his desk. Many were the
days when he ran in hot haste the moment he was released, to see that she
was still safe; even many hand-to-hand encounters he had with her in her
dangerous hours,—but no murmur ever escaped his lips at all this. When
she became very bad he took her back to the asylum, and she remained
sometimes for weeks, sometimes for months; but he always eagerly
reclaimed her the moment she was better. He took her with him on little
journeys,—a strait-jacket always safely packed in her portmanteau by
herself,—and one time she went mad while they were travelling in the
diligence and far from home. Often he wrote to their friends in the later
days, when he had become somewhat famous and friends had grown plenty,
to apologize for not keeping engagements or accepting invitations, "My
sister is taken ill." As George W. Curtis once wrote,—

"In those few words how much tragedy lies hidden! What a life of
patient heroism do they suggest!—in comparison with which the
career of Lamb's huge contemporary, Bonaparte, shrinks into the
meanest melodrama; while the misanthropic mouthings of Lord Byron
become maudlin when we recall the sweet, life-long, heroic silence of
Charles Lamb."

"What sad, large pieces it cuts out of life," Lamb writes in 1809,—"out of
her life, who is getting rather old; and we may not have many years to live
together." Once again when she was in confinement he writes:—

"It cuts out great slices of the time—the little time—we shall have to
live together. But I won't talk of death; I will imagine us immortal, or
forget that we are otherwise. By God's blessing, in a few weeks we
may be taking our meal together, or sitting in the front row of the pit at
Drury Lane, or taking our evening walk past the theatres, to look at the
outside of them at least, if not to be tempted in. Then we forget that we

are assailable; we are strong for the time as rocks,—the wind is
tempered to the shorn Lambs."

Then away on in 1833 he writes to Wordsworth:—

"Mary is ill again. Her illnesses encroach yearly. The last was three
months, followed by two of depression most dreadful. . . . I look back
upon her earlier attacks with longing,—nice little durations of six
weeks or so, followed by complete restoration,—shocking as they
were to me then."

This sister was a woman quite worthy of his devotion. Possessed of genius
somewhat akin to that of her brother, she also handled a delicate pen, and
but for her misfortune would have been well known in the world of books.
She was in complete sympathy with her brother, in heart as well as in mind.
And the record of their lives is one of the most beautiful pictures of
brotherly and sisterly affection in all literature.
Let us turn from the dark picture, and see some of the brighter sides of this
life, sketched so far in Rembrandt-like color. Throughout all this darkness
and dread, he had joked and jested his way on, amusing his friends in
private, and entertaining the world of letters by his genial humor. It welled
up as from a hidden fountain, and that fountain never failed but with life. So
easily and spontaneously did it flow, that if he wanted an order to see the
play, for some friends, he would scribble something like this to Ayrton:—
"I would go to the play
In a very economical sort of a way,
Rather to see
Than be seen;
Though I'm no ill sight
Neither—
By candle-light,
And in some kinds of weather,
You might pit me for height
Against Kean;
But in a grand tragic scene
I'm nothing.

It would create a kind of loathing
To see me act Hamlet;
There'd be many a damn let
Fly
At my presumption,
If I should try,—
Being a fellow of no gumption."
And so on through half a dozen verses of exquisite nonsense. And in every
little note to his many friends there was always some characteristic touch to
excite their ready smiles; as in the note to Coleridge, who had carried off
some of his books:—"There is a devilish gap in my shelf where you have
knocked out the two eye-teeth," and where he goes on to beg him in a
whimsical way to return them—because, although he had himself borrowed
them of somebody else, they had long adorned his shelf. Truly, most people
who own books at all can sympathize with Lamb in this, though they may
think he got off lightly to have only the two eye-teeth knocked out. We have
known of cases where cuspids, bicuspids, and molars have all been
extracted. These letters are all exquisitely droll, the most of them containing
a gentle oath or two, as where he wrote "Some d——d people have come
in, and I must stop;" and then recollecting that he was writing to a "proper"
person, making a postscript which says, "when I wrote d——d I only meant
deuced." But one would as soon think of dropping out Shakspeare's
adjective, and saying (as a very prim lady we once knew did in reading
Lady Macbeth's soliloquy), "Out, spot!" as to drop out any of Lamb's
qualifying words. He was sometimes accused of being irreverent, as in his
article upon "Saying Graces," where he affirms that he is more disposed to
say grace upon twenty other occasions in the course of the day than before
his dinner, and inquires why not say them over books, those spiritual
repasts. But he was very far indeed from being irreverent, and had much of
genuine religious feeling.
His hospitality was unbounded, and the evenings at his home have become
as well known in literature as the grand evenings at Holland House.
His friends were the first literary men of the day,—Wordsworth, Leigh
Hunt, Barry Cornwall, Talfourd, Hazlitt, Southey, Coleridge,—all the giants
of that day and generation, and he was loved by them all. Not that they did

not know and deplore his faults,—or his one fault; for if he could have
conquered his fondness for wine he would have had none of much moment
left. But even this was overlooked by his friends at the time, and has not
been considered as entirely inexcusable by posterity. That he smoked much
and drank hard, even for that day, may be true; but it can scarcely justify the
bitter sneers of Carlyle, or the holding of him up as an awful warning
without putting in any plea in mitigation, as is sometimes done by severe
moralists in our own day. He abased himself in awful shame over it many a
time in life, and suffered in his own person all the fearful retribution which
such habits bring in their train. Let this be sufficient for us, and let us but
pity and pass on. One of the most beautiful things in his later life was his
fatherly tenderness toward a friendless young girl whom he and Mary had
befriended and finally adopted,—Emma Isola, who was afterwards married
to Moxon, the publisher. He was extremely fond of her, and she brightened
his home much in the later years, although she married before his death. It
is sad to think that he should have died before his sister. He had often
prayed that this might not be. But he provided for her tenderly, and gave her
to the care of his friends.
Lamb is described as having a face of "quivering sweetness, nervous,
tremulous, and so slight of frame that he looked only fit for the most placid
fortune."
Fit or not, he had to contend with the hardest thing a man can have in life,
—he had to live a life-long witness of the sufferings of one he dearly loved,
and whom he was entirely powerless to help, the daily and hourly pathos of
whose sufferings he was fitted to appreciate keenly, and for whom in all this
wide weltering chaos of a world there was no hope. He renounced
everything else in life to try to mitigate this dreadful lot. His kindness was
unceasing, his pity was both fatherly and motherly; it was more,—Godlike;
and yet it was of small avail. He toiled physically that she might live at
ease. He exerted his mind constantly when in her presence, that she might
be cheerful. He watched over her with the tenderness of both brother and
lover; and this shall be his justification, if he needs one: he loved much.

CHRISTOPHER NORTH.

Hazlitt has a long paper "On Persons One would Wish to have Seen." And
surely, if he had lived at this time, he would have added genial and lovable
Kit North to the list of those thus honored. There are few of those who
belonged to his day and generation to whom we should have a stronger
wish to be presented, than to Wilson,—the student, the Bohemian, the
bookworm, the sportsman, the professor, the kindliest, merriest, and most
entertaining of genial companions,—the great hero of the "Noctes
Ambrosianæ."
Not even Lamb—the quaint and merry companion, so full of quips and
puns that laughter lingered with any company he graced with his pathetic
little body and quizzical countenance—could rival Christopher as a fountain
of merriment and eternal good-cheer. His humor was not quiet and subtle
like Lamb's, but broad, rich, bordering on farce, and of "imagination all
compact." And Lamb could by no means rival him in splendor of
description, vivacity of retort, energy of criticism, or in riotous and
uproarious mirth. De Quincey alone could match the splendor of his diction
when describing outward sights and sounds, and De Quincey had not a tithe
of his intense love of Nature, and appreciation of her glory and
magnificence. Ruskin alone equals him in this, and he scarcely reaches the
height of rhetorical eloquence to which Wilson soars so easily.
In these same "Noctes" we have descriptions of some of those nights when,
as Carlyle would have said, "there was much good talk." And Wilson was
mainly the talker. The chief characteristic of his discourse was its
prodigality of humor and its infinite variety. His imagination too ran riot,
and his wit sparkled ever and anon with a radiance all its own.

His memory was prodigious, and in his conversation he taxed it for
anecdotes and illustrations drawn from the four quarters of the globe, and
from the most remote and unusual stores of literary hoarding. His mind was
many-sided as well as keen, and he kept all his faculties in full play, not
excepting his sympathies, which were as broad as the world of men.
Can we wonder that those who crowded the table where he sat, lingered on
till the daylight drove them from the board? or that no man who had had
him for a boon companion could ever be satisfied with another? Can we
wonder that the students who crowded his lecture-room after he became a
professor thought every other lecturer commonplace and dull? Not that he
gave them more information than others—perhaps he did not give them as
much; but he excited and inspired them. He quickened their minds, and
wakened their dormant faculties. Some of the white heat of his own
enthusiasm he communicated to their colder natures, and they enjoyed the
unusual warmth. Those who listened to those wonderful discourses can
never be persuaded that eloquence did not die with Christopher North. They
were all addressed to the hearts of his listeners, and thrills, and tears, and
laughter that was not loud but deep, accompanied his speech from the
beginning to the very end. Let one who thus listened to him speak:—

"We have heard him in the assembly-rooms, speaking on the genius of
Scott, a little after the death of the Wizard, and in the tremble of his
deep voice could read his sorrow for the personal loss, as well as his
enthusiasm for the universal genius. We have heard him in his class-
room, in those wild and wailing cadences, which no description can
adequately re-echo, in those long, deep-drawn, slowly expiring sounds,
which now resembled the moanings of a forsaken cataract, and now
seemed to come hoarse and hollow from the chambers of the thunder,
advocating the immortality of the soul, describing Cæsar weeping at
the grave of Alexander, repeating, with an energy which might have
raised the dead, Scott's lines on the landing of the British in Portugal,
and discovering the secret springs of laughter, beauty, sublimity, and
terror, to audiences whom he melted, electrified, subdued, solemnized,
exploded into mirth, or awed into silence, at his pleasure."

His eloquence gained little from his personal appearance, about which there
was something savage, leonine, massive, but little that was refined or

attractive in the usual sense of that word. Still his face is described by some
as magnificent, and his gray, flashing eyes, as being remarkably expressive.
In his dress he was exceedingly slovenly except upon state occasions. His
professor's gown, as he stalked along the college-terraces, flew in tattered
stripes behind him, his shirts were usually buttonless, and his hat like a
reminiscence of a pre-historic age. His yellow hair always floated over his
shoulders, in confusion worse confounded, and he wore immense unkempt
whiskers hanging upon his breast. Dickens thus describes him:—

"At his heels followed a wiry, sharp-eyed shaggy devil of a terrier,
dogging his steps as he went slashing up and down, now with one man
beside him, now with another, and now quite alone, but always at a
fast rolling pace, with his head in the air, and his eyes as wide open as
he could get them. A bright, clear-complexioned, mountain-looking
fellow, he looks as if he had just come down from the Highlands, and
had never taken a pen in hand."

His carelessness of appearances extended to his rooms, which looked like
small sections from the primeval chaos. The book-shelves were of
unpainted wood, knocked together in the rudest fashion, and the books were
many of them tattered and without backs. A case containing foreign birds
was used also as a wardrobe, and all of his rare possessions in natural
history were mixed up with a most motley collection of books and papers,
—these latter consisting of all sorts of scraps, of which no one else could
have made anything. He always seemed to be able to find them when
wanted, even in the worst confusion; but how he did it was a mystery to his
friends. "Here and there, in the interstices between books, were stuffed what
appeared to be dingy, crumpled bits of paper, but they were in reality bank-
notes, his class fees; which he never carried in a purse, but stuffed away
wherever it seemed most convenient at the moment." He never, even in the
coldest weather, had a fire in his room.
No account of Kit North would be complete that left out entirely the
convivialities of the table, though we should make a great mistake if we
took the humorous caricatures of the "Noctes Ambrosianæ" for accounts of
literal feats in that line. This has sometimes been done, and he is frequently
represented as a glutton and a drunkard. He was neither, although he did
perform some remarkable feats both of eating and drinking in his day. His

life of constant out-of-door exercise gave him a keen appetite, and a perfect
digestion, and he loved the hilarity of the table as well as any man of his
day. But in his later life he became a teetotaller. Even in his earlier days it
was often the excitement of company which quickened all of his powers to
their utmost tension, when the effect was attributed to wine. So fond was he
of all sorts and kinds of out-of-the-way company, that he was at one time in
the habit of going at midnight to the Angel Inn, where many of the up and
down London coaches met, and there to preside at the passengers' supper,
carving for them, inquiring all about their respective journeys, and
astonishing them with his wit and pleasantry. He would also linger about
with coachmen and guards, and was present at, and took a hand in, many a
street row, unknown by those with whom he mingled.
He is said to have remained for three months in the back room of a
Highland blacksmith, strolling daily about the hills, and performing some of
his prodigious pedestrian feats, to the great surprise of the rustics. He is also
said to have followed the lady who became his wife all over the lake
country of Scotland in the disguise of a waiter, serving her at table wherever
the party happened to be, until the suspicions of her father were aroused by
seeing the same waiter at every inn. Wilson then made himself known,
declared his admiration for the lady, and finally became her accepted suitor.
After their marriage he took her with him all over the Highlands on foot,
assuring her that only so could she become really acquainted with their
beauties. No man perhaps ever loved the Highlands as Christopher North
loved them,—with the possible exception of Walter Scott.—and we can
truly envy his young bride to be thus escorted through their deepest
labyrinths, and introduced to their most delicate and hidden beauties. Here
he introduced his beloved also to the cottages of the peasants, and made her
acquainted with the poetry of that life which has inspired some of the finest
of modern literature. He knew as well as Hogg, or Scott, or Lockhart, that
the characteristic romance of a people like the Scotch is to be sought chiefly
in the cottages of the poor, and that the finest poetry of such a people has
for the most part a like inspiration. And these same peasants showed to their
best advantage always when Christopher was around. They loved him
instinctively, although they knew him only as a sportsman, or in some
cases, perhaps, as a naturalist. But his large heart always shone forth in his
intercourse with the poor, and he seemed conscious of no superiority to

them, meeting them always on the common ground of humanity, and
sympathizing, in his hearty and genial way, in all their joys and sorrows.
They took to him just as dogs and children did.
And his descriptions of their cramped and narrow lives, enlivened by his
characteristic humor, are among the best pictures the world has cherished of
Scottish rural life. He did not spare their vices, but gave many dramatic
pictures of the darker sides of peasant life, with which he gained a close
acquaintance during those long foot-journeys which he was so fond of
making, living really what we would call the life of a tramp, for long
periods. Sometimes he camped with gypsies for weeks, and at all times was
intimate with all of the so-called lower classes. Tinkers, cairds, poachers,
were his familiar roadside acquaintances, and he extracted great amusement
from their peculiarities. Sometimes he had to win the respect of these
worthies by knocking them down in the beginning of the acquaintance, but
after that they usually stood by him to the end. He usually figured as the
champion of the weak in these games at fisticuffs, but sometimes he
managed things on his own account.
Although he loved to wander in the Highlands, he made his home among
the lakes at Elleray. This home was a rambling, mossy-roofed cottage, of
very picturesque appearance, overhung by a giant sycamore.

"Never," he says, "in this well-wooded world, not even in the days of
the Druids, could there have been such another tree. It would be easier
to suppose two Shakspeares. Oh, sweetest and shadiest of sycamores,
we love thee beyond all other trees."

And he thus discourses of the lakes amid which he lived,—and about whose
borders he wandered so continually:—

"Each lake hath its promontories, that every step you walk, every
stroke you row, undergo miraculous metamorphoses, accordant to the
change that comes o'er the spirit of your dream, as your imagination
glances again over the transfigured mountains. Each lake hath its bays
of bliss, where might ride at her moorings, made of the stalks of water-
lilies, the fairy bark of a spiritual life. Each lake hath its hanging
terraces of immortal green, that along her shores run glimmering far

down beneath the superficial sunshine, where the poet in his becalmed
canoe, among the lustre, could fondly swear by all that is most
beautiful on earth, and air, and water, that these three are one, blended
as they are by the interfusing spirit of heavenly peace."

Lover of beauty as he was, yet he was well content with what he could find
in Scotland; he cared little for England, and nothing for the Continent.
There was enough to exhaust the seeing possibilities of a lifetime in his own
little land, with its rocks and lakes and heathery hills. This was because he
really had the poet's eye and heart. Such do not need to traverse the whole
wide world to find enough of beauty; it is only the mediocre and the
commonplace who care to gaze superficially at the landscapes of two
continents. But Wilson knew his land not only with the eye of a poet, but
also with that of a naturalist. His favorite pastime was ornithology, and he
made fine collections of specimens in this line.
He was a great sportsman, and a story is told by his daughter, Mrs. Gordon,
of his travelling seventy miles in one day, to fish in a certain favorite loch
among the braes of Glenarchy, called Loch Toila. He was also a good shot,
and very enthusiastic in sport even to old age. Boating was another favorite
pastime; and engaged in one or another of these out-of-door pursuits, he
passed a very large portion of his whole life. When he did write, he did it
with great rapidity, composing one of the "Noctes" at a sitting. His love for
the animal creation was very deep, and he would never submit to seeing any
creature abused. He one day saw a man cruelly beating his horse, which
was overloaded with coals, and could not move. He remonstrated with the
driver, who, exasperated at the interference, took up the whip in a
threatening way, as if with intent to strike the professor. In one instant the
well-nerved hand of Wilson, not new to these encounters, twisted the whip
from the coarse fist of the driver, and walking up to the cart, he unfastened
the trams and hurled the whole weight of the coals into the street. He then
took the horse and led it away, depositing it in the hands of the authorities,
with injunctions to see that the beast was better treated in future.
He made great pets of game-birds, the aristocracy of the species, with their
delicate heads and exquisite plumage, and kept at one time no less than
sixty-two in the back yard of his house. The noise was simply unendurable

to all but Wilson, who was never annoyed by it in the least. He kept one
lame sparrow for eleven years, caring for it with the tenderest solicitude.
He was always well known in the houses of the poor, and he never gave up
one of his humble friends. He was tender and gentle always to these, as to
the members of his own household, where it was said the very strength of
his hand was softened, that he might caress the infant, or play with the little
ones at his feet. With all children he was a prime favorite, and in his
declining years his grandchildren were his daily playmates. Noah's ark,
trumpets, drums, pencils, puzzles, dolls, were all supposed by them to
possess interest in his eyes equal to their own.
He was thrown much upon these children for his pleasures near the close of
his life. That frame of gigantic build and of gigantic strength became almost
helpless from paralysis, and he was cared for till death by his daughter, the
mother of these favored little ones. Oh, it is sad to think of it! Poor
Christopher,—the active, the alert, the keen-sighted, the fleet-footed, the
gay and rollicking sportsman, the famous angler, the champion boxer, too,
upon occasions,—laid low, and propped helpless upon pillows within walls,
which he had always hated so sincerely. He writes:—

"Our spirit burns within us, but our limbs are palsied, and our feet
must brush the heather no more. Lo, how beautifully those fast-
travelling pointers do their work on that black mountain's breast;
intersecting it into parallelograms and squares and circles, and now all
a-stoop on a sudden, as if frozen to death. Higher up among the rocks
and cliffs and stones, we see a stripling whose ambition it is to strike
the sky with his forehead, and wet his hair in the misty cloud, pursuing
the ptarmigan. . . . Never shall eld deaden our sympathies with the
pastimes of our fellow-men, any more than with their highest raptures,
their profoundest griefs."

It is safe to say that he kept his word, and was to the last, the same genial,
warm-hearted, impulsive, wayward man who had by these and other
engaging qualities made for himself so large a place in the heart of his
countrymen, during the long years he had wandered over her moors and
hills, seeing all her beauties, and describing them as no other had done.

He was almost the last of that band of strong men who cast such lustre over
the beginning of this century. Coleridge had gone before, and Wordsworth,
Byron, and Campbell, Shelley, and Canning, and Peel, and Jeffrey, and
Moore, and he lingered on in a solitude made greater by that last stroke of
calamity which deprived him of motion for a time that was weary and heart-
breaking to him, and over which the world yet sheds its sympathizing tears.
He died at the age of sixty-eight.

LORD BYRON.

So many volumes have been written about the domestic life and the loves of
Lord Byron, that it would be a hopeless undertaking to attempt to say

anything new about them. But the story of Byron's life will never lose its
fascination, and to every new generation of readers the romance will be
fresh. Marvellously beautiful, wonderfully gifted, unfortunately constituted
man; wronged by his birth, wronged by his education, wronged most of all
by himself, the world will never cease to wonder and to weep when his
tragic story is told. While the language remains his words will live.
Immortal poetry for youth!—new generations will learn it by heart, when
the older generations are forgetting; and long after all memory of his
waywardness and folly has faded from the world, his deathless songs will
still sing on.
In any attempt to understand Byron, his ancestry must be much considered.
It will never do to compare him with cool-headed, calm-blooded, matter-of-
fact people. He was the peculiar product of a peculiar race. Coming through
generations of hot, turbulent blood, which was never once mastered or
tamed by its possessors, he entered the world with a temperament and
disposition which made it simply impossible that he should lead the
ordinary life of the British Philistine of his day.
As far back as they have been traced, the family were violent, passionate,
high-spirited, but unrestrained in the indulgence of their desires by any of
the cardinal principles of morality. Byron's father, one of Byron's
biographers tells us, had outraged in his previous family life not only the
principles of religion, but also the laws of society; and when, in 1783, he
married Catherine Gordon, the wealthy heiress of Gight, Aberdeenshire, it
was chiefly for the purpose of paying off his debts with her fortune. Within
two years after the marriage the heiress of Gight was reduced to a pittance
of one hundred and fifty pounds a year. In 1790, for economy's sake, they
removed from London to Aberdeen, but soon separated.
Even after this, Captain Byron was mean-spirited enough to solicit money
from his wife, and she had not the heart to refuse him. With a small supply
thus obtained he crossed the channel, and in 1791 died in Valenciennes, in
the North of France. Of the violent temper of Byron's mother many stories
are told, and of her heartless treatment of him in his early years; so that
upon neither side can we find much upon which we could expect to build a
very noble or well-balanced character, and the fact seems to be that the

eccentricities of the Byron family were so great as to be dangerously near
the point called insanity.
A youth inheriting such blood as this, and brought up without even a
pretence of moral or religious training, could hardly be expected to develop
many of the domestic virtues. Neither could high-mindedness or lofty
principle be predicted of him. And in truth, Byron possessed neither of
these things. With this fiery Norman blood flowing in his veins, restlessness
was the habitual condition of his existence, such restlessness as drove him
to seek excitement at whatever cost,—quiet, as he expressed it, to the quick
bosom being hell. This restlessness led him into all sorts of folly and
excess, in the pursuit of new excitements. Then he was cursed with an
exaggerated sensibility, which, while it gave him many rare delights in life,
inflicted upon him also the keenest tortures. His massive egotism was the
cause, doubtless, of many of his most marked eccentricities. He was so
anxious to have the world's gaze fixed upon him that he said and did things
continually for the mere purpose of holding its attention. In this way he
frequently made himself appear worse than he really was. Society was held
willingly in the thrall of his personality. A dull world likes to have laid bare
for its inspection the pulses of a vivid existence. Byron may have been no
worse than many other men of his day, for it was a time of general
immorality, but he never concealed even his worst vices. While hypocrisy is
a national vice in England, Byron, though essentially English in most
things, never possessed this marked characteristic of his countrymen. He
flaunted his vices in the light of day; and the world took a speedy revenge
upon him for his audacity. The little episode of his love for Mary Chaworth
occurred at so early an age that it seems scarcely probable that it affected
him as seriously as he claimed; yet he was a very precocious child, and his
account of the strength of his passion, and its disappointment, may not be
wholly an affectation. It is difficult, too, to arrive at his real feeling toward
Miss Milbank, there was so much of contradiction both in his words and in
his conduct. Miss Milbank probably loved him but feared to marry him,
having heard of the irregularities of his life. And certainly the sort of life
which Byron had led was a very poor preparation for happiness at the
fireside, and if all other causes of unhappiness had been wanting would
doubtless have wrecked his union with Miss Milbank. But there were not
wanting numberless other sources of misery to this ill-mated couple, first

among which was the complete incompatibility of their tastes, feelings,
characters. That she was a noble, intelligent, and high-principled woman,
none have ever denied. The wonder was, not that she would not live with
such a man as Byron, but that she could ever have married him. In charity
we must decide that she was ignorant of the unspeakable degradation of
such an act. That he was a famous man of genius, the most wonderfully
gifted poet of his time, might have been a temptation, but it was no excuse,
if she entered into the contract with her eyes open. But aside from the
question of vice or virtue, there was nothing in common between them. She
felt that she had fallen from the unalterable serenity and dignity of her
existence, into chaos. Her natural reserve and his natural frankness were the
occasion of continual clashings. Her formality and his bluntness caused
constant unrest. Accustomed to the regularity of a well-ordered English
household, she was miserable at the utter demoralization of their home,—of
which the bailiff had possession nine times during the short year they
occupied it. Formed for a calm, domestic life, she would probably have
been a most admirable wife to a man suited to her virtuous tastes, but her
very virtues irritated Byron.
Lady Caroline Lamb, who had loved him so madly, and on whom he had
expended a temporary passion, was in her ardent nature and erratic genius
much better suited to his tastes; and yet it had not taken him long to tire of
her, beautiful as she had been. And were ever such bitter and cruel words
addressed to a wronged woman, even though she had herself been fearfully
to blame in the matter, as those sent by Byron to this poor creature, who had
sent him a last touching appeal to remember her? He wrote:—

"Remember you! remember you! Until the waters of Lethe have
flowed over the burning torrent of your existence, shame and remorse
will cry in your ears, and pursue you with the delirium of fever.
Remember you! Do not doubt it, I will remember. And your husband
will also remember you. Neither of us can ever forget you. To him you
have been an unfaithful wife, and to me—a devil!"

Terrible words, which apparently changed her love to hate, for she was his
relentless enemy for many years. But one day the great poet died, in
Greece, the death of a hero. His body was taken back to England for burial,
and Caroline Lamb stood at her window and saw the procession go by. The

coffin was followed by a dog, howling piteously. Caroline uttered a
heartrending cry, and sunk to the floor insensible. They raised her and
placed her in her bed, from which she never rose; she was borne from it to
her grave.
Such was the devotion which his fatal beauty and fascination won from
women, from many women, in his brief life. It is not probable that his wife
ever loved him in this way, but had she done so it seems very unlikely that
they could have lived a happy life together.
For one reason, he had no faith in women. "False as a woman or an epitaph"
expressed his deliberate opinion of the sex; and it must be confessed that
the sort of women with whom he had best acquaintance were not calculated
to give him high ideas upon the subject. This low estimate of women would
have stood in the way of domestic happiness under any circumstances.
He was not ignorant of this, and in "Childe Harold" states the case thus:—
"For he through sin's long labyrinth had run,
Nor made atonement when he did amiss;
Had sighed to many, though he loved but one,
And that loved one, alas! could ne'er be his.
Ah, happy she! to 'scape from him whose kiss
Had been pollution unto aught so chaste!
Who soon had left her charms for vulgar bliss,
And spoiled her goodly lands to gild his waste,
Nor calm domestic bliss had ever deigned to taste."
It has been thought by some that had Byron had the good fortune to meet
his latest love, the Countess Guiccioli, in his youth, all his stormy life might
have been changed and redeemed. However this may be, she seems, so far
as we can judge of her, to have been more likely to be a poet's one great
love than any of the others who for a time held his wandering fancy.
Beautiful as a poet's wildest dream, young, ardent, gifted, and passionately
devoted to him, what more could even his exacting nature demand?—

"Educated in the gloom of the convent, the notes of the organ, the
clouds of incense, the waxen tapers burning at the feet of the Virgin,
the litanies of the nuns,—all this had filled her mind with the poetry of

the cloister, and with that mystic and indefinable love which at the first
contact with the world was ready to change into a violent passion
when it should meet with an object upon which to fix itself."

Married as soon as she left the convent to a man selected by her parents,
whom she had barely seen, and who was old enough to be her father, she
was at the time Byron first saw her a melancholy and unhappy woman,
much given to the reading of poetry and of the immoral novels of that time
and place.
That she should love Byron at first sight was inevitable, and that which
followed was almost as inevitable. She herself thus describes her first
acquaintance with him:—

"His noble and exquisitely beautiful countenance, the tone of his voice,
his manners, the thousand enchantments that surrounded him, rendered
him so different and so superior a being to any by whom I was
surrounded or had hitherto seen that it was impossible he should not
have left the most profound impression upon me. From that evening,
during the whole of my subsequent stay at Venice, we met every day."

Almost the only glimpses of quiet happiness which Byron ever enjoyed
came from this association. The lovers seemed to be admirably adapted to
each other, and their love knew no diminution during the short remainder of
his life. And she cherished his memory with the utmost fondness throughout
a long life, writing of him with unbounded enthusiasm, in her own account
of her acquaintance with him, many years after his death. Byron has
probably exaggerated his own unhappiness, yet there can be no doubt that
much of what he describes was very real. The nobler elements of his
character were constantly at war with the lower, and although he did not
have sufficient strength of character to lead the noble life of which he had
frequent visions, he had enough innate nobility to despise himself for the
life he did lead. Doubtless there was much of truth in what he wrote in his
journal in Switzerland:—

"But in all, the recollections of bitterness, and more especially of
recent and more home desolation, which must accompany one through
life, have preyed upon me here; and neither the music of the shepherd,

the crashing of the avalanche, or the torrent, the mountain, the glacier,
the forest, or the cloud, have for one moment lightened the weight
upon my heart, or enabled me to lose my own wretched identity in the
majesty, and the power, and the glory around, above, and beneath me."

The close of Byron's life, in Greece, seems to have been one of peculiar
desolation. There is something really tragic in the utter loneliness of such a
death-bed. Years before, he had written concerning his death:—
"When time or soon or late shall bring
The dreamless sleep that lulls the dead,
Oblivion! may thy languid wing
Wave gently o'er my dying bed.

"No band of friends or heirs be there
To weep, or wish the coming blow;
No maiden with dishevelled hair
To feel, or feign, decorous woe.

"But silent let me sink to earth,
With no officious mourners near;
I would not mar one hour of rest
Or startle friendship with a tear."
Never was wish more literally fulfilled than this. There were none but
servants about him in his last hours:—

"In all these attendants," says Parry, "there was an over-officiousness
of zeal; but as they could not understand each other's language their
zeal only added to the confusion. This circumstance, and the want of
common necessaries, made Byron's apartment such a picture at distress
and even anguish during the last two or three days of his life as never
before beheld, and have no wish to witness again."

His remains were taken to England and interred in the family vault in the
Church of Hucknall. His poems are his imperishable monument.

SHELLEY.

The beautiful face of Shelley is one that is familiar to all students of literary
biography, and contends with that of Byron for the distinction of being the
handsomest among the men of letters of his day. Burns was also a picture of
manly beauty, whose features have long been familiar in engravings; but
Byron and Shelley look the ideal poet far more than their sturdier Scottish
brother. The face of Schiller was also one of great charm, and Tennyson and
Longfellow in their youth were also beautiful; but the world is more
familiar with the representations of their later years, and has almost
forgotten the alluring eyes and the flowing locks of the youthful bards.
Shelley always had a girlish look, caused perhaps by a feeble constitution,
and he suffered much from poor health, which added to the delicacy of his

face. But there was a wonderful charm about his countenance even in
childhood, and his eyes seemed like wells into which one might fall. There
was rare sweetness in his smile, too. He was a tall man and very slender,
with a certain squareness of shoulder, and great bodily litheness and
activity. He had an oval face and delicate features. His forehead was high.
His fine dark-brown hair disposed itself in beautiful curls over his brow and
around the back of his neck. The eyes were brown, and the coloring of his
face as soft as that of a girl's, in youth, though he bronzed somewhat during
his life in Italy.
His countenance changed with every passing emotion; his usual look was
earnest, but when joyful he was very bright and animated in expression.
When sad there was something peculiarly touching in his face, and there
was sometimes expressed in his look a mournful weariness of everything.
But there was something noble and commanding in his aspect through all
changes, something hinting of his high and noble birth, as well as of his
genius. He had a peculiar voice, not powerful, but musical and expressive,
and fine agreeable manners when once the shyness of youth had worn off.
That youth was a period of great unhappiness in many ways. He was
irritable and sensitive, and much given to reading and brooding, at which
the other children—or, as he called them "the little fiends—scoffed
incessantly." He had thoughts beyond his years, and found in these his
greatest happiness. He was impatient and full of impulse, with a strong dash
of egotism, like most men of genius.
That he was eccentric beyond the usual eccentricities of genius is known to
all the world. That he set out fully determined to live the ideal life and to
reform the world, is as well known; also, that he failed in both these
attempts,—partly through the limitations of his own nature, and partly that
the contract was too large, even for a man of his undoubted genius.
Shelley was born in the County of Sussex, on the 4th of August, 1792. His
most characteristic childish amusement seems to have been the making of
chemical experiments; and his brothers and sisters were often terrified at the
experiments in electricity which he tried upon them. He was also fond of
making the children personate spirits or fiends, while he burned some
inflammable liquid.

He was full of cheerful fun, and had all the comic vein so agreeable in a
household. His benevolent impulses displayed themselves in his earliest
childhood in his wish to educate some child; and he talked seriously of
purchasing a little girl for that purpose, and actually entered into
negotiations to that effect with a tumbler who came to the back door. His
hatred of tyranny also showed itself at the earliest age, in rebellion against
the rule of the old schoolmistress who educated his sisters.
He was exceedingly precocious, and was thus sent to Eton at an age much
younger than other boys. He was perhaps a little proud of his birth and
breeding; but it was probably more from his inborn hatred of tyranny than
from the former reason, that he utterly refused to "fag" for the older boys,
and in this way got himself at once into trouble in the school. Neither the
cruel vituperation of his fellows nor menaces of punishment upon the part
of his superiors could bend his will to an obedience which could only be
yielded at the expense of self-respect. He was soon withdrawn from Eton,
and was afterwards sent to Oxford. Here his first great enthusiasm was for
chemistry; and the appearance of his room is thus described by a fellow-
student:—

"Books, boots, papers, shoes, philosophical instruments, clothes,
pistols, linen, crockery, ammunition, and phials innumerable, with
money, stockings, paints, crucibles, bags, and boxes, were scattered on
the floor and in every place; as if the young chemist, in order to
analyze the mystery of creation, had endeavored first to reconstruct the
primeval chaos. The tables, and especially the carpet, were already
stained with large spots of various hues, which frequently proclaimed
the agency of fire. An electrical machine, an air-pump, the galvanic
trough, a solar microscope, and large glass jars were conspicuous
amidst the mass of matter. More than one hole in the carpet could
elucidate the ultimate phenomena of combustion,—especially a
formidable aperture in the middle of the room, where the floor had also
been burned by spontaneous combustion; and the horrible wound was
speedily enlarged by rents,—for the philosopher as he hastily crossed
the room in pursuit of truth, was frequently caught in it by the foot."

No student ever read more assiduously than he; and one of his chums said
to him, after he had literally read all day:—

"If I read as long as you read, Shelley, my hair and my teeth would be
strewed about on the floor, and my eyes would slip down into my
waistcoat pockets."

It was only by attracting his attention by some extravagance that he could
be drawn away from his books. He seldom stopped to take a regular meal,
but would have his pockets stuffed with bread, from which he ate from time
to time, anywhere he chanced to be. When he was walking in London he
would suddenly run into a baker's shop, purchase a supply, and breaking a
loaf, offer half of it to his companion; if it was refused he would wonder
that his friend did not like bread, and could scarcely appreciate the joke
when they laughed at him for devouring two or three pounds of dry bread in
the streets.
Very early in life he began to have decided opinions upon religious topics;
and for some of his so-called atheistic tendencies, embodied in his writings,
he was expelled from Oxford at the age of seventeen, without a word of
friendly remonstrance upon the part of the authorities, or any attempt
whatever to counteract the errors which he had imbibed from the reading of
French philosophy. We can scarcely believe it at this day, but it was true.

"At seventeen," says Mrs. Shelley, "fragile in health and frame, of the
purest habits in morals, full of devoted generosity and universal
kindness, glowing with ardor to attain wisdom, resolved at every
personal sacrifice to do right, burning with a desire for affection and
sympathy, he was treated as a reprobate, cast forth as a criminal."

Even his father cast him off on account of his impious opinions, and added
his curse; and had he been in the way of procuring a lettre de cachet, like
Mirabeau's father, he would certainly have sent him to Newgate and kept
him there. As it was, all his friends deserted him, and he lived in lodgings in
London, in a very irregular manner, for some time. Even his cousin Harriet
Grove, with whom he had been in love in his boyish way for a long time,
gave him up, and soon after married another. The affair was not a serious
one upon the part of either; but it cost Shelley some tears at the time. He
soon consoled himself, however, with a schoolmate of his sisters whom he
sometimes met when he went to visit them. Harriet Westbrook was
empowered by his sisters to convey to Percy such sums of money as they

could gather for him; for his father had refused to assist him, and he was in
absolute want at this time. She appeared to Shelley in the guise of a
ministering angel, and his imagination at once took fire. She was a comely,
pleasing, amiable, ordinary girl, who felt herself oppressed because obliged
to go to school, and excited Shelley's sympathy by appearing unhappy. He
soon became entangled with her and her sister, who was older, and who is
accused of furthering the intrigue out of ambition, thinking that the son of a
baronet must be a great match. He writes to a friend in May, 1811:—

"You will perhaps see me before you can answer this; perhaps not;
Heaven knows. I shall certainly come to York, but Harriet Westbrook
will decide whether now or in three weeks. Her father has persecuted
her in a most horrible way by endeavoring to compel her to go to
school. She asked my advice; resistance was the answer,—at the same
time that I essayed to mollify Mr. W. in vain. And in consequence of
my advice, she has thrown herself upon my protection."

The whole history of Shelley's courtship of Harriet—or of her courtship of
him, as many of his friends put it—will probably never be written. It seems
to have been promoted by others quite as much as by themselves. That her
father was not averse to her marriage with the eldest son of a baronet may
be taken for granted, and Shelley was the very man to be duped by
designing parties; of this there can be no doubt. He was but nineteen years
old, and she but sixteen, when they eloped,—of which proceeding there
does not seem to have been any especial need,—and proceeded to
Edinburgh, where they were married. By the time they reached Edinburgh
their money was gone, and Shelley laid the case before his landlord, and
asked him to advance money enough so that they might be married. To this
the landlord consented, and the ceremony was performed. But the landlord,
it appears, presumed somewhat upon the aid he had rendered, and in the
evening, when Shelley and his bride were alone together, he knocked at the
door and told them it was customary there for the guests to come in, in the
middle of the night, and wash the bride with whiskey.

"I immediately," says Shelley, "caught up my brace of pistols, and
pointing them both at him, said to him, 'I have had enough of your
impertinence; if you give me any more of it I will blow your brains

out;' on which he ran or rather tumbled downstairs, and I bolted the
doors."

Even before the honeymoon was over, Harriet's sister Eliza, the evil genius
of the pair, appeared upon the scene. The friend who was with them at the
time thus describes her advent:—

"The house lay, as it were, under an interdict; all our accustomed
occupations were suspended; study was forbidden; reading was
injurious; to read aloud might terminate fatally. To go abroad was
death; to stay at home the grave. Bysshe became nothing; I of course
much less than nothing,—a negative quantity of a very high figure."

That Harriet already had peculiar notions of her own was soon evident. The
same friend writes:—

"'What do you think of suicide?' said Harriet one day. 'Did you ever
think of destroying yourself?' It was a puzzling question, for indeed the
thought had never entered my head. 'What do you think of matricide,
of high treason, of rick-burning? Did you ever think of killing any
one? of murdering your mother? or setting rick-yards on fire?' I
replied."

But Harriet often discoursed at great length, in a calm, resolute manner, of
her purpose of killing herself some day or other. Of their after-housekeeping
in London lodgings Hogg writes:—

"Our dinners therefore were constructive, a dumb show, a mere empty
idle ceremony; our only resource against absolute starvation was tea.
Penny-buns were our assured resource. The survivors of those days of
peril and hardship are indebted for their existence to the humane
interposition and succor of penny-buns. A shilling's worth of penny-
buns for tea. If the purchase was intrusted to the maid, she got such
buns as none could believe to have been made on earth, proving
thereby incontestably that the girl had some direct communication with
the infernal regions, where they alone could have been procured."

The married life was on the whole, when not a roaring farce, almost a
tragedy. Harriet's sister was, like the poor, always with them. Shelley grew
to hate her, and tried in every way to be delivered from her presence, but in
vain. Harriet would not live without her, and paid little attention to anybody
else when she was present. Two children were born to them, but even the
children Shelley was not permitted to enjoy without the constant
supervision of Eliza. He became nearly frantic from the constant
annoyance, and finally a separation came about between the ill-mated pair.
The women themselves became tired of the moping and inefficient youth,
who still remained poor and unsettled, with a father desperately healthy and
inexorable. They grew tired and went away,—the wife, like Lady Byron,
refusing to go back to such an aimless, rhapsodizing husband. And in truth,
the hardship of living with such a man as Shelley, for a woman like Harriet,
must have been very great. It is easy to understand how a limited nature like
hers should be worn out by the exaction and impracticability of one like
Shelley; for to her, most impracticable would seem his lofty and ideal
requirements. The parting was not unfriendly, and Shelley always spoke of
her with deep kindness and pity, and she continued to write to him for some
time after he had formed his connection with Mary Godwin, of which she
did not seem to disapprove. He had found a sort of comfort in his
intercourse with Mary from his first acquaintance with her, and she was
probably the first woman he had ever known who in any way understood or
appreciated him. Some lines have been given in the "Relics," written to her
at this time, which run thus:—
"Upon my heart thy accents sweet
Of peace and pity fell like dew
On flowers half-dead. . . .

"We are not happy, sweet! our state
Is strange and full of doubt and fear;
More need of words that ills abate;—
Reserve or censure come not near
Our sacred friendship, lest there be
No solace left for thee or me."
Shelley and Mary seem to have been very happy with each other from the
first, although they felt the keenest sorrow at his being deprived by the

Court of Chancery of the guardianship of his children, on the alleged
grounds of his atheism, and although they were inexpressibly pained and
shocked at the suicide of Harriet, which occurred about two years after the
separation.
Her death seems to have had no immediate connection with any act of
Shelley's, but he mourned over it with great bitterness to the end of his life.
He married Mary in a legal manner soon after Harriet's death, and of course
a most violent storm of detraction and denunciation burst upon his head. He
soon retired to Italy, where he first met Byron, and he passed nearly all the
rest of his life there. Poor Harriet was only twenty-two at the time of her
tragic death. Whatever may have been the errors of her life, she had
suffered much in their expiation. After her return to her father's house it
appears that she was treated with unkindness, and fell into some
irregularities of life,—how great, remains still a disputed point. But no one
charges anything against her up to the time of her separation from Shelley,
except that she was almost as foolish and impracticable as himself.
Shelley's fancy for her was that of a mere boy, and his friend Mr. Peacock
thus describes the conflict of his feelings after meeting Mary Godwin:—

"Between his old feelings towards Harriet, from whom he was not then
separated, and his new passion for Mary, he showed in his looks, in his
gestures, in his speech, the state of a mind suffering, like a little
kingdom, the nature of an insurrection. His eyes were bloodshot, his
hair and dress disordered. He frequently repeated the lines from
Sophocles,—

'Man's happiest lot is not to be;
And when we tread life's thorny steep,
Most blest are they who, earliest free,
Descend to death's eternal sleep.'"
Godwin, it appears, tried hard to re-unite Shelley and Harriet, and
disapproved entirely of the new connection. Mary was but seventeen years
old, very beautiful, and possessed of genius; and her father, moral
considerations entirely aside, did not look upon Shelley as a suitable
husband for her. But Shelley had conceived for her the one violent,

uncontrollable passion of his life, and she was very easily brought under his
influence, in spite of the disapproval of her father. Mary had not been
brought up with conventional ideas upon the subject of marriage (her own
mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, having had very unusual opinions upon that
subject), and she fell an easy victim to Shelley's impassioned eloquence,
when he urged her to flee with him from an uncongenial home. Shelley
appeared to Mary as almost a divine being, and her worshipful love never
waned, even during her long widowhood of thirty years' duration. For
Shelley, in the whole matter, there seems to be no valid excuse. He
deliberately defied the world and the world's ways, and even his memory
must bear the fatal consequences. If we allow his genius to excuse his acts,
we are setting up a precedent which we have only to imagine universally
carried out to produce not only moral revolution but chaos throughout the
social world. He sinned like an ordinary mortal, he suffered also in the same
wise, and in the memory of man he must be held to the same responsibility
as his fellows. But his unworldliness may well be taken into the account. He
lived in a sort of dreamworld of his own, and the thoughts and opinions and
feelings of ordinary men upon matters of life and conduct were so different
from his that he could hardly comprehend the value they had in the eyes of
their possessors. Born to rank and wealth, he desired to induce every rich
man to despoil himself of superfluity, and to create a brotherhood of
property and service, and was ready to be the first one to lay down the
advantages of his birth. Born with the most fanatical love of liberty, he
looked upon all the conventionalities of the world as tyranny, and defied all
restraints of authority from his earliest youth. He believed the opinions he
entertained to be true, and he loved truth with a martyr's love; he was ready
to sacrifice station and fortune and his dearest affections at her shrine. With
the rashness of youth he proclaimed all the wildest of his opinions, and
upheld them with uncompromising zeal. In his acts he rushed into the face
of the world in the same defiant manner; and the world did not fail to take
her revenge upon him. But posterity will do him justice; it will see him,
noble, kind, passionate, generous, tender, brave, with an unbounded and
unquestioning love for his fellow-men, with a holy and fervid hope in their
ultimate virtue and happiness, and an intense and passionate scorn for all
baseness and oppression.

Already about his grave in a foreign land there gather many pilgrims, not
only from his own country, but from beyond the sea; and as they read the
inscription there,—
"Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea change into something rich and strange,"—
they think that the misconceptions which hung over him during life are
gradually suffering such a change, and they thank God amid their tears.

WASHINGTON IRVING.

It is a little over one hundred years since Washington Irving was born; and
it is nearly thirty years since he ceased to charm the reading world by the
work of his genial and graceful pen. For fifty long and fruitful years he was
our pride and boast, and his memory will for many a long year yet be green
in the hearts of his countrymen. He was our first and best humorist. Before
his advent, what little writing had been done in this country was mostly of
the sentimental and tearful sort. And for many years after he began to write,

it was much the same. Weeping poetesses filled whole columns with their
tears, and in every local sheet new Werthers were trying to tell of the
worthlessness of life and the beauties of dying. Young bards were inditing
odes to melancholy, and everybody was chanting in chorus, if not the
words, at least the sentiment of, "how sublime a thing it is to suffer and be
strong." There was no laughter in the land.
Could a collection of these mournful melodies have been made, and these
lorn lyrists have been induced to glance over it, it seems to us that they
must have received it with inextinguishable laughter. Each delicate little
wail when taken by itself was not so bad, but the united wail of this band of
broken-hearted singers would have produced, instead of tears, laughter both
long and deep. This doleful period lasted long after Irving had begun to
write in a different vein, and has lasted in too large a measure even to this
day; but he began the corrective process, and has had more influence for
good in that direction than any of our other writers. At a later day Dr.
Holmes began to write almost, if not quite, "as funny as he could." Charles
G. Leland, in his "Sunshine-in-Thought" series, in the old "Knickerbocker,"
ridiculed the prevailing weakness so forcibly and effectually that some
stopped groaning through sheer shame. Charles Dudley Warner sent a smile
over the set features of the nation when he wrote of his "Summer in a
Garden;" and Willis told in his "Fun Jottings" about some of the laughs he
had taken a pen to. But none of these had the magic touch of Irving,
although each in his own way was inimitable; and during these later years,
when the professional humorist has become one of our established
institutions, no writer has arisen to wear the mantle which fell from the
shoulders of Washington Irving. Bret Harte, doubtless, made us laugh more.
Irving could by no possibility ever have written the "Heathen Chinee," or
those other bits of compressed humor called Poems; but Bret Harte is not
exactly a lineal descendant of Irving. Mark Twain also can produce a roar, a
thing which Irving never did. But, though it has been a good thing for the
American people to roar with Mark Twain, we are all desirous to see some
writer arise who, with as keen an eye as his for the humorous side of life,
shall have a delicacy of touch which he lacks, and a refinement of
expression to which he is a stranger.
Washington Irving was born in the city of New York in 1783, the youngest
of eleven children born to his parents. At that time New York was a rural

city of twenty-three thousand inhabitants clustered about the Battery. The
Irvings were descendants of the old Scotch Covenanters, and were strict
Presbyterians. The home rule was one of austerity and repression. The
children were brought up on the catechism and the Thirty-Nine Articles. As
they grew older all were repelled from the church of the father by the
severity of its dogmas, and all except one attached themselves to the
Episcopal Church. Washington, we are told by Mr. Warner, "in order to
make sure of his escape and feel safe, while he was still constrained to
attend his father's church, went stealthily to Trinity Church at an early age
and received the rite of confirmation." He was of a joyous and genial
temperament, full of life and vivacity, and not at all inclined to religious
seriousness. He was born with a passion for music, and was also a great
lover of the theatre. These things, in the eyes of his father, were serious
evils, and he felt great anxiety for the son's spiritual welfare. The
gladsomeness and sportiveness of the boy's nature were things which he
could not understand, and he feared that they were of the Evil One. There
was no room in the darkness of his religions creed for anything that was
simply bright and joyous. To save one's soul was the business of life; all
things else were secondary and of small importance. Of course, he worried
much over this handsome, dashing, susceptible, music-loving, laughter-
loving son, and doubtless shed many tears over his waywardness. Yet there
was nothing wild about the boy. The writing of plays seems to have been
his worst boyish offence. His first published writings were audacious satires
upon the theatre, the actors, and the local audiences. They had some
promise, and attracted some attention in the poverty of those times.
At the age of twenty-one he was in such delicate health that a voyage to
Europe was looked upon as the only means of saving his life. He
accordingly embarked for Bordeaux and made an extended tour of Europe,
loitering in many places for weeks at a time, and laying up a store of
memories which gave him pleasure throughout life. In Rome he came
across Washington Allston, then unknown to fame. He was about three
years older than Irving, and just establishing himself as a painter. Irving was
completely captivated with the young Southerner, and they formed a very
romantic friendship for each other.
Irving even dreamed of remaining in Rome and turning artist himself, that
he might always be near his friend. He had a great dread of returning to the

New World and settling down to the uncongenial work of the law, and he
fancied he had some talent for art. He certainly had one essential
qualification,—a passionate love of color, and an eye for its harmonies.
This love was a great source of pleasure to him throughout life. He always
thought that he might have succeeded as a landscape painter. However this
might be, the gift of color-loving is in itself a rich endowment to any mind.
There are few purer and higher sources of enjoyment in this life than this
love of color, and it is a possession which ought to be cultivated in every
child.
But the art scheme was soon abandoned, and he went on to London, where
he began his literary work. His name of Washington attracted considerable
attention there, and he was frequently asked if he was a relative of General
Washington. A few years later, after he had written the "Sketch Book," two
women were overheard in conversation near the bust of Washington in a
large gallery. "Mother, who was Washington?" "Why, my dear, don't you
know?" was the reply, "he wrote the 'Sketch Book.'"
Soon after the book was published Irving was one night in the room with
Mrs. Siddons, the Queen of Tragedy. She carried her tragic airs even into
private life, it is said, and when Irving was presented to her, he, being
young and modest, was somewhat taken aback on being greeted with the
single sentence, given in her grandest stage voice and with the most lofty
stateliness, "You have made me weep." He could find no words to reply,
and shrank away in silence. A very short time after he met with her again,
and, although he sought to avoid her, she recognized him and repeated in
tones as tragic as at first, "You have made me weep;" which salutation had
the effect of discomfiting Irving for the second time.
He returned to New York in 1806, and was much sought after in society
from that time on. It was a very convivial company, that of old New York in
the early part of the century, and Irving entered into its pleasures with the
rest of his friends. Late suppers and good wine sometimes rendered these
young men rather hilarious, and one evening, going home, Harry Ogden,
Irving's chum, fell through a grating into a vault beneath. He told Irving
next day that the solitude was rather dismal at first, but in a little while,
after the party broke up, several other guests came along and fell in one by
one, and then they all had a pleasant night of it, "who would have thought,"

said Irving to Governor Kemble, in alluding, at the age of sixty-six, to these
scenes of high jollity, "that we should ever have lived to be two such
respectable old gentlemen!"
It was during these years that he made the acquaintance and learned to love
so deeply Matilda Hoffman, a beautiful young girl, daughter of one of his
older friends. She was a most lovely person, in body and mind, and in his
eyes the paragon of womanhood. He was young, romantic, full of
sensibility, and his love for this beautiful girl filled his whole life. He was
poor and could not marry, but he had many arguments with himself about
the propriety of doing so even without an income. "I think," he finally
writes, "that these early and improvident marriages are too apt to break
down the spirit and energy of a young man, and make him a hard-working,
half-starving, repining animal all his days." And again: "Young men in our
country think it a great extravagance to set up a horse and carriage without
adequate means, but they make no account of setting up a wife and family,
which is far more expensive." But while he was looking about on every side
for some way to better his fortunes, that he might take to his home this
woman he loved so tenderly, her health began to fail, and in a short time he
was deprived by death of her companionship. His sorrow was life-long, and
it was a sorrow which he held sacredly in his own heart. He never
mentioned her name, even to family friends, and they learned to avoid any
allusion to her, he was so overcome with emotion when merely hearing her
name spoken. This was in his early youth, and throughout a long life he
held himself faithful to her memory,—never, it is believed, wavering once
in his allegiance. Thackeray refers to this as one of the most pleasing things
he knew of Irving.
It was at this time that he was writing the "History of New York." He wrote
afterward:—

"When I became more calm and collected I applied myself by way of
occupation to the finishing of my work. I brought it to a close as well
as I could, and published it; but the time and circumstances in which it
was produced rendered me always unable to look upon it with
satisfaction."

His countenance long retained the trace of his melancholy, and he was ever
after a more subdued and quiet man. After his death a beautiful picture and
lock of hair were found among his private papers marked in his hand-
writing, "Matilda Hoffman." He also kept by him throughout life her Bible
and Prayer-Book. He lay with them under his pillow in the first days of his
anguish, and carried them with him always in all lands to the end of his life.
In a little private notebook intended only for his own eye were found these
words after his death: "She died in the beauty of her youth, and in my
memory she will ever be young and beautiful." Truly, not an unhappy fate
as the world goes,—to live thus in the memory of such a man. What would
years and cares and the commonplace of existence have done for such a
love as this, we wonder? We shall never know. But we have all seen loves
apparently as pure and as strong, worn away by the attritions of life,—by
the daily labor for daily bread, by little incessant worries and faults and
foibles upon the part of one or both,—until there was nothing left of the
early color of romance; only a faded web of life where once was cloth of
gold. How sweet to many a faded and careworn woman would be the
thought of being always young and beautiful to the man she loved.
Fortunate Matilda Hoffman of the olden time!
In 1817 he went again to Europe, and while there definitely made up his
mind to look upon literature as his profession,—an almost unheard of thing
in America at that time. He writes to his brother:—

"For a long while past I have lived almost entirely at home, sometimes
not leaving the house for two or three days, and yet I have not had an
hour pass heavily; so that if I could see my brothers around me
prospering, and be relieved from this cloud that hangs over us all, I
feel as if I could be contented to give up all the gayeties of life; I
certainly think that no hope of gain, however flattering, would tempt
me again into the cares and sordid concerns of traffic. . . . In
protracting my stay in Europe, I certainly do not contemplate pleasure,
for I look forward to a life of loneliness and of parsimonious and
almost painful economy."

Some time after this he wrote to a friend:—

"Your picture of domestic enjoyment indeed raises my envy. With all
my wandering habits, which are the result of circumstances rather than
of disposition, I think I was formed for an honest, domestic, uxorious
man; and I cannot hear of my old cronies snugly nestled down with
good wives and fine children round them, but I feel for the moment
desolate and forlorn. Heavens! what a hap-hazard, schemeless life
mine has been, that here I should be at this time of life, youth slipping
away, and scribbling month after month, and year after year, far from
home, without any means or prospect of entering into matrimony,
which I absolutely believe indispensable to the happiness and even
comfort of the after-part of existence."

He was thus described at this time:—

"He was thoroughly a gentleman, not merely in external manners and
looks, but to the innermost fibres and core of his heart; sweet-
tempered, gentle, fastidious, sensitive, and gifted with warmest
affections; the most delightful and invariably interesting companion;
gay and full of humor, even in spite of occasional fits of melancholy,
which he was, however, seldom subject to when with those he liked; a
gift of conversation that flowed like a full river in sunshine,—bright,
easy, and abundant."

In his fiftieth year he returned to America, far from rich, though he had
made money from his books. Although he had thought he could not support
a family of his own, he found himself with two brothers and several nieces
upon his hands for whom he must provide. He was very fond of them all;
and, being the least selfish of men, enjoyed making them all comfortable.
But to do so he had to be industrious with his pen, and he never gave
himself much rest. He bought a home at Tarrytown, upon the Hudson,
which he called Sunnyside, and where he resided till his death. The farm
had on it a small Dutch cottage, built about a century before, and inhabited
by the Van Tassels. This was enlarged, still preserving the quaint Dutch
characteristics; it acquired a tower and a whimsical weathercock, the delight
of the owner, and became one of the most snug and picturesque residences
on the river. A slip of Melrose ivy was planted, and soon overrun the house;
and there were shaded nooks and wooded retreats, and a pretty garden.

It soon became the dearest spot on earth for him; and although it ate up his
money almost as fast as he could earn it, he never thought of parting with it.
The little cottage soon became well stocked. He writes:—

"I have Ebenezer's five girls, and himself also whenever he can be
spared from town, sister Catherine and her daughter, and occasional
visits from all the family connection."

Thackeray describes him as having nine nieces on his hands, and makes a
woful face over the fact. He dispensed a charming hospitality here, and no
friend who ever visited him forgot the pleasure. He was a most genial and
cordial host, and loved much to have his friends bring the children, of
whom he was passionately fond. His nieces watched over his welfare with
most tender solicitude; and the cottage at Sunnyside, although without a
mistress, was truly a home.
It was with great reluctance that he left it after his appointment as minister
to Spain, and all the pleasure he received from that high mark of the
appreciation of his country did not compensate him for the hardship of
leaving home. During this third visit to Europe "it is easy to see that life has
grown rather sombre to Irving,—the glamour is gone, he is subject to few
illusions. The show and pageantry no longer enchant; they only weary." He
writes home: "Amidst all the splendors of London and Paris I find my
imagination refuses to take fire, and my heart still yearns after dear little
Sunnyside." Those were exciting times in Spain, and Irving entered into all
the dramatic interest of the situation with a real enthusiasm, and wrote most
interesting letters to friends at home, describing the melodrama in which he
had sometimes an even perilous interest. Throughout his four years' stay the
excitement continued, and the duties of minister were sometimes perplexing
enough. From the midst of court life, in 1845, he wrote:—

"I long to be back once more at dear little Sunnyside, while I have yet
strength and good spirits to enjoy the simple pleasures of the country,
and to rally a happy family group once more around me. I grudge
every year of absence that rolls by. To-morrow I shall be sixty-two
years old. The evening of life is fast drawing over me; still I hope to
get back among my friends while there is a little sunshine left."

In 1846 he did return, and enjoyed thirteen years more of happy life there.
George W. Curtis thus delightfully sketches the man:—

"Irving was as quaint a figure as Diedrich Knickerbocker in the
preliminary advertisement of the 'History of New York.' Thirty years
ago he might have been seen on an autumnal afternoon, tripping with
an elastic step along Broadway, with low-quartered shoes neatly tied,
and a Talma cloak,—a short garment that hung from his shoulders like
the cape of a coat. There was a chirping, cheery, old-school air in his
appearance, which was undeniably Dutch, and most harmonious with
the associations of his writings. He seemed, indeed, to have stepped
out of his own books; and the cordial grace and humor of his address
were delightfully characteristic."

Through all the honors which he received—and he was one of the most
honored men of his day—he was always modest, unassuming, and even
diffident. He was the most cheerful of men, and seemed to diffuse sunshine
wherever he went. He was essentially lovable, and could hardly be said to
have made an enemy during his life. Indeed, one of his lacks was that of
aggressiveness; it would have given a deeper force to his character and
brought out some qualities that were latent in him.
He died on the 28th of November, 1859, at the close of a lovely Indian-
summer day, and was buried on a little elevation overlooking Sleepy
Hollow. Near by winds the lovely Hudson, up and down which go the
white-winged boats bearing tourists to view the river he so loved, and over
which hangs the blue haze he has so often described, softening everything
in its gauzy folds. The feet of those he loved go in and out at Sunnyside,
and his memory is a benediction.

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.

In a fragment of autobiography which Mr. Bryant left among his papers, he
speaks thus of his childhood:—

"So my time passed in study, diversified with labor and recreation. In
the long winter evenings and the stormy winter days I read with my
brother books from my father's library,—not a large one, but well
chosen. I remember well the delight with which we welcomed the
translation of the Iliad by Pope when it was brought to the house. I had
met with passages from it before, and thought them the finest verses
ever written. My brother and myself, in emulation of ancient heroes,
made for ourselves wooden shields, swords, and spears, and fashioned
old hats in the shape of helmets, with plumes of tow; and in the barn,
when nobody observed us, we fought the battles of the Greeks and
Trojans over again.

"I was always, from my earliest years, a delighted observer of external
nature,—the splendors of a winter daybreak over the wide wastes of
snow seen from our windows; the glories of the autumnal woods; the
gloomy approaches of the thunderstorm, and its departure amid
sunshine and rainbows; the return of spring with its flowers; and the
first snowfall of winter. I cannot say, as some do, that I found my
boyhood the happiest part of my life. I had more frequent ailments
than afterward; my hopes were more feverish and impatient, and my
disappointments were more acute; the restraints on my liberty of
action, although meant for my good, were irksome, and felt as fetters
that galled my spirit and gave it pain. After-years, if their pleasures had
not the same zest, were passed in more contentment, and the more
freedom of choice I had, the better, on the whole, I enjoyed life."

Among the prayers of his childhood he mentions that he often prayed that
he might be endowed with poetic genius, and write verses which should
endure. And he began at a very early age to make attempts in this direction,
which seem somewhat less crude than the mass of such productions. He
was taught Latin by the Rev. Thomas Snell, his uncle, and Greek by the
Rev. Moses Hallock, a neighboring minister, who boarded and instructed
him for a dollar a week. He continued his studies at Williams College,
although he never was graduated, being taken from college from motives of
economy.
The town of Cummington, where he was born, is a little hamlet among the
hills in Hampshire County in western Massachusetts. The country around is
mountainous, and the valleys very beautiful. The poet was always much
attached to the region, and when he had become an old man bought the old
family home and fitted it up as a summer residence, where he used to gather
together the remaining members of the family, and enjoy himself highly in
exploring the country round about as he had done in the days of his
boyhood. Many stories are told of his pedestrian feats, even after he was
seventy-five years old; and he sometimes walked ten or twelve miles when
in his eightieth year. He retained his boyish love for plants and flowers, and
was as enthusiastic as in youth over a rare specimen or a beautiful bit of
landscape. He further evinced his interest in the old home by presenting the
town with a fine library of six thousand volumes, and building a suitable

house for its accommodation upon a beautiful site which he purchased for
that purpose.
Upon leaving school Mr. Bryant pursued the study of law, and entered upon
its practice, first in Plainfield, and afterward in Great Barrington, a pleasant
village in Berkshire County, on the banks of the Housatonic. While
studying at Worthington, a distinguished friend of his father came from
Rhode Island upon a visit, bringing with him a beautiful and accomplished
daughter, to whom the young poet at once lost his heart. The passion seems
to have been reciprocated, if we can judge by the assiduity with which the
correspondence was carried on after her return; but some unknown cause
seems to have broken off the fascinating romance, and after a year or two
we hear of it no more. That the end was painful to Mr. Bryant, we have
reason to suspect from his poems and letters; but as to how the lady felt, we
have no evidence. The verses show little promise of the work which the
young poet soon afterward did, but they are not entirely without charm:—
"The home thy presence made so dear,
I leave,—the parting hour is past;
Yet thy sweet image haunts me here,
In tears as when I saw thee last.

"It meets me where the woods are deep,
It comes when twilight tints depart,
It bends above me while I sleep,
With pensive looks that pierce my heart."
In another little poem we are informed,—
"The gales of June were breathing by,
The twilight's last faint rays were gleaming,
And midway in the moonless sky
The star of Love was brightly beaming.

"When by the stream, the birchen boughs
Dark o'er the level marge were playing,
The maiden of my secret vows
I met, alone, and idly straying.

"And since that hour,—for then my love
Consenting heard my passion pleaded,—
Full well she knows the star of Love,
And loves the stream with beeches shaded."
The poet had quite a lengthened season of darkness and despair after this
love-dream came to an end, and it must be confessed wrote a good deal of
very bad poetry, none of which he placed in collections of his poems, but
some of which have been published by his biographer. They are rather
worse than the usual run of such poems, which may indicate that the feeling
was really deeper,—too deep for expression in verse,—or that it was not as
deep and lasting as some of the first loves of poets. As he had already
written "Thanatopsis" and other fine poems, it is rather surprising that there
are so few gleams of the true poetic fire in these amatory verses.
As is usual in such cases, he did not recover from the old love until he had
discovered a new one, and he did this in his new residence, not long after
his arrival there. The second lady of his choice was Miss Fanny Fairchild,
daughter of a well-to-do and respectable farmer on the Green River. She
was nineteen years old at the time, a "very pretty blonde, small in person,
with light-brown hair, gray eyes, a graceful shape, a dainty foot, transparent
and delicate hands, and a wonderfully frank and sweet expression of face."
She was as sensible as beautiful, and had great charm of manner, which she
retained to the end of her life. He soon engaged himself to Miss Fairchild,
and the course of their love ran smoothly throughout a long life. To show
with what deep feeling and earnestness they entered upon their new
relations, the following prayer, dated 1820, has been printed, which was
found among Mr. Bryant's private papers after his death:—

"May God Almighty mercifully take care of our happiness here and
hereafter. May we ever continue constant to each other, and mindful of
our mutual promises of attachment and truth. In due time, if it be the
will of Providence, may we become more nearly connected with each
other, and together may we lead a long, happy, and innocent life,
without any diminution of affection till we die. May there never be any
jealousy, distrust, coldness, or dissatisfaction between us, nor occasion
for any,—nothing but kindness, forbearance, mutual confidence, and

attention to each other's happiness. And that we may be less unworthy
of so great a blessing, may we be assisted to cultivate all the benign
and charitable affections and offices, not only toward each other, but
toward our neighbors, the human race, and all the creatures of God.
And in all things wherein we have done ill, may we properly repent
our error, and may God forgive us, and dispose us to do better. When
at last we are called to render back the life we have received, may our
deaths be peaceful, and may God take us to his bosom. All which may
He grant for the sake of the Messiah."

If ever a prayer was granted, it seems to have been so in this instance, for in
every detail it was fulfilled in the lives which followed. So rarely beautiful
a marriage has seldom been seen, as the one which was entered into in this
solemn and lofty manner, by this young and high-minded couple. The days
of their pilgrimage were many, but they grew more and more beautiful until
the final parting; and when the separation at last came, in the fulness of
time, the old poet mourned, with a grief which could not be comforted, for
the companion of his youth, the delight of his mature years, and the idol of
his old age. Forty-five years they lived together, and after her death he
wrote to his brother:—

"We have been married more than forty-five years, and all my plans,
even to the least important, were laid with some reference to her
judgment or her pleasure. I always knew it would be the greatest
calamity of my life to lose her, but not till the blow fell did I know
how heavy it would be, and what a solitude the earth would seem
without her."

To another brother he said:—

"Her life seemed to me to close prematurely, so useful was she, and so
much occupied in doing good; and yet she was in her seventieth year.
It is now more than forty-five years since we were married,—a long
time, as the world goes, for husband and wife to live together. Bitter as
the separation is, I give thanks that she has been spared to me so long,
and that for nearly a half-century I have had the benefit of her counsel
and her example."

In a brief memoir of their intercourse, prepared for the eyes of his daughters
alone, he said:—

"I never wrote a poem that I did not repeat to her, and take her
judgment upon it. I found its success with the public to be precisely in
proportion to the impression it made upon her. She loved my verses,
and judged them kindly, but did not like them all equally well."

One who knew her well thus describes her character:—

"Never did poet have a truer companion, a sincerer spiritual helpmate,
than Mr. Bryant in his wife. Refined in taste, and elevated in thought,
she was characterized alike by goodness and gentleness. Modest in her
ways, she lived wholly for him; his welfare, his happiness, his fame,
were the chief objects of her ambition. To smooth his pathway, to
cheer his spirit, to harmonize every discordant element of life, were
purposes for the accomplishment of which no sacrifice on her part
could be too great."

Another who visited them familiarly in their home wrote:—

"In the autumn of 1863, we visited Mr. and Mrs. Bryant at West Point,
where they occupied Mr. John Bigelow's charming cottage, 'The
Squirrels.' From there we accompanied them to Roslyn, and spent a
week under their own roof-tree. How much we enjoyed those days, I
need not say. Mrs. Bryant's health was very delicate, and she sat much
in her large arm-chair by the open wood-fire which blazed under the
old tiles of the chimney-place. Mr. Bryant sat at her feet when he read
in the autumn twilight those exquisite lines, 'The Life that Is.' Such
was our last meeting with our dear Mrs. Bryant. I never saw her again,
but the thought of her dwells like a sweet strain of music amid the
varied notes of human life, and will be ours again when 'beyond these
voices there is peace.' The union between Mr. and Mrs. Bryant was a
poem of the tenderest rhythm. Any of us who remember Mr. Bryant's
voice when he said 'Frances' will join in his hope that she kept the
same beloved name in heaven. I remember alluding to those exquisite
lines, 'The Future Life,' to Mrs. Bryant, and her replying, 'Oh, my dear,
I am always sorry for any one who sees me after reading those lines,

they must be so disappointed.' Beatrice and Laura have not received
such tributes from their poets, for Mrs. Bryant's husband was her poet
and her lover at seventy as at seventeen."

After Mrs. Bryant had been dead seven years, Mr. Bryant wrote the
following poem, showing how tenderly he cherished her memory:—
The morn hath not the glory that it wore,
Nor doth the day so beautifully die,
Since I can call thee to my side no more,
To gaze upon the sky.

For thy dear hand, with each return of Spring,
I sought in sunny nooks the flowers she gave;
I seek them still, and sorrowfully bring
The choicest to thy grave.

Here, where I sit alone, is sometimes heard,
From the great world, a whisper of my name,
Joined, haply, to some kind commending word,
By those whose praise is fame.

And then, as if I thought thou still wert nigh,
I turn me, half-forgetting thou art dead,
To read the gentle gladness in thine eye
That once I might have read.

I turn, but see thee not; before my eyes
The image of a hillside mound appears,
Where all of thee that passed not to the skies
Was laid with bitter tears.

And I, whose thoughts go back to happier days
That fled with thee, would gladly now resign
All that the world can give of fame or praise
For one sweet look of thine.

Thus ever, when I read of generous deeds,

Such words as thou didst once delight to hear,
My heart is wrung with anguish as it bleeds
To think thou art not near.

And now that I can talk no more with thee
Of ancient friends and days too fair to last,
A bitterness blends with the memory
Of all that happy past.
That past had, indeed, been happy and most successful from every worldly
point of view. He had published his poems, while still a young man, and
they had made him famous at once. For more than fifty years he was
honored as one of the first of the poets of America, and for a large part of
that time he was held as indisputably the first in rank. His work received
honors and commendation over the sea as well as at home, almost from the
first. It seems very curious to us now to think of his selling the very finest
of his poems for two dollars apiece; yet he did that, and seemed satisfied
with the compensation. In later life, when two hundred dollars would have
been gladly paid him for such poems, he declined to write, saying that no
man should write poetry in old age. The greater part of his poetry was
written before he went to New York and became editor-in-chief of the
"Evening Post." After that time he was always driven by newspaper work
and involved in political controversy, and rarely wrote verses. In old age he
made his translations of the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey," which were very
remarkable works for a man of his years; but he seldom wrote an original
poem, although what he did write scarcely showed a falling off from the
work of his prime.
He was very conscientious in his work as an editor, and was honored by the
entire nation for the noble and patriotic course he took at the time of the
anti-slavery excitement, and throughout the Civil war. Men will long
remember the brave and spirited utterances of his paper during that time
that so tried men's souls. He did much, during his long career as an editor,
for American literature, for American art, and for the general culture of his
countrymen. In his numerous visits to Europe he learned much of the
workings of the institutions of the Old World, and gave his readers the
benefit of his studies of the comparative merits of Old and New World
methods; and while always fair in his judgments, he was always patriotic,

and stood gallantly by his own land. He was much honored while abroad, as
well as at home, and made acquaintance with many distinguished men in
foreign lands. Mr. Bryant had been brought up a Unitarian, and he
maintained his connection with that church throughout life. Many of his
dearest friends were among the ministers of that denomination, and he
wrote many of his most beautiful hymns for occasions connected with that
church. He was always a devoutly religious man, but grew even more so in
later life. During a long sickness which his wife had in Naples in 1858, his
thoughts became more and more fixed upon this subject; and meeting with
an old friend there, the Rev. Mr. Waterson, he opened his mind to him as
perhaps he had never done to any one before. Mr. Waterson tells us:—

"At this time I received a note from him stating that there was a subject
of interest upon which he would like to converse with me. On the
following day, the weather being delightful, we walked in the Villa
Reale, the royal park or garden, overlooking the Bay of Naples. Never
can I forget the beautiful spirit that breathed through every word he
uttered,—the reverent love, the confiding trust, the aspiring hope, the
rooted faith. Every thought, every view, was generous and
comprehensive. Anxiously watching, as he had been doing, in that
twilight boundary between this world and another, over one more
precious to him than life itself, the divine truths and promises had
come home to his mind with new power. He said he had never united
himself with the Church, which with his present feelings he would
most gladly do. He then asked if it would be agreeable to me to come
to his room on the morrow, and administer the Communion,—adding
that as he had not been baptized, he desired that ordinance at the same
time. The day following was the Sabbath, and a most heavenly day. In
fulfilment of his wishes, in his own quiet room, a company of seven
persons celebrated together the Lord's Supper. With hymns, selections
from the Scripture, and devotional exercises, we went back in thought
to the large upper-room where Christ first instituted the Holy Supper in
the midst of his disciples. Previous to the breaking of bread, William
Cullen Bryant was baptized. With snow-white head and flowing beard,
he stood like one of the ancient prophets; and never, perhaps, since the
days of the Apostles, has a truer disciple professed allegiance to the
Divine Master."

A purer and nobler life than Mr. Bryant led has hardly been chronicled in
our day; and the quiet and calm of his closing years was a fitting end to
such a life. He was tenderly cared for during these years by his daughters,
to whom he was most devotedly attached. His son-in-law, Parke Godwin,
thus writes of the closing years:—

"It was very curious to his friends to observe how he had mellowed
with time. The irritabilities of his earlier days had been wholly
overcome; his reluctance to mingle with men was quite gone; and old
age, which makes so many of us exacting and crabbed, if not morose,
imparted to him additional gentleness and sweetness. He had learned
to live more and more in the happiness of others, and was rewarded for
his unconscious devotion by new streams of happiness constantly
opening in his bosom."

He even learned to take good-naturedly what had annoyed him a good deal
in an earlier time, namely, the results of his fame. He writes thus to a friend
in extreme old age:—

"Is there a penny-post, do you think, in the world to come? Do people
there write for autographs to those who have gained a little notoriety?
Do women there send letters asking for money? Do boys persecute
literary men with requests for a course of reading? Are there offices in
that sphere which are coveted, and to obtain which men are pestered to
write letters of recommendation? If anything of this kind takes place in
the spirit-world it may, perhaps, be of a purgatorial nature, or perhaps
be the fate of the incorrigible sinner. Here on earth this discipline never
ends; and if it exists at all in the other world, it is of a kind which will,
of course, never cease. On this account I am inclined to believe that the
punishment for sin may be of endless duration; for here the
annoyances and miseries which I have mentioned only cease with
death, and in the other world, where there is no death, they will, of
course, never come to an end."

To another correspondent he writes:—

"How is it in the world to come? Will patience have had her perfect
work in this sphere, or is the virtue to be exercised there, until we shall

have acquired an evenness of temper which no possible provocation
can disturb? Are the bores to be all penned in a corner by themselves,
or are they to be let loose to educate the saints to the sublimest degree
of patience of which our nature is capable? These are deep questions. I
do not remember that you have given any special attention to the use
of bores in the moral government of the world in your book on 'The
Problem of Human Destiny.' I admit their utility as a class: they serve a
most excellent purpose; but whether we are to be annoyed with them
in the next world is the doubt. Some of them are most worthy people,
and capital Christians, and cannot be kept out of Paradise; but will they
be allowed to torment the elect there?"

Probably the title of the Great American could be as fittingly applied to
Bryant as to any man our nation has produced. He has been happily called
the Puritan Greek; and this epithet applies equally well to his life and to his
writings. If he was a Stoic in his earlier years, he was as unmistakably a
Christian in later life. During both periods he was pure as ice, lofty in
thought, noble in deed,—an inspiration toward the True Life to all who
watched his course. No errors of passion or of overheated blood did he have
to mourn over, even in youth; yet he was not cold or unimpassioned, as his
deep devotion throughout life to the woman of his choice proved. He led
emphatically the intellectual life, with as little admixture of the flesh as
possible; yet the warm currents of feeling were never dried up in his nature,
but bubbled up freshly to the end. He lived largely on the heights of life, yet
he was not uncharitable to the weaknesses and follies he saw everywhere
about him, but rather looked upon them with a half-pitying tenderness; and
he dropped a tear occasionally where the integrity of his own nature
counselled a stern reproof.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON.

"I have seen Emerson, the first man I have ever seen," wrote George Eliot
in her diary many years ago. Carlyle uses similar expressions in his letters
at least a score of times. Sentences like the following appear very often:—

"It remains true and will remain, what I have often told you, that
properly there is no voice in this world which is completely human to
me but your voice only."

Again:—

"In the whole world I hardly get to my spoken human word any other
word of response that is authentically human. God help us, this is
growing a very lonely place, this distracted dog-kennel of a world."

Indeed, the personality of Emerson seems to have produced a very marked
effect upon all the great men and women with whom he came in contact.
We find that he was often described as an angel in appearance in his
younger days. Here are one or two instances: Of his appearance to them in
their stony solitude at Craigenputtoch Carlyle afterwards wrote to Emerson:
—

"Among the figures I can recollect as visiting us in our Nithsdale
hermitage,—all like apparitions now, bringing with them airs from
heaven, or else blasts from the other region,—there is perhaps not one
of a more undoubtedly supernal character than yourself,—so pure and
still, with intents so charitable; and then vanishing, too, so soon into
the azure inane, as an apparition should."

Mrs. Carlyle always spoke of this visit of Emerson to them there as a
visitation from an angel.

Mr. Charles Congdon thus writes in the "Reminiscences of a Journalist:"—

"One day there came into our pulpit the most gracious of mortals, with
a face all benignity, who gave out the first hymn and made the first
prayer as an angel might have read and prayed. Our choir was a pretty
good one, but its best was coarse and discordant after Emerson's
voice."

The ancestors of Emerson were all of clean pure blood. Behind him were
many generations of fine old New England ministers, and he was but the
natural product of his race in character,—though from what source sprang
the consummate flower of his genius it is hard to tell. He was brought up to
all good things, under the immediate eyes of a superior mother and a gifted
aunt. He was a fine scholar during his college days, and entered the
Unitarian ministry when quite young. He also married young, but early lost
his wife, and soon afterward retired from the ministry to devote himself to
literature.
In September, 1835, Emerson was married for the second time, to Miss
Lydia Jackson of Plymouth. The wedding took place in the fine old mansion
known as the Winslow house. After the marriage they went to reside in
Concord, in the house where he passed the rest of his life, and where his
family still live. This is the plain, square, wooden house, with horse-
chestnuts in the front yard and evergreens around it, which has often been
described by visitors to Concord. Near by is the orchard planted by
Emerson, and two miles away his wood-lot, which he describes to Carlyle
as his new plaything, and where he proposed to build a tower to which to
flee from intrusive visitors. Of the planting of the orchard he thus writes:—

"You are to know that in these days I lay out a patch of orchard near
my house, very much to the improvement, as all the household affirm,
of our homestead. Though I have little skill in these things, and must
borrow that of my neighbors, yet the works of the garden and orchard
at this season are fascinating, and will eat up days and weeks; and a
brave scholar should shun it like gambling, and take refuge in cities
and hotels from these pernicious enchantments. For the present I stay
in the new orchard."

In due time came the little troop of children, to gladden the home and to be
a perpetual wonder and delight to the father. In his essay on "Domestic
Life" he thus talks of the little one:—

"The size of the nestler is comic, and its tiny beseeching weakness is
compensated perfectly by the happy, patronizing look of the mother,
who is a sort of high reposing Providence toward it. Welcome to the
parents the puny struggler, strong in his weakness,—his little arms
more irresistible than the soldier's, his lips touched with persuasion
which Chatham and Pericles in manhood had not. His unaffected
lamentations when he lifts up his voice on high, or, more beautiful, the
sobbing child, soften all hearts to pity and to mirthful and clamorous
compassion. His ignorance is more charming than all knowledge, and
his little sins more bewitching than any virtue."

Emerson was never a rich man, and his home was always so ordered as to
come within the scope of his limited income; but it was always attractive
and charming, and pervaded by an air of dignity and repose. And that in it
he could dispense hospitality in the old royal manner is shown by the many
times he invites Carlyle to come and spend a year with him, and seriously
urges him to do so. Thoreau availed himself of such invitation, and spent
months at a time in Emerson's home. One wonders if Mrs. Emerson
received such instruction as her husband gives in the essay just mentioned,
and if she profited by it:—

"I pray you, O excellent wife, not to cumber yourself and me to get a
rich dinner for this man or this woman who has alighted at our gate,
nor a bed-chamber made ready at too great a cost. These things, if they
are curious in, they can get for a dollar at any village. But let this
stranger, if he will, in your looks, in your accent and behavior, read
your heart and earnestness, your thought and will,—which he cannot
buy at any price in any village or city, and which he may well travel
fifty miles, and dine sparely and sleep hard, in order to behold.
Certainly let the board be spread, and let the bed be dressed for the
traveller, but let not the emphasis of hospitality lie in these things.
Honor to the house where they are simple to the verge of hardship, so

that there the intellect is awake and reads the law of the universe, the
soul worships truth and love, honor and courtesy flow into all deeds."

If the American people had heeded such wise words as these the old-
fashioned virtue of hospitality would not have become so rare among us.
The "emphasis of hospitality" has been placed upon the material things to
such an extent that one hardly dares to invite his friend now, unless it be to
an elaborate feast; and the labor, to say nothing of the expense, of preparing
the elaborate feast is so great that more and more we neglect to call our
friends around us, and to bind their hearts to ours by loving and tender
ministrations.
Let us learn of Emerson the meaning of economy. He says:—

"Parched corn eaten to-day that I may have roast fowl to my dinner
Sunday is a baseness; but parched corn and a house with one
apartment, that I may be free of all perturbations, that I may be serene
and docile to what the mind shall speak, and quit and road-ready for
the lowest mission of knowledge or good-will, is frugality for gods and
heroes."

This was the sort of frugality that Thoreau practised in his hut on Walden
Pond, and it is a frugality which has made him famed throughout the hero-
worshipping world.
The charm of Emerson's home life lay largely in his manners, which were
simple, yet faultless. He greeted his friends with all the mildness and
serenity of the very god of repose, and induced in them that most enjoyable
sensation, a feeling of entire contentment with all the world. No heat, no
fret, no hurry, no great call to strenuous exertion to appear well or make a
fine impression. All was ease, calm, unstudied attention to every little want,
and talk fit for the noblest and the best. He was an example of what he
himself honored most.

"I honor that man whose ambition it is, not to win laurels in the state or
the army, not to be a jurist or a naturalist, not to be a poet or a
commander, but to be a master of living well, and to administer the
offices of master or servant, of husband, father, and friend."

In all these relations Emerson shone resplendently, and in the old-fashioned
relation of neighbor he was always at his best. To the family of his old
friend Alcott he was as a special providence for many years, and beautiful
indeed was the affection in which he was held by them. When, during
Emerson's absence in Europe, his house was partly burned, his neighbors
promptly rebuilt it, ready for his return. Of these helpers Emerson wrote, in
accepting their gift:—

"Judge Hoar has up to this time withheld from me the names of my
benefactors; but you may be sure I shall not rest till I have learned
them, every one, to repeat to myself at night and at morning."

Emerson's personal appearance was that of a scholar and the descendant of
scholars,—tall, slender, and with the complexion which is bred in the
alcove and not in the open air. His hair was brown, fine, and thick. His eyes
were of the deepest blue. His mode of living was very simple, but he was
constitutionally fastidious, and very much averse to vulgar or commonplace
companionship. He loved all children and simple-minded people, and the
very babies in Concord knew and loved him. "Incorrigible spouting
Yankee" he called himself; but he was rather a silent man in reality, and did
not care to talk excepting when he had somewhat to say. He did not prate
eternally of silence, as Carlyle did, while wreaking himself upon speech in
the most frantically vehement manner all his days, but he knew when and
how to be silent. The glimpses he gives of Mrs. Emerson, in the long
correspondence with Carlyle, are all of the most pleasing nature, and his
home life was apparently as perfect as music all his life long. Of the boy
Waldo, who died, he was fond of speaking, and he evidently mourned him
very deeply for a long time. Of his other children he never boasted, but
always spoke most kindly. The most entire revelation that Emerson ever
made of himself was doubtless in the letters to Carlyle; and it must be said
that nowhere else has Carlyle appeared to so good advantage as in this
correspondence with Emerson. One loves the grim, sardonic old man better
after seeing that he could love his friend faithfully and loyally for so many
years, and after reading all the tender and touching things he puts into his
letters to him. Especially is this the case in the later days, when both had
grown to be old men, and had been saddened by their life experience.

Carlyle's letters after his wife's death are very touching. In the first after the
sad event he says:—

"By the calamity of last April I lost my little all in this world, and have
no soul left who can make any corner of this world into a home for me
any more. Bright, heroic, tender, true, and noble was that lost treasure
of my heart, who faithfully accompanied me in all the rocky ways and
climbings; I am forever poor without her. She was snatched from me in
a moment as by a death from the gods. Very beautiful her death was;
radiantly to those who understood it, had all her life been: quid plura?"

This which follows in the same letter, written while Carlyle was still in the
unbroken possession of his faculties, makes us not only sad but indignant
that his determination had not been allowed to be carried out; and that the
poor old man, when broken down by age, should have been permitted to
expose to view all those sacred things which, when sane and sound, he
would so carefully have covered from the prying eyes of the world. He
says:—

"All summer last my one solacement in the form of work was writing
and sorting of old documents and recollections; summoning out again
into clearness old scenes that had now closed on me without return.
Sad, and in a sense sacred; it was like a kind of worship,—the only
devout time I had had for a great while past. These things I have half
or wholly the intention to burn out of the way before I myself die; but
such continues still mainly my employment, to me if to no other
useful. To reduce matters to writing means that you shall know them,
see them in their origins and sequences, in their essential lineaments,
considerably better than you ever did before. To set about writing my
own life would be no less than horrible to me; and shall of a certainty
never be done. The common, impious, vulgar of this earth—what has it
to do with my life or me? Let dignified oblivion, silence, and the
vacant azure of eternity swallow me; for my share of it, that verily is
the handsomest or one handsome way of settling my poor account with
the canaille of mankind, extant and to come."

How would his sad old heart have been torn could he have foreseen that in
the weakness of senility he would expose to the 'impious vulgar' all the

most sacred secrets of his home life! Oh, the pity of it! As a slight offset to
the sad revelations thus made, let us accept this little note in Emerson's
diary during one of his visits to Chelsea:—

"C. and his wife live on beautiful terms. Their ways are very engaging,
and in her bookcase all his books are inscribed to her as they came,
year by year, each with some significant lines."

Emerson's regard for Mrs. Carlyle was very great, and there is not one of
the many letters but sends a kindly and a warm greeting to her over the sea.
For the rest, this correspondence exhibits Emerson in the light of a true and
very useful friend to Carlyle,—taking infinite trouble in the early days to
introduce Carlyle's books in America, and to secure to the author in his
poverty some return for their publication here. In this he was successful,
and sent with great delight little sums of money to his friend. The books
met with a quicker recognition in America than in England; and after
Emerson had said something to Carlyle of a new edition of "Sartor
Resartus," Carlyle writes:—

"As for Fraser, however, the idea of a new edition is frightful to him,
or rather ludicrous, unimaginable. Of him no man has inquired for a
'Sartor.' In his whole wonderful world of Tory pamphleteers,
Conservative younger brothers, Regent-street lawyers, Crockford
gamblers, Irish Jesuits, drunken reporters, and miscellaneous unclean
persons (whom water and much soap will not make clean), not a soul
has expressed the smallest wish that way. He shrieks at the idea."

There is also much writing, on both sides, of Carlyle's coming to America.
For years this was the most enchanting topic, of which they never grew
weary. In one of his saddest moods, while yet almost unknown and very
poor, Carlyle wrote:—

"In joy, in grief, a voice says to me, 'Behold, there is one that loves
thee; in thy loneliness, in thy darkness, see how a hospitable candle
shines from far over seas, how a friendly heart watches!' It is very
good and precious to me."

There is, of course, a great deal of mutual admiration of each other's work,
very genuine, ever pleasant to hear about, expressed in the warmest
language,—even in those superlatives which Emerson derided.
There are also lovely bits of home life upon both sides,—faultless interiors
over which the mind will linger with delight in times far away from these,
when the students of another age strive to make to themselves a picture of
what sort of men these the great of the nineteenth century really were. There
is nothing told in these volumes that will detract from the fame of either,
but much that will add to the kindly impression which they have made upon
their time. One cannot but think, as the letters grow more infrequent, and
are written with greater labor, of how old age was a weariness to these great
men as to others,—how the very grasshopper became a burden, and how
inexpressibly sad was the decay of their great powers. Emerson begins to
lag first, although a few years younger than Carlyle, and Carlyle implores
him, almost piteously, to write. There is an interval of one, two, and even
three years in the correspondence toward the end; and after Emerson's last
visit to England they wrote no more. Carlyle's gentleness and tenderness
show themselves very beautifully in these last letters to his one best friend.
When he finds that it has become hard for Emerson to write, he begs at first
that he be not forsaken, but after a little says in effect: Never mind, my
friend, if it wearies you to write, write to me no more. I will still write to
you, and thus our friendship shall not lack for a voice. When the sweet bells
had become a little jangled in Emerson's brain, when memory had left him
or played him false, and there was a weakening of all his powers,—he sat
still in his own home among his friends and kindred, his household intact,
and surrounded by the fondest care and affection; while his old friend over
the seas—the broken giant, the god of thunder, now grown silent—sat in
utter desolation in the home he had reared after infinite struggle and
endeavor, and wrapped in a solitude so utter and so black that the heart
which can look upon it without pity must be a heart of stone. Carlyle died
on the 5th of April, 1881, being eighty-five years old. Emerson died on the
27th of April, 1882, at the age of seventy-nine. In death they were not long
divided.

THOMAS CARLYLE.

Carlyle is one of the many great men who have suffered severely at the
hands of their biographers, and from the pen clan in general. When the
world knew him alone or chiefly through the lurid splendors of "The French
Revolution,"—that book which, as he himself would have expressed it, was
a truth, though a truth written in hell-fire,—or through the uncanny
labyrinths of "Sartor Resartus," or the subtle analysis of the "Hero-

Worship," or the more pleasing pages of his "Burns," or "Milton," or the
"Characteristics," it would stand aloof in wonder, in admiration, almost in
awe. But when with his own hand—for he was primarily the cause of all—
he stripped away the privacy which he had guarded so jealously through
life, and through the "Reminiscences" and his wife's letters, which he
prepared for publication, took, as we may say, the roof off from the house,
that all the world might look in, then indeed he fell from his lofty pedestal
and became like one of us. Hero-worship was no longer possible, but loud
abuse and recrimination, or apology and a cry for charitable construction,
became the order of the day. We may say that he had only himself to thank
for it; but who can help regretting that the man in his old age should so have
destroyed the fair fabric of his own fame? We are not so rich in heroes that
we can afford to lose even the least of the kingly band; and we have felt that
we have sustained an irreparable loss ever since the luckless day when we
took up the first of the intensely interesting but most painful books relating
to this great life.
Let us look a little at this hero's domestic life. What was its foundation,
what its outcome? That there was something wrong at the foundation seems
to be clear. And it was not so much the fact that neither party married the
first choice of the heart,—though it is true that Jane Welsh loved with all the
ardor of her nature Edward Irving first, and that Carlyle undoubtedly would
have married his first love, the fair and amiable Margaret Gordon, the
original of Blumine in "Sartor Resartus," had not poverty prevented,—but
rather was it their unsuitability to each other. She was a lady, delicately
reared, and with a taste for society and the refinements of life; with a love
for admiration, too, and a wish to shine in her little sphere. He was a
peasant, coarsely bred, and scorning the amenities of life to which he was
unaccustomed,—scorning, too, the chivalric feeling with which better bred
men look upon women and treat their wives. He told her this, bluntly and
brutally, before marriage. They two were to be one, and he that one. He had
the peasant idea of being master, and to the end of his days held fast to it.
They were never, to his mind, equals, but he was the chief and she the
subject. This was what put her down intellectually. In her youth she had
literary tastes and ambitions, and doubtless much ability; but after marriage
we hear no more of that. Even in the seven years at Craigenputtoch, when
one would think that out of sheer weariness and want of occupation she

would have written or studied, we hear nothing of any such attempts. Her
married life seems to have quenched all this utterly.
Then all the domestic drudgery, which to her seemed such a burden, and
appears to have afflicted her to the end of life, seemed to him to be the
natural and proper thing for a woman. He had all his life been accustomed
to see his mother and sisters at their tasks, naturally and uncomplainingly,
and he could never understand why all women should not feel in the same
way. Then he was fond of solitude, and looked upon a visitor as an emissary
of the devil; and he failed to see that a gay, pleasure-loving, volatile,
sparkling girl could not share his feelings. So he shut her up remorselessly,
—never dreaming that he was cruel. That she was fond of admiration was
nothing to him, though he was fond of it himself in his own grim way; he
was the central figure of this household, and if she was deprived of a natural
enjoyment it seemed a trifle to him. In short, their whole philosophy of life
was different, their characters unsuited to each other, and their tempers of
the order described as "difficult." It is not necessary to blame one or the
other entirely for what followed. He saw everything in one light, she in
another; what but disappointment and unrest could ensue?
Had she clung to her original determination not to marry him, would it have
been better? Doubtless, yet it is certain that she learned to love him, even
too much for her peace of mind; and it is foolish to picture her, as some
have done, as a loveless wife. Probably at marriage she was not what is
usually styled "in love" with him, but that she did love him through life is
not to be doubted. And that, spite of all his neglect and harshness and
selfishness, he truly loved her and was essentially loyal to her is as little to
be doubted. Whence then came the unhappiness,—an unhappiness which,
we think, has in some places been greatly exaggerated? As we said before,
from their different points of view. Take, for instance, the hardships of
Craigenputtoch. They seemed nothing to him, brought up as he had been,
but much to her, who from her youth had been the petted darling of a
handsome home. This terrible place, which has been described as worse
than a desert island, was a large and recently renovated old manor-house
standing in fields of its own, only fifteen miles from where her mother
lived, and twelve miles from Dumfries. Everything had been made
comfortable for them by her mother, and in the farm-cottage near were his
brother and sister, Jane and Alexander Carlyle, who had three men and two

women; and Mrs. Carlyle herself always one servant. Much has been
written of her hardships here,—and they were very real hardships to her;
but from his point of view they did not seem so bad. She did some work,
but one cannot help thinking that with so many about her, if she habitually
did such drudgery as is represented, it was her own fault. There will come
domestic crises in all households, when the hands of the mistress must take
hold to save from chaos; but on the whole it would seem that she was not so
very great a martyr in this.
The lack of society was the real evil; and this Carlyle did not feel, absorbed
as he was in his mighty work, his brain burning with the great thoughts to
which he must give utterance. How could he appreciate the vacuity of her
life,—who had always had young and cheerful company about her, and a
mother to pity and cheer her smallest sorrow? It was very pitiful that he
could not see, but not so very strange. Many another man would have been
equally obtuse.
His sisters would not have minded it; he did not mind it, and it was not
given him to see that she minded it as much as she really did. For it is
certain that those seven years left marks upon her which she never outgrew.
They almost seem to have changed her very nature. Yet Carlyle with his
peasant nature did not see it, but wrote cheerfully upon a time, "Jane is far
heartier, now that she has got to work." A mistake, says Froude: "Mrs.
Carlyle had not strength for household work, and doing it, she permanently
broke down her health."
And again Carlyle writes, with a little more appreciation of the situation:—

"Her life beside me, constantly writing here, is but a dull one;
however, she seems to desire no other. . . . I tell her many times there
is much for her to do, if she were trained for it,—her whole sex to
deliver from the bondage of frivolity, dollhood, and imbecility, into the
freedom of valor and womanhood."

Of the solitude which had nearly killed his wife, he after a time wearied
himself; and then he effected a change. One laughs to think of the second
moving, and wonders if it was as bad as the first, which he thus described:
—

"In this mansion we have had a battle like that of Saint George and the
dragon. Neither are we yet conquerors. Smoke, and wet, and chaos!
May the good Lord keep all Christian men from moving."

If it seemed as bad as this to him, what did it seem to her, delicately reared
and hating the disagreeables of life? Still she did not complain, but wrote to
his mother about this time: "I could wish him a little less yellow, and a little
more peaceable; otherwise he is perfect." And she soon learned, compelled
to it possibly by dire necessity, to take upon herself all of the practical and
prosaic part of the management of their affairs.
It is painful, although it is also comical, to read of her domestic battles and
defeats. She put infinite wit and talent into her descriptions of them in her
letters to her friends, and the whole world has read them with smiles and
tears; but they were not light troubles to her, as they would have been to
many commonplace women. Probably upon a majority of wives, even if
they have not men of genius for husbands, fall nearly as great a part of the
domestic duties and cares as upon Mrs. Carlyle; yet few consider this a
great hardship, and the sympathies of the world are not invoked in their
behalf. It was not this so much in Mrs. Carlyle's case as it was the
moodiness and fault-finding and general irascibility of the husband which
aggravated everything, and made little things seem great.
That her spirits were entirely gone and her whole vivacious nature changed
at the end of the Craigenputtoch period is proved by sentences from her
letters, To his mother she writes:—

"It is my husband's worst fault with me that I will not or cannot speak.
Often when he has talked to me for an hour without answer, he will
beg for some sign of life on my part, and all that I can give him is a
little kiss."

And she was a woman who loved to talk, and he the best and most brilliant
talker of his day. Surely, this is pitiful. But after they went up to London this
aspect of things was improved for her, and had it not been that thereafter
she suffered from constant ill-health she would doubtless have been quite
comfortable. But her health was bad, and in the ignorance of the day the
dosing was bad; and when we read of the medicine which she took as she

took her daily bread, we only wonder that she lived to tell the tale. It speaks
a great deal for her Scotch constitution that she survived her remedies.
Carlyle was soon in the zenith of his fame, and the great men of the day sat
at his feet, figuratively speaking, and would literally have done so had not
his growl been so fierce that it kept them at bay. Of those who did "beard
the lion in his den, the Douglas in his hall," many were immolated in his
diary; and we see them, now that it has been published, like so many flies
with pins stuck through them, fastened to the paper. Poor Charles Lamb
stands there, bloodless, fleshless; but we think scarcely the less of gentle
Elia as we look upon him, but far less of the cruel perpetrator of the
atrocity. Leigh Hunt, too, has a pin quite through his warm heart; and Stuart
Mill, and many others. One wonders sometimes if Froude himself escaped,
or if he were there too, like a giant bluebottle, desiccated as the rest; and
was that the reason why he did not suppress all the damaging letters and
recollections, but maliciously gave them to the world?
Mrs. Carlyle's pen could be dipped in acid also, as has been proved in her
comments upon the men and women of her time. These, to be sure, are very
brief and fragmentary, and it has been a source of much wonder that,
knowing intimately as she did many of the notable persons of her time, she
has not left behind in any single letter a valuable portrait or even sketch of
any of these great people. What priceless words of Darwin she might have
gathered up, which all the world would have eagerly read; what
characteristic anecdotes she could have told of Tennyson,—what an insight
she might have given into the man behind the poet; what noble things she
must have known of Stuart Mill; what inimitable facetiæ concerning the
Hunts; what spirited stories she could have told of Jeffrey; what a light she
could have cast over dark places in the life of Edward Irving! Why did she
not do this, we wonder. Did the dread of assassination hover over her? For
Charles Buller, Carlyle's friend, had just made his plea for the man who
killed his wife for keeping a diary: "What else could a poor fellow do with a
wife who kept a diary, but murder her?"
We cannot but regret that the sketches were not written. They would have
been immortal; for her power in this line has been unequalled by any one
who has written in these later days. As it is, she has, unconsciously to
herself, left a picture of the greatest of all the men she knew—Carlyle

himself—which can never be blotted out. The portrait is full-length, full of
Rembrandt-like light and shadow, and remorselessly faithful. Painted not
for the public eye, but sketched in a thousand little parts, in matter-of-fact
every-day letters to humble friends, with no remotest thought that other
eyes would ever see them,—it is this by which Carlyle as a man will be
known to all coming time. Not a hero, not a monster, as some have claimed,
but a faulty man, with the defects of his qualities, described by a woman
faulty like himself. A constitutional growler, with a warm heart withal, and
infinite capacities for tenderness; selfish it may be, but inexorably just; cold
to all the outside world, but warm-hearted and generous and magnificently
loyal to his family, throughout all his distinguished career. No trace of
snobbery or false shame in him. Not liking the reformers of his own day,
but almost deifying the reformers of the past, and himself making it his
mission, from earliest youth to hoary age, to reform the world in his own
particular Carlylean way; fiercely assailing much that passed for religion,
but being always deeply and truly religious at heart. What a vast
contradictory Titan he seems in it all! If a lovely wind-flower, fresh and
fragrant as the breath of morning, was crushed in the arms of this god of
thunder, what shall we say? Shall we reject the god of thunder, who gave us
the "Heroes," and the "Cromwell," and the "Frederick," and wish that he
might have been a gentle poet singing to a lute; or shall we thank God for
him, even as he was, though we give a tear to the wind-flower?

VICTOR HUGO.

The times of Napoleon and the First Empire seem to be more than a lifetime
away from us; and yet it was in that day that Victor Hugo lived as a child in
the old convent of the Feuillantines so graphically described in "Les
Misérables." Here he and his two brothers lived with their mother in the
strictest seclusion, while the father, General Hugo, a soldier of the Empire,
was off with the Grand Army at some distant point, either in garrison or in
the field. The child, who was afterwards to hold Napoleon the Little up to
the execration of the world, felt his earliest emotions of patriotism stirred by
the glorious conquests of Napoleon the Great. General Hugo was one of the
most gallant soldiers of the day, and placed in many positions of trust and of
responsibility, as well as of danger, by Napoleon. He it was who conducted
the terrible retreat from Spain just before the fall of Napoleon. His soldiers
were the only protection to the lives of twenty thousand French fugitives,
who were fleeing from Madrid wild with terror; for the pursuing Spaniards
would not have hesitated to massacre the helpless multitude, had they found
it in their power to do so. From every bush projected the muzzle of a gun,
charged with the death of an invader; every pass concealed an ambush;
every height bristled with guns in the hands of the patriots. But General
Hugo conducted the fugitives through in safety, and proceeded to take
command of the fortress at Thionville, soon to be besieged.
He defended this outpost of the Empire with great gallantry, and it was the
last citadel over which the tri-color waved. But at last General Hugo was
forced to surrender it to the Allies, and the star of Napoleon had set forever.

Madame Hugo had been a royalist always, although she had not been
allowed to influence the minds of the children in that direction; but after the
fall of the Emperor she openly proclaimed her sympathy with the Bourbons,
and was so demonstrative in her enthusiasm that it led to a complete
estrangement between herself and her husband. Victor as a boy sided with
his mother, and was royalist to the core; but as soon as he became a man he
gravitated at once to his father's side. The years which he passed with his
mother and brothers, and the priest who was their tutor, in the old garden of
the Feuillantines, were as peaceful and happy as the years of childhood
should always be. It was in an almost deserted quarter of Paris, and the
grounds were spacious, being the remains of a park once attached to the
convent. They were, however, neglected; and everything had run wild here,
until it seemed to the city children almost like a forest. A ruined chapel was
in this wood, which always excited the imagination of the boys, who were
thoughtful and fanciful beyond their years. Beautiful horse-chestnut trees
cast their shadows round this ruin, and were the home of innumerable birds
who nested there. Upon the walls among the cankered and unnailed
espaliers were niches for Madonnas and fragments of crucifixes; and vines
hung there in ragged festoons to the ground. Through these dismantled
cloisters and spacious abbey-chambers the imagination of the boys ran riot,
and it cast a sort of poetic glamour over their young and solitary lives.
To this secluded place came, at one period of Victor's childhood, General
Lahorie, his godfather, hiding from the authorities, who had set a price upon
his head; and here he was securely hidden by Madame Hugo for two years,
as Victor Hugo afterwards pictured Jean Valjean as being concealed there
by the old gardener. Lahorie was implicated in Moreau's plot against
Napoleon, and was being diligently sought after by the police all the time
he occupied the ruined chapel in the old convent-garden. His camp bed was
under the shelter of the altar; in a corner were his pistols; and although the
rain and snow came in through the dilapidated windows, he bivouacked
here in winter as well as summer. The children never knew who he was; he
was called simply "the General," and was much loved by the boys, to whom
he talked much of their country and of liberty. After a time, under the
promise of pardon if he came forward to receive it, he was betrayed into
giving himself up; was arrested at once, cast into prison, and afterward shot,

—one of the most infamous of the acts of Napoleon, noted throughout his
whole career for treachery and insatiable bloodthirstiness.
This devilish betrayal of his early friend did not fail to impress the mind of
such a boy as Victor Hugo, and to add to his natural hatred of tyrants and
their deeds. It was perhaps the most lasting and impressive lesson that he
ever learned, and the world has seen its results in his life. Throughout all the
varied years of a long and eventful career, it was ever at the shrine of liberty
that he paid his devotions, ever her praises that he sung in his loftiest verse,
ever for her that he struck the strongest blows of which his arm was
capable.
Almost solitary as were the lives of the children under Madame Hugo's
watchful eyes, the one visitor who was admitted to their companionship
was welcomed with more than the accustomed warmth of children. This
was a little girl named Adèle Foucher (about thirteen or fourteen years old
when she first visited them), who used occasionally to spend the day with
the boys in the garden. Victor soon felt for her the most tender and chivalric
regard. He has himself described it once and again, the first time in the
story of Pepita, in "Le Dernier Jour d'un Condamné," where "he sees her in
all her charms, just fourteen years of age, with large lustrous eyes and
luxuriant hair, with rich golden-brown skin and crimson lips; he dwells on
the proud emotion which he felt as she leaned upon his arm; he recounts
how they wandered, talking softly, along the shaded walks; he tells how he
picked up for her the handkerchief she had dropped, and was conscious of
her hands trembling as they touched his own. And he recollects how they
talked about the birds, the stars, and the golden sunset,—sometimes, too,
about her school-fellows, her dresses, and her ribbons; they blushed
together over the most innocent of thoughts." Again, in "Les Misérables,"
Victor Hugo reverts to the scenes of his youth, and to his child-love.
"Marius" is but a free variation of himself; the circumstances are changed,
but the character is the same, and the garden scenes between Marius and
Cosette are but faint reproductions of passages in the courtship of the poet
and Mlle. Foucher. Victor had begun to write poetry by this time, and some
of his earlier efforts had attracted considerable attention. His whole
ambition lay in this direction. We are told by his biographer that—

"his greatest pleasure was to accompany his mother to M. Foucher's
house, and there spend long evenings in unspoken admiration of the
maiden to whom his whole heart was devoted. It was not long before
these admiring glances were noticed by the parents, to whom the
danger of encouraging such a passion was apparent, as both the young
people were of an age when marriage was out of the question. By
mutual consent the two families broke off their intimacy for a time.
Victor Hugo found expression for his grief at the separation, in a poem
that is full of sad and gentle dignity. . . . In spite of apparent
resignation, the obstacles placed in the way of his passion only
increased its intensity, and absence, instead of extinguishing his love,
served only to increase it. His fevered imagination devised a thousand
means by which he might catch a glimpse of one without whom he felt
it impossible to exist. Numberless are the stratagems he contrived, and
incredible the ingenuity with which they were executed; the freshness
of his romance was itself an exquisite idyl. . . . Victor never despaired;
but in the midst of his anticipations he was overwhelmed by a terrible
blow."

Madame Hugo died very suddenly in the summer of 1821, and the grief of
her son was deep and lasting. He could no longer remain away from the one
being he felt could afford him comfort, and he went boldly to the house of
M. Foucher and declared his love for Mlle. Adéle, asking of her parents her
hand in marriage. Although both were so young, and they had as yet no
means of living, the parents did not deny the suit, only stipulating that there
should be no present thought of marriage. Victor was very poor at this time,
his allowance from his father having been withdrawn, and he having no
settled employment; so the lovers were unwillingly forced to accept these
terms. They were very happy at this time, despite his privations, which were
very real, and hard for one brought up in comfort, as he had been, to endure.
For a whole year he lived on seven hundred francs, which he earned by his
pen, cooking his own meals in his humble lodgings, and finding them
sometimes scanty and unsatisfactory. He tells us he had but three shirts at
this time, and sometimes found it difficult to be as neat as he desired. It was
not long, however, before the verses of the young poet attracted the
attention of the king, who bestowed a pension upon him of one thousand
francs, from his private purse. This enabled the poet to consummate his

marriage with Mlle. Foucher, which was done in October, 1822. The
bridegroom, whose fortune consisted of eight hundred francs, presented his
bride with a wedding dress of French cashmere. The brightness of the
occasion was destroyed by a sudden attack of insanity which overtook
Victor's brother Eugene,—an attack from which he never recovered. Victor
now began in earnest his literary work, and soon published his first novel,
"Han d'Islande," which is said to bear a marked resemblance to the works of
Walter Scott. He soon followed this with his plays, "Marion Delorme" and
"Hernani," the former of which was soon prohibited by the Government.
The first representation of "Hernani" was an event long remembered in
Paris. It was supposed that the classical school would receive the new
drama with little favor, and would perhaps drive it from the stage; so the
friends of the new movement in literature determined to organize for its
defence; and as Victor Hugo had decided against having the usual paid
claquers, they determined to form themselves into such a body and carry
the play through at all hazards. Fired with zeal, all the young litterateurs of
the day organized in companies, each under a captain of its own, and at an
early hour in the afternoon of the day set for the performance, appeared
before the theatre. Among those selected as captains was Théophile Gautier,
then but nineteen years old. He determined to appear in a dress worthy of
the occasion, and demanded such a costume of his tailor as that worthy man
had never before prepared for a human being,—not even a poet. The
waistcoat was of scarlet satin, and, according to Gautier's directions, it was
made to open behind. The trousers were of a pale-green tint, with a stripe of
black velvet down the seams, a black coat with broad velvet facings, and a
voluminous gray overcoat turned up with green satin. A piece of watered
ribbon did duty both for collar and neck-tie. With his long hair streaming
down his back, and in this remarkable costume, Gautier must certainly have
presented a picturesque appearance. Many other of the "Hernani" partisans
appeared in costumes quite as eccentric. The passers-by stopped and stared
at them in astonishment. Some of them wore soft felt hats, some appeared
in coats of velvet or satin, frogged, broidered, or trimmed with fur; others
were enveloped in Spanish cloaks, and the array of caps was quite
miraculous. Most of them wore prodigious beards and long hair, at a time
when every well-regulated citizen was closely cropped and shaven. They
waited more than six hours in the street, and the moment the doors were

opened rushed in and took possession of the theatre. They had brought their
lunches; and eggs, sausages, and bottles of wine were consumed in the seats
of the theatre where the fine ladies usually sat. The evening was tumultuous
in the extreme; but whenever the classics hissed, the disciples of
Romanticism not only cheered, but rose to their feet and howled. When the
groans of the Philistines became unbearable, the enthusiasts of the pit
would drown them by shouting "To the guillotine with the sycophants." But
though the evening was a continual uproar, no doubt was entertained at its
close that the victory was with the Romanticists; and at the conclusion of
the performance the name of the author was proclaimed as that of a
victorious general, and the shouts of acclamation overwhelmed the storm of
hisses. Victor Hugo was the great star of the French capital from that day.
Meanwhile, all was happiness in the poet's household. The wife of his
youthful dreams presided with tact and grace over his home and her dark
Spanish beauty was much admired by the crowds of youthful friends who
now began to frequent the house. This type of beauty appears almost as
constantly in Victor Hugo's books as the head of La Fornarina did in the
pictures of Raphael. He seems constantly to seek to immortalize her whom
he had chosen for his own. Madame Hugo's picture was painted for the
Salon by their friend M. Louis Boulanger, and was thus described at the
time:—

"A full, well-developed bust, white arms of perfect form; a pair of
plump, delicate hands that a queen might envy; the hips high, and
setting off a figure that was faultless in its contour and flexibility."

She performed her duties as hostess with infinite grace, and her salon was
filled with celebrities like Lamartine, who would write verses in her album,
and with women like Madame de Girardin. The house was always filled
with visitors, attracted by the fascinations of the hostess as much as by the
joyousness of the poet. As Victor Hugo's fame increased, we are told that—

"the calm serenity of his early years of married life was somewhat
disturbed by the cares and anxieties that glory brings; but at the time of
his residence in the Place Royale, of which we have been speaking,
there was great happiness in the household, with the young and
beautiful children."

The beautiful Madame Drouet, then an actress upon the Parisian stage, was
said to have come between the poet and his wife at a later day; and it is
certain that she shared his banishment, assisting him much in his literary
labor, and finally, after the death of the poet's wife, came to preside over his
home in the last days, cherishing her love for him to the very close of his
life. She is said to have been very beautiful, even in old age, when her hair,
Alphonse Daudet tells us, was as white as swan's-down.
It is not our purpose to deal with the public life of Victor Hugo, and we pass
over all that occurred up to the time of the exile, after the coup d'état of
Louis Napoleon. The historian tells us that—

"Victor Hugo had asked the Assembly whether, having had a Napoleon
the Great, they were now to have a Napoleon the Little; he had
inquired of the Royalists how it was that they entered into such strange
fellowship with the Empire, pointing out significantly how the
Imperialists who had murdered the Duc D'Enghien, and the
Legitimatists who had shot Murat, were now grasping each other's
blood-stained hands. From the tribune he had proclaimed that the
Republic is invincible, and that in France it would prove itself
indestructible, as being identical on the one hand with the age, on the
other with the people. In lofty language, alike prophetic of the future
and condemnatory of the present, he had poured out his indignation in
the ears of the nation. The result of all this was that Bonaparte wrote
his name at the head of the list of the proscribed."

Feeling that if he remained in Paris his life would be sacrificed to no
purpose, he endeavored to get away from the city. This was no easy matter
to accomplish, and had it not been for the active and skilful assistance of
Madame Drouet, he would doubtless have been imprisoned, with his many
friends, who crowded all the jails of Paris. A price was set upon his head;
twenty-five thousand francs was offered to any one who would either kill or
arrest him, and there were many assassins lurking about in waiting for him.
Madame Drouet took him in a fiacre, and secretly started out to seek for
him a refuge. She thought she had friends who would shelter him, as
Madame Hugo had sheltered Lahorie during the troublous times of the first
Empire. She applied to friend after friend in vain. She wept, she implored,
she tried to bribe,—in vain. The citizens were too much intimidated to dare

shelter one of the proscribed,—even Victor Hugo, perhaps the most honored
man in the nation. Madame Drouet, however, would not yield to despair,
but pursued her way with undaunted determination. The drive was terrible,
—past ruined barricades and pointed cannon, through bloody patrols, and
among the police so thoroughly accustomed to the hunting of men. They
passed more than one Javert in that fearful ride; and when Victor Hugo
afterwards described the sensations of a man pursued like Jean Valjean, he
did not have to draw very strongly upon his imagination. The horrible
feeling of doubt and distrust, and the cold thrills of dread at every change of
circumstance, were well known to his own soul. Madame Drouet's
perseverance was at last rewarded by finding a temporary retreat for her
charge under the roof of a distant relative of the poet, where he remained
five days, filled with the most harrowing anxiety for the friends whom he
was endangering, as well as for himself. His two sons were already in
prison, and fears for their safety were added to his other burdens. But he
escaped at last, in disguise, and fled to Brussels, now filled with French
exiles. He managed to communicate with his wife, but his sons in their
prison-cells could only conjecture as to his fate. But they heard the roar of
cannon and the rattle of musketry outside the walls, and knew that the
prison was overflowing with victims; and they feared the worst. Madame
Hugo soon joined her husband in Brussels, and he immediately set to work
to write "L'Histoire d'un Crime," and completed it in five months. With the
power of a Tacitus he describes the scenes of the great historical drama he
has taken part in, and with the pen of a Juvenal lashes the betrayers of the
Republic. The book was not published till 1877, but it will tell the story of a
shameful epoch in French history to the remotest time. He was not allowed
to enjoy his refuge in Brussels long; almost as soon as he had printed his
"Napoleon the Little," which book he wrote after completing the "History
of a Crime," he was requested by the Belgian government to leave the
country.
He repaired to the Island of Jersey, where he was joined by his sons upon
their release, and by quite a party of friends. He took a small house known
as Marine Terrace, on the sea-shore, and there set up his household gods
once more. The house was only one story high, but it had a balcony, a
terrace, and a garden; and it overlooked the sea, which seemed more than
all to Victor Hugo. His income was now but seven thousand francs, and he

had nine persons to provide for. No more money could be expected from
France, and probably no more from literature, at present. But his busy pen
kept at its work, trusting to the future; and the time passed not altogether
unpleasantly to the little body of exiles. Jersey is of itself delightful, and the
poet found great pleasure in its climate, its scenery, and its luxuriant
vegetation. But Napoleon did not at all enjoy the proximity of his great
enemy, and soon took measures to drive him from his retreat. Hearing of the
new move against him, Victor Hugo took occasion to defy Napoleon, and to
"warn him that whether it be from France, from Belgium, from England, or
from America, my voice shall never cease to declare that sooner or later he
will have to expiate the crime of the 2d of December. What is said is true:
there is a personal quarrel between him and me; there is the old quarrel of
the judge upon the bench and the prisoner at the bar." They were ordered to
quit the Island of Jersey, and were treated to some scenes of violence before
departing, which they did with considerable regret, having found life in that
favored region comfortable, if not inspiring. They received a warm
welcome at Guernsey, whither they retreated, and soon made a new home
on that hospitable shore. A large and convenient residence, known as
Hauteville House, situated on the top of a cliff, was rented and repaired, and
served as a home for the poet and his friends during all the remaining years
of his exile, which were destined to be many. Victor Hugo changed and
beautified the house according to his own ideas, doing much of the work
with his own hands; and the result is something eminently characteristic of
the man.
On the third story is the study, a kind of belvedere, with its sides and roof
composed of glass. In this study, which overlooked the little town of St.
Sampson and its picturesque promontory, the poet did his work. Here he
finished "Les Misérables," which had been begun in the Place Royale; here
was produced the magnificent essay on Shakspeare; and here he worked
almost literally from morning until night. The house became a refuge for
exiles from many lands, and a chamber, still known as "Garibaldi's room,"
was fitted up expressly for that hero, under the expectation that he would
accept the invitation of Victor Hugo to share his home, at a time when his
fortunes were at their lowest ebb. Many literary men were here at different
times, generously cared for by the host, who called the retreat "the raft of
Medusa." There were many pets also, especially dogs, as Victor Hugo

almost shared the sentiment of Madame de Staël concerning these animals,
"The more I know men, the better I love dogs."
The wonderful success of "Les Misérables," when it was published in 1862,
called the attention of the whole world to the illustrious exile on the sea-girt
isle, and after that time he was overwhelmed with visitors from all parts of
the earth, anxious to see one who had come to be looked upon as the
greatest man of his time. The success of the book was unprecedented, the
sales were enormous, and the enthusiasm of readers and critics almost
without a parallel.
Madame Hugo died in 1868, and it was always a great grief to her husband
that she could not have lived to share his return to his native land, which
took place after the downfall of Louis Napoleon in 1870. After nineteen
years of exile, he returned to his country only to find it in the hands of the
Prussians first, and of the Commune afterward. One of his companions on
that eventful journey thus describes the feelings of the returned exile:—

"Making good their retreat from Mézières, on their way to Paris, the
remnant of Vinoy's corps, poor, harassed creatures, covered with dust
and discolored with powder, pale with exertion and discouragement,
were lying all along the road. Close behind them were the Uhlans.
There was no alternative for them but flight, if they would escape the
disaster that had befallen the army at Sedan. Defeat was written in
their faces, demoralization was evident in their attitude, they were
dejected and dirty, they were like pebbles driven along by a hurricane.
But what of that? Anyhow, they were soldiers of France; their uniform
proclaimed their nationality: they wore the blue tunic and the red
trousers,—but what was of infinitely more consequence, they were
carrying their colors back with them. Their defeat did not prevent them
bringing back the tri-color safe and sound.
"Great tears rolled from Victor Hugo's eyes. He leaned from the
carriage-window, and with a voice thrilling in its earnestness, he kept
shouting: 'Vive la France, vive l'armée, vive la patrie!' Exhausted as
they were with hunger and fatigue, the bewildered soldiers looked up.
They scarcely comprehended what he said, but he continued his
shouting, and it was almost like an order of quick march to them all,

when they made out that they were being assured that they had done
their duty, and that it was by no fault of theirs that they had sustained
defeat.
"And so the train went on. The tears still lost themselves in Victor
Hugo's snowy beard. He had lived in the proud illusion that France
was invincible; he was a soldier's son, and could not conceive that the
soldiers of his country were not pledged to glory."

It was ten o'clock when the train reached Paris, but a great crowd which had
been gathering for hours was there to receive him. With continued
acclamations they bore him to the house of his friend Paul Meurice, where
he was to stay, and called upon him continually for a speech. He said a few
words to the crowd, at the station and at the house, but gladly sought the
seclusion of his new home, being completely overcome with emotion. This
was at the beginning of the investment of the city by the Prussian troops,
and he witnessed the whole of the siege of Paris, and endured its privations
with the people. He also witnessed the terrible deeds of the Communists,
but—sympathizing, as he always had done, with the poor and the
downtrodden—only to condemn them with the utmost vehemence of his
nature. Still, he desired their pardon when all was over, feeling for the
ignorance which had caused their misguided zeal. About this time his son
Charles died very suddenly, which was a great blow to him, and he began to
feel that all things were falling away from him.
The death of his youngest son, François, in 1873, removed the last prop of
his age, and only two young grandchildren remained of all who had
composed his beloved family. The mother of these children, and her second
husband, however, were very much loved by the old poet, and watched very
tenderly over his declining years. The children were a source of constant
interest and pleasure to him, and have become well known to the world
through his work upon "The Art of being a Grandfather." Of the honors
which were showered upon him from every side in his closing years, it is
useless to write. All are familiar with them, as with the magnificent
demonstrations after his death. It is safe to say that few men have been so
honored while living, or held in such sacred remembrance after death.

GEORGE SAND.

Upon no woman of the century has the public fixed its eye with a more
eager interest and curiosity than upon Aurore Dudevant, known to the world
as George Sand.
The utmost heights of panegyric and adulation have been scaled in
describing her and her work; also the lowest depths of denunciation and of
calumny. Her admirers describe her as being not only the greatest genius of
her time, which perhaps few will dispute, but as being the most magnificent
and adorable of women as well; while her detractors can find no language
in which to express the depths of their loathing both for her life and some of
her works. As usual, a just estimate of such a character as this will be found
between the two extremes. She was neither a monster nor a saint, but a
woman of magnificent qualities and of defects upon a corresponding scale.

As with her life, so with her works. Some are undoubtedly pernicious to an
alarming degree, while the influence of others cannot by any stretch of
imagination be called bad. The two kinds may perhaps be divided under the
head of earlier and later works. When the tumultuous feelings and wild
visions of youth were calmed by age, a new kind of literary product came
forth. And her life in its latter years was as quiet as her books, and ran as
little against the traditions and usages of mankind.
George Sand was born in 1804, and descended from Marshal Saxe, the
natural son of the King of Poland. This Marshal Saxe was one of the bravest
but most licentious men of his time,—a time not noted for its domestic
virtues. She was brought up in the country until fifteen years of age, in the
midst of the elegancies of an aristocratic home. But her unbounded vitality
called loudly for an out-of-door life, and she lived the life of a boy, never
wearying of its rude sports, and enjoying its sometimes dangerous
excitements. At the close of her fifteenth year she was taken to the
Augustine Convent in Paris, where she remained for three years, and where
she passed through a very intense religious experience and came near
becoming a nun. It is a curious piece of speculation to try to imagine what
her life as a nun would have been, had this design been carried out. Would
the prayers and litanies, the penances and the fasts, have tamed her wild
blood? Would her nature have still asserted itself under the cap of the sister?
would she have led a revolt against authority within the church as she did
without? Are there any such fierce, tumultuous natures as hers to-day
kneeling on stony cloister floors? Can matins and vespers, the odors of
incense, and the sacred ceremonial of the church fill up for an ardent nature
all that the service of the world supplies? We shall never know; for the real
history of a faithful daughter of the church will never be written. The story
of the three years of George Sand's convent life is very charming, full of
variety and sincerity, and matchless in point of style; but it is a fragment.
She came out of the convent a young woman knowing absolutely nothing of
real life. The object of all who have charge of young girls in France is to
keep them in perfect ignorance of the world. The safety that lies in
knowledge is utterly forbidden to them. They are supposed to be children,
and are watched over as such until a marriage can be arranged. And this
marriage, whatever it may be, is usually accepted by the girl as an escape
from a sort of slavery. She is always told that she may only do the things

she desires to do after marriage. And it is very unusual for any girl to object
to the wishes of her friends in this matter. The whole system of marriage in
France is so utterly abominable that no other civilized land would tolerate
it; and this sacrifice of the young and ignorant is only one of its diabolical
features. Aurore Dudevant did not seem to object more than the rest. She
was married, and lived for eight years with her husband, becoming the
mother of two children.
She then left him and her estate of Nohant, and went up to Paris, taking her
two children with her. She sacrificed her personal fortune—which was
considerable—in doing so, and was obliged to earn her own living. She
tried various things in the artistic line before she essayed the writing of
books. At last with one grand bound she leaped before the world in
"Indiana." Of course she had written some things of small value before this,
but that wonderful book was really her introduction to the world. And it
brought the whole literary world to her feet. Thereafter her friends were the
first men of France. De Lamennais, Pierre Leroux, Michel, Alfred de
Musset, Chopin, Liszt, Delacroix, Béranger, Sainte-Beuve, Gustave
Planche, Mazzini, were her friends, her intimates, or her lovers.
Alfred de Musset was the first who found favor with her heart, it appears;
and they were inseparably associated for about three years. This brilliant
young poet, so sceptical, so sad, so audacious, so dissolute, was the first of
this famous coterie of men to become madly infatuated with George Sand,
—but far from the last. It is asserted that each in turn, and many more
besides, were the victims of her luring wiles. For many years the wildest
stories were afloat concerning her and her enchantments. And the fact that
two or three of her most ardent worshippers ended their lives for her sake
only added to the interest and the horror with which the world of
respectability and morality looked upon this strange woman. She had
broken once for all with the world of conventionality, and was free to
follow whatever inclination seized upon her, unrestrained by aught but
conscience,—for we are far from thinking that she ever parted permanently
with that disagreeable but useful monitor.
So she lived out her brief romance with De Musset, and, apparently
unmindful of his tragic end, entered upon a new epoch of her life with that
most remarkable modern musical genius, Chopin.

Poor Alfred de Musset has had the sympathy of all classes and conditions of
men, apparently, from that day to this. She tried to vindicate herself in the
affair by publishing a book entitled "Elle et Lui," "wherein she depicted the
sufferings of an angelic woman, all tenderness, love, and patience, whose
fate was joined to that of a man all egotism, selfishness, sensuousness, and
eccentricity." How grandly the woman suffered, and how wantonly the man
flung happiness away, is told with all the impassioned fervor of George
Sand in her early writings. The taste of the whole proceeding was
revoltingly low, and no more than matched by that of the rejoinder, which
was made in a book called "Lui et Elle," written by Paul de Musset after his
brother's death. In this book the picture is reversed: "a hideous woman is
portrayed, utterly selfish, dissolute, heartless; and her lover, who is easily
recognized as Musset himself, is described as having almost all of the
heroic virtues." Both books were thoroughly French,—thoroughly
execrable.
Chopin at first feared Madame Sand very much, and refused to be presented
to her; but as she persisted in her desire to make the acquaintance of so fine
and delicate a genius, they at last met, and the fate of poor Chopin was at
once sealed. He was consumed from the very first by an absorbing passion,
to which no other name but morbid infatuation could be applied. Madame
Sand herself describes it in "Lucrezia Floriani" thus:—

"For it seemed as if this fragile being was absorbed and consumed by
his affection. . . . Others seek happiness in their attachments; when
they no longer find it, the attachment gently vanishes. But he loved for
the sake of loving. No amount of suffering was sufficient to discourage
him. He could enter upon a new phase, that of woe; but the phase of
coldness he could never arrive at. It would have been indeed a phase of
physical agony,—for his love was his life, and, delicious or bitter, he
had not the power of withdrawing himself a single moment from its
domination."

Chopin, suffering from severe sickness, was ordered to a warmer climate;
and in the fall of 1837 Madame Sand accompanied him to the Island of
Majorca, where she nursed him back to life, although his friends at the time
of his departure never thought to see him again, and although he was
dangerously ill for a long time after their arrival. This solitude, surrounded

by the blue waves of the Mediterranean, and shaded by groves of orange,
seemed fitted by its exceeding loveliness for the ardent vows of youthful
lovers, still believing in their naïve and sweet illusions, sighing for
happiness in some desert isle. In this case it was the refuge of those who
had grown weary and disenchanted with life, but who hoped in deep
devotion to each other to find some solace for their sadness. The memory of
those days, like the remembrance of an entrancing ecstasy which Fate
grants but once in a lifetime to her most favored children, always remained
dear to the heart of Chopin. When he was restored to health they returned to
Paris, where their friendship was continued for about eight years. She then
severed her connection with him. Liszt asks in regard to this, in his life of
Chopin:—

"Has genius ever attained that utter self-abnegation, that sublime
humility of heart which gives the power to make those strange
sacrifices of the entire Past, of the whole Future; those immolations as
courageous as mysterious; those mystic and utter holocausts of self,
not temporary and changing, but monotonous and constant,—through
whose might alone tenderness may justly claim the higher word
devotion? Has not the force of genius its own exclusive and legitimate
exactions, and does not the force of woman consist in the abdication of
all exactions? Can the purple and burning flames of genius ever float
over the immaculate azure of a woman's destiny?"

Liszt also tells us that—

"Chopin spoke frequently and almost by preference of Madame Sand,
without bitterness or recrimination. Tears always filled his eyes when
he named her; but with a kind of bitter sweetness he gave himself up to
the memories of past days, alas, now stripped of their manifold
significance. . . . All attempts to fix his attention upon other objects
were made in vain; he refused to be comforted, and would constantly
speak of the one engrossing subject. . . . He was another great and
illustrious victim to the transitory attachments occurring between
persons of different character, who, experiencing a surprise full of
delight in their first sudden meeting, mistake it for a durable feeling,
and build hopes and illusions upon it which can never be realized. It is

always the nature the most deeply moved, the most absolute in its
hopes and attachments, for which all transplantation is impossible,
which is destroyed and ruined in the painful awakening from the
absorbing dream. . . . Chopin felt, and often repeated, that the
sundering of this long friendship, the rupture of this strong tie, broke
all the cords which bound him to life."

Her friends say, upon her part, that he was a morbid, dreary invalid, jealous
beyond endurance, and that she suffered much at his hands, and separated
from him only when she could endure his exactions no longer. He did not
long survive the sundering of their relations, and died in Paris in 1849, very
deeply deplored by all admirers of his genius. Chopin was a wonderfully
gifted and very remarkable man, exceedingly reserved, and with little of the
egotism of genius. His eyes were blue and dreamy, his smile very sweet, his
complexion very fair and delicate, his hair light in color, soft and silky, his
nose slightly aquiline. His bearing was so distinguished, and his manners
stamped with so much high breeding, that involuntarily he was always
treated en prince. His gestures were many and graceful, yet he was on the
whole serene in his bearing, and generally gay in company, though subject
to moods of deep melancholy. He was passionately devoted to Poland all
his life, and when he was dying requested the Countess Potocka to sing to
him the melodies of his country. He was deeply religious in nature, a devout
Catholic.
It was during the years of which we have been speaking that George Sand
produced her most famous works. "Indiana" was followed by "Valentine,"
"Lelia," and "Lettres d'un Voyageur." Others followed in quick succession,
many of them dealing with the subject of marriage in such a manner as to
raise a most violent storm about her head. People who had never read these
books described them as being of revolting indecency; and that impression
prevails in many quarters even yet. In point of fact, she is no more open to
the charge of indelicacy than any prominent English novelist of the day. The
opinions are bad enough many times, but the style is always pure and
perfect. This is the answer she herself made to her critics:—

"I was astounded when a few Saint Simonians, conscientious and
sincere philanthropists, estimable and sincere seekers of truth, asked
me what I would put in the place of husbands. I answered them naïvely

that it was marriage; in the same way as in the place of priests who
have so much compromised religion, I believe it is religion which
ought to be put. . . . That love which I erect and crown over the ruins of
the infamous, is my Utopia, my dream, my poetry. That love is grand,
noble, beautiful, voluntary, eternal; but that love is marriage such as
Jesus made it, such as Saint Paul explained it. This I ask of society as
an innovation, as an institution lost in the night of ages, which it would
be opportune to revive, to draw from the dust of æons, and the shrine
of habits, if it wishes to see real conjugal fidelity, real repose, and the
real sanctity of the family, replace the species of shameful contract and
stupid despotism bred by the infamous decrepitude of the world."

It must always be remembered that she wrote of French marriages, in which
there is no pretence of having love to start with; and if we remember this,
her language can scarcely be considered too strong. The system is utterly
vile, and her hatred of it an honor to her in every sense. Had she done
nothing worse than to protest against this form of marriage few would
condemn her; her condemnation comes rather from the life she felt it
consistent with her theories to live for many years.
What the world said was: "The welfare of the human family demands that a
marriage legally made shall never be questioned or undone. Marriage is not
a union depending on love, or congeniality, or any such condition. It is just
as sacred when made for money, or for ambition, or for lust of the flesh, or
for any other purpose, however ignoble or base, as when contracted in the
spirit of the purest mutual love." Against all this, George Sand, both with
pen and life, protested. She contended that it was love alone which made
marriage anything but a disgusting sin. We have heard much of this in these
latter days, even in our own country, but it was George Sand who first
struck the keynote; the doctrine is essentially hers in all its parts. That she
denounced the whole system of marriages of convenience, is an honor to
her; that she proclaimed love as the only true foundation for marriage, is
equally an honor; but that she assailed the institution of legal marriage as a
whole, and overleaped its bounds and became a law to herself in the matter,
is her weakness and her shame. It is frequently denied that she did this. It is
said that she did not assail the institution of marriage, but only the things
that are perpetrated in its name.

"But all the same [as another has well said], her eloquent expositions
of ill-assorted unions, her daring appeals from the obligations they
impose to the affections they outrage, her assertion of the rights of
nature over the conventions of society, have the final effect of
justifying the violation of duty on the precarious ground of passion and
inclination.
"Nobody who knows what the actual life of George Sand has been can
doubt for a moment the true nature of her opinions on the subject of
marriage. It is not a pleasant subject to touch, and we should shrink
from it if it were not as notorious as everything else by which she has
become famous in her time. It forms in reality as much a part of the
philosophy she desires to impress upon the world as the books through
which she has expanded her theory. It is neither more nor less than her
theory of freedom and independence in the matter of passion (we dare
not dignify it by any higher name) put into action,—rather vagrant
action, we fear, but on that account all the more decisive."

Society and she were naturally at war from the beginning of her career; and
she suffered from it, though she dealt many bitter blows at it even while she
suffered. "What has it done," she says in one place,—

"what has it done for our moral education, and what is it doing for our
children, this society shielded with such care? Nothing. Those whom it
calls vain complainers, and rebels, and madmen, may reply: Suffer us
to bewail our martyrs, poets without a country that we are, forlorn
singers well versed in the causes of their misery and of our own. You
do not comprehend the malady which killed them; they themselves did
not comprehend it. If one or two of us at the present day open our eyes
to a new light, is it not by a strange and unaccountable good
Providence? and have we not to seek our grain of faith in storm and
darkness, combated by doubt, irony, the absence of all sympathy, all
example, all brotherly aid, all protection and countenance in high
places? Try yourselves to speak to your brethren heart to heart,
conscience to conscience! Try it! but you cannot, busied as you are
with watching and patching up in all directions your dykes which the
flood is invading: the material existence of this society of yours
absorbs all your cares, and requires more than all your efforts.

Meanwhile the powers of human thought are growing into strength and
rise on all sides around you. Among these threatening apparitions there
are some which fade away and re-enter the darkness, because the hour
of life has not yet struck, and the fiery spirit which quickened them
could strive no longer with the horrors of the present chaos; but there
are others that can wait, and you will find them confronting you, up
and alive, to say, 'You have allowed the death of our brethren, and we,
we do not mean to die.'"

But she rises after a while out of her depths of passionate contention with a
world out of joint, with the reign of stupidity and the tyranny of convention,
into serener heights; and in her later books she gives us exquisite pictures of
nature, with which she has the closest sympathy; lovely stories of rural life
and gentle tales of perfectly pure love. Her passionate resentment against
the world has worn itself out, and she is calmer, wiser now. Her daughter,
too, Solange, has grown to be a woman and has a lover of her own, and the
household thoughts and cares, and the tenderness of a serious and unselfish
cast which creep into a mother's heart upon such occasions, shed their
sweetness upon this wayward soul, and inspire it with congenial utterances.
Now she looks back and says:—

"My poor children, my own flesh and blood, will perhaps turn upon
me and say: 'You are leading us wrong; you mean to ruin us as well as
yourself. Are you not unhappy, reprobated, evil spoken of? What have
you gained by these unequal struggles, by these much-trumpeted duels
of yours with Custom and Belief? Let us do as others do; let us get
what is to be got from this easy and tolerant world.' This is what they
will say to me. Or at best, if, out of tenderness for me, or from their
own natural disposition, they give ear to my words and believe me,
whither should I guide them? Into what abysses shall we go and
plunge ourselves, we three? for we shall be our own three upon earth,
and not one soul with us. What shall I reply to them, if they come and
say to me: 'Yes, life is unbearable in a world like this. Let us die
together. Show us the path of Bernica, or the Lake of Sténio, or the
glaciers of Jacques'?"

Again, in the later times, she said:—

"Let us all try to be saints, and if we succeed we will know all the
more how difficult a thing it is, and what indulgence is owed to those
who are not yet saints. Then we shall acknowledge that there is
something to be modified, either in law or opinion; for the aim of
society should be to render perfection accessible to all, and man is very
feeble when he struggles alone against the mad torrent of custom and
of ideas."

A very wise, saying truly, written out of her own experience. Sad, too, as is
much of her later writing, though there is not in it the passionate despair of
her earlier work.
She lived to be seventy-two years old, and had known and experienced
many phases of life,—the tumultuous passions and the wild revolt of youth,
the cooler and more self-contained life of middle age, and the sombre color
of a rather hopeless old age. Even in age she had her pleasures, however.
She delighted in her grandchildren, in books, in pictures, in nature, and in
work. Her unwearied pen moved until the last, and did not lose its cunning.
There was much of the old strength and power to the last. But she had
ceased to desire to destroy; she sought at last to build up.
Here are two descriptions of her as she appeared to different observers, in
youth and in later life. Heine, who saw with the eye of an artist and wrote
with the pen of a critic, described her in youth:—

"George Sand, the greatest of French writers, is a woman of
remarkable beauty. Like the genius revealed in her writings, her
countenance may rather be called beautiful than fascinating. The face
of George Sand has precisely the character of Grecian regularity. The
cut of her features has not exactly the severity of antique models; her
face is softened by modern sentiment, which veils it with sadness. Her
forehead is not high, and her rich and luxuriant brown hair falls from
either side of her head upon her shoulders. Her eyes are not brilliant;
has their fire gone out under frequent tears, or only in her writings?
George Sand's eyes are soft and tranquil. Her nose is neither aquiline,
nor spiritual, nor pugged; it is a straight and ordinary nose. Around her
mouth habitually plays a smile of kindness and benevolence, but not
very bewitching: her inferior lip protrudes a little, and seems to reveal

a fatigue of the senses. Her chin is finely formed. Her shoulders are
magnificent; also her hands, her arms, her feet, which are very small.
George Sand is beautiful like the Venus of Milo."

Now hear one who described her in old age:—

"She was not at all like the woman of my imagination; she looked very
little like the bold and vigorous thinker she is; one would have taken
her at first sight for a gentle, serene old grandmother. She is short, and
inclined to embonpoint. Her hair, which is still abundant, though faded
by time, was simply arranged. Her features are not striking; her eyes
have that vague, dreamy look which she herself refers to in her
'Histoire de Ma Vie' as one of her marked characteristics."

Most people in her youth found her beautiful, though some thought her face
heavy, and even coarse; but she had a matchless charm of manner which
had far more effect than any mere beauty. She seemed to enslave men at her
will. Poets, artists, statesmen, and priests, were all at her side, or at her feet.
Her manner, at least in later life, was very retiring, and she was singularly
modest and free from literary vanity. When asked once which of her works
she preferred, she answered, apparently quite sincerely, "Mon Dieu, I detest
them all."
Let us close with Matthew Arnold's tribute of respect:—

"It is silent, that eloquent voice; it is sunk, that noble, that speaking
head; we sum up as we best can what she said to us, and we bid her
adieu. From many hearts, in many lands, a troop of tender and grateful
regrets converge toward her humble churchyard in Berry. Let them be
joined by these words of sad homage from one of a nation which she
esteemed, and which knew her very little and very ill. Her guiding
thought, the guiding thought which she did her best to make ours too,
'the sentiment of the ideal life, which is none other than man's normal
life as we shall one day know it,' is in harmony with words and
promises familiar to that sacred place where she lies."

Over her grave might well be written those words over another grave in
Père-la-Chaise:—

He Knoweth.

THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY.

In the beginning of the eighteenth century the great-grandfather of the
famous Lord Macaulay, the author of the glowing and impassioned History
of England, was minister of Tiree and Coll, when his stipend was taken
from him at the instance of the Laird of Ardchattan. The slight
inconvenience of having nothing to live upon did not seem to incline the old
minister in the least degree to resign his charge and to seek a flock who
could feed their shepherd. He stayed valiantly on, doing his duty faithfully
by his humble people. But after some time had elapsed, "his health being
much impaired, and there being no church or meeting-house, he was
exposed to the violence of the weather at all seasons; and having no manse
or glebe, and no fund for communion elements, and having no mortification

for schools or other pious purposes in either of the islands, and the air being
unwholesome,"—he was finally compelled to leave, much to his own regret
and that of his poor little flock.
The reasons enumerated certainly seem sufficient to us in these later days
for a change of parishes; and indeed some modern ministers have been
known to change upon provocations less than these. There was fine stuff in
the old Scotch ministers of that day, and it is pleasant to hear that this one
found a new charge to which he ministered for half a century. There were
many other ministers in the Macaulay family during several generations;
but Zachary Macaulay, the father of the historian, seemed born with a taste
for business, and was accordingly sent out to Jamaica to learn mercantile
affairs, when quite young. Here he saw much of negro slavery, and became
so much impressed with its horrors, and so filled with sympathy for the
black race, that he resolved to devote himself to their interests. He
accordingly resigned his position in Jamaica and returned to Scotland,
where until his death he labored in the unpopular and misunderstood ranks
of the abolitionists. A colony was projected in Sierra Leone for freed slaves,
and young Macaulay was appointed a member of the council, and sailed for
Africa to take practical part in the work for the negro. Soon after his arrival
there he succeeded to the position of Governor, and for some time worked
heroically in that capacity. But in the very midst of the Reign of Terror in
France, a French fleet bore down upon the little colony and almost wiped it
out of existence. Zachary Macaulay stayed for a year after the attack,
heroically trying to rehabilitate the little colony, and partially succeeded in
doing so, when, his health failing, he returned to England, where he gave
almost the entire remaining years of his life to the work of negro
emancipation in one form or another.
Thomas Babington Macaulay was born the 25th of October, 1800, the day
of St. Crispin and the anniversary of Agincourt. He drew in the love of
freedom with his earliest breath, and he was reared with the utmost care by
those high moralists, his noble parents. He was a prodigy from babyhood.
From the time he was three years old he read incessantly, for the most part
lying on the rug before the fire. Many laughable stories are told of his
precocity, particularly of the fine language he used when a mere infant. For
instance, when four years old some hot coffee was spilled on his legs, and
after a little time a lady inquired of him if he felt better now, when the

phenomenon replied, "Thank you, madam, the agony is abated." Of course
so quaint and remarkable a child was much petted and spoiled, and
probably rendered somewhat conceited and priggish. But he was docile and
affectionate, and was then, as always thereafter, the idol of his family.
After he left Cambridge he went up to London, and soon after wrote his
article on Milton for the "Edinburgh Review." Like Byron, he awoke one
morning and found himself famous. Compliments and enthusiastic letters
poured in upon him from all sides. The one compliment which he said gave
him the most pleasure was Jeffrey's word at the end of a business note: "The
more I think, the less I can conceive where you picked up that style." And
no wonder; that style was not a thing to be picked up every day. Jeffrey did
well to wonder. Macaulay at once became the fashion, and invitations were
showered upon him from every side, many of which he accepted. The first
flush of such a success as Macaulay's must have been very sweet to a young
man of his genial nature. He was thus described by Praed:—

"There came up a short, manly figure, marvellously upright, with a bad
neckcloth, and one hand in his waistcoat pocket. Of regular beauty he
had little to boast; but in faces where there is an expression of great
power or of great good-humor, or both, you do not regret its absence."

He had a massive head, and features powerful and rugged, but peculiarly
expressive. His face was oftentimes all aglow with emotion. He dressed
badly but not cheaply; indeed, his wardrobe, Trevelyan tells us, was always
enormously overstocked. "Later in life he indulged himself in an apparently
inexhaustible succession of handsome embroidered waistcoats, which he
used to regard with much complacency."
Among the first places to which the new lion was invited was of course the
famous resort of celebrities, Holland House; and in his letters to his two
younger sisters,—to whom he was always the most devoted of brothers,—
he frequently narrates his experiences there. Let us glance at a few of these
pictures:—

"Well, my dear, I have been to Holland House. I took a glass coach,
and arrived, through a fine avenue of elms, at the great entrance about
seven o'clock. The house is delightful, the very perfection of the old

Elizabethan style,—a considerable number of very large and very
comfortable rooms, rich with antique carving and gilding, but carpeted
and furnished with all the skill of the best modern upholsterers. Lady
Holland is certainly a woman of considerable talent and great
acquirements. To me she was excessively courteous; yet there was a
haughtiness in her courtesy which, even after all that I had heard of
her, surprised me. The centurion did not keep his soldiers in better
order than she keeps her guests. It is to one, 'Go,' and he goeth; and to
another, 'Do this,' and it is done. 'Ring the bell, Mr. Macaulay.' 'Lay
down that screen, Lord Russell; you will spoil it.' 'Mr. Allen, take a
candle and show Mr. Cradock the picture of Bonaparte.' Her ladyship
used me as well, I believe, as it is her way to use anybody. . . .
"I had a good deal of pleasant conversation with Rogers. He was
telling me of the curiosity and interest which attached to the persons of
Sir Walter Scott and Lord Byron. When Scott dined at a gentleman's
house in London not long ago, all the servant-maids in the house asked
leave to stand in the passage and see him pass. He was, as you may
conceive, greatly flattered. About Lord Byron, whom he knew well, he
told me some curious anecdotes. When Byron passed through
Florence, Rogers was there. The inn had fifty windows in front. All
were crowded with women, mostly Englishwomen, to catch a glimpse
of their favorite poet. Among them were some at whose houses he had
been in England oftentimes, and with whom he had lived on friendly
terms. He would not notice them or return their salutations. Rogers
was the only person he spoke to. The worst thing that I know about
Lord Byron is the very unfavorable impression which he made on men
who certainly were not inclined to judge him harshly, and who were
not personally ill-used by him. Sharp and Rogers both speak of him as
an unpleasant, affected, splenetic person. I have heard hundreds and
thousands of persons who never knew him rant about him, but I never
heard a single expression of fondness for him fall from the lips of any
one who knew him well. Yet even now there are those who cannot talk
a quarter of an hour about Charles Fox without tears—after twenty-
five years. . . .
"In the evening Lord John Russell came, and old Talleyrand. I had seen
Talleyrand before. I now had the pleasure of listening to his

conversation. He is certainly the greatest curiosity I ever fell in with.
His head is sunk down between two high shoulders. One of his feet is
hideously distorted. His face is pale as that of a corpse, and wrinkled to
a frightful degree. His eyes have an odd, glassy stare. His hair, thickly
powdered and pomatumed, hangs down his shoulders on each side as
straight as a pound of tallow candles. His conversation, however, soon
makes you forget his ugliness and infirmities."

One more glimpse of Lady Holland:—

"Her ladyship is all courtesy and kindness to me; but her demeanor to
some others, particularly to poor Allen, is such as quite pains me to
witness. He is really treated like a negro slave. 'Mr. Allen, go into my
drawing-room and bring my reticule.' 'Mr. Allen, go and see what can
be the matter that they do not bring up dinner.' 'Mr. Allen, there is not
turtle-soup enough for you. You must take gravy-soup or none.' Yet I
scarcely pity the man. He has an independent income, and if he can
stoop to be ordered about like a footman I cannot so much blame her
for the contempt with which she treats him."

Here are one or two touches of nature:—

"Get Blackwood's new number. There is a description of me in it: 'A
little, splay-footed, ugly dumpling of a fellow, with a mouth from ear
to ear.' Conceive how such a charge must affect a man so enamoured
of his own beauty as I am."
"After the debate I walked about the streets with Bulwer till near three
o'clock. I spoke to him about his novels with perfect sincerity, praising
warmly and criticising freely. He took the praise as a greedy boy takes
an apple-pie, and the criticism as a good, dutiful boy takes senna-tea.
At all events I shall expect him to puff me well. I do not see why I
should not have my puffers as well as my neighbors."

Here is a glimpse of the domestic economy of the great Holland House:—

"The dinner was not as good as usual, and her ladyship kept up a
continued lamentation during the whole repast. I should never have

found out that everything was not as it should be, but for her
criticisms. The soup was too salt; the cutlets were not exactly comme il
faut; and the pudding was hardly enough boiled. I was amused to hear
from the splendid mistress of such a house the same sort of apologies
which —— made when her cook forgot the joint and sent too small a
dinner to table."

All these artless details were given to amuse his young sisters at home,—
the beings he loved best on earth, not only at this time but throughout life. If
he ever had any deeper love for another, there is no hint given of it in his
life or letters. Probably for many reasons he never contemplated marriage.
When he was young he was too poor to think of it; when he was older he
had his own family upon his hands, and cared for them munificently to the
end. He was very generous with his money and never learned the art of
saving. It would seem scarcely possible that a man of his warm heart and
ardent temperament could have gone through life with no romance; but if
he had any such experience it has not been given to the world. He loved his
sisters, and his nephews and nieces, with the most passionate devotion, and
was in turn idolized by them. His nephew says:—

"It must be acknowledged that where he loved, he loved more entirely
and more exclusively than was well for himself. It was improvident in
him to consecrate such intensity of feeling upon relations who,
however deeply they were attached to him, could not always be in a
position to requite him with the whole of their time and the whole of
their heart. He suffered much for that improvidence, but he was too
just and kind to permit others to suffer with him; and it is not for one
who obtained by inheritance a share of his inestimable affection to
regret a weakness such as this."

This refers to his grief at the marriage of his sisters, which was really great
and enduring. He had planned to have them in his home, and not to be in
theirs; and when it turned out otherwise he could not at first be reconciled
to it. His sister Nancy went out with him to India after his appointment
there, and soon fell in with young Trevelyan,—to whom she became
engaged, with her brother's approval but to his great grief. He calls it "a
tragical denouement to an absurd plot." After the marriage they formed one

household during his stay in India, and her home was to all intents and
purposes his own during life. His youngest sister died during his stay
abroad, and of her he thus writes:—

"The last month has been the most painful I ever went through. Indeed,
I never knew before what it was to be miserable. Early in January
letters from England brought me news of the death of my sister. What
she was to me no words can express. I will not say that she was dearer
to me than anything in the world, for my sister who was with me was
equally dear; but she was as dear to me as one human being can be to
another. Even now, when time has begun to do its healing work, I
cannot write about her without being altogether unmanned."

His only solace was found in books. He could at any time bury himself in
these and forget all the world. Probably there never was such a reader
before. He devoured books like a gourmand. He read everything—Greek,
Latin, German, Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese; and books of all kinds
in these languages,—history, belles-lettres, poetry, novels, old chronicles.
He seemed to have a passion for all. He would read a book in an hour which
it would take any one else half a day to get through in the poorest shape.
And he would know what was in it, too. He read enormous quantities of
novels always, and was very fond of poor ones,—none too poor for him
were written at that time. It is a question whether if he had lived till this day
the same thing could have been said of him. It is not recorded whether he
ever encountered any of Anthony Trollope's works during his life.
If Macaulay had not been known as a great man of letters he would
probably have been known as a great orator. He was, indeed, one of the best
speakers of his day, and the House of Commons, that listens to so few
speakers, always gave its attention to him. It seems a great pity that he
should have given so many years of his life to Parliament, and to official
work, when his true career undoubtedly was literature pure and simple, for
which no man of his time was so splendidly equipped, both by nature and
by preparation. We ought to have had from him more enduring historical
works, and more of his masterly estimates of the works of other men. After
his retirement into private life, in 1847, he enjoyed his freedom intensely,
and much regretted that he had not obtained it sooner. He enjoyed the
pleasures of society greatly at this time. He was the centre of a gifted circle

of men—the most brilliant of their time—all of whom were his close
friends and admirers. How brilliantly these men talked is already a matter of
tradition. Macaulay was the most wonderful conversationalist, probably,
since Dr. Johnson, not even excepting Carlyle, or Sydney Smith, or
Coleridge. Very laughable stories are told, of course, of a man who would
talk three hours without pause, and undoubtedly there were many people
sadly bored by him in his day; but to those who could appreciate the
remarkable stores of information he possessed, and the lucidity with which
he could deal them forth,—to say nothing of his rhetorical splendors,—
those discourses of his were never tedious, but full of supreme interest. To
be sure, Sydney Smith sneered at his "wonderful stores of very accurate—
misinformation," but he was one who did not like a rival near the throne;
and in Macaulay's absence he was himself the sun around which the social
universe revolved. Thackeray wrote after Macaulay's death:—

"Now that wonderful tongue is to speak no more, will not many a man
grieve that he no longer can listen? To remember the talk is to wonder,
to think not only of the treasures he had stored, but of the trifles which
he could produce with equal readiness. What a vast, brilliant,
wonderful store of learning he had; what strange lore would he not
fetch at your bidding."

No report of these conversations exists, except such as is found scattered in
private diaries. In these there are records of many an Attic night, and still
more agreeable morning. Lord Carlisle's journal contains as many of these
records, perhaps, as any one's. He makes glowing mention of Macaulay and
his eloquence, after nearly every meeting of the famous circle. The only
criticism he made, and it is one that was frequently made on Macaulay, was
that it was remarkable what quantities of trash he remembered. He could
repeat pages of the very dreariest stuff that ever was written, and was in
danger of doing so on small provocation,—an infliction it must have been
hard for his friends to have endured sometimes. Great stories are told of his
remarkable memory,—one seldom equalled by any man. He was always
willing to accept a friendly challenge to a feat of memory. One day in the
board-room of the British Museum he handed to Lord Aberdeen a sheet of
foolscap covered with writing arranged in parallel columns down each of
the four pages. This document, on which the ink was still wet, proved to be

a full list of the Senior Wranglers at Cambridge, with their dates and
colleges for the hundred years during which the names of Senior Wranglers
had been recorded in the University Calendar. On another occasion Sir
David Dundas asked:—

"'Macaulay, do you know your Popes?' 'No,' was the answer; 'I always
get wrong among the Innocents.' 'But you can say your Archbishops of
Canterbury?' 'Any fool,' said Macaulay, 'could say his Archbishops of
Canterbury backwards;' and he went off at a score, drawing breath
only once in order to remark on some oddity."

He was easily bored in general society, and in later life rarely went beyond
his little circle of intimates. Children were the only people of whom he
never tired, and he was a royal companion to them always. He was
unrivalled in the invention of games, and never wearied of repeating them.
He had an inexhaustible repertory of small dramas for his nieces, and
sustained a great variety of parts with much skill. An old friend of the
family writes:—

"There was one never-failing game of building up a den with
newspapers behind the sofa, and of enacting robbers and tigers; we
shrieking with terror, but always begging him to begin again, of which
we never grew weary."

He writes to a friend concerning Dickens, that he did not think it possible
for fiction to affect him as the death of little Nell had done, and adds:—

"Have you seen the first number of 'Dombey'? There is not much in it,
but there is one passage which made me cry as if my heart would
break. It is the description of a little girl who has just lost her mother,
and is unkindly treated by everybody. Images of that kind always
overpower me even when the artist is less skilful than Dickens."

In truth, his extreme sensibility was often a great annoyance to him. He
strove very hard to overcome it, but in vain; and he was moved to tears
upon a great many occasions, when he would have given much to be able to
control himself.

Let us quote a little more from Thackeray's tribute to him.

"All sorts of successes were easy to him. As a lad he goes down into
the arena with others, and wins all the prizes to which he has a mind. A
place in the Senate is straightway offered to the young man. He takes
his seat there, he speaks when so minded, without party anger or
intrigue, but not without party faith and a sort of heroic enthusiasm for
his cause; and speech is also a success to him. Still he is a poet and
philosopher even more than orator. . . . Years ago there was a wretched
outcry raised because he dated a letter from Windsor Castle, where he
was staying. Immortal gods! was not this man a fit guest for any palace
in the world, or a fit companion for any man or woman in it? The place
of such a natural chief was among the first in the land."

Macaulay died, in 1860, a sudden and painless death, and lies buried in
Westminster Abbey, in the Poet's Corner, near the west wall of the South
Transept, at the feet of Addison.

EDWARD BULWER LYTTON.

The British aristocracy has given to literature a few names which the world
will not willingly let die. But its contribution to the world's genius has not
been great in proportion to its numbers, its exceptional opportunities for
culture, and the great prominence which has naturally been given to its
achievements. From out its ranks have come few of the great names in
English literature.
Among these the name of Lord Lytton, or Bulwer, as he is more generally
known in literature, holds a prominent place. For the period of a long life he
lived in the world's eye, and the world feels a great interest in the character
of the man as well as in his writings.
His paternal ancestors had been settled in Norfolk since the Conquest. The
name of Bulwer attests the Scandinavian origin of the Norman soldier. The
great-grandfather of Edward Bulwer married the heiress of the Earles of
Heydon Hall, which became the family residence. Our hero's father
"contracted a romantic, if illicit, attachment to a young person of great
beauty, who eloped with him from a boarding-school in which she was a
teacher, and, though too haughty a man to marry beneath him, he had at
least the justice to say that while she lived he would never marry any one
else. And when the hand of a great and noble heiress was offered him,
although a very ambitious man, he refused her upon the ground that he was
not quite satisfied with the shape of her ladyship's nose." General Bulwer
built for his mistress a villa in the neighborhood of London, and as he was
driving into the yard on his return from some military duties which had
detained him longer than usual, she ran out to meet him. In this hurried
action she received a kick from one of the horses, and died of the injury.
After this, the General, who is described by his son as being of a very
powerful, self-willed nature, wholly uncultivated by literature, but with that

ability for action which takes lessons from life,—married the mother of our
hero, a delicate girl, with intelligent, dark-blue eyes, with shy sensitive
temper, passionately fond of poetry, and deeply under the influences of
religion. Her family was as ancient as that of the Bulwers, the Lyttons
having intermarried with many houses famous in history. But family
concord was not one of the characteristics of the Lytton family, and
Bulwer's grandfather and grandmother had lived stormily together for a few
years, and separated by mutual consent. The essential faults are said to have
been all on the side of the grandfather. The only daughter of the
uncongenial pair was not permitted to dwell permanently with either. She
was sent at the age of five to a large school, where she lived a sad life for a
long time, without any of the tender care and affection which such a child
craves, and must have, for anything like a healthful child-life. After a while
she went to live with her father, and still later with her mother, from whose
house she was married to General Bulwer. He was not a man who could
appreciate the rarer qualities of Miss Lytton. He could have no share in her
intellectual life and no sympathy with her religious nature. But the elegance
of her manners satisfied his pride, her domestic habits gave him promise of
a peaceful home, and, greatest merit of all, her features suited him. He liked
an aquiline nose. A nose that turned up the least bit, his son tells us, would
have disgusted him with a Venus. The lady's nose in this instance proving
satisfactory, a happy marriage was anticipated, although the bridegroom had
buried his heart in the grave of a mistress, and the bride had but partially
recovered from an unhappy attachment for a man beneath herself in rank,—
in fact, a merchant's son. But the marriage proved far from a happy one, and
was closed after a few years by the sudden death of General Bulwer. Our
hero thus writes of him:—

"Peace to thy dust, O my father! Faults thou hadst, but those rather of
temper than of heart,—of deficient education and the manlike hardness
of imperious will than of ungenerous disposition or epicurean
corruption. If thou didst fail to give happiness to the woman whom
thou didst love, many a good man is guilty of a similar failure. It had
been otherwise, I verily believe, hadst thou chosen a partner of
intellectual cultivation more akin to thine own,—of hardier nerve and
coarser fibre,—one whom thy wrath would less have terrified, whom

thy converse would more have charmed; of less moral spirit and more
physical courage."

Verily we are tempted to ask when we read of this marriage—as well as of
the son's own marriage and the marriages of many other members of the
English aristocracy whose domestic lives have latterly seen the light of day
—whether less of moral spirit and more of physical courage is not the great
need among women who aspire to the peerage. Strong nerves and a martial
spirit, if they could not secure peace, would at least place the combatants
upon a more equal footing, and the world would be spared the spectacle of
the mild-mannered and meek bullied by the overbearing and violent.
As for Bulwer himself, he had the hot blood, imperious temper, and
remorseless will of the combined Bulwers and Lyttons; and, it must be
added, a vanity and egotism so boundless as to be peculiarly his own, and
an arrogance and superciliousness which throughout life were a constant
drawback, and which interfered materially with the acknowledgment by the
world of his really great powers.
At the early age of seventeen this precocious young man, who had already
been several years in society, felt his first sensations of love; and he talked
of it to the end of his days as being the one genuine passion of his life. He
tells the pretty story very feelingly, and no doubt it was a genuine boyish
romance. Hear him:—

"Ah, God! how palpably, even in hours the least friendly to
remembrance, there rises before me when I close my eyes that
singularly dwarfed tree which overshadowed the little stream,
throwing its boughs half-way to the opposite margin. I dare not revisit
that spot, for there we were wont to meet (poor children that we
were!), thinking not of the world we had scarce entered, dreaming not
of fate and chance, full only of our first-born, our ineffable love. It was
so unlike the love of grown-up people; so pure that not one wrong
thought ever crossed it, and yet so passionate that never again have I
felt any emotion comparable to the intensity of its tumultuous
tenderness."

When the meetings so feelingly described became known to the lady's
father, she was sent away at once, and Bulwer never saw her again. Very
soon after, she was forced into a marriage against which her heart protested.
For three years she strove to smother the love which consumed her; and
when she sunk under the conflict, and death was about to relieve her, she
wrote to Bulwer informing him of the sufferings she had undergone,
affirming her deathless love, and begging him to visit her grave.
His son says:—

"The impressions left on my father by this early phantom of delight
were indelible and colored the whole of his afterlife. He believed that
far beyond all other influences they shaped his character, and they
never ceased to haunt his memory. Allusions to it are constantly
recurring in all his published works, and in none of them more than in
the last of all. He was much affected by them, and not knowing to what
they referred, we wondered that the creations of his fancy should
exercise such power over him. They were not creations of fancy, but
the memories of fifty years past."

After the abrupt end of his first romance he conceived a sort of friendship
for Lady Caroline Lamb, which came very near the verge of love. Lady
Caroline was between thirty and forty years old at this time, it being
subsequent to her intrigue with Lord Byron. She looked much younger than
her age,—thanks, perhaps, to a slight rounded figure and a child-like mode
of wearing her pale golden hair in loose curls. She had large hazel eyes,
good teeth, and a pleasant laugh. She had to a surpassing degree the
qualities that charm, and never failed to please. Her conversation was
remarkable, and she was the only woman, Byron said, who never bored
him. She was a creature of caprice, and impulse, and whim, and had been
known to send a page around to all her guests at Brocket at three o'clock in
the morning to say that she was playing the great organ on the staircase, and
requested the pleasure of their company. And it is added that the invitation
was never refused, and that daylight would find them listening, spellbound
and without a thought of bed. Here is Bulwer's own account of the close of
this little episode with Lady Caroline. He was staying at her house, and had
become very jealous of a Mr. Russell.

"I went downstairs. Russell sat opposite me. He wore a ring. It was one
which Lord Byron had given Lady Caroline: one which was to be
worn only by those she loved. I had often worn it myself. She had
wanted me to accept it, but I would not, because it was so costly. And
now he wore it. Can you conceive my resentment, my wretchedness?
After dinner I threw myself upon a sofa. Music was playing. Lady
Caroline came to me. 'Are you mad?' said she. I looked up. The tears
stood in my eyes. I could not have spoken a word for the world. What
do you think she said aloud? 'Don't play this melancholy air,—it
affects Mr. Bulwer so that he is actually weeping.' My tears, my
softness, my love were over in a moment. When we broke up in the
evening I said to her, 'Farewell forever. It is over. Now I see you in
your true light. Instead of jealousy I only feel contempt. Farewell. Go
and be happy.'"

This account reads very much like a page from "Pelham" or "Devereux,"
and the whole account of his affairs of the heart is written in a similar
manner.
All this had passed before he was twenty-two. At that age he first met
Rosina Wheeler, at an evening party. He was talking busily to his mother
when she suddenly exclaimed: "O Edward, what a singularly beautiful face!
Do look. Who can she be?"
An elderly gentleman was leading through the room in which they sat a
young lady of remarkable beauty, who, from the simplicity of her costume,
seemed to be unmarried. He turned his head languidly, as he says, with a
strangely troubled sensation, and beheld his fate before him,—in other
words, his future wife.
Rosina Wheeler was at this time twenty-three, and in the full blossom of a
very remarkable beauty. Her father was an Irish squire, who at the age of
seventeen had married a very beautiful girl two years younger than himself.
The natural result of this marriage was a separation, after the birth of two
children, one of them the future Lady Lytton. Domestic infelicity seems to
have been the heritage of every one connected with the Bulwer family even
in the remotest manner.

And now it appears again in the family of the woman to whom the latest
scion of the old house is to be united. Bulwer's mother opposed the match
strenuously from the first. Her pride, her prudence, her forebodings, and her
motherly susceptibilities all rose up against it. And she never gave her
consent to it, or became really reconciled to it after it had taken place.
Although very unwilling to displease his mother in so vital a matter, Bulwer
seems to have gone steadily on to such a consummation; not borne away
certainly by strong passion, but rather influenced, it would seem, by a
tender regard for the feelings of Miss Wheeler, who had grown much
attached to him. Not without many a struggle with himself, however, did he
yield. He was tenderly attached to his mother, and it was a great grief to him
to do so important a thing without her approval; and, moreover, his income
and all his worldly prospects depended upon her. He does not seem to have
been particularly happy over his own prospects, for in one of the last letters
he wrote before marriage he says:—

"My intended is very beautiful, very clever, very good; but, alas! the
human heart is inscrutable. I love and am loved. My heart is satisfied,
my judgment, too. And still I am wretched."

There have been published within a few years a great number of the love-
letters written by Bulwer to Miss Wheeler about this time. His son
publishes none of them in the late biography, and it is safe to say that in all
the range of literature there are no other letters filled with such drivelling
idiocy as these. Had they been written by some Cockney coachman to some
sentimental housemaid, they should stand as the finest specimens of that
grade of literature extant; but that they should have been written by one of
the foremost literary men of his time is a marvel, and seems to show to
what extremes of imbecility love may reduce even wise men. As for Lady
Lytton herself, one cares to know little more than that she could have
married a man who habitually addressed her as his "sugar-plum," his
"tootsy-wootsy," and his "sweety-weety." A woman clothed and in her right
mind, who could deliberately accept such a personage for a life-long
companion, calls for small sympathy from a matter-of-fact world, unless,
indeed, it be that we bestow our sympathy simply upon the grounds of her
feeble-mindedness.

In less than three years began the vulgar quarrels which finally ended the
marriage. Bulwer is described by a visitor to the house about this time as
appearing "like a man who has been flayed and is sore all over." His
temperament was by nature extremely sensitive and irritable. And the
combined Bulwer and Lytton blood was hot, turbulent, and at times quite
uncontrollable. There are records of scenes of absolute personal violence
against his wife, and one instance is given where at dinner, during the
momentary absence of the servant, he bit her cheek till the blood flowed
freely. After marriage, his income being cut off by his mother, he for a time
wrote for his bread; and the work, close and confining as it was, told very
much upon his health.

"His feelings became morbidly acute, and all the petty household
worries were to his exasperated brain what frictions and jostlings are to
highly inflamed flesh. His wife had little of his society. He was nearly
always writing or making preparation for writing, and when they were
together his nervous irritability vented itself at every unwelcome
circumstance in complaints, or taunts, or fits of anger. To harsh words
and unjust reproaches his wife returned meek replies. Any distress his
conduct occasioned her she concealed from him. She was studious to
please him, and endeavored to anticipate every want and wish. Her
gentleness and forbearance increased his gratitude and devotion to her,
and whenever he perceived that she was wounded he was full of
remorse."

So says her son, and continues:—

"The mischief was aggravated by the unfortunate occurrence that my
mother being unable to suckle her first-born child, it had been nursed
out of the house. Her maternal instinct, thus thwarted in its origin,
never revived. The care of children was ever after distasteful to her.
Losing this satisfaction to her affections, unless she had company in
the house she was lonely. As it was, neither of them saw the issue to
which the divided life was tending."

That issue, as all the world knows, was a separation of the husband and
wife, and a life-long quarrel of almost unimagined bitterness. No wonder
that Bulwer's hand faltered when be tried to write of it, and that, having

brought his autobiography up to this point, he laid it by, not daring to go on.
He always cherished the intention of resuming it, but could never bring
himself to the point of doing so. He could not tell the story; but Lady Lytton
could, and did, continuing to do so till her dying day. The picture of her
which her son has given does not seem like that of a woman who would do
all the things which she notoriously did. But doubtless she had her amiable
and engaging side, and was half maddened by her wrongs. Justin McCarthy
says:—

"I do not know whether I ought to call it a quarrel. Can that be called a
quarrel, piteously asks the man in 'Juvenal,' where my enemy only
beats and I am beaten? Can that be called a quarrel in which, so far as
the public could judge, the wife did all the denunciation, and the
husband made no reply? Lady Lytton wrote novels for the purpose of
satirizing her husband and his friends,—his parasites, she called them.
Lady Lytton attributed to her husband the most odious meannesses,
vices, and cruelties; but the public, with all its love of scandal, seems
to have steadfastly refused to take her ladyship's word for these
accusations. Dickens she denounced and vilified as a mere parasite and
sycophant of her husband. Disraeli she caricatured under the title of
Jericho Jabber. This sort of thing she kept always going on. Sometimes
she issued pamphlets to the women of England, calling on them to take
up her quarrel, which, somehow, they never did. Once, when Sir
Edward was on the hustings addressing his constituents at a county
election, her ladyship suddenly appeared, mounted the platform, and
'went' for him. I do not know anything of the merits of the quarrel, but
have always thought that something like insanity must have been the
explanation of much of her conduct. But it is beyond doubt that her
husband's conduct was remarkable for its quiet, indomitable patience
and dignity."

Let the veil drop over the blighted lives, knowing as we do that the human
heart is so dark and intricate a labyrinth that we cannot claim to understand
it by half knowledge, and that however we might judge these two with any
light which we can possibly have in our day, we should be in danger of
doing each a grievous wrong.

ALFRED TENNYSON.

It is related by Miss Thackeray that the grandfather of Alfred Tennyson,
when that poet was young, asked him to write an elegy on his grandmother,
who had recently died, and when it was written gave him ten shillings, with
the remark, "There, that is the first money you have ever earned by your
poetry, and, take my word for it, it will be the last." How little he foresaw at
that time the fame and fortune which the youth's poetry was to bring him,
and the lasting honor he was to bestow upon the family name! That name
was already an honorable one, for the Tennysons were an old family, and
had good blood in their veins. The home was the old rectory of Somersby,
where George Clayton Tennyson, LL.D., held sway in the old-time priestly
fashion for a lifetime. He is described as a man of strong character and high
principle, full of accomplishments, and gifted withal; a strikingly handsome

man, with impressive manners. Twelve children were given to his hands, of
whom Alfred was the third. The eldest, Frederick, and the second, Charles,
were both poets, and not without merit,—especially Charles, who published
a volume of sonnets, which gave great pleasure to so good a judge as
Coleridge; and the Laureate is himself very fond of his brother's work.
The children led a very free and unconstrained life in that beautiful part of
Lincolnshire, and had a few friends to whom they attached themselves for
life. Arthur Hallam was Alfred's intimate, and later on he became engaged
to one of his sisters. Young Hallam's early death was the first shadow upon
their lives. But who would not willingly die at twenty-three to be
immortalized in such a poem as "In Memoriam"?
Of Arthur Hallam's own quality as a poet we get a pleasant glimpse in the
sonnet addressed to his betrothed when he began to teach her Italian:—
"Lady, I bid thee to a sunny dome,
Ringing with echoes of Italian song;
Henceforth to thee these magic halls belong,
And all the pleasant place is like a home.
Hark, on the right, with full piano tone,
Old Dante's voice encircles all the air;
Hark yet again, like flute-tones mingling rare
Comes the keen sweetness of Petrarca's moan.
Pass thou the lintel freely; without fear
Feast on the music. I do better know thee
Than to suspect this pleasure thou dost owe me
Will wrong thy gentle spirit, or make less dear."
After Tennyson had made his first literary successes, and after the family
life at Somersby was broken up, we next hear of him through a warm and
life-long friend. Away back in 1844 Carlyle in one of his letters to Emerson
gives the following description of the then young and rising poet. It is an
authentic glimpse of the real man, as he then appeared to one of the
shrewdest and most critical of the men of that day.

"Tennyson is now in town, and means to come and see me. Of this
latter result I shall be very glad: Alfred is one of the few British or
Foreign Figures (a not increasing number I think) who are and remain

beautiful to me,—a true human soul, or some approximation thereto, to
whom your own soul can say, Brother! However, I doubt he will not
come; he often skips me, in these brief visits to Town; skips everybody
indeed, being a man solitary and sad, as certain men are, dwelling in
an element of gloom,—carrying a bit of Chaos about him, in short,
which he is manufacturing into Cosmos!
"Alfred is the son of a Lincolnshire Gentleman Farmer, I think; indeed,
you see in his verses that he is a native of 'moated granges,' and green
fat pastures, not of mountains and their torrents and storms. He had his
breeding at Cambridge, as if for the Law or Church; being master of a
small annuity, on his Father's decease, he preferred clubbing, with his
mother and some sisters, to live unpromoted and write Poems. In this
way he lives still, now here, now there; the family always within reach
of London, never in it; he himself making rare and brief visits, lodging
in some old comrade's rooms. I think he must be under forty, not much
under it. One of the finest looking men in the world. A great shock of
rough dusty-dark hair; bright, laughing hazel eyes; massive aquiline
face, most massive, yet most delicate; of sallow-brown complexion,
almost Indian looking; clothes cynically loose, free-and-easy; smokes
infinite tobacco. His voice is musical metallic,—fit for loud laughter
and piercing wail, and all that may lie between; speech and speculation
free and plenteous: I do not meet in these decades such company over
a pipe! We shall see what he will grow to. He is often unwell; very
chaotic—his way is through Chaos and the Bottomless and Pathless;
not handy for making out many miles upon."

To this graphic description little need be added of the Tennyson of that time.
He was in the midst of his greatest literary successes, and just beginning to
reap some of the rewards of his labors. His fame increased rapidly from that
time forward, and his fortune with his fame. For many years he has been a
rich man, being a sharp and shrewd manager of his worldly affairs. His
investments have always proved to be paying ones; and for a long time he
has had whatever prices he named for his poems. He has a beautiful place at
Farringford, Isle of Wight, and another country seat at Aldworth, in Surrey.
He also owns a house in London, although he spends very little time there.
He kept up his visits to the Carlyles during his occasional stays in the
metropolis, until the death of his old friends. He was very fond of Mrs.

Carlyle, her sharp wit amusing him, and her appreciation of his own work
flattering him. She gives occasional pleasant mention of him in her letters.
Over his later work Carlyle was not enthusiastic, although he retained his
friendship for the man. In 1867, after the death of his wife, he gives us his
last glimpse of the poet, which is as characteristic as the other:—

"We read at first Tennyson's 'Idyls,' with profound recognition of the
finely elaborated execution, and also of the inward perfection of
vacancy—and, to say truth, with considerable impatience at being
treated so very like infants though the lollipops were so superlative.
We gladly changed for one Emerson's 'English Traits;' and read that
with increasing and ever increasing satisfaction every evening;
blessing heaven that there were still books for grown-up people too."

According to Carlyle, what Tennyson needed was a Task; and wanting that,
he almost lost his way among the will-o'-wisps. High art, in the eyes of
Carlyle, was but a poor "task" for a man like Tennyson. Upon this point the
world will not be likely to agree with him, nor in his judgment of the
wonderful "Idyls of the King." Although Tennyson, like Carlyle himself,
has written too far into the shadows of age, he will not be judged by the
labors of his old age, but by the matchless products of his prime. These are
surely a priceless possession for the readers of the future, as well as for the
men of his own time.
In the autobiography of Sir Henry Taylor we have this glimpse of the poet,
in a letter from Mrs. Cameron to that gentleman:—

"Alfred has grown, he says, much fonder of you since your last visit
here. He says he feels now he is beginning to know you and not to feel
afraid of you; and that he is beginning to get over your extreme
insolence to him when he was young and you were in your meridian
splendor and glory. So one reads your simplicity. He was very violent
with the girls on the subject of the rage for autographs. He said he
believed every crime and every vice in the world was connected with
the passion for autographs and anecdotes and records; that the desiring
anecdotes and acquaintance with the lives of great men was treating
them like pigs, to be ripped open for the public; that he knew he
himself should be ripped open like a pig; that he thanked God

Almighty with his whole heart and soul that he knew nothing, and that
the world knew nothing, of Shakspeare but his writings."

All of which sounds not unlike what Carlyle himself might have said in
those days; and yet what personal revelations he made to the world before
his death!
The news that Lord Tennyson is writing his autobiography may be sent by
cable almost any day now, and the world will not receive it with any great
surprise, but with very great interest and pleasure. This dislike of being
lionized and overrun by celebrity hunters is probably one great reason why
the poet prefers the solitude of the country to a residence in London. His
servants and family guard him very securely from unwelcome visitors in his
country home. The injunctions against disturbing him while at his work are
so strong, that one day during the life of Prince Albert that distinguished
attaché of royalty was refused admittance at the door. The poet formed a
friendship with the Prince, however, later in life, and is now an occasional
visitor to the Queen at Windsor. He is also a favorite with the Princess of
Wales and other members of the royal family. But even such august friends
as these do not draw him often from his solitude. Mr. Gladstone begs him in
vain for a visit, and his invitations to the houses of the great lords are of
course many and importunate; but of late he refuses them all. He says he
will never again voluntarily pass a week in London, and he is not more fond
of visits to country houses than to the city. Nor can we wonder much at this.
He has never been a society man, and now that he is old, and growing
somewhat feeble, the effort to conform to the demands of a conventional
life is harder than ever. He tried taking a house in London and spending the
season there, not many years ago, but wearied of it very quickly, and gave
up the idea forever. While in London at that time he always appeared in
public in the picturesque wide-awake hat of the Italian bandit, and always,
even in warm weather, wore a cloak. The costume is very becoming, and
the poet can afford to indulge his individual tastes in the matter of dress; so
everybody said how poetical he looked, and, on the whole, his eccentricity
was a success. He has always had a great contempt for the conventionalities
of dress, and many laughable anecdotes have been told concerning his
appearance at the Isle of Wight. When young he was really handsome,
though he always wore his hair long, and looked as if he would be the better
for a barber; but now he is very gray and wizened, stoops badly, and shows

that he has smoked, as Carlyle said, infinite tobacco. Tennyson has always
exercised a judicious hospitality, but never overburdened himself with
company. His favorite time for guests is from Saturday until Monday, and
those who are so fortunate as to be invited enjoy very greatly the
distinction. Among his favorite guests is Henry Irving. A few years before
his death Garibaldi paid the poet a visit, which was much enjoyed by both.
Years ago, when the poet was more in London than now, a little knot of
literary friends had a standing engagement to dine together once a month,
and the parties were almost the ideal of unconventional friendliness. Among
the number were Carlyle, Cunningham, Mill, Thackeray, Forster, Stirling,
Landor, and Macready. Here the conversation was of the best, Carlyle
always coming out strong, and all the rest content to listen. However,
Carlyle, unlike many great conversers, never monopolized the conversation.
It was always dialogue and not monologue with Carlyle in any mixed
company, though he would discourse at length to one or two visitors.
Tennyson, like many men of letters, loves to talk about his own work, and is
very fond of reading his poems to his friends. This is, of course, very
delightful to those friends, if the reading be not too prolonged, although he
is said to chant them in rather a disagreeable manner. He is a great egotist,
and does not like to listen to other people when they talk about themselves.
We are told that Charles Sumner once paid him a visit, and bored him very
much by a long talk upon American affairs in which Tennyson took no
interest. When Sumner finally made a sufficient pause, Tennyson changed
the subject by inquiring if his visitor had ever read "The Princess." Sumner
replied that it was one of his favorite poems, whereupon Tennyson handed
him the book and asked him to read. Sumner began, but was soon stopped
by Tennyson, who wished to show him how a passage should be read. He
went on reading aloud in his high nasal voice, until Sumner grew very
weary, but did not dare to move for fear of being thought unappreciative.
On and on read the poet, page after page, never making a moment's pause
or giving Sumner any chance to escape, until he had read the whole poem.
It is said that Sumner never dared pay him another visit. Being a decided
egotist himself, it was painfully hard for the distinguished American to
subordinate himself for so long a time, and his friends amused themselves
very much at the idea.

Tennyson undoubtedly has a high opinion of his work; but he does not go
quite to the length of Wordsworth in such self-admiration, as Wordsworth
would read no poetry but his own, while Tennyson is a generous admirer of
the work of fellow-poets.
Tennyson's married life has been one of the happiest on record. He
addresses his wife in these lines:—
"Dear, near, and true—no truer Time himself
Can prove you, though he make you evermore
Dearer and nearer."
One cannot think, when he witnesses the devotion of the poet to his wife,
that he ever regrets the "Amy shallow-hearted," the "Amy mine no more,"
of his youth; and the reader certainly cannot regret her, if it is really to her
that we owe "Locksley Hall." Mrs. Tennyson has been something of an
invalid, and the poet and his sons, Hallam and Lionel, may often be seen
wheeling her on the lawn at Farringford. Of the house at Farringford Miss
Thackeray, who is an old friend of the family, as was her father before her,
tells us:—

"The house itself seemed like a charmed palace, with green walls
without and speaking walls within. There hung Dante with his solemn
nose and wreath; Italy gleamed over the doorways; friends' faces lined
the way; books filled the shelves, and a glow of crimson was
everywhere; the great oriel window in the drawing-room was full of
green and golden leaves, of the sound of birds, and of the distant sea."

She continues:—

"I first knew the place in the autumn, but perhaps it is even more
beautiful in spring-time, when all day the lark trills high overhead, and
then when the lark has flown out of our hearing the thrushes begin, and
the air is sweet with scents from the many fragrant shrubs. The woods
are full of anemones and primroses; narcissus grows wild in the lower
fields; a lovely creamy stream of flowers flows along the lanes, and
lies hidden in the levels; hyacinth-pools of blue shine in the woods;
and then with a later burst of glory comes the gorse, lighting up the
country round about, and blazing round about the beacon hill. The

beacon hill stands behind Farringford. If you follow the little wood of
nightingales and thrushes, and follow the lane where the blackthorn
hedges shine in spring-time (lovely dials that illuminate to show the
hour), you come to the downs, and climbing their smooth steps you
reach 'Mr. Tennyson's Down,' where the beacon-staff stands firm upon
the mound. Then following the line of the coast you come at last to the
Needles, and may look down upon the ridge of rocks that rises crisp,
sharp, shining, out of the blue wash of fierce delirious waters."

Since Tennyson's elevation to the peerage there has been an infinite amount
of squibbing at his expense, and some very good parodies upon his poems
have been circulated. The "Pall Mall Gazette" parodies "Lady Clara Vere de
Vere" thus:—
"Baron Alfred Vere de Vere,
Of me you win no new renown:
You thought to daze the country-folk
And cockneys when you came to town.
See Wordsworth, Shelley, Cowper, Burns,
Withdraw in scorn, and sit retired;
The last of some six hundred earls
Is not a place to be desired.

"Baron Alfred Vere de Vere,
We thought you proud to bear your name;
Your pride is yet no mate for ours,
Too proud to think a title fame.
We had the genius—not the lord;
We love the poet's truer charms,
A simple singer with his dreams
Is worth a hundred coats-of-arms."
And so on to the close:—
"Alfred, Alfred Vere de Vere,
If time be heavy on your hands,
Are there no toilers in our streets,
Nor any poor in all these lands?

Oh, teach the weak to strive and hope;
Oh, teach the great to help the low;
Pray Heaven for a noble heart,
And let the foolish title go."
There was undoubtedly much disappointment that Tennyson did not refuse
the title bestowed upon him, as he had previously declined to be knighted,
and was looked upon as something of a liberal. He probably was this when
young, judging by some things in his writings; but he is now looked upon as
a tory of the tories.
Tennyson has probably received higher prices for his poems than any other
poet. When he was paid ten pounds a line for "Sea Dreams," it was
considered a fabulous price; but he has received much more than that since.
During his long literary life—for he has been writing over fifty years—he
has of course written a great deal; yet he is very slow and laborious in
composition, and spends much time in rewriting and polishing. The garden
song in "Maud" was rewritten fifty times, and almost as great labor has
been given to other famous bits of writing. He was seventeen years in
writing "In Memoriam," and he brought it almost to perfection of finish; but
he has spent laborious years upon poems which are comparative failures.
After the inspiration has waned, or if the inspiration is wanting in the first
place, the pains taken in revision go for little in the making of a poem
which will live. Given the inspiration, and the labor usually, though not
always, adds to its chances for immortality. Tennyson, with all his fastidious
delicacy in writing, is a robust, manly man,—strong, healthy, active, fond of
out-of-door life, and not greatly given to study. He spends whole days in the
open air, and has all an Englishman's fondness for walking. He is martial in
spirit, too, and rejoices in the heroic deeds of his countrymen. He can write
a spirited war song, as he proved a few years ago when he thrilled all
England with the lyric:—
"Form, form, riflemen, form;
Ready, be ready to meet the storm."
On the whole, Tennyson must be said to have had a very prosperous and
well-ordered life. He has enjoyed more of the blessings of this world than
almost any one of his famous contemporaries; and his name is likely to live

after that of most of the others shall have passed away. He has had the
appreciation and the applause of all of the great men of his time, and the
friendship of such as he desired; and his old age is full of honor, and
ministered unto by loving and faithful hands. May it still be long before an
admiring world shall read at the end of his life's story the words, "In
Memoriam, Alfred Tennyson."

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.

"Come to Concord," wrote Ellery Channing to Hawthorne once upon a
time; "Emerson is away, and nobody here to bore you;"—which sentence
contains a gentle hint to the posterity of the two most distinguished men of
letters America has produced that even the mystic and the seer sometimes
palled upon the appetites of his personal friends. If any man could be
supposed to be a hero to his valet, that man was surely Emerson; but his
gifted neighbor seems not to have had any strong relish for his society.
Neither did Hawthorne really enjoy Thoreau, who would seem to have been
a sufficiently original person to have interested him, merely as a study of
character. But it does not appear that Hawthorne was ever particularly fond

of the society of men of letters, even though they were also men of genius.
He refused to go to the Saturday Club of Authors, but would play cards with
sea-captains in the smoking-room of his boarding-house in Liverpool,
evening after evening. Indeed, he liked the piquant flavor of what is
commonly called low society, when he required any society outside his
home, better than that which would have seemed more adapted to his taste.
We mean simply by this the society of back-woodsmen, sailors, laborers,
and old hard-headed farmers of New England stock, with their strong
provincial dialect.
Mr. Emerson himself liked the raciness of the conversation of such men,
and, indeed, we think almost all men of genius have something of the same
taste. When we read what Mrs. Hawthorne says of the manner of
conversation between her husband and Emerson, it can scarcely be
considered remarkable that Hawthorne should not have cared to confine
himself to the society of the sage. She says, speaking of Hawthorne:—

"Mr. Emerson delights in him; he talks to him all the time, and Mr.
Hawthorne looks answers. He seems to fascinate Emerson. Whenever
he comes to see him he takes him away, so that no one may interrupt
him in his close and dead-set attack upon his ear."

There is a one-sidedness to a conversation of this nature which might well
weary a person in the body; and only a disembodied spirit, it may be
surmised, could thoroughly enjoy it. A fine thing to do would be to put two
of those great conversationalists against each other, as was sometimes done
with Sydney Smith and Macaulay. It is said that the two would sit glaring at
each other and maintain perfect silence; whereas either one of them apart
from the other would discourse for three hours without taking breath.
Imagine the horrible agony of those among the auditors who were not
interested in the subject of the oration!—and there must always have been
some among the number so situated.
One remembers how Shelley got rid of the old woman down in Conway,
and wonders why the ruse was never tried upon Macaulay by some of his
victims. Shelley, it is said, was once riding in a stage in that region, and the
only passenger beside himself was an old woman with two huge baskets
filled with onions and cabbage respectively. She was huge herself and much

incumbered with fat, and the day was excessively warm. Shelley was one of
those delicate mortals who have been known to "die of a rose in aromatic
pains," and after a while the presence of the old woman nearly drove him to
distraction. He pretended that it had quite done so, and suddenly throwing
himself into the bottom of the stage he glared at the old woman and
shouted:—
"For God's sake let us sit upon the ground,
And tell sad stories of the death of kings:
How some have been deposed, some slain in war,
Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed,
Some poisoned by their wives, some sleeping killed,—
All murdered."
Before the last two words—which he rendered with more than an actor's
effect—were fairly out of his mouth, the old woman by her shrieks had
summoned the guard, and was released from the company of the madman.
Shelley was often induced by his friends to show them how he got rid of the
old woman, and the exhibition always called for uproarious applause. There
is a hint in it for any well-bred company who may be bored to the point of
extinction by a distinguished member. The only wonder is that in some
cases the sudden madness is not real rather than assumed.
Hawthorne was eminently capable of being bored to this point of
desperation, and his mother and elder sister saved themselves from any
danger of this kind by voluntarily living the lives of recluses. Julian
Hawthorne tells us:—

"His mother, a woman of fine gifts but extreme sensibility lost her
husband in her twenty-eighth year; and from an exaggerated, almost
Hindoo-like, construction of the law of seclusion which the public
taste of that day imposed upon widows, she withdrew entirely from
society and permitted the habit of solitude to grow upon her to such a
degree that she actually remained a strict hermit to the end of her long
life, or for more than forty years after Captain Hawthorne's death. Such
behavior on the mother's part could not fail to have its effect upon the
children. They had no opportunity to know what social intercourse
meant; their peculiarities and eccentricities were at least negatively

encouraged; they grew to regard themselves as something apart from
the general world. It is saying much for the sanity and healthfulness of
the minds of these three children, that their loneliness distorted their
judgment—their perception of the relation of things—as little as it
did."

The sister is described as having in many respects an intellect as
commanding and penetrating as that of her brother, and yet she followed in
the way of her mother and passed her life in almost complete seclusion,
caring for nothing but the reading of books and the taking of long walks,
sleeping always until noon, and sitting up until two or three o'clock in the
morning in perfect solitude. She boarded for many years after her mother's
death at a farm-house on the seashore, and could not be induced to come
out, even to attend the funeral of her brother at Concord, although he was
her pride and idol throughout life.
Had Hawthorne himself been less fortunate in his marriage, there is little
doubt that his own peculiarities would have become exaggerated, perhaps
even to the extent of those of his sister. But he married a woman who both
understood and appreciated him, and whom he idolized. From this union
grew all the happiness and success of his life. His son says:—

"To attempt to explain and describe his career without taking this event
into consideration would be like trying to imagine a sun without heat
or a day without a sun. Nothing seems less likely than that he should
have accomplished his work in literature independently of her
sympathy and companionship. Not that she afforded him any direct
and literal assistance in the composition of his books and stories: her
gifts were wholly unsuited to such employment, and no one
apprehended more keenly than she the solitariness and uniqueness of
his genius, insomuch that she would have deemed it something not far
removed from profanation to have offered to advise or sway him in
regard to his literary productions. She believed in his inspiration, and
her office was to promote, as far as in her lay, the favorableness of the
conditions under which it should manifest itself."

It was to this that she devoted her life,—to comfort, to cheer, to soothe, to
inspire, to guard from all outward annoyances, the poetical and sensitive

man who believed in her so implicitly and leaned upon her so confidently.
They led a very quiet and secluded life during the most of his literary
career, and seemed almost to resent any intrusion of the outside world upon
them, not only as regarded persons, but even as regarded agitating questions
and pressing ideas.
They took very slight interest in the questions which stirred New England
life in their day, and held entirely aloof from the reforms which shook the
social life around them from centre to foundation-stone. Indeed, he had a
deep-seated dislike to the genus Reformer, and presented his picture of the
whole race in "Hollingsworth." Perhaps he had known some individual
reformer of that odious type, and out of this grew his dislike of the whole
species. At any rate, the men—of whom New England was full at that time
—who
"Blew the fiery breath of storm
Through the hoarse trumpet of Reform"
never received much aid or sympathy from Nathaniel Hawthorne or his
wife. Nor will they, apparently, from his son, who says of his father, "He
was not a teetotaler any more than he was an abolitionist or a Thug."
But if their sympathies did not go out very widely to the outside world,
there was the most perfect sympathy and companionship in the home life,
and no more beautiful record of a perfect marriage has ever been made than
this life of the Hawthornes presents. Yes, it was a happy life they led, these
two in their married isolation, despite poverty and obscurity and a lack of
appreciation in the early time, and of trial, from ill-health and other causes,
in later years. He lived like Carlyle, a good deal in the shadows of his
famous books, and was sometimes for months in the possession of the
demon of composition. While composing "The Marble Faun" he thus writes
in a letter:

"I sternly shut myself up, and come to close grips with the romance
which I am trying to tear from my brain."

He was always discouraged about his work, and needed a deal of cheering
regarding it. He says in one place:

"My own individual taste is for an altogether different class of books
from what I write. If I were to meet with such books as mine by
another writer, I do not believe I should be able to get through with
them."

And again:—

"I will try to write a more genial book, but the Devil himself always
gets into my inkstand, and I can only get him out by penfuls."

Still again:—

"Heaven sees fit to visit me with the unshakable conviction that all this
series of articles is good for nothing. I don't think that the public will
bear with much more of this sort of thing."

His letters are often full of this moody discouragement, though lighted up
always by some gleams of his humor. For instance, he writes to Fields:—

"Do make some inquiries about Portugal,—in what part of the world it
lies, and whether it is a Kingdom, an Empire, or a Republic. Also the
expenses of living there, and whether the Minister would be much
pestered with his own countrymen."

And later, when he was in Rome:—

"I bitterly detest this Rome, and shall rejoice to bid it adieu forever;
and I fully acquiesce in all the mischief and ruin that has ever
happened to it from Nero's conflagration downward. In fact, I wish the
very site of it had been obliterated before I ever saw it."

His complaints about his pens are really very amusing to those people—and
their name is legion—who have had a like difficulty in pleasing themselves.
He writes to Fields:—

"If you want me to write you a good novel, send me a good pen; not a
gold one, but one which will not get stiff and rheumatic the moment I
get attached to it. I never met with a good pen in my life."

To this last sentiment we think that a great multitude which no man can
number will respond Amen. He says of them again:—

"Nobody ever suffered more from pens than I have, and I am glad that
my labor with the abominable little tool is drawing to a close."

In private conversation he enlivened his more serious thoughts often with
vivid surprises of expression; and he had a mild way of making a severe
remark, which reminded Charlotte Cushman of a man she once saw making
such a disturbance in the gallery of a theatre that the play could hardly
proceed. Cries of "Throw him over!" arose from all parts of the house, and
the noise became furious. All was tumultuous chaos until a sweet and gentle
female voice was heard in the pit, when all grew silent to hear:—

"No, I pray you, my friends, don't throw him over. I beg that you will
not throw him over, but—kill him where he is!"

It was only in the company of intimate personal friends, from whom all
restraint was removed, that Hawthorne ever indulged in his natural
buoyancy of spirits. Among them he occasionally condescended to
uproarious fun. But he was like Dr. Johnson, who, when indulging in a
scene of wild hilarity, suddenly exclaimed to his friends, as Beau Brummel
approached, "Let us be grave; here comes a fool." If there was the slightest
suspicion of there being a fool in the company Hawthorne always wore his
armor. The pretentious and transcendental fools he hated worst of all; and
the young man who had no taste for the finite, but thought the infinite was
the thing for him, always left him with a feeling as of asphyxia.
Hawthorne's atmosphere was really unhealthy for transcendentalists. No
doubt his dislike of Margaret Fuller arose from this feeling of his that she
was always acting a part, always straining after an effect. He loved simple,
natural, unaffected people, and the part of a sibyl was very distasteful to
him. He suspected the inspiration of green tea in much that Margaret said,
and very ungallantly pronounced her a humbug. But as he did this only
upon the paper of his own private diary, with no thought of it ever being
paraded before a critical and captious world, we should not blame him too
severely. And if he was mistaken in what he wrote concerning her husband
and her life in Rome, as seems to be the fact, no doubt he was deceived by

gossip-loving friends in Rome concerning the matter. One does not write
gratuitous falsehoods upon the pages of one's private notebook about
acquaintances, as a general rule. If he had desired to injure Margaret he
would have put his supposed facts in a different place, no doubt, and not
merely written them in a moment of spleen where he never expected them
to be seen.
The publication of such comment as this, and Carlyle's mention of Charles
Lamb and others, seems to be due entirely to the total depravity of literary
executors. As George Eliot says, it is like uncovering the dead Byron's club-
foot, when he had been so sensitive about it through life, as his friend
Trelawny boasts that he did. Margaret Fuller was a large-brained, big-
hearted woman, but that she and Hawthorne could not thoroughly fraternize
is not a strange thing. We see another instance of such lack of appreciation
of each other's qualities in Henry James and the Bostonians of the present
time. Even the admirers of the Boston type get a little quiet amusement
from his delicious satire, although their admiration of the reformers may
remain unshaken. That the world has got a little weary of the mutual
admiration of the Boston coterie is an open secret. We have had a trifle too
much of it from the day of Fields, who apparently invented Hawthorne, and
would have put a patent upon him if possible, down to the present era of
worship of that real hero, Emerson who, if he survives the laudations of his
present army of admirers, may well hope for immortality.
The wife of Hawthorne was so different a person from the noble army of
literary and artistic women who are so numerous to-day, but who in his time
had just begun to assert themselves, that, believing her to be the perfect
flower of womanhood, as he did, he could scarcely be expected to
appreciate the Zenobias of that or of the present time.
Mrs. Hawthorne's sister, Elizabeth Peabody, was one of the women of the
new era, and has spent her entire life in noble efforts to improve the world
into which she was born; and who shall say whether Mrs. Hawthorne or
Miss Peabody was the higher type of woman?
If we were obliged to compare Mrs. Hawthorne with the caricatures of the
strong-minded woman in which novelists so delight,—those "housekeepers
by the wrath of God,"—like Mrs. Jellaby and similar monstrosities, then the

answer would not be hard. We could all cry, Mrs. Hawthorne, now and
forever! But when we compare her to the strong-minded women like
George Eliot, perfect wives, perfect home-makers, perfectly sympathetic
and loyal comrades of their husbands, and lacking nothing of womanly
softness or tenderness with all their strength, then the answer is not so
simple. But doubtless the fact that God created both types may be accepted
as evidence that He saw uses for both, and that even the women whom He
made "fools to match the men" are not without their purpose in the
economy of the universe.
Such thoughts as the following in regard to her husband, written by Mrs.
Hawthorne after eight years of marriage, sound not unlike the rhapsodies of
George Eliot concerning Mr. Lewes:—

"He has perfect dominion over himself in every respect, so that to do
the highest, wisest, loveliest thing is not the least effort to him, any
more than it is for a baby to be innocent. It is his spontaneous act, and
a baby is not more unconscious of its innocence. I never knew such
loftiness so simply borne. I have never known him to stoop from it in
the most trivial household matter any more than in the larger or more
public ones. If the Hours make out to reach him in his high sphere their
wings are very strong. Happy, happiest is the wife who can bear such
and so sincere testimony to her husband after eight years' intimate
union. Such a person can never lose the prestige which commands and
fascinates. I cannot possibly conceive of my happiness, but in a kind of
blissful confusion live on. If I can only be so great, so high, so noble,
so sweet as he, in any phase of my being, I shall be glad. I am not
deluded nor mistaken, as the angels know now, and as all my friends
will know in open vision."

We will quote but this one passage from her letters about him, though the
Life is filled with similar ones, and will give but one of his love-letters to
her, and that not entire. He says:—

"Sometimes during my solitary life in our old Salem house it seemed
to me as if I had only life enough to know that I was not alive, for I
had no wife then to keep my heart warm. But at length you were
revealed to me in the shadow of a seclusion as deep as my own. I drew

nearer and nearer to you, and opened my heart to you, and you came to
me, and will remain forever, keeping my heart warm, and renewing my
life with your own. You only have taught me that I have a heart; you
only have thrown a light deep downward and upward into my soul.
You only have revealed me to myself, for without your aid my best
knowledge of myself would have been merely to know my own
shadow—to watch it flickering on the wall, and mistake its fantasies
for my own real actions. . . . If the whole world stood between us we
must have met; if we had been born in different ages we could not
have been sundered!"

What was poverty and obscurity and isolation unto these two souls, so
complete in each other that nothing else was desired? How deep a lesson
might the young of these later days, who hesitate to take each other unless
all things else may be added unto them, learn from this perfect marriage!
How much, too, could they learn from the dignity and the refinement and
the charm of that early home, where all was so simple, so humble, and yet
so rich and satisfying! Would that we had more such homes of royal poverty
in these days of vulgar pretence and showy unreality. More homes where
there is no shamefacedness over the want of the luxuries of their neighbors,
but a simple content with what it is possible to have honorably; where plain
living is a religion, and where there is no insatiable longing for the
unattainable. The worship of wealth, the feeling that there is no other good
than money, is one of the most degrading features of our modern life. It is a
falsehood, too. There is everything good in the world, and the most of the
things which are best in life can be had with but a little money. No man is
poor unless he feels poor. If a family are willing to live their own noble life,
pitched in a high key, and with little regard for what their neighbors may
say and think, it is still possible to be happy in this goodly world, though
the bank account may be small, or there be no bank account in the case. The
Ways and Means Committee of which Mrs. Hawthorne was chairman in her
day could impart a world of wisdom to the fretful and ambitious wives of a
generation of young men now upon the stage of action, who strive so hard
to live like the people who have wealth at their command that they spoil the
beautiful homes they might enjoy by an unceasing strife to appear to live
better than they can afford to do.

When Fortune began to smile upon the Hawthornes, after the immortal
"Scarlet Letter" had been written and "The Blithedale Romance" had been
added to it, they received her favors with thankful hearts, and knew how to
spend wisely and well what came to them. But, as so often happens, it does
not appear that they were any happier in their easier circumstances than in
their poverty; probably not as happy, for the glamour of youth was gone,
and the first zest of being had become dulled. Ill health, too, had come upon
him, once so strong and perfect in body; and their home was measurably
broken up after they first went abroad. The days at the Old Manse
comprised the idyl of their lives.
Here is what Hawthorne himself says of this time:—

"My wife is in the strictest sense my sole companion, and I need no
other; there is no vacancy in my mind any more than in my heart. In
truth, I have spent so many years in total seclusion from all human
society that it is no wonder if now I feel all my desires satisfied by this
sole intercourse. But she has come to me from the midst of many
friends and acquaintances; yet she lives from day to day in this
solitude, seeing nobody but myself and our Molly, while the snow of
our avenue is untrodden for weeks by any footstep save mine. Yet she
is always cheerful. Thank God that I suffice for her boundless heart."

And, again, to her he writes:—

"Dear Little Wife,—After finishing my record in the journal, I sat a
long time in grandmother's chair thinking of many things; but the
thought of thee, the great thought of thee, was among all other
thoughts, like the pervading sunshine falling through the boughs and
branches of a tree and tinging every separate leaf. And surely thou
shouldst not have deserted me without manufacturing a sufficient
quantity of sunshine to last till thy return. Art thou not ashamed?"

Concord was never the same to them after their return from Rome. The
shadow of the coming separation was already around them. He writes, after
the appearance of Longfellow's poem: "I, too, am weary, and look forward
to the Wayside Inn." And, spite of the most loving ministrations of family
and friends, he was soon brought to the rest which awaited him there. None

could really regret that he had found the peace he sought; but the world
seemed more thinly populated when it was known that the hand which had
written "The Scarlet Letter," "The House of the Seven Gables," and "The
Marble Faun" would write no more. "We carried him," said Fields, "through
the blossoming orchards of Concord, and laid him down under a group of
pines on a hill-side overlooking historic fields; the unfinished romance
which had cost him such anxiety laid upon his coffin." And there, upon that
Concord height which he has rendered world-famous, made a Delphian vale
or a Mecca to so many pilgrims from his own land and from over sea, he
sleeps well. There the sweet spring flowers of dear old New England bloom
for him; there the Mayflower pierces the melting snow, and the shy, sweet
violet gems the earliest green; there the dandelion glows in golden splendor,
and the snowy daisies star the grass, and all the sweet succession of summer
flowers troop in orderly array, until Autumn waves her torch, and the
sumach and the goldenrod blaze out in wild magnificence, and the blue-
fringed gentian hides in secret coverts. These are the fitting decorations of
that grave. Piled marble or towering granite would lie too heavy on the
heart of this child of Nature. And as the years shall pass, still will the
humble grave continue to be visited. "Forgotten" will never be written upon
the tombstone of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Still through the clear brilliance of
New England winter nights will the stars look down tenderly upon it.
Arcturus will stand guard over it, golden-belted Orion will send down
quivering lances of light to illumine it, the pomp of blazing Jupiter shall
envelop it, and the first radiance of the dawn shall silver its sacred slopes
forever.

HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.

In the city of Portland, that "beautiful town that is seated by the sea," in the
year 1807 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was born, and in the delightful old
ancestral home there he passed his youth. The house had been his mother's
home since early childhood; in it she was married, and in it passed almost
her entire life. It had been built by Mrs. Longfellow's father, General Peleg
Wadsworth, in the year 1784, and was one of the finest mansions in the city
at that time, standing, not as now, in the heart of the city, but out in the open
fields. Mr. and Mrs. Longfellow passed here a long, beautiful, and happy
life, devotedly attached to each other, fond and proud of their children, and
much given to good works. Mr. Longfellow was a man of consequence in
the community, much honored for his learning and ability, and much

esteemed for his integrity, his cordial and kind manners, and his generous
hospitality. He had graduated at Harvard College when very young, where
he was a classmate of Dr. Channing, Judge Story, and other distinguished
men, and much esteemed by them for the same qualities which made him
popular in after-life. He was regarded as one of the purest and most high-
minded youths who had at that time honored the college and been honored
by it. Mrs. Longfellow was a very beautiful woman, fond of poetry and
music, of dancing and social gayety, and a profound lover of Nature in all
her varied aspects. She was a tender and faithful wife and a most devoted
mother. From her Mr. Longfellow doubtless inherited his poetic
temperament and much that was most pleasing in his disposition.
Longfellow's childhood seems to have been a very happy one, passed in this
beautiful home, with such parents, and surrounded by a delightful group of
young friends. He was very fond of reverting to it, and all through his life
cherished the memory of
"The friendships old, and the early loves"
which used to come back to him
"With a Sabbath sound as of doves
In quiet neighborhoods."
He remembered, too, more vividly than many men of mature years,
"The gleams and glooms that dart
Across the school-boy's brain;
The song and the silence in the heart
That in part are prophecies and in part
Are longings wild and vain."
When only fifteen years of age he entered Bowdoin College, with a brother
two years older than himself, and graduated fourth in his class in 1825. His
Commencement oration was upon "The Life and Writings of Chatterton."
He was also invited to deliver a poem the day after Commencement, as he
had already begun to write verses which had been printed in the local
newspapers. Almost immediately after his graduation he was offered a
professorship in the college, and requested to visit Europe to prepare

himself for its duties, making further studies in the modern languages for
that purpose.
The proposal was eagerly accepted, and he sailed the following spring in a
packet-ship from New York. The voyage occupied a month, and was a
remarkably pleasant one, thoroughly enjoyed by the young traveller. There
is nothing remarkable in the letters he wrote home during this first trip to
Europe, when he visited France, Spain, Germany, Italy (where he spent a
year), and England. He assumed the duties of his professorship immediately
upon his return, at a salary of one thousand dollars a year. He was very
popular with the students from the first, and became quite a power in the
University. At this time he became a contributor to the "North American
Review," and may be said to have fairly begun his literary career. In the
year 1831 he was married to Mary Storer Potter, a young lady of Portland,
to whom he had long been attached. She was one of the famous beauties of
that town, noted for its beautiful women, and a member of the social circle
in which the Longfellows moved. The marriage was in every way suitable,
and pleasing to the friends of both parties. She was a lady highly educated
for that day, and possessed of a mind of unusual power. She was also of a
most cheerful and amiable disposition; and the world opened very brightly
before the young professor. They began housekeeping in Brunswick in a
house still standing in Federal Street. He gives this picture of a morning
there:—

"I can almost fancy myself in Spain, the morning is so soft and
beautiful. The tessellated shadow of the honeysuckle lies motionless
upon my study floor, as if it were a figure in the carpet; and through
the open window comes the fragrance of the wild-brier and the mock-
orange. The birds are carolling in the trees, and their shadows flit
across the window as they dart to and fro in the sunshine; while the
murmur of the bee, the cooing of doves from the eaves, and the
whirring of a little humming-bird that has its nest in the honeysuckle,
send up a sound of joy to meet the rising sun."

Here was passed a very busy and happy period of Mr. Longfellow's life. He
was young, gifted, fortunately situated, and beloved, and as yet no shadow
had darkened his life. He employed his leisure in writing a series of
sketches of travel which were afterwards published as "Outre-Mer," and he

began to write poetry again after an interval of nearly eight years. He also
began a scrap-book devoted to notices of his writings, which he christened
"Puffs and Counter Blasts," and kept for the greater part of his life.
He passed five and a half years in Brunswick, perhaps the happiest years of
his life, for he had youth and health and high hope at this time; and then he
began to long for a somewhat wider sphere. Very opportunely came the
offer of a professorship in Harvard University, which was at once accepted,
in April, 1835. He sailed for Europe to make himself familiar with the
Scandinavian tongues and to pass some further time in Germany. He was
accompanied by his wife and two of her young lady friends. They remained
in London for a few weeks, and made acquaintance with many
distinguished people,—among others the Carlyles, to whom they had
brought an introduction from Mr. Emerson. They paid a visit to the seer at
Chelsea, of which Mrs. Longfellow wrote:—

"Mr. Carlyle of Craigenputtock was soon after announced, and passed
a half-hour with us much to our delight. He has very unpolished
manners, and a broad Scottish accent, but such fine language and
beautiful thoughts that it is truly delightful to listen to him. He invited
us to take tea with them at Chelsea, where they now reside. We were as
much charmed with Mrs. C. as with her husband. She is a lovely
woman with very simple and pleasing manners. She is also very
talented and accomplished; and how delightful it is to see such
modesty combined with such power to please!"

They left London for Copenhagen and Stockholm in June, and were much
delighted with the new land they visited. To read in the public square at
midnight; to pass through groves of pine and fir with rose-colored cones; to
hear the watchman call from the church tower four times toward the four
quarters of the heaven, "Ho, watchmen, ho! Twelve the clock hath stricken.
God keep our town from fire and brand, and enemy's hand;" to have boys
and girls run before to open the gates; to hear the peasants cry, "God bless
you," when you sneezed,—all these little things gave them the delight
which young travellers alone can experience.
But alas! that delight was of short duration. Mrs. Longfellow was taken sick
in Amsterdam in October, and they were detained there for a month. She

seemed to recover, and they journeyed on to Rotterdam, where she fell ill
again and died the 29th of November. Her husband wrote of her that "she
closed her peaceful life by a still more peaceful death, and though called
away when life was brightest, went without a murmur and in perfect
willingness to the bosom of her God." Mr. Longfellow immediately
resumed his journey, going on to Dusseldorf and from there to Bonn. He
took a carriage and journeyed along the banks of the Rhine, by the "castled
crag of Drachenfels" and the other storied places of that famous river, in
complete silence, though with a pleasant companion by his side. They
visited castles and cathedrals, and wonderful ruins, and some of the most
picturesque points of that picturesque land, but in a gloom which nothing
could break or even lighten. So on to Heidelberg, where they were to
sojourn for a time, and where Mr. Longfellow was to pursue his studies.
Here he found Mr. Bryant, whom he had never met, but who cheered and
soothed him as only a fellow-countryman and a man like-minded with
himself could have done. Mr. Bryant did not remain long in Heidelberg,
however, though his wife and daughters stayed through the winter and
continued to cheer Mr. Longfellow's loneliness. He made work his chief
consoler, however, and accomplished a great deal in the line of his chosen
career.
Like Paul Fleming, into whose story he wove many of the experiences of
this part of his life, "he buried himself in books, in old dusty books. He
worked his way diligently through the ancient poetic lore of Germany into
the bright sunny land where walk the modern bards and sing." Into the
Silent Land he walked with Salis; he wept with the melancholy Werther, or
laughed with the gentle Meister; he pondered deeply over the congenial
Schiller, but delighted most of all in Jean Paul the Only, in whose prodigal
fancy he lost for a time the memory of his sorrows. But ever at his side, as
he walked on the banks of the beautiful Neckar and gazed up at the lofty
mountains which surround Heidelberg, there seemed to walk the Being
Beauteous who had whispered with her dying breath, "I will be with you
and watch over you." Many years afterwards he embalmed the memory of
this young and beautiful wife in the poem called "The Footsteps of Angels."
The summer following his bereavement he started on a tour through
Switzerland, finding at the very outset of that journey the tablet containing
the inscription which he made the motto of "Hyperion" and of his future

life: "Look not mournfully into the Past, it comes not back again; wisely
improve the Present, it is thine; go forth to meet the shadowy Future
without fear and with a manly heart." At Interlachen he met Miss Frances
Appleton, and in the pages of "Hyperion" the world has read of the romance
which followed that meeting. We also read, in the journals published
recently, some records of those days. Here is one of the earliest:—

"A day of true and quiet enjoyment, travelling from Thun to Entelbuch
on our way to Lucerne. The time glided too swiftly away. We read the
'Genevieve' of Coleridge, and the 'Christabel,' and many scraps of
song, and little German ballads of Uhland, simple and strange. At noon
we stopped at Langnau, and walked into the fields, and sat down by a
stream of pure water that turned a mill; and a little girl came out of the
mill and brought us cherries; and the shadow of the trees was pleasant,
and my soul was filled with peace and gladness."

And a little later:—

"Took a carriage to St. Germain-en-Laye to see the Fête des Layes.
The day was pleasant, with shifting clouds and sunshine. They told me
I was in good spirits. It was the surface only, stirred by the passing
breeze and catching the sunshine of the moment. I have often
observed, amid a chorus of a hundred voices and the sound of a
hundred instruments, amid all this whirlwind of the vexed air, that I
could distinguish the melancholy vibration of a single string touched
by a finger. It had a mournful, sobbing sound. Thus amid the splendor
of a festival,—the rushing crowd, and song, and sounds of gladness,
and a thousand mingling emotions,—distinctly audible to the mind's
ear are the pulsations of some melancholy chord of the heart, touched
by the finger of memory. And it has a mournful, sobbing sound."

But tearing himself away from the sadness of the old memory and the
fascination of the new presence alike, Mr. Longfellow returned to America
in December, 1836, and assumed the duties of his professorship at
Cambridge. Here he soon formed those friendships which were to him a
life-long blessing and delight. They fall naturally into two groups, the
earlier and later, though some of the most intimate of these friendships
formed in youth lasted until near the close of Mr. Longfellow's life. Among

the early friends were George W. Greene, with whom he corresponded most
affectionately for many years; Mr. Samuel Ward, a brother of Mrs. Julia
Ward Howe; Professor Felton; Hilliard, Mr. Sumner's law partner;
Cleveland, a scholar living at ease in Brookline; Hawthorne; and always
and ever Mr. Sumner himself. Emerson, also, and Prescott were his friends,
but not so intimate as the others. Here is a glimpse of the author of that
series of fascinating histories, since so popular, in a letter to Greene:—

"This morning, as I was sitting at breakfast, a gentleman on horseback
sent up word that I should come down to him. It was Prescott, author
of 'Ferdinand and Isabella.' He is an early riser, and rides about the
country. There on his horse sat the great author. He is one of the best
fellows in the world, and much my friend; handsome and forty; a great
diner-out; gentle, companionable, and modest; quite astonished to find
himself famous."

Then comes a glimpse of the as yet unknown author of "The Scarlet
Letter:"—

"I shall see Hawthorne to-morrow. He lives in Salem, and we meet and
sup together to-morrow evening at the Tremont House. Your health
shall be remembered. He is a strange owl; a very peculiar individual,
with a dash of originality about him very pleasant to behold. How I
wish you could be with us! Ach! my beloved friend, when I one day sit
with you in Italy again, with nothing on the snow-white tablecloth save
bread still whiter, and fruit, and that most delicate wine 'in beakers full
of the warm South,' will we pledge the happy present time and those
sorrows and disappointments which are our schoolmasters. Sumner is
the nearest and warmest thing I can send you. When you have him you
will think you have me, he can tell you so much of me."

To this early group were added, later on, Agassiz, Lowell, Dana, James T.
Fields, Norton, Dr. Holmes, and others; but those mentioned were his real
intimates throughout life. With Emerson he maintained a calm and admiring
friendship, but saw less of him than of the others. Bryant and Whittier and
George W. Curtis he loved and admired, but they were more distant and not
his every-day companions. Dr. Samuel G. Howe belonged, if not exactly to
the earliest group of friends, yet among friends both early and late. These

men are all historic now, and it seems strange to find Longfellow writing of
them as he does in letters and journals. For instance:—

"Also Mr. Emerson, a clergyman, with new views of life, death, and
immortality; author of 'Nature,' and friend of Carlyle. He is one of the
finest lecturers I ever heard, with magnificent passages of true prose
poetry. But it is all dreamery, after all."

Strange, too, to find Carlyle writing to the young poet after the receipt of a
volume of his poems, before reading them, as is said to be the fashion of
great men when they wish to let unknown authors down easily and
gracefully:—

"About the same time there came an indistinct message that a copy of
your poems had been left for me at Fraser the bookseller's. It now
beckons to me from one of my shelves, asking always, 'When wilt thou
have a cheerful, vacant day?'"

Very natural it seems, though, to find that Carlyle is already writing from "a
hideous immeasurable treadmill, a smoky, soul-confusing Babylon," and
that he addresses "only one prayer to the heavens,—that he were well out of
it before it takes the life out of him."
Pleasantest and strongest perhaps of all his friendships was that for Charles
Sumner, who was lecturing at the Law School when Mr. Longfellow first
came to Cambridge. Begun when both were young men just launching forth
on their great but so different career, it continued until death separated
them, without a shadow of estrangement or disloyalty, but with ever
increasing ardor of affection. Sumner was inclined to literature at that time,
and indeed for many years afterwards, his political career being rather
forced upon him by the stormy times. A club was formed at this time, called
the "Five of Clubs," consisting of Longfellow, Sumner, Hilliard, Cleveland,
and Felton. They read and criticised each other's writings, and enjoyed a
hearty social intercourse. Awhile afterwards, when they began to speak well
of each other's articles in the reviews, the newspapers gave them the name
of the "Mutual Admiration Society." Not inapplicable, probably, but
applicable to the literary men of all time. What is the great literary guild
anywhere but a mutual admiration society? What a large portion of our best

literature would be blotted out if what one great writer has said of another
should be destroyed! Would we have this so? Nay, verily! Certainly there
was no lack of warm admiration, and warm expression of it, among this
little group of friends; and between Sumner and Longfellow, at least, these
expressions continued throughout life, and were heartily sincere to the last.
One after another Longfellow's poems were submitted to his friends'
criticism, and each received its due meed of praise or gentle censure. Mr.
Sumner's speeches were received by Longfellow with great enthusiasm
always, and praised heartily and unreservedly. Every step in his career was
watched with the most eager interest and intense sympathy. It is one of the
most beautiful friendships on record. One wonders in reading the journal
what Longfellow's life would have been without these constant visits and
letters from Sumner. Every Sabbath was spent by the statesman at the poet's
house, when the former was in the vicinity of Boston, and many and many
are the records during the week,—Sumner to dine, Sumner to tea, Sumner
to pass the night, and always some note made of the late and pleasant talk
the pair had together. When Sumner goes to Washington he is sadly missed,
and such little notes as this sent after him in tender remembrance:—

"Your farewell note came safe and sad; and Sunday no well-known
footstep in the hall, nor sound of cane laid upon the table. We ate our
dinner somewhat silently by ourselves and talked of you far off,
looking at your empty chair. Away, phantoms! I will not think of this
too much for fear that which you say may prove truer than I want it to
be. Let us not prophesy sadness."

When Sumner was expected to make a speech all were alert at Craigie
House, and often his friend would send him some such greeting as this:—

"It is now eleven o'clock of the forenoon, and you have just taken your
seat in the Senate and arranged your artillery to bombard Nebraska!
We listen with deepest interest, but shall not hear the report of your
guns till to-morrow, you are so far off. If, after all, the enemy prevails,
it will be one dishonest victory more in the history of the world. But
the enemy will not prevail. A seeming victory will be a real defeat."

Then, after the speech was read:—

"All this morning of my birthday, my dear Senator, I have devoted to
your speech on Nebraska, which came by the morning's mail. It is very
noble, very cogent, very eloquent, very complete. How any one can get
over it or under it or through it or round it, it is impossible to imagine."

Then, after the cowardly and fiendish attack upon Sumner in the Senate
Chamber:—

"I have no words to write you about this savage atrocity; only enough
to express our sorrow and sympathy for yourself. We have been in
great distress. Owen came to tell us of this great feat of arms of the
'Southern chivalry.' He was absolutely sobbing. I was much relieved on
seeing your despatch to your mother, and to hear that George was
going to you directly. A brave and noble speech you made, never to die
out of the memories of men."

Then, a day or two later:—

"I have just been reading again your speech. It is the greatest voice on
the greatest subject that has been uttered since we became a nation. No
matter for insults—we feel them with you; no matter for wounds—we
also bleed in them."

But in the days of which we are writing, all these stormy troublous times
were yet far in the future, and the world looked bright and pleasant to these
afterward saddened friends. The acquaintance with Miss Appleton had been
renewed after her return to Boston, and the poet was by this time deeply
devoted to her, and hopeful of one day winning her for his own. He became
something of a dandy in those days, and showed a fondness for color in
coats, waistcoats, and neckties; and the ladies looked at him a little
doubtfully, thinking perhaps, as they had done of Paul Fleming, that "his
gloves were a shade too light for a strictly virtuous man." Six years passed
after the first meeting with Miss Appleton in Europe before Mr. Longfellow
finally claimed her for his bride. He had been a patient as well as an ardent
lover, and was rewarded in 1843 by the hand of her he sought. She was now
a woman of twenty-five, of stately presence, cultivated mind, and calm but
gracious manners. Her face was not "faultily faultless" nor "icily regular,"
but both beautiful and expressive. Mr. Longfellow was now thirty-six years

old, and a man of rapidly widening fame. Mr. Appleton purchased for the
newly married couple the old Craigie House in Cambridge, which had been
Mr. Longfellow's home ever since his arrival there. Most visitors to
Cambridge are familiar with this old Colonial mansion which had once
been the headquarters of General Washington. It stands far back in the
ample grounds which surround it, and is painted in yellow and white. It is
on Brattle Street as one goes from Harvard College to Mount Auburn. The
front is about eighty feet in length, including the verandas, and a wooden
railing extends around the roof. There is an Italian balustrade along the first
terrace, and a hedge of lilacs leads up to the door. Old historic elms throw
their broad arms all about the place. The interior of the house is very
handsome, and is considered a fine specimen of the old Colonial style.
Altogether it made a most delightful home for the poet and his bride, and
there they spent the remainder of their lives.
About the time of his marriage Mr. Longfellow's eyes failed him on account
of overstraining them, and one of Mrs. Longfellow's first wifely duties was
to furnish eyes for her husband. She read to him and wrote for him a great
deal for several years, and the close companionship which this required was
very pleasant to both. He was a very busy man in those days; for, contrary
to the popular impression, Mr. Longfellow did a great deal of hard work at
the college for a good many years. His was no honorary position, but a
genuine working professorship, involving the preparation of a great number
of lectures during each year and close class-work besides. He enjoyed this
work very much for the first few years, but long before he resigned his
position it became exceedingly burdensome to him. The college should
have relieved him of the drudgery of his professorship, and allowed him
time for the preparation of special lectures upon really scholarly themes; but
it had not the wisdom to do so, and exacted the labors of a dray-horse from
this chained Pegasus. In the journal are many entries like the following:—

"I seriously think of resigning my professorship. My time is so fully
taken up by its lectures and other duties that I have none left for
writing. Then my eyes are suffering, and the years are precious; and if
I wish to do anything in literature it must be done now. Few men have
written good poetry after fifty."

Again:—

"I get very tired of the routine of this life. The bright autumn weather
draws me away from study, and the brown branches of the leafless
trees are more beautiful than books. We lead but one life here on earth.
We must make that beautiful. And to do this, health and elasticity of
mind are needful, and whatever endangers or impedes these must be
avoided."

And again:—

"The day of rest—the 'truce of God' between contending cares—is
over, and the world begins again to swing round with clash and clang,
like the wings of a windmill. Grind, grind, grind."

Some hint of real work may be found in this:—

"The seventy lectures to which I am doomed next year hang over me
like a dark curtain. Seventy lectures! who will have the patience to
hear them? If my eyes were strong I should delight in it. But it will eat
up a whole year, and I was just beginning so cheerily on my poem and
looking forward to pleasant work on it next year."

Oh, the pity of it! Many men could have lectured to college boys on the
modern languages and literature, if not as well as Longfellow, at least well
enough; but who was there who could write his poems? That he should
drudge on through his best years, giving only the odds and ends of his time
to his real life-work, seems an infinite pity. What might he not have done in
those earlier years could he have gone fresh and untired to his musings and
his dreams?
Emerson was wiser than he, when early in life he resolved to be content
with the most modest means and to have possession of himself. He never
drudged in a profession, but gave his full strength to his literary work.
Longfellow should have done this at least ten years before he did. But five
children had come into the family during the years of his last marriage, and
poetry has not long been a paying investment in this country, although
Longfellow in the later years received large sums for his work. He probably
dropped his college work as soon as he felt that he could afford to do so;
and after that, much of his important work was done. But it was not done

with the buoyancy and freshness which the earlier years might have
furnished, although some of his best poems were written after the change.
But the last twenty years of Mr. Longfellow's life were saddened
inexpressibly by the loss of his wife, and all his later work is of a sombre
hue, filled through and through, unconsciously, with his own sadness.
Unconsciously we say, for he never intentionally rhymed his own sorrows.
There is no personal mention of his griefs in all his later poems. The death
of his wife occurred on the 9th of July in 1861, and was caused by burns
received from having her clothing ignited by a match upon which she trod
in their library, where she had been sealing up some packages of the
children's curls, which she had just cut. Mr. Longfellow was badly burned
in trying to save her, and when the funeral took place was confined to his
bed. She was buried upon the anniversary of her marriage-day, and was
crowned with a wreath of orange blossoms. She was long remembered in
Cambridge as the most beautiful woman of her time,—beautiful not alone
in body, but in spirit and life. Mr. Longfellow never recovered from the
tragedy, but mourned her in silence for twenty years. Heart-breaking are the
entries in the journal during all this time,—entries telling at frequent
intervals of his ever increasing desolation. Little was known of all this by
the world until the publication of his journal, for it was one of the
peculiarities of his grief that he could speak of it to no one. Only after
months had passed did he allude to it in his letters even to his brothers, and
then in the briefest fashion: "And now of what we both are thinking I can
write no word. God's will be done." The first entry in the journal after the
break made at the time of her death is this:—
"Sleep sweetly, tender heart, in peace!
Sleep, holy spirit, blessed soul!
While the stars burn, the moons increase,
And the great ages onward roll."
The entries in the journal are all brief, but they are frequent and like these:
"Walk before breakfast with E—— and afterward alone. The country is
beautiful, but oh, how sad! How can I live any longer!" "The glimmer of
golden leaves in the sunshine; the lilac hedge shot with the crimson creeper;
the river writing its silver S in the meadow; everything without full of

loveliness. But within me the hunger, the famine of the heart!" "Another
walk under the pines, in the bright morning sunshine."
"Known and unknown; human, divine:
Sweet human hand and lip and eye;
Dear heavenly friend, who canst not die:
Mine, mine forever; ever mine."
"How inexpressibly sad are all holydays! But the dear little girls had their
Christmas-tree last night, and an unseen presence blessed the scene!"
No mention of his loss was ever made in his published verse, though the
whole of his poetry was much sadder after that loss; but after his own death
the following poem was found in his desk, written eighteen years after his
wife's death:—
"In the long, sleepless watches of the night
A gentle face—the face of one long dead—
Looks at me from the wall, where round its head
The night lamp casts a halo of pale light.
Here in this room she died, and soul more white
Never through martyrdom of fire was led
To its repose; nor can in books be read
The legend of a life more benedight.
There is a mountain in the distant West
That, sun-defying in its deep ravines,
Displays a cross of snow upon its side:
Such is the cross I wear upon my breast
These eighteen years, through all the changing scenes
And seasons changeless since the day she died."
It was a long time before he could work again. When he felt that he could
do so, he began his translation of Dante, and frequently produced a canto in
a day, finding in this absorbing occupation the first alleviation of his sorrow.
In a sonnet "On Translating Dante," he said:—
"I enter here from day to day,
And leave my burden at this minster gate."

But when his work was done he always found that his burden was still
awaiting him on the outside, and he took it up and bore it as patiently as he
could. But he began earnestly to long for
"The Wayside Inn,
Where toil should cease and rest begin,"
and to feel that the approach of old age without the beloved companionship
was hard indeed to contemplate. But his children were beautiful and
promising and affectionate, and he a most loving and conscientious father;
so they gradually came to occupy his thoughts and much to cheer his
solitude. He was a famous man too by this time, indeed long before; and the
world made demands upon him which could not always be disregarded, and
he began to mingle with it somewhat again. But the little group of friends to
whom allusion has been made were his best comforters, and were more and
more prized as the years went on. During the translation of Dante they
assembled at very short intervals to listen to the reading of the work, and to
criticise, and suggest such changes as were deemed advisable; and these
occasions were much enjoyed. As the years went by, one after another of
the early friends fell by the way, leaving gaps in his life which could never
be filled. Felton was the first to go, and he was very deeply mourned by
Longfellow, who felt "as if the world were reeling and sinking under his
feet." His death made, as his friend expressed it, "a chasm which not only
nothing can fill up, but which nothing has a tendency to fill up." Hawthorne
and Agassiz followed soon after Felton; and later Charles Sumner, most
deeply mourned of all. He said, in allusion to these friends, in one of his
most beautiful sonnets:—
"I also wait! but they will come no more,
Those friends of mine, whose presence satisfied
The thirst and hunger of my heart. Ah me!
They have forgotten the pathway to my door!
Something is gone from Nature since they died,
And summer is not summer, nor can be."
Mr. Longfellow made a final visit to Europe in 1868, accompanied by his
children, two sisters, and a brother, and his brother-in-law Thomas
Appleton. This journey was much enjoyed by all, although Mr. Longfellow

was not a very good sight-seer, and impatient of delays. The remainder of
his life passed placidly at his old home, and he died at the age of seventy-
five, in the midst of his family and friends. Upon his coffin they placed a
palm-branch and a spray of passion-flower,—symbols of victory and the
glory of suffering; and he was buried at Mount Auburn, beside her he had
so long mourned. What his work was we may tell in the eloquent words of
his brother poet and most appreciative critic, Mr. Stedman:—

"His song was a household service, the ritual of our feastings and
mournings; and often it rehearsed for us the tales of many lands, or,
best of all, the legends of our own. I see him, a silver-haired minstrel,
touching melodious keys, playing and singing in the twilight, within
sound of the rote of the sea. There he lingers late; the curfew-bell has
tolled and the darkness closes round, till at last that tender voice is
silent, and he softly moves unto his rest."

JOHN G. WHITTIER.

The poet Whittier always calls to mind the prophet-bards of the olden time.
There is much of the old Semitic fire about him, and ethical and religious
subjects seem to occupy his entire mind. Like his own Tauler, he walks
abroad, constantly
"Pondering the solemn Miracle of Life;
As one who, wandering in a starless night,
Feels momently the jar of unseen waves,
And hears the thunder of an unknown sea
Breaking along an unimagined shore."
His poems are so thoroughly imbued with this religious spirit that they
seem to us almost like the sacred writings of the different times and nations
of the world. They come to the lips upon all occasions of deep feeling
almost as naturally as the Scriptures do. They are current coin with
reformers the world over. They are the Alpha and Omega of deep, strong
religious faith. Whoever would best express his entire confidence in the
triumph of the right, and his reliance upon God's power against the devices
of men, finds the words of Whittier upon his lips; and to those who mourn
and seek for consolation, how naturally and involuntarily come back lines
from his poems they have long treasured, but which perhaps never had a
personal application until now! To the wronged, the down-trodden, and the
suffering they appeal as strongly as the Psalms of David. He is the great
High Priest of Literature. But few priests at any time have had such an
audience and such influence as he. The moral and religious value of his
work can scarcely be overstated. Who can ever estimate the power which
his strong words had in the days that are now but a fading memory,—in the
great conflict which freed the bodies of so many million slaves? And who
can ever estimate the power his strong words have had throughout his

whole career in freeing the minds of other millions from the shackles of
unworthy old beliefs? His blows have been strong, steady, persistent. He
has never had the fear of man before his eyes. No man has done more for
freedom, fellowship, and character in religion than he. Hypocrisy and
falsehood and cant have been his dearest foes, and he has ridden at them
early and late with his lance poised and his steed at full tilt. Indeed, for a
Quaker, Mr. Whittier must be said to have a great deal of the martial spirit.
The fiery, fighting zeal of the old reformers is in his blood. You can imagine
him as upon occasion enjoying the imprecatory Psalms. In his anti-slavery
poems there is a depth of passionate earnestness which shows that he could
have gone to the stake for his opinions had he lived in an earlier age than
ours. That he did risk his life for them, even in our own day, is well known.
During the intense heat of the anti-slavery conflict he was mobbed once and
again by excited crowds; but he was not to be intimidated by all the powers
of evil, and continued to speak his strong words and to sing his inspiring
songs, whether men would hear or whether they would forbear. And those
Voices of Freedom, whatever may be thought of them by mere critics and
litterateurs, will outlast any poems of their day, and sound "down the
ringing grooves of Time" when much that is now honored has been
forgotten. He will be known as the Poet of a great Cause, the Bard of
Freedom, as long as the great anti-slavery conflict is remembered. He is a
part, and an important part, of the history of his country, a central figure in
the battalions of the brave. Those wild, stirring bugle-calls of his cheered
the little army, and held it together many a time when the cause was only a
forlorn hope; and they came with their stern defiance into the camp of the
enemy with such masterful power that some gallant enemies deserted to his
side. They were afraid to be found fighting against God, as Whittier had
convinced them they were doing. There is the roll of drums and the clash of
spears in these stirring strains; there are echoes from Thermopylæ and
Marathon, and the breath of the old Greek heroes is in the air; there is a hint
of the old Border battle-cries from Scotland's hills and tarns; from Jura's
rocky wall we can catch the cheers of Tell; and the voice of Cromwell can
often be distinguished in the strain.
There is also the sweep of the winds through the pine woods, and the
mountain blasts of New England, and the strong fresh breath of the salt sea;
all tonic influences, in short, which braced up the minds of the men of those

days to a fixed and heroic purpose, from which they never receded until
their end was achieved. It has become the fashion in these days of
dilettanteism to say that earnestness and moral purpose have no place in
poetry, and small critics have arisen who claim that Mr. Whittier has been
spoiled as a poet by his moral teachings. To these critics it is only necessary
to point to the estimation in which Mr. Whittier's poetry is held by the
world, and to the daily widening of his popularity among scholars and men
of letters as well as among the people, to teach them that this ruined poetry
is likely to live when all the merely pretty poetry they so much admire is
forgotten forever. The small poets who are afraid of touching a moral
question for fear of ruining their poems would do well to compare Poe, who
is the leader of their school and its best exponent, with Mr. Whittier, and to
ask themselves which is the more likely to survive the test of time. Let them
also ponder the words of Principal Shairp, one of the finest critics of the
day, when he says of the true mission of the poet, that "it is to awaken men
to the divine side of things; to bear witness to the beauty that clothes the
outer world, the nobility that lies hid, often obscured, in human souls; to
call forth sympathy for neglected truths, for noble and oppressed persons,
for down-trodden causes; and to make men feel that through all outward
beauty and all pure inward affection God himself is addressing them." They
would do well also to ponder the words of Ruskin, who believes that only in
as far as it has a distinct moral purpose is any literary work of value to the
world. Is not the opinion of such men as these to be considered of weight in
this matter? And is it not an impertinence in little men like some of those
who have lately written of Mr. Whittier, to speak in a patronizing and
supercilious tone of his work, as if the very qualities which distinguish it
from the work of the weaklings had ruined it as poetry?
It is perhaps to Mr. Whittier's ancestry that we may trace this intense
consecration of life to all its higher purposes; for he came of a people who
had endured persecution for conscience' sake for generations, and who had
loved liberty with a love passing that of woman, and sacrificed much for
her sake. The depths of feeling which Mr. Whittier has always sounded
when the persecutions of the Quakers have risen before his vision can only
be understood by those who are thoroughly familiar with the details of these
persecutions, and who know the harmless character of the men and women
thus outraged. Mr. Whittier knows this well, and it stirs his blood to this

day, as it stirred the blood of his father and mother when they recounted
these things to his childish ears. Though so much deep feeling was latent in
their natures, the outward lives of his parents were serene and calm. Mr.
Whittier has, in that exquisite little idyl "Snowbound," given us a graphic
and authentic picture of his childhood's home, and in a measure of the life
lived there. It is a quiet little New England interior, painted by a master's
hand from love of his work. It is every whit as delightful as "The Cotter's
Saturday Night;" and it is realistically true in every detail. Here we have the
family portraits drawn to life,—the father, who
"Rode again his ride
On Memphremagog's wooded side;
Sat down again to moose and samp
In trapper's hut and Indian camp;
Lived o'er the old idyllic ease
Beneath St. François' hemlock trees;"
and showed how
"Again for him the moonlight shone
On Norman cap and bodiced zone;
Again he heard the violin play
Which led the village dance away,
And mingled in its merry whirl
The grandam and the laughing girl."
The mother,
"While she turned her wheel
Or run the new-knit stocking-heel,
Told how the Indian hordes came down
At midnight on Cocheco town,
And how her own great-uncle bore
His cruel scalp-mark to fourscore.
Recalling in her fitting phrase,
So rich and picturesque and free,
(The common unrhymed poetry
Of simple life and country ways,)
The story of her early days."

The uncle,
"Innocent of books,
Was rich in lore of fields and brooks,—
The ancient teachers never dumb
Of Nature's unhoused lyceum.
In moons and tides and weather wise,
He read the clouds as prophecies,
And foul or fair could well divine
By many an occult hint and sign,
Holding the cunning-warded keys
To all the woodcraft mysteries."
The picture is very attractive of this
"Simple, guileless, childlike man,
Content to live where life began;
Strong only on his native grounds,
The little world of sights and sounds."
Next,
"The dear aunt, whose smile of cheer
And voice in dreams I see and hear,—
The sweetest woman ever Fate
Perverse denied a household mate,
Who, lonely, homeless, not the less
Found peace in love's unselfishness."
Then the elder sister,
"A full, rich nature, free to trust,
Truthful and almost sternly just,
Impulsive, earnest, prompt to act,
And make her generous thought a fact,
Keeping with many a light disguise
The secret of self-sacrifice."
The youngest sister, with "large, sweet, asking eyes," and the

"Brisk wielder of the birch and rule,
The master of the district school,"
make up the customary group; and it is safe to say that they were royal
company on that winter night.
Another description of the life of his boyhood may be found in "The
Barefoot Boy." No other language will describe so well those careless,
happy years of the genuine country boy.
"Oh for boyhood's time of June,
Crowding years in one brief moon,
When all things I heard or saw,
Me, their master, waited for.
I was rich in flowers and trees,
Humming-birds and honey-bees;
For my sport the squirrel played,
Plied the snouted mole his spade;
For my taste the blackberry cone
Purpled over hedge and stone;
Laughed the brook for my delight
Through the day and through the night,
Whispering at the garden wall,
Talked with me from fall to fall;
Mine the sand-rimmed pickerel pend,
Mine the walnut slopes beyond,
Mine, on bending orchard trees,
Apples of Hesperides!

"Oh for festal dainties spread,
Like my bowl of milk and bread,—
Pewter spoon and bowl of wood,
On the door-stone, gray and rude!
O'er me, like a regal tent,
Cloudy-ribbed, the sunset bent,
Purple-curtained, fringed with gold,
Looped in many a wind-swung fold;

While for music came the play
Of the pied frogs' orchestra;
And, to light the noisy choir,
Lit the fly his lamp of fire.
I was monarch: pomp and joy
Waited on the barefoot boy."
Is not this an accurate picture of what a poet's childhood should be?
In his early youth we have the one hint of a romance which his life
contains, and he shall give us that also in his own words:—
"How thrills once more the lengthening chain
Of memory, at the thought of thee!
Old hopes which long in dust have lain,
Old dreams, come thronging back again,
And boyhood lives again in me;
I feel its glow upon my cheek,
Its fulness of the heart is mine,
As when I leaned to hear thee speak,
Or raised my doubtful eye to thine.
I hear again thy low replies,
I feel thy hand within my own,
And timidly again uprise
The fringèd lids of hazel eyes,
With soft brown tresses overblown.
Ah! memories of sweet summer eves,
Of moonlit wave and willowy way,
Of stars and flowers and dewy leaves,
And smiles and tones more dear than they."
It is very tender, very beautiful and touching, and, doubtless, it left on him
"an impress Time has worn not out." And we doubt if even yet, when the
shadows of age are gathering very deeply around the gentle poet, that
memory has faded.
"Not yet has Time's dull footstep worn
To common dust that path of flowers."

We cannot but wonder who the favored "Playmate" of the poet was, and we
sympathize with him when he asks,—
"I wonder if she thinks of them,
And how the old time seems,—
If ever the pines of Ramoth wood
Are sounding in her dreams.

"I see her face, I hear her voice:
Does she remember mine?
And what to her is now the boy
Who fed her father's kine?"
And we feel an intense interest in knowing whether or not she cares, when
he tells her,—
"The winds so sweet with birch and fern,
A sweeter memory blow;
And there in spring the veeries sing
The song of long ago.

"And still the pines of Ramoth wood
Are moaning like the sea,—
The moaning of the sea of change
Between myself and thee!"
Mr. Whittier has never married, and his favorite sister long presided over
his home in Amesbury, where his mother and the dear aunt also came after
the father's death. It was the bitterest loss of his life when this beautiful
sister died, and he has written nothing more touching than his tribute to her
in "Snowbound":—
"With me one little year ago,
The chill weight of the winter snow
For months upon her grave has lain;
And now, when summer south winds blow
And brier and harebell bloom again,
I tread the pleasant paths we trod,
I see the violet-sprinkled sod

Whereon she leaned, too frail and weak
The hillside flowers she loved to seek,
Yet following me where'er she went
With dark eyes full of love's content.
The birds are glad; the brier-rose fills
The air with sweetness; all the hills
Stretch green to June's unclouded sky;
But still I wait with ear and eye
For something gone which should be nigh,
A loss in all familiar things,
In flower that blooms, and bird that sings.

And while in life's late afternoon,
Where cool and long the shadows grow,
I walk to meet the night that soon
Shall shape and shadow overflow,
I cannot feel that thou art far,
Since near at need the angels are;
And when the sunset gates unbar,
Shall I not see thee waiting stand,
And, white against the evening star,
The welcome of thy beckoning hand?"
This sister Elizabeth was herself a remarkable woman, and one of whom the
world would have heard more but for her great modesty. She was gifted
with a fine poetic taste, and was not only appreciative, but might have been
creative as well. A few of her poems appear in her brother's collected works.
She was beautiful in person, delicate and dark-eyed, and possessed of
exquisite taste in everything. The village of Amesbury still cherishes her
memory and recounts her virtues. The tie between the sister and brother was
of the closest kind, and their home life together for so many years as
beautiful as any recorded in literature. After her death a niece kept his house
for some time; but though she was all devotion to him, the old home was
never home after the dear sister had left it.
Mr. Whittier is a man to feel very much the loneliness of his later life, bereft
as he has been of all his family friends except one brother. But he is very

lovingly and tenderly cared for by some distant relatives, who live at Oak
Knoll, Danvers, Mass., where he has passed the most of his time the last
few years. It is a most beautiful place, and the poet takes great delight in it,
preferring it even to his own home at Amesbury, where he lived so long and
where the greater part of his literary work was done. The house and grounds
remind one of an old English manor-house and its surroundings. The old
forest trees still beautify it, while clumps of evergreens have been planted
here and there, with many shrubs and flowers. In the distance rise the blue
hills of Essex and Middlesex, and near at hand babbles a noisy brook,
seeking the not distant sea. All the beautiful trees of New England grow
here,—hickories, chestnuts, maples, birches, pines, and beeches; and
Whittier, who is a famous lover of trees, passes much time in these shady
coverts.
Mr. Whittier's own house at Amesbury is a plain white painted wooden
house, consisting of an upright and ell, like many old-fashioned farm-
houses, and surrounded by a picket-fence. It is roomy and comfortable, and
the study is a very cosey and attractive place, with its open wood-fire and
its well-filled book-shelves. One familiar with its appearance thus describes
it:—

"One side is filled with a desk and books, among which Irish ballads
have a place of honor; and an old-fashioned Franklin fireplace with
polished brasses throws its cheerful blaze over carpet, lounge, and
easy-chairs, and on walls covered with many souvenirs,—a water-
color of Harry Fenn's, Hill's picture of the early home, fringed gentians
painted by Lucy Larcom, and other trifles which give character to the
room. In this nook the 'lords of thought' have been made welcome;
here came Alice and Phœbe Cary on their romantic pilgrimage, and
here have come many others of the illustrious women of the day, most
of whom he reckons as his friends in this generation as he did Lydia
Maria Child and Lucretia Mott and their contemporaries in the last."

Mr. Whittier's personal appearance is thus described by George W. Bungay
in his "Crayon Sketches:"—

"His temperament is nervous bilious; he is tall, slender, and straight as
an Indian; has a superb head; his brow looks like a white cloud under

his raven hair; eyes large, black as sloes, and glowing with expression,
. . . those star-like eyes flashing under such a magnificent forehead."

Another writer tells of:—

"The fine intellectual beauty of his expression, the blending brightness
and softness of the clear dark eye, the union of manly firmness and
courage with womanly sweetness and tenderness alike in countenance
and character."

That clear and bright observer Mr. Wasson says:—

"The high cranium, so lofty, especially in the dome; the slight and
symmetrical backward slope of the whole head; the powerful level
brows, and beneath these the dark, deep eyes, so fun of shadowed fire;
the Arabian complexion; the sharp-cut, intense lines of the face; the
light, tall, erect stature; the quick, axial poise of the movement,—all
these traits reveal the fiery Semitic prophet."

His smile is spoken of by all as irradiating his whole face. He is the most
modest and one of the shyest of men. He can rarely be exhibited as a lion in
Boston, though the celebrity-hunters often try to induce him thus to show
himself. His fame has been a great surprise to him, and he can scarcely
believe in it even now. When his seventieth birthday was celebrated by the
publishers of the "Atlantic Monthly" by a Whittier Banquet, to which all the
great writers in the country were invited, and where many fine tributes were
paid to his genius, he especially wondered that all this honor was for him.
The "Literary World" at the same time published many fine poems from
distinguished authors addressed to him, and he replied in that journal to
them, saying:—
"Beside that mile-stone where the level sun
Nigh unto setting sheds his last low rays
On word and work irrevocably done,
Life's blending threads of good and ill outspun,
I hear, O friends, your words of cheer and praise,
Half doubtful if myself or otherwise.

Like him who in the old Athenian days
A beggar slept, and crownèd Caliph woke."
Although shy in formal society, Mr. Whittier is of a social nature, and very
much enjoys unrestrained intercourse with his friends. Visitors were always
made welcome at Amesbury, and while his sister presided there the house
was very attractive to those who enjoyed its hospitality. She was a witty and
bright woman, who enlivened every social circle she graced; and Mr.
Whittier himself has a fund of delicate humor, which lights up his
conversations with those with whom he is on familiar terms, and he has a
quiet way of drawing out the best there is in others, which causes every one
to appear well in his presence. Children are his loyal and enthusiastic
friends everywhere; and he was known among them in Amesbury as "the
man with the parrot," that remarkable bird "Charlie" serving as a sort of
connecting link between the poet and the little ones. He is always ready for
a game of romps with the children even now, and they very much admire
the stately old man who condescends to them so kindly. Long ago, when his
little niece wanted the scarlet cape which other children wore, and there was
objection upon the part of her Quaker mother, Mr. Whittier pleaded so well
for the little one that she was allowed to indulge in the bright trappings of
her mates. Mr. Whittier himself has never gone to the extremes of Quaker
dress, and could hardly be distinguished from the world by that alone. But
he uses the "thee" and "thou" of the Friends, and it is very charming to hear
them from his lips. He has always been a faithful attendant, also, upon their
meetings.
The kindliness of Mr. Whittier's nature has always led him to help others,
especially young literary aspirants, and he has spent a great deal of his
valuable time upon this class. He cannot bear to leave a letter unanswered
or a request ungranted, and his correspondence has become very
burdensome these latter years. He has long been subject to very severe
neuralgic headaches, and can write now but a few minutes at a time; and
those few precious minutes he often wastes on some impertinent stranger
who has sent a great mass of manuscripts to him for criticism. The little
time which these insatiable correspondents leave to him, he occupies very
pleasantly in and about the grounds at Oak Knoll. He enjoys working in the
fine flower-garden, feeding the squirrels, playing with the dogs, and driving
the fine horses. He has many friends within a morning's drive,—Harriet

Preston, Gail Hamilton, and others,—and driving about the country has
always been one of his choice diversions. He is now seventy-eight years
old,—a cheerful, kindly, essentially lovable old man. He still goes up to
Boston occasionally to meet friends and look about the city, and runs over
to Amesbury, where friends occupy his house and make him welcome; but
for the most part he remains in his quiet retreat, cheerfully awaiting the
change which must be near.

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.

The genial "Autocrat of the Breakfast Table" was born in the city of
Cambridge, in Massachusetts, in the year 1809, upon the day given to the
Commencement exercises of Harvard College. It was the day of small
things in that institution, and the day of small things in American literature.
The child who was born that day was destined to add much to the
estimation in which both were held. He occupied a professor's chair in the
University for thirty-five years, and did good work in it too; and he is one
of the little group of illustrious men who have helped to make a
distinctively American literature, which is now honored throughout the
world. As we believe with Dr. Holmes that "it is an ungenerous silence
which leaves all the fair words of honestly-earned praise to the writer of
obituary notices and the marble-worker," we shall endeavor to set forth in
this paper some of the good points in the character and work of this
distinguished man,—perhaps the best beloved of our native authors.
The Rev. Abiel Holmes, the father of our hero, was one of the typical New
England ministers of that day; the mother, Sarah Wendell, was from a Dutch
family, who came to Boston from Albany in the eighteenth century. The old
gambrel-roofed house where the poet was born stood close to the buildings
of Harvard University, and to the south flows the Charles River, so often
celebrated by Holmes and Longfellow and Lowell. The environs of
Cambridge are particularly beautiful, and have been the subjects of many
charming descriptions by all these writers. The old yellow hip-roofed house
was about one hundred and sixty years old when it was moved away to
make room for modern improvements. The New England colonists knew
how to build a house, and the work of their hands puts to shame the sham
edifices of the present day, which come up like Jonah's gourd in a night.
The mansion-houses of New England are among her most precious
inheritances; and we can scarcely blame the families, in whose hands they
have remained until this time, for feeling a certain pride in them.
The study was the great attraction to Oliver and his brother John. It was a
large heavy-beamed room, lined upon all sides with books,—which was
almost an unheard-of thing in this country at that time. Here the boys were
allowed to choose for themselves what they would read, and here they
doubtless formed the scholarly tastes of after-days. The contrast between
this library and that of the Whittier household, with its less than a dozen
books, is a great one, and has something to do with the distinctive flavor of

the work of the two men. There is a wild woodsy flavor about Whittier to
this day, pungent and stimulating; and about all that Holmes has written is
the atmosphere of books,—a smell of Russia-leather, as it were, and the
mustiness of old tomes. The childhood of Oliver was very happy, and the
memory of it has lingered with him through life; he has always been very
fond of talking of it and writing about it. Of the old garden surrounding the
manse, he has written eloquently, and one can almost see it for himself from
his description,—with its lilac-bushes, its pear-trees, its peaches (for they
raised peaches in New England in those days), its lovely nectarines, and
white grapes. Old-fashioned flowers grew in the borders,—hyacinths,
coming up even through the snow; tulips, adding their flaming splendor to
the spring, although they are so much more like autumn flowers; peonies, of
mammoth size and gorgeous coloring; flower-de-luce, lilies, roses—
damask, blush, and cinnamon,—larkspurs, lupines, and royal hollyhocks.
Then there were the vegetables growing with the flowers,—"beets, with
their handsome dark-red leaves, carrots, with their elegant filagree foliage,
parsley, that clung to the earth like mandrakes, radishes, illustrations of total
depravity, a prey to every evil underground emissary of the powers of
darkness."
The Holmes boys were lively and frolicsome, not unlike what we have been
accustomed to hear of ministers' sons in general, and some of their pranks
were remembered in Cambridge for many a year. In one of Dr. Holmes's
college poems he hints at some of these "high old times:"—
"I am not well to-night; methinks the fumes
Of overheated punch have something dimmed
The cerebellum or pineal gland,
Or where the soul sits regnant."
Still, there was nothing worse than boyish fun in any of their larks, and they
were studious beyond their years.
Among their schoolmates was Margaret Fuller. Dr. Holmes says of her:—

"Her air to her schoolmates was marked by a certain stateliness and
distance, as if she had other thoughts than theirs, and was not of them.
I remember her so well, as she appeared at school and later, that I
regret that she had not been faithfully given to canvas or marble in the

day of her best looks. None know her aspect who have not seen her
living. Margaret, as I remember her at school and afterwards, was tall,
fair-complexioned, with a watery aquamarine lustre in her light eyes,
which she used to make small, as one does who looks at the sunshine.
A remarkable point about her was that long flexible neck, arching and
undulating in strange sinuous movements, which one who loved her
would compare to those of a swan, and one who loved her not, to those
of the ophidian who tempted our common mother. Her talk was
affluent, magisterial, de haut en bas, some would say euphuistic, but
surpassing the talk of women in breadth and audacity."

In due time young Holmes was graduated from Harvard, with a class which
he has helped to make well known by his annual college poems. The boys
of '29 were a noble and talented set of men, and quite a number of them still
live, among our most honored citizens. Some of his well-known humorous
poems were written for the college papers, among them "The Dorchester
Giant," "Evening, by a Tailor," "The Spectre Pig," and "The Height of the
Ridiculous." For a few years after he left college he went on "writing as
funny as he could," then discontinued his literary work for some time, and
only permanently renewed it with the starting of the "Atlantic Monthly" in
1857. Here he began "The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table," and followed it
with that brilliant series of papers and of novels which made him known the
world over, as one of our most original and characteristic writers. Long
before this he had been married, and settled down for life in the city of
Boston. His wife, to whom he was united in 1840, was Amelia Lee Jackson,
daughter of Judge Jackson of the Massachusetts Supreme Court. They lived
in one house for over twenty years, in Montgomery Place, near Bromfield
Street. Holmes says of it, in "The Professor at the Breakfast Table:"—

"When he entered that door, two shadows glided over the threshold;
five lingered in the doorway when he passed through it for the last
time,—and one of the shadows was claimed by its owner to be longer
than his own. What changes he saw in that quiet place! Death rained
through every roof but his; children came into life, grew into maturity,
wedded, faded away, threw themselves away; the whole drama of life
was played in that stock-company's theatre of a dozen houses, one of
which was his, and no deep sorrow or severe calamity ever entered his

dwelling. Peace be to those walls forever, for the many pleasant years
he passed in them."

The three children born to him were Oliver Wendell, Amelia Jackson, and
Edward. They all live near the old home, and the second generation is
beginning to be a prominent factor in the family affairs. The daughter is
Mrs. John T. Sargent, of Beverly Farms, near Boston, where Dr. Holmes has
passed the summer months for several years past. All readers will remember
the Doctor's famous "Hunt after the Captain," published in the "Atlantic"
during the war, and the thrilling interest the country took in it. The
"Captain" was the elder son, then just graduated from Harvard, and
belonging to the Fourth Battalion of Infantry. He was thrice wounded, and
the terror and anxiety of his friends at home cannot be described in words.
He is now an associate justice of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts.
For a few years Dr. Holmes was much in demand as a lecturer; but he never
enjoyed that business very well, and after a while refused to go upon any
terms. In 1856 he thus defined his terms to an applicant for a lecture:—

"My terms, when I stay over night, are fifteen dollars and expenses, a
room with a fire in it, in a public-house, and a mattress to sleep on,—
not a feather-bed. As you write in your individual capacity, I tell you at
once all my habitual exigencies. I am afraid to sleep in a cold room; I
can't sleep on a feather-bed; I will not go to private houses."

In the "Autocrat" there is an account of his lecturing experiences by the
landlady, which gives a pretty good idea of some of his personal traits:—

"He was a man who loved to stick around home, as much as any cat
you ever see in your life. He used to say he'd as lief have a tooth pulled
as go anywheres. Always got sick, he said, when he went away, and
never sick when he didn't. Pretty nigh killed himself goin' about
lecterin' two or three winters; talkin' in cold country lyceums; as he
used to say, goin' home to cold parlors and bein' treated to cold apples
and cold water, and then goin' up into a cold bed in a cold chamber,
and comin' home next mornin' with a cold in his head as bad as a horse
distemper. Then he'd look kind of sorry for havin' said it, and tell how
kind some of the good women was to him; how one spread an

edderdown comforter for him, and another fixed up somethin' hot for
him after the lecter, and another one said, 'There, now you smoke that
cigar of yours after the lecter just as if you was at home,'—and if
they'd all been like that, he'd have gone on lecterin' forever; but as it
was, he got pooty nigh enough of it, and preferred nateral death to
puttin' himself out of the world by such violent means as lecterin'."

In fact, Holmes is eminently a Bostonian, and has never been really happy
off his native pavements. He, however, studied medicine in Paris in his
youth, and has made one or two visits to Europe since.
The Atlantic Club for a long time furnished Holmes excellent company, and
he in turn furnished the club with the wittiest and most sparkling talk which
this country probably has known:—
"Such jests, that, drained of every joke,
The very bank of language broke;
Such deeds that laughter nearly died
With stitches in his belted side."
Among those who took part in these delightful re-unions were Emerson,
Longfellow, Felton, Holmes, Agassiz, Lowell, Whipple, Motley, Charles
Eliot Norton, Edmund Quincy, Francis H. Underwood, Judge Hoar, J. Elliot
Cabot, and others. Lowell and Holmes were the wits par excellence, though
Judge Hoar did not fall far behind. Emerson sat always with a seraphic
smile upon his face, and Longfellow thoroughly enjoyed every good sally,
though not adding to the mirth-making himself. Dr. Appleton, who met Dr.
Holmes at the Saturday Club, writes:—

"Dr. Holmes was highly talkative and agreeable; he converses very
much like the Autocrat at the Breakfast Table,—wittily, and in a
literary way, but perhaps with too great an infusion of physiological
and medical metaphor. He is a little deaf, and has a mouth like the
beak of a bird; indeed, he is, with his small body and quick
movements, very like a bird in his general aspect."

When Charles Kingsley was in Boston he met Holmes, who came in,
frisked about, and talked incessantly, Kingsley intervening with a few
words only occasionally. At last Holmes whisked himself away, saying,

"And now I must go." "He is an insp-sp-sp-ired j-j-j-h-ack-daw," said
Kingsley.
Mr. Kennedy, in his life of the poet, thus describes him:—

"In person Holmes is a little under the medium height, though it does
not strike you so when you see him, especially on the street, where he
wears a tall silk hat and carries a cane. As a young man, he was, like
Longfellow, a good deal of an exquisite in dress; and he has always
been very neat and careful in his attire. He is quick and nervous in his
movements, and conveys, in speaking, the impression of energy and
intense vitality; and yet he has a poet's sensitiveness to noises, and a
dread of persons of superabundant vitality and aggressiveness. When
the fountain of laughter and smiles is stirred within him his face lights
up with a winning expression, and a laughing, kindly glance of the eye.
When he warms up to a subject in conversation he is a very rapid,
vivacious speaker."

Dr. Holmes has been accused of being an egotist, and he undoubtedly does
like to talk of himself; but he talks always in such charming fashion that
nobody regrets the subject of his discourse, but would fain have him go on
and on without pause or limit. He is a hearty, happy man, who is a good
deal in love with life, and seldom dwells upon its darker side. But he has a
very earnest and serious side to his nature, and is far from being a mere
laughing philosopher. He enjoys out-of-door life, as every poet must, and
though he likes best to live in the city, he takes great delight in the country
also. He spent seven summers upon a farm of his own in the enchanting
Berkshire region, near Pittsfield, and he says these seven summers stand in
his memory like the seven golden candlesticks seen in the beatific vision of
the holy dreamer. He loves rowing, racing, and walking through green
country lanes. The New England wild-flowers are especially dear to him,
and he has all a poet's love for that shyest and most beautiful of all, the
trailing arbutus. He is very fond also of perfumes, and likes the odorous
blossoms best. He has always had his dream of fair women, and he is a
great favorite with women of all ages. He is not averse to the pleasures of
the table, and likes plenty of friends around him, with mirth and good cheer,
at his dinner hour.

He has been accused of being somewhat aristocratic in his feelings, and is
doubtless a lover of the best society, as he interprets that word,—not mere
wealth or fashion, but good blood, generous culture through more than one
generation, and a general refinement in manners and in thought. What he
calls the Brahmin caste of New England is doubtless very good society
indeed; and who shall blame the good Autocrat if he visits in that circle by
choice? He would not, perhaps, like the old scholar of whom he tells, give
as his toast "to all the people who on the earth do dwell," but he would
select some very choice and rare little coterie of those people, and toast
them with the most contagious enthusiasm.
That he is a man of fastidious tastes goes without saying, and rather critical
of men and women, in manners as well as morals. An acute observer of
small social phenomena, he does not deem it beneath his dignity to criticise
the man who cannot pronounce "view," and the woman, even if it be
Margaret Fuller, who says "nawvels." That he is a sensitive man he told us
long ago, and that—
"There are times
When all this fret and tumult that we hear
Do seem more stale than to the sexton's ear
His own dull chimes.

"From crib to shroud!
Nurse o'er our cradle screameth lullaby,
And friends in boots tramp round us as we die,
Snuffling aloud.

"Children with drums
Strapped round them by the fond paternal ass,
Peripatetics with a blade of grass
Between their thumbs.

"Cockneys that kill
Thin horses of a Sunday,—men with clams,
Hoarse as young bisons roaring for their dams,
From hill to hill.