1810-1850. MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI.

119

MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI. 1810-1850. (Manual, p. 502.) From her "Memoirs.",

170. THE REAL SUBORDINATE TO THE IDEAL.

YET one word as to the "material,” in man. Is it not the object of all philosophy, as well as of religion and poetry, to prevent its prevalence? Must not those who see most truly be ever making statements of the truth, to combat this sluggishness, or worldliness? What else are sages, poets, preachers, born to do? Men go an undulating course sometimes on the hill, sometimes in the valley. But he only is in the right, who, in the valley, forgets not the hill prospect, and knows in darkness that the sun will rise again.* That is the real life which is subordinated to, not merged in, the ideal; he is only wise who can bring the lowest act of his life into sympathy with its highest thought. And this I take to be the one only aim of our pilgrimage here. I agree with those who think that no true philosophy will try to ignore or annihilate the material part of man, but will rather seek to put it in its place, as servant and minister to the soul.

171. CHARACTER OF CARLYLE.

CARLYLE, indeed, is arrogant and overbearing; but in his arrogance there is no littleness, no self-love. It is the heroic arrogance of some old Scandinavian conqueror—it is his nature, and the untamable energy that has given him power to crush the dragons. You do not love him, perhaps, nor revere; and perhaps, also, he would only laugh at you if you did; but you like him heartily, and like to see him the powerful smith, the Siegfried, melting all the old iron in his furnace till it glows to the sunset red, and burns you, if you senselessly go

too near.

172.

JOHN WILLIAM DRAPER.' 1810-.

From "Thoughts on the Future Civil Policy of America."

PROSPECTIVE INFLUENCE OF THE REPUBLIC.

Now, when we consider the position of the American continent, its Atlantic front looking upon Europe, its Pacific front looking upon Asia, when we reflect how much Nature has done for it in the wonderful river system she has bestowed, and how varied are the mineral

1 Distinguished as an author in chemistry and physiology, and as a philosophical historian; a native of England, but long a professor in New York University.

and agricultural products it yields, it would seem as if we should be constrained by circumstances to carry out spontaneously in practical life the abstract suggestions of policy. Great undertakings,

such as the construction of the Pacific Railroad, pressed into existence by commercial motives and fostered for military reasons, will indirectly accomplish political objects not yielding in importance to those that are obvious and avowed.

A few years more, and the influence of the great republic will resistlessly extend in a direction that will lead to surprising results. The stream of Chinese emigration already setting into California is but the precursor of the flood that is to come. Here are the fields, there are the men. The dominant power on the Pacific Ocean must necessarily exert a controlling influence in the affairs of Asia.

The Roman empire is regarded, perhaps not unjustly, as the most imposing of all human political creations. Italy extended her rule across the eastern and western basins of the Mediterranean Sea, from the confines of Parthia to Spain. A similar central, but far grander, position is occupied by the American continent. The partitions of an interior and narrow sea are replaced by the two great oceans. But, since history ever repeats itself, the maxims that guided the policy of Rome in her advance to sovereignty are not without application here. Her mistakes may be monitions to us.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 1810-. (Manual, pp. 503, 520.)

From "Among my Books."

173. NEW ENGLAND TWO CENTURIES AGO.

I HAVE little sympathy with declaimers about the Pilgrim Fathers, who look upon them all as men of grand conceptions and superhuman foresight. An entire ship's company of Columbuses is what the world never saw. It is not wise to form any theory and fit our facts to it, as a man in a hurry is apt to cram his travelling-bag, with a total disregard of shape or texture. But perhaps it may be found that the facts will only fit comfortably together on a single plan, namely, that the fathers did have a conception (which those will call grand who regard simplicity as a necessary element of grandeur) of founding here a commonwealth on those two eternal bases of Faith and Work; that they had, indeed, no revolutionary ideas of universal liberty; but yet, what answered the purpose quite as well, an abiding faith in the brotherhood of man and the fatherhood of God; and that they did not so much propose to make all things new, as to develop the latent possibilities of English law and English character by clearing away the fences by which the abuse of the one was gradually discommoning

the other from the broad fields of natural right. They were not in advance of their age, as it is called, for no one who is so can ever work profitably in it; but they were alive to the highest and most earnest thinking of their time.

174. From an "Essay on Dryden."

I Do not think he added a single word to the language, unless, as I suspect, he first used magnetism in its present sense of moral attraction. What he did in his best writing was, to use the English as if it were a spoken, and not merely an inkhorn language; as if it were his own to do what he pleased with it, as if it need not be ashamed of itself. In this respect, his service to our prose was greater than any other man has ever rendered. He says he formed his style upon Tillotson's (Bossuet, on the other hand, formed his upon Corneille's); but I rather think he got it at Will's, for its greatest charm is, that it has the various freedom of talk. In verse, he has a pomp which, excellent in itself, became pompousness in his imitators. But he had nothing of Milton's ear for various rhythm and interwoven harmony. He knew how to give new modulation, sweetness, and force to the pentameter; but in what used to be called pindarics, I am heretic enough to think he generally failed.

EDGAR ALLEN POE. 1811-1849. (Manual, pp. 510, 521.) 175. From "Siope-A Fable."

THEN I grew angry, and cursed, with the curse of silence, the river, and the lilies, and the wind, and the forest, and the heaven, and the thunder, and the sighs of the water-lilies. And they became accursed, and were still. And the moon ceased to totter in its pathway up the heaven, and the thunder died away, and the lightning did not flash, and the clouds hung motionless, and the waters sunk to their level and remained, and the trees ceased to rock, and the water-lilies sighed no more, and the murmur was heard no longer from among them, nor any shadow of sound throughout the vast, illimitable desert. And I looked upon the characters of the rock, and they were changed, and the characters were SILENCE.

Now there are fine tales in the volumes of the Magi - in the ironbound, melancholy volumes of the Magi. Therein, I say, are glorious histories of the heaven, and of the earth, and of the mighty sea, and of the genii that overruled the sea, and the earth, and the lofty heaven. There was much lore, too, in the sayings which were said by the sibyls; and holy, holy things were heard of old by the dim leaves that

trembled around Dodona; but, as Allah liveth, that fable which the Demon told me, as he sat by my side in the shadow of the tomb, I hold to be the most wonderful of all. And as the demon made an end of his story, he fell back within the cavity of the tomb, and laughed. And I could not laugh with the demon, and he cursed me because I could not laugh. And the lynx, which dwelleth forever in the tomb, came out therefrom, and lay down at the feet of the demon, and looked at him steadily in the face.

From "New England Philosophy;" an Essay from "The Optimist."

176. THE HEART SUPERIOR TO THE INTELLECT.

CONSTANT supplies of knowledge to the intellect, and the exclusive cultivation of reason, may, indeed, make a pedant and a logician ; but the probability is, these benefits-if such they are - will be gained at the expense of the soul. Sentiment, in its broadest acceptation, is as essential to the true enjoyment and grace of life as mind. Technical information, and that quickness of apprehension which New Englanders call smartness, are not so valuable to a human being as sensibility to the beautiful, and a spontaneous appreciation of the divine influences which fill the realms of vision and of sound, and the world of action and feeling. The tastes, affections, and sentiments are more absolutely the man than his talents or acquirements. And yet it is by, and through, the latter that we are apt to estimate character, of which they are at best but fragmentary evidences. It is remarkable that in the New Testament, allusions to the intellect are so rare, while the "heart" and the "spirit we are of" are ever appealed to. Sympathy is the "golden key" which unlocks the treasures of wisdom; and this depends upon vividness and warmth of feeling. It is therefore that Tranio advises, "In brief, sir, study what you most affect." A code of etiquette may refine the manners, but the "heart of courtesy," which, through the world, stamps the natural gentleman, can never be attained but through instinct; and in the same manner, those enriching and noble sentiments, which are the most beautiful and endearing of human qualities, no process of mental training will create.

1 One of our most thoughtful and finished writers in polite literature and criticism; author of the "Sketch of American Literature" that accompanies these specimens.

H. N. HUDSON. 1814-. (Manual, pp. 480, 501.)

From "Preface to the Works of Shakespeare."

177. THE INSTRUCTIVE CHARACTER OF HIS WORKS.

IT is true, he often lays on us burdens of passion that would not be borne in any other writer. But whether he wrings the heart with pity, or freezes the blood with terror, or fires the soul with indignation, the genial reader still rises from his pages refreshed. The reason of which is, instruction keeps pace with excitement: he strengthens the mind in proportion as he loads it. He has been called the great master of passion: doubtless he is so; yet he makes us think as intensely as he requires us to feel; while opening the deepest fountains of the heart, he at the same time unfolds the highest energies of the head. Nay, with such consummate art does he manage the fiercest tempests of our being, that in a healthy mind the witnessing of them is always attended with an overbalance of pleasure. With the very whirlwinds of passion he so blends the softening and alleviating influences of poetry, that they relish of nothing but sweetness and health. He is not wont to exhibit either utterly worthless or utterly faultless monsters; persons too good, or too bad, to exist; too high to be loved, or too low to be pitied: even his worst characters (unless we should except Goneril and Regan, and even their blood is red like ours) have some slight fragrance of humanity about them, some indefinable touches, which redeem them from utter hatred and execration, and keep them within the pale of human sympathy, or at least of human pity.

MARIA J. MCINTOSH. 1815-. (Manual, p. 484.)

From "Two Pictures."

178. DEBATE BETWEEN WEBSTER AND HAYNE.

THE session was one of peculiar interest. Great questions agitated the public mind, and were treated greatly. Two great parties, springing from the very foundations of our civil polity, strove for supremacy in our legislative halls. The one, looking into the depths of our colonial history, took its stand on the unquestionable truth, that each state of the Union was sovereign over herself, from which was drawn the corollary, that she was as free to leave as she had been to enter the Union. The other contended that the present constitution of these United States defined the boundary of the powers of each state, as well as of the great whole into which they had been voluntarily