Early in my professional life, too, I met certain questions, which every thinking man meets sooner or later, and which were pressed upon my mind by the new element that came into our religious society. The Friends are trained up to reverence the inward light, and have the less respect for historical Christianity. The revelation in our nature, then, and the revelation in the Scriptures; the proper place of each in any just system of thought and theology; what importance is to be assigned to the primitive intuitions of right and wrong, and what to the supernaturalism, to the miracles of the New Testament, these were the questions, and I discussed them a good deal in the pulpit, as matters very practical to many of the minds with which I was dealing. I admitted the full, nay, the supreme value of the original intuitions, of the inward light, of the teachings of the Infinite Spirit in the human soul; without them we could have no religion; without them we could not understand the New Testament at all, and Christianity would be but as light to the blind; but I maintained that Christ's teaching and living and dying were the most powerful appeal and help and guidance to the inward nature, to the original religion of the soul, that it had ever received. And I believed and maintained that this help, at once most divine and most human, was commended to the world by miraculous [62] attestations. Not that the miracle, or the miracle-sanctioned Christianity, was intended to supersede or disparage the inward light; not that it made clearer the truth that benevolence is right, any more than it could make clearer the proposition that two and two make four; not that it lent a sanction to any intuitive truth, but that it was the seal of a mission, this was what I insisted on. And certainly a being who appeared before me, living a divine life, and assuring me of God's paternal care for me and of my own immortality, would impress me far more, if there were "works done by him" which no other man could do, which bore witness of him. And although it should appear, as in a late work on "The Progress of Religious Ideas" it has been made to appear, that in the old systems there were foreshadowings of that which I receive as the most true and divine; that the light had been shining on brighter and brighter through all ages, that would not make it any the less credible or interesting to me, that Jesus should be the consummation of all, the "true Light" that lighteth the steps of men; and that this Light should have come from God's especial illumination, and should be far above the common and natural light of this world's day. Nay, it would be more grateful to me to believe that all religions have had in them something supernaturally and directly from above, than that none have.
[63] But time went on, and work went on, reason as I might; though time would have lost its light and life, and work all cheer and comfort, if I had not believed. But work grew harder. I was obliged to take longer and longer vacations, one of them five months long at the home in Sheffield. After this I went back to my work, preaching almost exclusively in my own pulpit, seldom going away, unless it was now and then for an occasional sermon.
I went over to Providence in 1832, to preach the sermon at Dr. Hall's installation as pastor of the First Church. Arrived on the evening before, some of us of the council went to a caucus, preparatory to a Presidential election, General Jackson being candidate for the Presidency and Martin Van Buren for Vice-President. Finding the speaking rather dull, after an hour or more we rose to leave, when a gentleman touched my arm and said, "Now, if you will stay, you will hear something worth waiting for." We took our seats, and saw John Whipple rising to speak. I was exceedingly grateful for the interruption of our purpose, for I never heard an address to a popular assembly so powerful; close, compact, cogent, Demosthenic in simplicity and force, not a word misplaced, not a word too many, and fraught with that strange power over the feelings, lent by sadness and despondency, a state of mind, I think, most favorable to real eloquence, in which all verbiage is eschewed, and the burden [64] upon the heart is too heavy to allow the speaker to think of himself.
Mr. Whipple was in the opposition, and his main charge against Van Buren especially, was, that it was he who had introduced into our politics the fatal principle of "the spoils to the victors," a principle which, as the orator maintained, with prophetic sagacity, threatened ruin to the Republic. Still there was no extravagance in his way of bringing the charge. I remember his saying, "Does Mr. Van Buren, then, wish for the ruin of his country? No; Caesar never wished for the glory of Rome more than when he desired her to be laid, as a bound victim, at his feet."
We have learned since more than we knew then of the direful influence of that party cry, "The spoils to the victors." It has made our elections scrambles for office, and our parties "rings." Mr. Whipple portrayed the consequences which we are now feeling, and powerfully urged that his State, small though it was, should do its utmost to ward them off. As he went on, and carried us higher and higher, I began to consider how he was to let us down. But the skilful orator is apt to have some clinching instance or anecdote in reserve, and Mr. Whipple's close was this:
"There sleep now, within the sound of my voice, the bones of a man who once stood up in the revolutionary battles for his country. In one of them, he told me, [65] when the little American army, ill armed, ill clad, and with bleeding feet, was drawn up in front of the disciplined troops of England, General Washington passed along our lines, and when he came before us, he stopped, and said, 'I place great confidence in this Rhode Island regiment.' And when I heard that," said he, "I clasped my musket to my breast, and said, Damn 'em; let 'em come!" "The immortal Chieftain" [said the orator] "is looking down upon us now; and he says, 'I place great confidence in this Rhode Island regiment.'"
And now, on the whole, what shall I say of my life in New Bedford? It was, in the main, very happy. I thought I was doing good there; I certainly was thoroughly interested in what I was doing. I found cultivated and interesting society there. I made friends, who are such to me still. In the pastoral relation, New Bedford was, and long continued to be, the very home of my heart; it was my first love.
In 1827 I was invited to go to New York. I did not wish to go, so I expressly told the church in New York (the Second Church); but I consented, in order to accomplish what they thought a great good, provided my congregation in New Bedford would give their consent. They would not give it; and I remained. I believe that I should have lived and died among them, if my health had not failed.
But it failed to that degree that I could no longer do the work, and I determined to go abroad and recruit, and recover it, if possible. [66] This was in 1833. The Messrs. Grinnell & Co., of New York, offered me a passage back and forth in their ships, one of the thousand kind and generous things that they were always doing, and I sailed from New York in the "George Washington" on the 8th of June. It was like death to me to go. I can compare it to nothing else, going, as I did, alone. In London I consulted Sir James Clarke, who told me that the disease was in the brain, and that I must pass three or four years abroad if I would recover from it. I believe I stared at his proposition, it seemed to me so monstrous, for he said, in fine: "Well, you may go home in a year, and think yourself well; but if you go about your studies, you will probably bring on the same trouble again; and if you do, in all probability you will never get rid of it." Alas! it all proved true. I came home in the spring of 1834, thinking myself well. I had had no consciousness of a brain for three months before I left Europe. I went to work as usual; in one month the whole trouble was upon me again, and it became evident that I must leave New Bedford. I could write no more sermons; I had preached every sermon I had, that was worth preaching, five times over, and I could not face another repetition. I retired with my family to the home in Sheffield, and expected to pass some years at least in the quiet of my native village. [67] I should like to record some New Bedford names here, so precious are they to me. Miss Mary Rotch is one, called by everybody "Aunt Mary," from mingled veneration and affection. It might seem a liberty to call her so; but it was not, in her case. She had so much dignity and strength in her character and bearing that it was impossible for any one to speak of her lightly. On our going to New Bedford, she immediately called upon us, and when she went out I could not help exclaiming, "Wife, were ever hearts taken by storm like that!" Storm, the word would be, according to the usage of the phrase; but it was the very contrary, a perfect simplicity and kindliness. But she was capable, too, of righteous wrath, as I had more than one occasion afterwards to see. Indeed, I was once the object of it myself. It was sometime after I left New Bedford, that, in writing a review of the admirable Life of Blanco White by the Rev. J. H. Thom, of Liverpool, while I spoke with warm appreciation of his character, I commented with regret upon his saying, toward the close of his life, that he did not care whether he should live hereafter; and I happened to use the phrase, "He died and made no sign," without thinking of the miserable Cardinal Beaufort, to whom Shakespeare applies it. Aunt Mary immediately came down upon me with a letter of towering indignation for my intolerance. I replied to her, saying that if ever I should be so [68] happy as to arrive at the blessed world where I believed that she and Blanco White would be, and they were not too far beyond me for me to have any communion with them, she would see that I was guilty of no such exclusiveness as she had ascribed to me. She was pacified, I think, and we went on, as good friends as ever. Her religious opinions were of the most catholic stamp, and in one respect they were peculiar. The Friends' idea of the "inward light" seemed to have become with her coincident with the idea of the Author of all light; and when speaking of the Supreme Being, she would never say "God," but "that Influence." That Influence was constantly with her; and she carried the idea so far as to believe that it prompted her daily action, and decided for her every question of duty.
Miss Eliza Rotch had come from her English home shortly before my going to New Bedford, and had brought, with her English education and sense, more than the ordinary English powers of conversation. She, like all her family, had been bred in the Friends' Society; and she came with many of them to my church. She was a most remarkable hearer. With her bright face, and her full, speaking eye, and interested especially, no doubt, in the new kind of ministration to which she was listening, she gave me her whole attention, often slightly nodding her assent, unconsciously to herself and unobserved by others. She married Professor John Farrar of Harvard, and [69] able mathematician, and one of the most genial and lovable men that ever lived.
Life, in our quiet little town, was more leisurely than it is in cities, and the consequence was an unusual development of amusing qualities. There was more fun, and I ventured sometimes to say, there was more wit, in New Bedford than there was in Boston. To be sure, we could not pretend to compare with Boston in culture and in high and fine conversation, least of all in music, which was at a very low ebb with us. I remember being at an Oratorio in one of our churches, where the trump of Judgment was represented by a horn not much louder than a penny-whistle, blown in an obscure corner of the building!
Charles H. Warren was the prince of humorists among us, and would have been so anywhere. Channing said to me one day, "I want to see your friend Warren; I want to see him as you do." I could not help replying, "That you never will; I should as soon expect to hear a man laugh in a cathedral." I never knew a man quite so full of the power to entertain others in conversation as he was. Lemuel Williams, his brother lawyer, had perhaps a subtler wit. But the way Warren would go on, for a whole evening, letting off bon-mots, repartees, and puns, made one think of a magazine of pyrotechnics. Yet he was a man of serious thought and fine intellectual powers. He was an able lawyer, and, placed upon the bench at an uncommonly, early [70] age, he sustained himself with honor. I used to lament that he would not study more, that he gave himself up so much to desultory reading; but he had no ambition. Yet, after all, I believe that the physical organization has more to do with every man's career than is commonly suspected. His was very delicate, his complexion fair, and his face, indeed, was fine and expressive in a rare degree. The sanguine-bilious, I think, is the temperament for deep intellectual power, like Daniel Webster's. It lends not only strength, but protection, to the workings of the mind within. It is not too sensitive to surrounding impressions. Concentration is force. Long, deep, undisturbed thinking, alone can bring out great results. I have been accustomed to criticise my own temperament in this respect, too easily drawn aside from study by circumstances, persons, or things around me, external interests or trifles, the wants and feelings of others, or their sports, a playing child or a crowing cock. My mind, such as it is, has had to struggle with this outward tendency, too much feeling and sentiment, and too little patient thinking, and I believe that I should have accomplished a great deal more if I had had, not the sanguine alone, but the sanguine-bilious temperament.
Manasseh Kempton had it. He was the deacon of my church. I used to think that nobody knew, or at least fairly appreciated, him as I did. Under that heavy brow, and phlegmatic aspect, [71] and reserved bearing, there was an amount of fire and passion and thought, and sometimes in conversation an eloquence, which showed me that, with proper advantages, he would have made a great man.
James Arnold was a person too remarkable to be passed over in this account of the New Bedford men. With great wealth, with the most beautiful situation in the town, and, yet more, with the aid of his wife, never mentioned or remembered but to be admired, his house was the acceptable resort of strangers, more than any other among us. Mr. Arnold was not only a man of unshaken integrity, but of strong thought; and if a liberal education had given him powers of utterance, the habit of marshalling his thoughts, equal to the powers of his mind, he would have been known as one of the remarkable men in the State.
One other figure rises to my recollection, which seems hardly to belong to the modern world, and that is Dr. Whittredge of Tiverton. In his religious faith he belonged to us, and occasionally came over to attend our church. I used, from time to time, to pay him visits of a day or two, always made pleasant by the placid and gentle presence of his wife, and by the brisk and eager conversation of the old gentleman. He was acquainted in his earlier days with my predecessor, of twenty-five years previous date, Dr. West, himself a remarkable man in his day, [72] and almost equally so, both for his eccentricity and his sense. An eccentric clergyman, by the by, is rarely seen now; but in former times it was a character as common as now it is rare. The commanding position of the clergy the freedom they felt to say and do what they pleased brought that trait out in high relief. The great democratic pressure has passed like a roller over society: everybody is afraid of everybody; everybody wants something, office, appointment, business, position, and he is to receive it, not from a high patron, but from the common vote or opinion.
Dr. West's eccentricity arose from absorption into his own thoughts, and forgetfulness of everything around him. He would pray in the family in the evening till everybody went to sleep, and in the morning till the breakfast was spoiled. He would preach upon some Scripture passage till some one went and moved his mark forward. He once paid a visit to the Governor in Boston, and, having got drenched in the rain, was supplied with a suit of his host's, which unconsciously, he wore home, and arrayed in which, he appeared in his pulpit on Sunday morning. At the same time he was a man of strong and independent thought. I have read a "Reply" of his to Edwards on the Will, in which the subject was ably discussed, but without the needful logical coherence, perhaps, to make its mark in the debate. [73] The conversations of West with his friend, Dr. Whittredge, as the latter told me, ran constantly into theological questions, upon which they differed. West was a frequent visitor at Tiverton, and, when the debate drew on towards midnight, Whittredge was obliged to say, "Well, I can't sit here talking with you all night; for I must sleep, that I may go and see my patients to-morrow." He was vexed, he said, that he should thus seem to "cry quarter" in the controversy again and again, and he resolved that the next time he met West, he would not stop, be they where they might. It so happened that their next meeting was at the head of Acushnet River, three miles above New Bedford, where Whittredge was visiting his patients, and West his parishioners. This done, they set out towards evening to walk to New Bedford. Whittredge throwing the bridle-rein over his arm, they walked on slowly, every now and then turning aside into some crook of the fence, the horse meantime getting his advantage in a bit of green grass, and thus they talked and walked, and walked and talked, till the day broke!
But the most remarkable thing about my venerable parishioner remains to be mentioned. Dr. Whittredge was an alchemist. He had a furnace, in a little building separate from his house, where he kept a fire for forty years, till he was more than eighty, visiting it every night, of summer and winter alike, to be sure of keeping it alive; [74] and melting down, as his family said, many a good guinea, and all to find the philosopher's stone, the mysterious metal that should turn all to gold. From delicacy I never alluded to the subject with him, I am sorry now that I did not. And he never adverted to it with me but once, and that was in a way which showed that he had no mean or selfish aims in his patient and mysterious search; and, indeed, no one could doubt that he was a most benevolent and kind-hearted man. The occasion was this: He had been to our church one day, indeed, it was his last attendance, and as we came down from the pulpit, where he always sat, the better to hear me, and as we were walking slowly through the broad aisle, he laid his hand upon my shoulder, and said, "Ah, sir, this is the true doctrine! But it wants money, it wants money, sir, to spread it, and I hope it will have it before long."
While in Europe I had kept a journal, and I low published it under the title of "The Old World and the New," and about the same time, I forget which was first, a volume of sermons entitled, "Discourses on Various Subjects." The idea of my book of travels, I think, was a good me, to survey the Old World from the experience of the New, and the New from the observation of the Old; but it was so ill carried out hat what I mainly proposed to myself on my second visit to Europe, ten years after, was to [75] fulfil, as far as I could, my original design. But my health did not allow of it. I made many notes, but brought nothing into shape for publication. I still believe that America has much to teach to Europe, especially in the energy, development, and progress lent to a people by the working of the free principle; and that Europe has much to teach to America, in the value of order, routine, thorough discipline, thorough education, division of labor, economy of means, adjustment of the means to living, etc. As to my first volume of sermons, if any one would see his thoughts laid out in a winding-sheet, let them be laid before him in printer's proofs; that which had been to me alive and glowing, and had had at least the life of earnest utterance, now, through this weary looking over of proof-sheets, seemed dead and shrouded for the grave. It did not seem to me possible that anybody would find it alive. I have hardly ever had a sadder feeling than that with which I dismissed this volume from my hands.
At the time of my retirement to Sheffield, the Second Congregational Church in New York, which had formerly invited me to its pulpit, was without a pastor, and I was asked to go down there and preach. I could preach, though I could not write; my sermons, with their five earmarks upon them in New Bedford, would be new in another pulpit, and I consented. I was soon [76] invited to take charge of the church, but declined it. It was even proposed to me to be established simply as preacher, and to be relieved from parochial visiting; but as the congregation was small, and could not support a pastor beside me, I declined that also. But I went on preaching, and after about a year, feeling myself stronger, I consented to be settled in the church with full charge, and was installed on the 8th November, 1835, Dr. Walker preaching the sermon.
The church was on the corner of Mercer and Prince Streets; a bad situation, inasmuch as it was on a corner, that is, it was noisy, and the annoyance became so great that I seriously thought more than once of proposing to the congregation to sell and build elsewhere. On other accounts the church was always very pleasant to me. It was of moderate size, holding seven or eight hundred people, and became in the course of a year or two quite full. The stairs to the galleries went up on the inside, giving it, I know not what, a kind of comfortable and domestic air, very social and agreeable; and last, not least, it was easy to speak in. This last consideration, I am convinced, is of more importance, and is so in more ways, than is commonly supposed. A place hard to speak in is apt to create, especially in the young preacher just forming his habits, a hard and unnatural manner of speaking. More than one young preacher have I known, who began with good natural tones, in the course of a [77] year or two, to fall into a loud, pulpit monotone, or to bring out all his cadences with a jerk, or with a disagreeable stress of voice, to be heard. One must be heard, that is the first requisite, and to have one and another come out of church Sunday after Sunday, and touch your elbow, and say, "Sir, I could n't hear you; I was interested in what I could hear, but just at the point of greatest interest, half of the time, I lost your cadence," is more than any man can bear for a long time, and so he resorts to loud tones and monotonous cadences, and he is obliged to think, much of the time, more of the mere dry fact of being heard, than of the themes that should pour themselves out in full unfolding ease and freedom. I have fought through my whole professional life against this criticism, striving to keep some freedom and nature in my speech, though I have made every effort consistent with that to be heard. I have not always succeeded; but I have tried, and have always been grateful, a considerable virtue, especially when the hearer was himself a little deaf to every one who admonished me. This is really a matter that seriously concerns the very religion that we preach. Everybody knows what the preaching tone is; it can be distinguished the moment it is heard, outside of any church, school-house, or barn where it is uplifted; but few consider, I believe, of what immense disservice it is to the great cause we have at heart. Preaching is the [78] principal ministration of religion, and if it be hard and unnatural, the very idea of religion is likely to be hard and unnatural, far away from the every-day life and affections of men. Stamp upon music a character as hard, technical, unnatural as most preaching has, and would men be won by it? I do not say that what I have mentioned is the sole cause of the "preaching tone;" false ideas of religion have, doubtless, even more to do with it. But still it is of such importance that I think no church interior should be built without especial nay, without sole reference to the end for which it is built, namely, to speak in. Let what can be done for the architecture of the exterior building; but let not an interior be made with recesses and projections and pillars and domes, only to please the eye, while it is to hurt the edification of successive generations, for two or for ten centuries. No ornamentation can compensate for that injury. The science of acoustics is as yet but little understood; all that we seem to know thus far is that the plain, unadorned parallelogram is the best form. And even if we must stick to that, I had rather have it than a church half ruined by architectural devices. Our Protestant churches are built, not for ceremonies and spectacles and processions, but for prayer and preaching. And the fitness of means to ends that first law of architecture is sacrificed by a church interior made more to be looked at than to be heard in. [79] But to return: we were not long to occupy the pleasant little church in Mercer Street, pleasant memories I hope there are of it to others besides myself. On Sunday morning, the 26th November, 1837, it was burned to the ground. Nothing was saved but my library, which was flung out of the vestry window, and the pulpit Bible, which I have, a present from the trustees.
The congregation immediately took a hall for temporary worship in the Stuyvesant Institute, and directed its thoughts to the building of a new church. Much discussion there was as to the style and the locality of the new structure, and at length it was determined to build in a semi-Gothic style, on Broadway. I was not myself in favor of Broadway, it being the great city thoroughfare, and ground very expensive; but it was thought best to build there. It was contended that a propagandist church should occupy a conspicuous situation, and perhaps that view has been borne out by the result. One parishioner, I remember, had an odd, or at least an old-fashioned, idea about the matter. "Sir," said he, "you don't understand our feeling about Broadway. Sir, there is but one Broadway in the world." It is now becoming a street of shops and hotels, and is fast losing its old fashionable prestige.
The building was completed in something more than a year, and on the 2d May, 1839, it was dedicated, under the name of the Church of the Messiah. The burning of our sanctuary had [80] proved to be our upbuilding; the position of the Stuyvesant Institute on Broadway, and the plan of free seats, had increased our numbers, and we entered the new church with a congregation one third larger than that with which we left the old. The building had cost about $90,000, and it was a critical moment to us all, but to me especially, when the pews came to be sold. It may be judged what was my relief from anxiety when word was brought me, two hours after the auction was opened, that $70,000 worth of pews were taken.
It was a strong desire with me that the church should have some permanent name. I did not want that it should be called Dewey 's church, and then by the name of my successor, and so on; but that it should be known by some fixed designation, and so pass down, gathering about it the sacred associations of years and ages to come. I believe that it was the first instance in our Unitarian body of solemnly dedicating a church by some sacred name.
Another wish of mine was to enter the new church with the Liturgy of King's Chapel in Boston for our form of service. The subject was repeatedly discussed in meetings of the congregation; but although it became evident that there would be a majority in favor of it, yet as these did not demand it, and there was a considerable minority strongly opposed to it, we judged that there was not a state of feeling among us that would justify the introduction of what so essentially [81] required unanimity and heartiness as a new form of worship. And I am now glad that it was not introduced. For while I am as much satisfied as ever of the great utility of a Liturgy, I have become equally convinced that original, spontaneous prayer is likely to open the preacher's heart, or to stir up the gift in him in a way very important to his own ministration and to the edification of his people. The best service, I think, should consist of both.
And I cannot help believing that a church service will yet be arranged which will be an improvement upon all existing ones, Roman Catholic, Church of England, or any other. If in the highest ranges of human attainment there is to be an advancement of age beyond age, surely there is to be a progress in the spirit and language of prayer. From some forming hand and heart, by the united aid of consecrated genius, wisdom, and piety, something is to come greater than we have yet seen. No Homeric poem or vision of Dante is so grand as that will be. What is the highest idea of God, excluding superstition, anthropomorphism, and vague impersonality alike, what is the fit and true utterance of the deepest and divinest heart to God, this, I must think, may well occupy the sublimest meditations of human intellect and devotion. Not that the entire Liturgy, however, should be the product of any one man's thought. I would have in a Liturgy some of the time-hallowed prayers, some of the Litanies [82] that have echoed in the ear of all the ages from the early Christian time. The churches of Rome and England and Germany have some of these; and in a service-book, supposed to be compiled by the Chevalier Bunsen, there are others, prayers of Basil and of Jerome and Augustine, and of the old German time. There are beautiful things in them, especially in the old German prayers there is something very filial, free, and touching; but they would want a great deal of expurgation, and I believe that better prayers are uttered today than were ever heard before; and it is from uttered, not written prayers, if I could do so by the aid of a stenographer or of a perfect memory, that I would draw contributions to a book of devotion. What would I not give for some prayers of Channing or of Henry Ware! some that I have heard by their own firesides, or of Dr. Gardiner Spring, or of Dr. Payson of Portland, that I heard in church many years ago, for the very words that fell from their lips! I do not believe that the right prayers were ever composed, Dr ever will be.
After the dedication of our church I went on with my duties for three years, and then again broke down in health, able indeed, that is, with physical strength, to preach, but not able to write sermons. The congregation increased; many of is members became communicants; in the last Tear before I went abroad once more, the church [83] was crowded; in the evening especially, the aisles as well as pews were sometimes filled.
It was this fulness of the attendance in the evening that reconciled me to a second service; especially it was that many strangers came, to whom I had no other opportunity to declare my views of religion. For I judge that, for any given congregation, one service of worship, and of meditation such as the sermon is designed to awaken, is enough for one day. In the "Christian Examiner," two or three years after this, I think it was; I published an article on this subject, in which I maintained that there was too much preaching, too much preaching for the preacher, and too much preaching for the people. It was received with great surprise and little favor, I believe, at the time; but since then not a few persons, both of the clergy and laity, have expressed to me their entire agreement with it. What I said, and say, is that one sermon, one discourse of solemn meditation, designed to make a distinct and abiding impression upon the heart and life, is all that anybody should preach or hear in one day, and that the other part of Sunday should be used for conference or Sunday-school, or instructive lecture, or something with a character and purpose different from the morning meditation, something to instruct the people in the history, or evidences, or theory, or scriptural exposition of our religion. Indeed, I did this myself as often as I was able, though it tried the [84] religious prejudices of some of my people, and my own too, about what a sermon should be. I discussed the morals of trade, political morality, civic duty, that of voters, jurymen, etc., social questions, peace and war, and the problem of the human life and condition. Some portions of these last were incorporated into the course of Lowell Lectures on this subject, which I afterwards published. And it is high time to take this matter into serious consideration; for in all churches where the hearing of two or three sermons on Sunday is not held to be a positive religious duty, the second service is falling away into a thin and spectral shadow of public worship, discouraging to the attendants upon it, and dishonoring to religion itself.
The pastor of a large congregation in the city of New York has no sinecure. The sermons to be written, the parochial visiting, once a year, at least, to each family, and weekly or daily to the sick and afflicted, my walks commonly extended to from four to seven miles a day, the calls of the poor and distressed, laboring under every kind of difficulty, the charities to be distributed, I was in part the almoner of the congregation, the public meetings, the committees to be attended, the constantly widening circle of social relations and engagements, the pressure, in fine, of all sorts of claims upon time and thought, all this made a very laborious life for me. Yet it was pleasant, and very interesting. I thought when I [85]first went to the great city, when I first found myself among those busy throngs, none of whom knew me, beside those ranges of houses, none of which had any association for me, that I should never feel at home in New York. But it became very home-like to me. The walls became familiar to my eye; the pavement grew soft to my foot. I built me a house, that first requisite for feeling at home. I chanced to see a spot that I fancied: it was in Mercer Street, between Waverley Place and Eighth Street, just in the centre of everything, a step from Broadway and my church, just out of the noise of everything; there we passed many happy days. I have been quite a builder of houses in my life. I built one in New Bedford. My study had the loveliest outlook upon Buzzard's Bay and the Elizabeth Islands, I shall never have such a study again. Oh, the joy of that sea view! When I came to it again, after a vacation's absence, it moved me like the sight of an old friend. And I have built about the old home in Sheffield, till it is almost a new erection.
But to return to New York: I was very happy there. I had a congregation, I believe, that was interested in me. I made friends that were and are dear to me. When I first went to New York, I was elected a member of the Artists' Club, or Club of the Twenty-one, as it was called; by what good fortune or favor I know not, for I was the first clergyman that had ever been a member of it. It consisted of artists and other gentlemen, [86] an equal number of each. Cole and Durand and Ingham and Inman and Chapman and Bryant and Verplanck and Charles Hoffman were in it when I first became acquainted with it; and younger artists have been brought into it since, Gray and' Huntingdon and Kensett, and other non-professional gentlemen interested in art, and the meetings have been always pleasant. It was a kind of heart's home to me while I lived in New York, and I always resort to it now when I go there, sure of welcome and kindly greeting.'
Then, again, I had in William Ware, the pastor of the First Church, a friend and fellow-laborer, than whom, if I were to seek the world over, I could not find one more to my liking. Our friendship was as intimate as I ever had with any man, and our constant intercourse, to enter his house as freely as my own, his coming to mine was as a sunbeam, as cheering and undisturbing, I thought I could not get along without it. But I was obliged to do so. He had often talked of resigning his situation, and I had obtained from him a promise that he would never do it without consulting me. Great was my surprise, then, to learn, one day while in the country, that he had sent in his resignation. My first word to him on going to town was, "What is this? You have broken your promise." "I did not consult even [87] my father or my brothers," was his reply. I could say nothing. The truth was, that things had come to that pass in his mind that the case was beyond consultation. He considered himself as having made a fatal mistake in his choice of a profession. I have some very touching letters from him, in which he dwells upon it as his "mistake for a life." His nature was essentially artistic; he would have made a fine painter. He could have worked between silent walls. He could write admirably, as all the world knows; I need only mention "Zenobia" and "Aurelian" and "Probus." But there was a certain delicacy and shrinking in his nature that made it difficult for him to pour himself out freely in the presence of an audience. And yet a congregation, consisting in part of some of the most cultivated persons in New York, held him, as preacher and pastor, in an esteem and affection that any man might have envied.
[FN: The well-known Century Club of New York is the modern development of what was first known as the Sketch Club, or the XXI. M. E. D.]
And to repair the circle of my happy social relations, broken by Ware's departure, came Bellows to fill his place. I gave him the right hand of fellowship at his ordination; and I remember saying in it, that I would not have believed it possible for me to welcome anybody to the place of his predecessor with the pleasure with which I welcomed him. The augury of that hour has been fulfilled in most delightful intercourse with one of the noblest and most generous men I ever knew. With a singularly clear insight and penetration [88] into the deepest things of our spiritual nature, with an earnestness and fearlessness breaking through all technical rules and theories, with a buoyancy and cheerfulness that nothing can dampen, with a fitness and readiness for all occasions, his power as a preacher and his pleasantness as a companion have made him one of the most marked men of his day.
As to my general intercourse with society, whether in New York or elsewhere, I have always felt that its freedom lay under disagreeable restrictions, if not under a lay-interdict; and when travelling as a stranger I have always chosen not to be known as a clergyman, and commonly was not. I once had a curious and striking illustration of the feeling about clergymen to which I am alluding. I was invited by Mr. Prescott Hall, the eminent lawyer, to meet the Kent Club at his house, a law club then just formed. As I arrived a little before the company, I said to him: "Mr. Hall, I am sorry you have formed this kind of club, a club exclusively of lawyers. In Boston they have one of long standing, consisting of our professions, and four members of each, that is of lawyers, doctors, clergymen, and merchants." "To tell you the truth," he answered, "I don't like the clergy." I said that I could conceive of reasons, but I should like to hear him state them. "Why," said, he, "they come over me; they don't put themselves on a level with me; they talk [89] ex cathedra." I was obliged to bow my head in acquiescence; but I did say, "I think I know a class of clergymen of whom that is not true; and, besides, if I could bring all the clergy of this city into clubs of the Boston description, I believe those habits would be broken up in a single year."
There were two men who came to our church whose coming seemed to be by chance, but was of great interest to me, for I valued them greatly. They were Peter Cooper and Joseph Curtis. Neither of them, then, belonged to any religious society, or regularly attended upon any church. They happened to be walking down Broadway one Sunday evening as the congregation were altering Stuyvesant Hall, where we then temporarily worshipped, and they said, "Let us go in were, and see what this is." When they came out, is they both told me, they said to one another, "This is the place for us" And they immediately connected themselves with the congregation, to be among its most valued members.
Peter Cooper was even then meditating that plan of a grand Educational Institute which he afterwards carried out. He was engaged in a large and successful business, and his one idea which he often discussed with me was to obtain the means of building that Institute. A man of the gentlest nature and the simplest habits; yet his religious nature was his most remarkable quality. It seemed to breathe through his life as [90] fresh and tender as if it were in some holy retreat, instead of a life of business. Mr. Cooper has become a distinguished man, much engaged in public affairs, and much in society. I have seen him but little of late years; but I trust he has not lost that which is worth more than all the distinctions and riches in the world.
Joseph Curtis was a man much less known generally, and yet, in one respect, much more, and that was in the sphere of the public schools. He did more, I think, than any man to bring up the free schools of New York to such a point as compelled our Boston visitors to confess that they were not a whit inferior to their own. And his were voluntary and unpaid services, though his means were always moderate. He neither had, nor made, nor cared to make, a fortune. He cared for the schools as for nothing else; and there is no wiser or nobler care. For more than twenty years he spent half of his time in the schools, walking among them with such intelligent and gentle oversight as to win universal confidence and affection, so that he was commonly called, by teachers and pupils, "Father Curtis."
At the same time, his hand and heart were open to every call of charity. I remember once making him umpire between me and Horace Greeley, the only time that I ever met the latter in company. He was saying, after his fashion in the "Tribune,"—he was from nature and training a Democrat, and had no natural right ever to be in [91] the Whig party, he was saying that the miseries of the poor in New York were all owing to the rich; when I said, "Mr. Greeley, here sits Mr. Joseph Curtis, who has walked the streets of New York for more years than you and I have been here, and I propose that we listen to him." He could not refuse to make the appeal, and so I put a series of questions upon the point to Mr. Curtis. The answers did not please Mr. Greeley. He broke in once or twice, saying, "Am not I to have a chance to speak? ". But I persisted and said, "Nay, but we have agreed to listen to Mr. Curtis." The upshot was, that, in his opinion, the miseries of the poor in New York were not owing to the rich, but mainly to themselves; that there was ordinarily remunerative labor enough for them; and that, but in exceptional cases of sickness and especial misfortune, those who fell into utter destitution and beggary came to that pass through their idleness, their recklessness, or their vices. That was always my opinion. They besieged our door from morning till night, and I was obliged to help them, to look after them, to go to their houses; my family was worn out with these offices. But I looked upon beggary as, in all ordinary cases, prima facie evidence that there was something wrong behind it.
The great evil and mischief lay in indiscriminate charity. Many were the walks we took to avoid this, and often with little satisfaction. I have walked across the whole breadth of the city, [92] on a winter's day, to find a man dressed better than I was, with blue broadcloth and metal buttons and new boots, and just sitting down to a very comfortable dinner. The wife was rather taken aback by my entrance, it was she who had come to me, and the man, of course, must say something for himself, and this it was: He "had fallen behind of late, in consequence of not receiving his rents from England. He was the owner of two houses in Sheffield." "Well," I said, "If that is so, you are better off than I am;" and I took a not very courteous leave of them.
To give help in a better way, an Employment Society was formed in our church to cut out and prepare garments for poor women to sew, and be paid for it. A salesroom was opened in Amity Street, to sell the articles made up, at a trifling addition to their cost. The ladies of the congregation were in attendance at the church, in a large ante-room, to prepare the garments and give them out, and a hundred or more poor women came every Thursday to bring their work and receive more; and they have been coming to this day. It was thought an excellent plan, and was adopted by other churches. The ladies of All Souls joined in it, and the institution is now transferred to that church.
One day, in the winter I think of 1837, I heard of an association of gentlemen formed to investigate this terrible subject of mendacity in our city, and to find some way of methodizing our chari-[93] ties and protecting them from abuse. I went down immediately to Robert Minturn, who, I was told, took a leading part in this movement, and told him that I had come post-haste to inquire what he and his friends were doing, for that nothing in our city life pressed upon my mind like this. I used, indeed, to feel at times and Bellows had the same feeling as if I would fain fling up my regular professional duties, and plunge into this great sea of city pauperism and misery.
Mr. Minturn told me that he, with four or five others, had taken up this subject; that, for more than a year past, they had met together one evening in the week to confer with one another upon it; that they had opened a correspondence with all our great cities, and with some in Europe; and sometimes had sent out agents to inquire into the methods that had been adopted to stem these enormous city evils. Mr. Minturn wished me to join them, and I expected to be formally invited to do so; but I was not, nor to a great public meeting called soon after, under their auspices. I suppose there was no personal feeling against me, only an Orthodox one. Well, no matter. It was a noble enterprise, better than any sectarianism ever suggested, and worthy of record, especially considering its spontaneity, labor, and expense.
Their plan, when matured, was this: to district the city; to appoint one person in each district to receive all applications for aid; to sell tickets [94] of various values, which we could buy and give the applicant at our doors, to be taken to the agent, who would render the needed help, according to his judgment. Of course the beggars did not like it. I found that, half the time, they would not take the tickets. It would give them some trouble, but the special trouble, doubtless, with the reckless and dishonest among them, was that it would prevent them from availing themselves of the aid of twenty families, all acting in ignorance of what each was doing.
Jonathan Goodhue was a man whom nobody that knew him can ever forget. Tall and fine-looking in person, simple and earnest in manners, with such a warmth in his accost that to shake hands with him was to feel happier for it all the day after. I remember passing down Wall Street one day when old Robert Lenox was standing by his side. After one of those warm greetings, I passed on, and Mr. Lenox said, "Who is that?" "Mr. Dewey, a clergyman of a church in the city." "Of which church?" said Mr. Lenox. "Of the Unitarian church." "The Lord have mercy upon him!" said the old man. It was a good prayer, and I have no doubt it was kindly made.
Alas! What I am writing is a necrology: they are all gone of whom I speak. George Curtis, too; he died before I left the Church of the Messiah, died in his prime. George William Curtis is [95] his son, well known as one of our most graceful writers and eloquent men: something hereditary in that, for his father had one of the clearest heads I knew, and a gifted tongue, though he was too modest to be a great talker. He could make a good speech, and once he made one that was more effective than I could have wished. The question was about electing Thomas Starr King to be my colleague. The congregation was immensely taken with him; but Mr. Curtis opposed on the ground that King was a Universalist, and he carried everything before him. He said, as it was reported to me, "I was born a Unitarian; I have lived a Unitarian; and, if God please, I mean to die a Unitarian!" He had the old-fashioned, and indeed well-founded, dislike of Universalism. But all that is changed now, was changing then; for the Universalists have given up their preaching of no retribution hereafter. They are in other respects, also, Unitarians, and the two bodies affiliate and are friends.
Moses Grinnell was a marked man in New York. A successful and popular merchant, his generosity was ample as his means; and I have known him in circumstances that required a higher generosity than that of giving money, and he stood the test perfectly. His mind, too, grew with his rise in the world. He was sent to Congress, and his acquaintance from that time with many distinguished men gave a new turn to his thoughts and a higher tone to his character and [96] conversation. At his house, where I was often a guest, I used to meet Washington Irving, whose niece he married. Of course everybody knows of Washington Irving; but there are one or two anecdotes, of which I doubt whether they appear in his biography, and which I am tempted to relate. He told me that he once went to a theatre in London to hear some music. (They use theatres in London as music-halls, and I went to one myself, once, to hear Paganini, and enjoyed an evening that I can never forget. His one string for he broke all the others was a heart-string.) Mr. Irving said that on entering the theatre he found in the pit only three or four English gentleman, who had evidently come early, as he had, to find a good place. Accordingly, he took his seat near them, when one of them rather loftily said, "That seat is engaged, sir." He got up and took a seat a little farther off, when they said, "That, too, is engaged." Again he meekly rose, and took another place. Pretty soon one of the party said, "Do you remember Washington Irving's description of a band of music?" (It is indeed a most amusing caricature. One of the performers had blown his visnomy to a point. Another blew as if he were blowing his whole estate, real and personal, through his instrument. I quote from memory.) Mr. Irving said they went over with the whole description, with much entertainment and laughter. They little knew that they had thrust aside [97] the author of their pleasure, who sat there, like the great Caliph, incognito, and they would have paid him homage enough if they had known him.
Mrs. S. told me that one evening he strolled up to their piazza, they lived near to one another in the country, and fell into one of those easy and unpremeditated talks, in which, to be sure, he was always most pleasant, when he said, among other things, "Don't be anxious about the education of your daughters: they will do very well; don't teach them so many things,—teach them one thing." "What is that, Mr. Irving?" she asked. "Teach them," he said, "to be easily pleased."
Bryant, too, everybody knows of. Now he is chiefly known as poet; but when I went to New York-people thought most about him as editor of the "Evening Post," and that with little enough complacency in the circles where I moved. How many a fight I had for him with my Whig friends! For he was my parishioner, and it was known that we were much together. The "Evening Post" was a thorn in their sides, and every now and then, when some keen editorial appeared in it, they used to say, "There! What do you say of that?" I always said the same thing: Whether you and I like what he says or not, whether we think it fair or not, of one thing be sure, he is a man of perfect integrity; he is so almost to a fault, if that be possible, regarding [98] neither feelings nor friendships, nor anything else, when justice and truth are in question.
Speaking of Bryant brings to mind Audubon, the celebrated naturalist. I became acquainted with him through his family's attending our church, and one day proposed to Mr. Bryant to go with me to see him. Seating himself before the poet, Audubon quietly said, "You are our flower,"—a very pretty compliment, I thought, from a man of the woods.
I happened to fall in with Mr. Audubon one day in the cars going to Philadelphia, when he was setting out, I think, on his last great tour across the American wilderness. He described to me his outfit, to be assumed when he arrived at the point of departure, a suit of dressed deerskin, his only apparel. In this he was to thread the forest and swim the rivers; with his rifle, of course, and powder and shot; a tin case to hold his drawing-paper and pencils, and a blanket. Meat, the produce of the chase, was to be his only food, and the earth his bed, for two or three months. I said, shrinking from such hardship, "I could n't stand that."—"If you were to go with me," he replied, "I would bring you out on the other side a new man." He broke down under it, however, rather prematurely; for in that condition I saw him once more,—his health and faculties shattered,—near the end of his life.
[99] But to return,—turning and returning upon one's self must be the course of an autobiography, my health having a second time completely failed, I determined again to go abroad; and to make the measure of relief more complete, I determined to go for two years, and to take my family with me. The sea was a horror to me, but beyond it lay pleasant lands that I wanted to look upon once more, galleries of art by which I wished to sit down and study at my leisure, and, above all, rest: I wanted to be where no one could call on me to preach or lecture, to do this or do that.
We sailed for Havre in October, 1841, passed the winter in Paris, the summer following in Switzerland, the next winter in Italy, and, returning through Germany, spent two months in England, and came home in August, 1843.
While in Geneva I was induced for my health to make trial of the "water-cure," and first to try what they call the "Arve bath." The Campagne at Champel, where we were passing the summer, is washed for half a mile by the Arve. In hot August days I walked slowly by the river-bank, with cloak on, till a moderate perspiration was induced, then jumped in,—and out as quick! for the river, though it had run sixty miles from its source, seemed as cold as when it left the glacier of the Arveiron at Chamouni. Experiencing no ill effect, however, I determined to try the regular water-cure, and for this purpose, in [100] our travel through Switzerland, stopped at Meyringen in the Vale of Hasli. I was "packed,"-bundled up in bed blankets every morning at daybreak, went through the consequent furnace of heat and drench of perspiration for two or three hours,—then was taken by a servant on his back, me and my wrappages, the whole bundle, and carried down to the great bath, only 6 of Reaumur above ice (45 degrees Fahrenheit), plunged in, got out again in no deliberate way, was pushed under a shower-bath of the same glacier water, fought my way out of that, at arm's end with the attendant, when he enveloped me in warm, dry sheets, and made me comfortable in one minute. It was of no use, however. My brain grew more nervous, the doctor agreed that it did not suit me, and shortly I gave it up.
At Rome we were introduced with a small American party to the Pope, Gregory XVI. It was just after the Carnival and just before Lent. The old man expressed his pleasure that the people had enjoyed themselves in Carnival, "But now," said he, "I suppose a great many of them will find themselves out of health in Lent, and will want indulgences." I could not help thinking how much that last was like a Puritan divine.
What a life is life in Rome!—not common, not like any other, but as if the pressure of stupendous and crowding histories were upon every day. A presence haunts you that is more than all you see. We Americans, with some invited [101] guests, celebrated Washington's birthday by a dinner. In a speech I said, "I was asked the other day, what struck me most in Rome, and I answered,—To think that this is Rome!" Lucien Bonaparte, who sat opposite me at table, bowed his head with emphasis, as if he said, "That is true." He was entitled to know what great historic memories are; and those of his family, criticise them as we may,—and I am not one of their admirers,—do not, perhaps, fall below much of the Roman imperial grandeur.
On coming to England from the Continent, among many things to admire, there were two things we were especially thankful for,—comfort and hospitality. We had not been in London half a day before I had rented a furnished house, and we were established in it. That is, the owner, occupying the basement, gave us the parlors above and ample sleeping-rooms, and the use of her servants,-we defraying the expense of our table,—for so much a month. We took possession of our apartments an hour after we had engaged them, and had nothing to do but order our dinner and walk out; and all this for less, I think, than it would have cost us to live at a good boarding-house in Broadway.
We visited various parts of England,—Warwick, Kenilworth, Oxford, Birmingham, and Liverpool, and made acquaintance with persons whom to know was worth going far, and whom [102] to remember has been a constant pleasure ever since.
Well, we came back in August, 1843, in the steamer "Hibernia." What a joy to return home! We landed in Boston. The railroad across Massachusetts had been completed during our absence, and brought us to Sheffield in six or seven hours; it had always been a weary journey before, of three days by coach, or a week with our own horse. A few days' rest, and then six or eight hours more took us to New York, where we found the water fountains opened; the Croton had been brought in that summer. Did it not seem all very fit and festal to us? For we had come home!
My health, however, was only partially reestablished, and the recruiting which had got me for constant service in my church but three years more. The winter of 1846-47 I passed in Washington, serving the little church there. En the spring I returned to New York, struggled on with my duties in the church for another year; in the spring of 1848 sold my house, and retired to the Sheffield home, continuing to preach occasionally in New York for a number of months longer, when, early in 1849, my connection with the Church of the Messiah was finally dissolved. I would willingly have remained with it on condition of discharging a partial service, with a colleague to assist me: it was the only chance I saw [103] of continuing in my profession. The congregation, at my instance, had sought for a colleague, both during my absence in Europe and in the later years of my continuance with it, but had failed,—there appearing to be some singular reluctance in our young preachers to enter into that relation,—and there seemed nothing for the church to do but to inaugurate a new ministration.
It was in this crisis of my worldly affairs, so trying to a clergyman who is dependent on his salary, that I experienced the benefit of a rule that early in life I prescribed to myself; and that was, always to lay up for a future day some portion of my annual income. I insisted upon it that, with as much foresight as the ant or the bee, I might be allowed without question so to use the salary appointed to me as to make some provision for the winter-day of life, or for the spring that would come after, and might be to others bleak and cold and desolate without it. So often have I witnessed this, that I am most heartily thankful that, on leaving New York, I was not reduced to utter destitution, and that with some moderate exertion I am able to provide for our modest wants. At the same time I do not feel obliged to conceal the conviction, and never did, that the service of religion in our churches meets with no just remuneration. One may suffer martyrdom and not complain; but I do not think one is bound to say that it is a reasonable or pleasant thing. [104] Another thing I will be so frank as to say on leaving New York, and that is, that it was a great moral relief to me to lay down the burden of the parochial charge. I regretted to leave New York; I could have wished to live and die among the friends I had there; I should make it my plan now to spend my winters there, if I could afford it: but that particular relation to society,—no man, it seems to me, can heartily enter into it without feeling it to weigh heavily upon him. Sympathy with affliction is the trial-point of the clergyman's office. In the natural and ordinary relations of life every man has enough of it. But to take into one's heart, more or less, the personal and domestic sorrows of two or three hundred families, is a burden which no man who has not borne it can conceive of. I sometimes doubt whether it was ever meant that any man, or at least any profession of men, should bear it; whether the general ministrations of the pulpit to affliction should not suffice, leaving the application to the hearer in this case as in other cases; whether the clergyman's relations to distress and suffering should not be like every other man's,—general with his acquaintance, intimate with his friends; whether, if there were nothing conventional or customary about this matter, most families would not prefer to be left to themselves, without a professional call from their minister. Suppose that there were no rule with regard to it; that the clergyman, like every [105] other man, went where his feelings carried him, or his relations warranted; that it was no more expected of him, as a matter of course, to call upon a bereaved family, than of any other of their acquaintance,—would not that be a better state of things? I am sure I should prefer it, if I were a parishioner. When, indeed, the minister of religion wishes to turn to wise account the suffering of sickness or of bereavement, let him choose the proper time: reflection best comes after; it is not in the midst of groans and agonies, of sobs and lamentations, that deep religious impressions are usually made.
I have a suspicion withal, that there is something semi-barbaric in these immediate and urgent ministrations to affliction, something of the Indian or Oriental fashion, or something derived from the elder time, when the priest was wise and the people rude. For ignorant people, who have no resources nor reflections of their own, such ministrations may be proper and needful now. I may be in the wrong about all this. Perhaps I ought to suspect it. There is more that is hereditary in us all, I suppose, than we know. My father never could bear the sight of sickness or distress: it made him faint. There is a firmness, doubtless, that is better than this; but I have it not. Very likely I am wrong. My friend Putnam [FN: Rev. George Putnam, D. D., of Roxbury, Mass.—M. E. D.] lately tried to convince me of it, in a conversation we had; maintaining that the [106] parochial relation ought not to be, and need not be, that burden upon the mind which I found it. And I really feel bound on such a point, rather than myself, to trust him, one of the most finely balanced natures I ever knew. Why, then, do I say all these things? Because, in giving an account of myself, I suppose I ought to say and confess what a jumble of pros and cons I am.
Heaven knows I have tried hard to keep right; and if I am not as full as I can hold of one-sided and erratic opinions, I think it some praise. . . . I do strive to keep in my mind a whole rounded circle of truth and opinion. It would be pleasant to let every mental tendency run its length; but I could not do so. It may be pride or narrowness; but I must keep on some terms with myself. I cannot find my understanding falling into contradiction with the judgments it formed last month or last year, without suspecting not only that there was something wrong then, but that there is something wrong now, to be resisted. That "there is a mean in things" is held, I believe, to be but a mean apothegm now-a-days; but I do not hold it to be such. All my life I have endeavored to hold a balance against the swayings of my mind to the one side and the other of every question. I suppose this appears in my course, such as it has been, in religion, in politics, on the subject of slavery, of peace, of temperance, etc. It may appear to be dulness or tameness or time-serving or cowardice [107] or folly, but I simply do not believe it to be either.
But to return: we were now once more in Sheffield, and I was without employment,—a condition always most irksome to me. Hard work, I am persuaded, is the highest pleasure in the world, and, from the day when I was in college, vacations have always proved to me the most tedious times in my life.
I determined, therefore, to pursue some study as far as I could, and my subject,—the choice of years before,—was the philosophy of history and humanity. While thus engaged, I received an invitation from Mr. John A. Lowell, trustee of the Lowell Institute, to deliver one of its annual popular courses of lectures in Boston. This immediately gave a direction to my thoughts, and by the winter of 1850-51 I was prepared to write the lectures, which I ventured to denominate, "Lectures on the Problem of Human Destiny," and I gave them in the autumn of 1851. My reason for adopting such a title I gave in the first lecture, and I might add that, with my qualifications, I was ashamed to put at the head of my humble work such great words as "Philosophy of History and Humanity,"—the title of Herder's celebrated treatise. The truth was, I had, or thought I had, something to say upon the philosophy of the human condition,—upon the end for man, and upon the only way in which it could be [108] achieved,—upon the terrible problem of sin and suffering in this world,—and I tried to say it. I so far succeeded with my audience in Boston, that, either from report of that, or from the intrinsic interest of the subject, I was invited to repeat the lectures in various parts of the country; and during the four or five years following I repeated them fifteen times,—in New Bedford, New York, Brooklyn, Washington, Baltimore, St. Louis, Louisville, Madison, Cincinnati, Nashville, Sheffield, Worcester, Charleston, S. C., New Orleans, and Savannah in part, and the second time also, I gave them, by Mr. Lowell's request, in the Boston Institute. At the same time, I was not idle as a preacher, having preached every Sunday in the places where I lectured, besides serving the church in Washington two long winters. I also wrote another course of lectures for the Lowell Institute, on the "Education of the Human Race," and repeated it in several places.
At the time that I was invited to Washington, I received, in February, 1851, a document from the Government, which took me so much by surprise that I supposed it must be a mistake. It was no other than a commission as chaplain in the Navy. I wrote to a gentleman in Washington, asking him to make inquiry for me, and ascertain what it meant. He replied that there was no mistake about it, and that it was intended for me. I then concluded, as there was a Navy Yard in Washington, and as the President, Mr.[109] Fillmore, attended the church to which I was invited, that he intended by the appointment to help both the church and me, and I accepted it. On going to Washington I found that there was a chaplain already connected with the Navy Yard, and on his retirement some months later, and my offering to perform any duties required there, being answered that there was really nothing to be done, I resigned the commission.
Life in Washington was not agreeable to me, and yet I felt a singular attachment to the people there. This mixture of repulsion and attraction I could not understand at the time, or rather,-as is usually the case with our experience while passing,—did not try to; but walking those streets two or three years later, when experience had become history, I could read it. In London or Paris the presence of the government is hardly felt; the action of public affairs is merged and lost in the life of a great city; but in Washington it is the one, all-absorbing business of the place. Now, whether it be pride or sympathy, one does not enjoy a great movement of things going on around him in which he has no part, and the thoughts and aims of a retired and studious man, especially, sever him from the views and interests of public men. But, on the other hand, this very pressure of an all-surrounding public life brings private men closer together. There they stand, while the tides of successive Administrations sweep by them, and their relation be-[110] comes constantly more interesting from the fluctuation of everything else. It is really curious to see how the private and resident society of Washington breathes freer, and prepares to enjoy itself when Congress is about to rise and leave it to itself.
Among the remarkable persons with whom I became acquainted in Washington, at this or a-former time, was John C. Calhoun. I had with him three interviews of considerable length, and remember each of them, the more distinctly from the remarkable habit he had of talking Ton subjects,—not upon the general occurences of the day, but upon some particular topic. The first two were at an earlier period than that to which this part of my narrative creates; it was when he was Vice-President of the United States, under the administration of John Quincy Adams. I went to his room in the Capitol to present my letter of introduction; it was just before the assembling of the Senate, and I said, of course, that I would not intrude upon his time at that moment, and was about to withdraw; but he kindly detained me, saying, "No: it will >e twenty minutes before I go to the Senate; sit down." And then, in two minutes, I found him talking upon a purely literary point,—I am sure do not know how he got to it; but it was this, hat the first or second book of every author, so le maintained, was always his best. He cited a [111] number of instances in support of his position. I do not remember what they were; but it occurred to me in reflecting upon it afterwards, that, in purely literary composition, there were some reasons why it might be true. An author writes his first books with the greatest care; he naturally puts into them his best and most original thoughts, which he cannot use again; and if he succeeds, and gains reputation, he is liable to grow both careless and confident,—to think that the things which people admire are his peculiarities, and not his general merits, and so to fall into mannerism and repetition. I remember Mrs. George Lee, of Boston, a sagacious woman, saying to me one day, when I told her I was going to write a second sermon on a certain subject,—she had praised the first,—"I have observed that the second sermon, on any subject, is never so good as the first; even Channing's are not."
Mr. Calhoun, on my leaving him, invited me to pass the evening with him at his house in Georgetown. I went, expecting to meet company, but found myself alone with him, and then the subject of conversation was the advantage and necessity of an Opposition in Government. He was himself then, of course, in the Opposition, and he was very candid: he said he did not question the motives of the Administration, while he felt bound to oppose it. I was struck with his candor,—a thing I did not look for in a political [112] opponent,—but especially with what he said about the benefit of an Opposition; both were rather new to me.
My third interview with him was at a later period, when his discourse turned upon this question: What is the greatest thing that a man can do? His answer was characteristic of the statesman. "It is," he said, "to speak the true and saving word in a great national emergency. For it implies," he continued, "the fullest knowledge of the past, the largest comprehension of the present, and the clearest foresight of the future." He might have added, to complete the idea, that this word was sometimes to be spoken when it involved the greatest peril to the position and prospects of the speaker. But how much moral considerations were apt to be present to his mind, I do not know. He was mostly known—so we of the North thought—as an impracticable reasoner. Miss Martineau said, "He was like a cast-iron man on a railroad."
I was introduced to Mr. Adams, but saw him little, and heard him less, as I will relate. Mr. Reed, of Barnstable, introduced me,—"Father Reed," as they used to call him, from his having been longer a member of Congress than any other man in the House,—and I said to him, as we were entering the White House, "Now tell Mr. Adams who I am and where from; for I think he must be puzzled what to talk about, with so many strangers coming to him." Well, I was intro-[113]duced accordingly, and Mr. Reed retired. I was offered a seat, and took it. I was a young man, and felt that it did not become me to open a conversation. And there we sat, five minutes, with>tit a word being spoken by either of us! I rose, took my leave, and went away, I don't know whether more angered or astonished. I once, by the by, visited his father, old John Adams, then lying in retirement at Quincy. Mr. Josiah Quincy took me to see him. He was not silent, but talked, I remember, full ten minutes—for ye did not interrupt him—about Machiavelli and in language so well chosen that I thought it night have been printed.
But the most interesting person, as statesman, hat I saw in Washington, was Thomas Corwin, of Ohio, commonly called Tom Corwin. This was a later period.
Circumstances, or the chances of conversation, sometimes lead to acquaintance and friendship, which years of ordinary intercourse fail to bring about. It happened, the first time I saw Mr. Corwin, that some observation I made upon political normality seemed to strike him as a new thought; suppose it was a topic seldom touched upon in Washington society. It led to a good deal of conversation, then and afterwards; and I must say that a more high-principled and religiously minded statesman I have never met with than Mr. Corwin.
When he was preparing to deliver his celebrated [114] speech in the Senate against the war with Mexico, he told me what he was going to say, and asked me if I thought he could say it and not be politically ruined by it. I answered that I did not know; but that I would say it if it did ruin me.
The day came for his speech, and I never saw the Senate Chamber so densely packed as it was to hear him. He told me that he should not speak; more than half an hour; but he did speak three hours, not only against the Mexican war, but against the system of slavery, in the bitterest language. His friends in Ohio told me, years after, that it did ruin him. But for that, they said, he would have been President of the United States.
Thackeray came to Washington while I was here. He gave his course of lectures on "the English Humorists of the Eighteenth Century." His style, especially in his earlier writings, had one quality which the critics did not seem to notice; it was not conventional, but spun out of the brain. With the power of thought to take hold of the mind, and a rich, deep, melodius voice, he contrived, without one gesture, or my apparent emotion in his delivery, to charm away an hour as pleasantly as I have ever felt it in a lecture. What he told me of his way of composing confirms me in my criticism on his style.-He did not dash his pen on paper, like Walter Scott, and write off twenty pages without stop-[115] ping, but, dictating to an amanuensis,—a plan which leaves the brain to work undisturbed by the pen-labor,—dictating from his chair, and often from his bed, he gave out sentence by sentence, slowly, as they were moulded in his mind.
Thackeray was sensitive about public opinion; no writer, I imagine, was ever otherwise. I remember, one morning, he was sitting in our parlor, when letters from the mail came in. They were received with some eagerness, of course, and he said, "You seem to be pleased to have letters; I am not."—"No?" we said.—"No. I have had letters from England this morning, and they tell me that 'Henry Esmond' is not liked."