CHAPTER II

For it seemeth to me unreasonable to send a prisoner and not to signify the things laid to his charge,

and Agrippa's answer, after Paul's apologia:

In a little thou persuadest me to become a Christian!

But the story did not end then. I rehearsed over and over again what the King Agrippa might have said to his sister, the noble and beautiful Bernice—I knew nothing of the lady's reputation then—and how finally they did become Christians. In my imagination, princely dignity and exquisite grace were added to the external beauty of religion; and Paul went to Rome protected by the law of the Romans. And yet the very fineness of his attitude was the cause of his further imprisonment. "This man," I often repeated with Agrippa, "might have been set at liberty, if he had not appealed to Cæsar."

It was St. Paul who sent me back to the ProphetMicheas, who had previously struck me as of no importance at all, and I read:

And Thou, Bethlehem Ephrata, art a little one among the thousands of Juda; out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be the ruler in Israel; and his going forth is from the beginning, from the days of eternity.

And back again to St. Matthew—

But they said to him: In Bethlehem of Juda; For so it is written by the prophet; And thou, Bethlehem, the land of Juda, art not the least among the princes of Juda; for out of thee shall come forth the captain, who shall rule my people Israel.

These exercises in completing the prophecies of the Old Testament with the fulfilments of the New were interesting, and I found great pleasure in them. And this led me to a greater appreciation of the Old Testament, against which I had been once rather prejudiced. One day, I was led, by some reference or other in another book, to read the twenty-third psalm of David, in the King James version. It struck me as much more simple and appealing than the version in the Douai Bible, which begins in Latin "Dominus regit me." It runs:

The Lord ruleth me: and I shall want nothing.2 He hath set me in a place of pasture.He hath brought me up, on the water of refreshment:3 He hath converted my soul. He hath led me on the paths of justice, for his own name's sake.4 For though I should walk in the midst of the shadow of death, I fear no evils, for thou art with me.Thy rod and thy staff, they have comforted me.5 Thou hast prepared a table before me, against them that afflict me.Thou hast anointed my head with oil: and my chalice which inebriateth me how goodly is it.And thy mercy will follow me all the days of my life.And that I may dwell in the house of the Lord, unto length of days.

The Lord ruleth me: and I shall want nothing.

2 He hath set me in a place of pasture.

He hath brought me up, on the water of refreshment:

3 He hath converted my soul. He hath led me on the paths of justice, for his own name's sake.

4 For though I should walk in the midst of the shadow of death, I fear no evils, for thou art with me.

Thy rod and thy staff, they have comforted me.

5 Thou hast prepared a table before me, against them that afflict me.

Thou hast anointed my head with oil: and my chalice which inebriateth me how goodly is it.

And thy mercy will follow me all the days of my life.

And that I may dwell in the house of the Lord, unto length of days.

In the Douai version this psalm was called the twenty-second.

Without any special guidance—I think most of my teachers would have looked on as dangerous any attempt to ally English literature with the Bible—I soon discovered that nearly everything I read owed something to the Bible. At first, the comparison of the twenty-third psalm in the King James version enraptured me so much that I began to find fault with the Latinized phrases of the Vulgate in English. It was the fashion in the earlyseventies to be very Saxon in speech, especially in the little group at school interested in English literature. Street cars at this time were comparatively new in Philadelphia, and I think we reached the last extremity of Saxonism in speech when we spoke of them as "folk wains." The tide then turned toward the Latins; and I preferred the Book of Job and the story of Ruth in the Latinized version, because the words were more mouth filling, and because it was very difficult to translate everything into a bald "early English medium", which for a time I had been trying to do. It was Keats's lovely phrase "amid the alien corn" which sent me back to "Ruth"; and a quotation in Quackenbos's "Rhetoric"—"Can'st thou hook the Leviathan" which made me revel in "Job."

Something Meg Merrilies said bore me on toward the roaring storm of Isaiah. The Latinized medium seemed to suit his denunciations best; and then, besides, I found more illuminating footnotes in the Douai version than in the King James. In both versions, some passages were so obscure that I often wondered how anybody could get any meaning out of them. I was often astonished to find in English novels that the old people in thecottages were soothed by texts, quoted at a great length, out of which I could make nothing, so I limited myself to the Douai version, which I found more illuminating.

Whether my system of reading is to be commended or not to young persons, I am not prepared to say, but for me it made the Bible a really live book. To be frank, and perhaps shocking at the same time—if anybody had asked me whether, being marooned on an island, I should have most preferred the Bible in my loneliness, I should promptly have answered "No." At this age "Nicholas Nickleby" or "Midsummer Night's Dream," or "The Tempest," or "As You Like it," or Macaulay's "Lays of Ancient Rome," would have suited me better, provided, of course, that I could have chosen only one book.

It was borne in on me many times that no author could improve on the phrasing of the Bible. Both in the Vulgate and the King James versions there are passages which, leaving aside all question of doctrine, it is sacrilege to try to improve. The French translation of the Bible is, as everybody knows, very paraphrastic, and that may account for the fact that, while regarded as aprecious depository of doctrine, it is not a household book, and the dreadfully dull interpretations of Clement Marot—called hymns—naturally bored a people who, in their hearts, believe that God listens more amiably to petitions uttered in the language of the Academy! In their novels, dealing with the beginnings of Christianity—and there are many such novels in French unknown in other countries—it is hard for a French author not to be rhetorical, in the manner of the writer of "Ben Hur" when the death of Christ is described. No human author could improve on the words of the Vulgate, or the words of the King James version. What young heart can ponder over these words, without a thrill, St. John XIX (Douai version: 1609; Rheims; 1582):

When Jesus therefore had seen his Mother and the disciple standing whom he loved, he saith to his Mother: Woman, behold thy son.After that, he saith to the disciple, Behold thy mother. And from that day the disciple took her to his own.Afterwards, Jesus knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the Scripture might be fulfilled, said: I thirst.Now there was a vessel set there full of vinegar, and they, putting a sponge full of vinegar about hyssop, put it to his mouth.And Jesus therefore when he had taken the vinegar, said, it is consummated, and bowing his head, gave up the ghost.

When Jesus therefore had seen his Mother and the disciple standing whom he loved, he saith to his Mother: Woman, behold thy son.

After that, he saith to the disciple, Behold thy mother. And from that day the disciple took her to his own.

Afterwards, Jesus knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the Scripture might be fulfilled, said: I thirst.

Now there was a vessel set there full of vinegar, and they, putting a sponge full of vinegar about hyssop, put it to his mouth.

And Jesus therefore when he had taken the vinegar, said, it is consummated, and bowing his head, gave up the ghost.

When Marie Corelli became a popular author, there were persons existing—happily, they have all gone to the great beyond—who thought that the "talented" author could have done better!

I am aware that many persons look on Emerson as somewhat dangerous reading for a boy of sixteen. The mothers and fathers of my Baptist friends and the uncle of my Methodist cousins forbade the reading of Emerson because of his Unitarianism; but, as the rector of our parish never denounced Unitarians from the altar, though he frequently offered his compliments to Martin Luther, I paid no attention whatever to these objections. I trust that I am not defending the miscellaneous reading of my boyhood; I do not recommend this course to the approval of parents and guardians; I am simply expressing the impression that certain books made on my youthful mind and heart; for, though I never said so in words, the books I liked were always nearer to my heart than to my mind. I owe a great debt to Emerson.

It was on a hot afternoon during the summer vacation that, near sundown, sitting on the warm marble steps of our house, I dipped into an early edition of Emerson. I felt inspired at once to think great thoughts and to do good things, to lift myself above the petty things of the earth, and to feel that to be an American was to be at once proud and humble. Emerson's abrupt sentences, like a number of brilliants set close together, reminded me of "Proverbs"; but the Book of Proverbs did not get so near to my actual life as the essays of Emerson. I liked the lessons that he drew from the lives of great men. I was shocked when he mentioned Confucius and Plato in the same breath as Christ; but I was amiably tolerant, for I felt that he had never had the privilege of studying the Little Catechism, and I thought of writing to him on the subject. But somebody told me that he was an "American Classic" and, from that, I concluded he was dead, and had doubtless already found out his mistake.

Perhaps I might have been better engaged in reading the more practical books offered to boys in our own time, if we had had them. There were some books then on scientific subjects, reduced tothe comprehension of the young; but not so many as there are now. One of my uncles recommended the works of Samuel Smiles—"Self-Help" I think was his favourite; but Samuel Smiles never appealed to me. My small allowance, paid weekly, could not have been affected by "Thrift", and when my uncle quoted passages from this tiresome book I astounded him by replying, in a phrase I wrongly attributed to the adorable Emerson, that if I had a quarter to spend instead of twelve cents, I would give half of it for a hyacinth! My miserly uncle said it sounded just like Mohammed, and that Emerson had doubtless found it in that dangerous book, the Koran.

I cannot imagine any other author doing for me just what the essays of Emerson did. In the first place, they seemed to me to be really American; in the second, and largely because of their quality, they offered an antidote to the materialism in the very air, which had succeeded the Civil War. At this time there was much talk of money and luxury everywhere about us. Even in our quiet neighbourhood, where simple living was the rule, many had burst into ostentation, and moved away into newer and more pretentious quarters, and therewas a rumour that some of these sought unlimited opportunities for extravagant expenditure. We saw them driving in new carriages, and condescendingly stopping before the white doors and the green window-shutters of our old-fashioned colonial houses. They had made money through the war. For the first time in our lives we boys heard of money making as the principal aim of life. The fact that these successful persons were classed as "shoddy" did not lessen the value of the auriferous atmosphere about us. Emerson was a corrective to this materialism. As to his philosophy or theology, that did not concern me any more than the religious opinions of Julius Cæsar, whose "Commentaries" I was obliged to read. Emerson gave me a taste for the reading of essay.

By chance I fell upon some essays of Carlyle. The inflation of his style did not deter me from thoroughly enjoying the paper on "Novalis." That on "Cagliostro," however, was my favourite. It introduced me intimately to the French Revolution. I disliked this great charlatan for his motto, "Tread the lilies under foot." I was for the Bourbons! The French Revolution, as a fact,was very near to me. My mother had been born (in Philadelphia) in 1819, and my great-uncle and my grandfather had lived through the French Revolution. There was a legend, moreover—probably the same legend exists in every family of Irish descent whose connections had lived in France—that one of them had been a clerk to Fabre d'Eglantine, and had spent his time in crossing off the list of the condemned the names of the Irish-French aristocrats and substituting in their place others that did not happen to belong to Celts!

In spite of the Little Catechism and the uplifting influence of Emerson, I looked on this probably mythical gentleman as one of the glories of our family. And then there was an old man—very old—who walked up and down Sixth Street with his head wrapped in a bandanna handkerchief, bearing a parrot on his shoulder. The boys of the neighbourhood believed that he was Sanson, the executioner of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette. We shivered when we saw him; but we boasted of his existence in our neighbourhood, all the same. After I had read "Cagliostro" I devoured every line on the subject of the French Revolution I could find. It seemed to me that I would havebeen willing to give five years out of my life to have lived in Paris during those horrors, and to have rescued Marie Antoinette and the Princess Elizabeth! Such brutalities seemed impossible in our time; and yet I have since lived very near to friends who went through even greater horrors in Russia—the Baroness Sophie de Buxhoevenden, second lady-in-waiting to the Czarina, for instance, whose letters lie before me as I write.

In spite of my taste for Carlyle, which induced me to dip into Jean Paul Richter, of whose writings I remember only one line,

I love God and little children,

I did not get very far into his "French Revolution." It seemed then an unreal and lurid book.

Emerson led to Montaigne, whose essays, in an old edition which I had from the Mechanics' Institute, of which my father was a committeeman, delighted me beyond words. I liked Emerson's essay on "Friendship" better than his, but for wit, quick repartee, general cheerfulness, he reminded me of my favourite heroine in literature, Sir Walter Scott's Catherine Seton! Later, I read with astonishment that Montaigne was an unbeliever, a skeptic, almost a cynic. I was extremely indignant; he seemed to me to be a very pious gentleman, with that wit and humour which I seldom found in professedly pious books; and to this day I cannot hear Montaigne talked of as a precursor of Voltaire without believing that there is something crooked in the mind of the talker. So much for the impressions made in youth, so much for the long, long thoughts of which Longfellow sings.

Who is more amusingly cheerful than Montaigne, who more amusingly wise, who so well bred and attractive, who knew the world better and took it only as the world? Give me the old volume of Montaigne and a loaf of bread—no Victrola singing to me in the wilderness!—a thermos bottle, and one or two other things, and I can still spend the day in any wild place! I did not, of course, know, in those early days, what in his flavour attracted me. Afterward, I found that it was the very flavour and essence of Old France. Carlyle's impressions of historical persons interested me, but Montaigne was the most actual of living persons who spoke to me in a voice I recognized as wholly his. To be sure, I read him in Florio's translation.

I think it was about this time, too, that I discovered a very modern writer, who charmed me very greatly. It was Justin McCarthy who contributed a series of sketches of great men of the day to a magazine called theGalaxy. He "did" Victor Emmanuel and Pope Pius IX. and Bismarck, and many other of the worthies of the times. Nothing that he wrote before or after this pleased me at all; but these sketches were so interesting and apparently so true that they really became part of my life. If I had been asked at this time who was my favourite of all modern authors, and what the name of the composer I admired most, I should have said Justin McCarthy and Offenbach! I regarded "Voici le Sabre" in "La Grande Duchesse" as a masterpiece only to be compared to an "Ave Verum," by Pergolesi, which was often sung in St. Philip's Church at the Offertory! A strange mixture, but the truth is the truth. Although I have not been able to find Justin McCarthy's series of sketches, they still hold a sweet place in my memory. Perhaps, like other masterpieces that one loves in youth, one would now find them like those beautiful creatures of the sea that seem to be vermilionand purple and gold under the waves, but are drab and ugly things when taken out of the water. This applies to some books that one reads with pleasure in early days, and wonders, later, how they were endured!

There were not so many outdoor books in the late '60's as there are now. We were all sent to Thoreau's "Walden" and Dana's "Two Years Before the Mast." "Walden" I learned to like, but I much preferred Fenimore Cooper's description of nature. "Walden" struck me as the book of a man playing at out-of-doors, imagining his wildness, and never really liking to be too far from the town. Singularly enough, it was not until I discovered Hamerton's "A Painter's Camp" that I began to see that nature had beauties in all weathers. In truth, I hate to confess that nature alone never appealed to me. A landscape without human beings seemed deadly dull; and I did not understand until I grew much older that I had really believed that good art was an improvement on nature.

I have not the slightest idea in what light the modern critics see the works of Philip Gilbert Hamerton. I tried to read one of his novels recently, and failed; but let me say that, allowing for receptivity and what one may call temperament, I know of no book more revealing as to the relations of nature and art than "A Painter's Camp." I recall vividly the words of the beginning of the preface to the first edition:

It is known to all who are acquainted with the present condition of the fine arts in England that landscape-painters rely less on memory and invention than formerly, and that their work from nature is much more laborious than it used to be.

I had seen so many pictures that seemed to be "made up" in the artist's studio and I knew so well from my experience in the drawing classes at school, how nature was neglected for artificial models, that I hailed these words with great joy.

Everything in life was rather conventional, rather fixed, for the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, to which our country owes the beginning of the æsthetic awakening, had not yet taken place. It may seem strange to this generation that we were limited to the wood-cuts in Godey'sLady's Book, the illustrations inHarper's Magazine, and an occasional picture in some short-lived periodical. The reign of the chromo had just begun. Rogers's groups were a fixture in nearly every self-respecting house, though I am glad to say, in my own family, very good casts of the Clytie and the Discus-thrower filled their place. My father greatly admired Power's Greek Slave, whose praises had been celebrated in theCosmopolitan Magazine; but my mother regarded it as almost "improper."

Nearly every youth of my generation, in Philadelphia, wanted not exactly something better, but something more vivid. There were few sports; long walks and a little cricket supplied the place of the coming baseball and tennis.

In his "Steeplejack," James Huneker speaks of his weekly walks with Mr. Edward Roth, the head of a military school and the author of "Christus Judex." I, too, looked on these walks with an occasional row on the Schuylkill with him as the best part of my education. But this was later. All we could do, then, in our moments of leisure, was to walk and talk and read.

The cult of the out-of-doors had not yet begun to be developed. The beginning of "A Painter's Camp" was most attractive to my thirsty soul. Mr. Hamerton says:

I had a wild walk yesterday. I have a notion of encamping on the Boulsworth moors to study heather; and heartily tired of being caged up here in my library, with nothing to see but wet garden-walks and dripping yew trees, and a sundial whereon no shadow had fallen the livelong day, I determined, in spite of the rain to be off to the moors to choose a site for my encampment. Not very far from this house still dwells an old servant of my uncle's with whom I am on the friendliest terms. So I called upon this neighbour on my way and asked him if he would take a walk with me to the hills. Jamie stared a little and remarked that "it ur feefi weet" but accompanied me nevertheless, and a very pleasant walk we had of it.

Hamerton opened his book in Jane Eyre's country; our family had lately read "Jane Eyre." This added interest to the volume, and there came the details of the invention of the new hut, intended to be a shelter against all weathers, so that the artist might study nature on intimate terms. He made it in order to paint the heather at close range. Now, this was a revelation! It had never hitherto occurred to me that the heather changes its aspect day by day, or indeed that our pet place of beauty, the Wissahickon Creek, or river if you like, was not the same every day in the year except when the ice bound it! This may seem a rather stupid state of mind; butit is the stupidity that is very common. I could understand how interesting it would be to be in snow-fall while yet safely out of it. Mr. Hamerton thus described his hut:

It consists entirely of panels, of which the largest are two feet six inches square: these panels can be carried separately on packhorses, or even on men's backs, and then united together by iron bolts into a strong little building. Four of the largest panels serve as windows, being each of them filled with a large pane of excellent plate-glass. When erected, the walls present a perfectly smooth surface outside, and a panelled interior; the floor being formed in exactly the same manner, with the panelled or coffered side turned towards the earth, and the smooth surface uppermost. By this arrangement all the wall-bolts are inside, and those of the floor underneath it, which protects them not only from the weather but from theft, an iron bolt being a great temptation to country people on account of its convenience and utility. The walls are bolted to the floor, which gives great strength to the whole structure, and the panels are carefully ordered, like the stones in a well-built wall, so that the joints of the lower course of panels do not fall below those of the upper. The roof is arched and provides a current of fresh air, by placing ventilators at each end of the arch, which insures a current without inconvenience to the occupant.

The chapters on "Concerning Moonlight in Old Castles," "The Coming of the Clouds," and the little sketches, like "Loch Awe after Sunset, Sept.23, 1860," enchanted me. It had not before struck me that Loch Awe was different on September 23, 1860, from what it was at other times, or—to carry the idea further—that the imperial Delaware had changed since that momentous time when George Washington crossed it, or the Schuylkill since Tom Moore looked upon it.

To quote further:

The mountain is green-grey, colder and greener towards the summit. All details of field and wood are dimly visible. Two islands nearer me are distinct against the hill, but their foliage seems black, and no details are visible in them. The sky is all clouded over. From the horizon to the zenith it is one veil of formless vapour.

And:

There is one streak of dead calm, which reflects the green mountain perfectly from edge to edge of it. There is another calm shaped like a great river, which is all green, touched with crimson. Besides these there are delicate half calms, just dulled over with faint breathings of the evening air; these, for the most part being violet (from the sky), except at a distance, where they take a deep crimson; and there is one piece of crimson calm near me set between a faint violet breeze and a calm of a different violet. There are one or two breezes sufficiently strong to cause ripple, and these rippled spaces take the dull grey slate of the upper sky.Realise this picture as well as you may be able, and then put in the final touch. Between the dull calms and theglassy calms there are drawn thin threads of division burning with scarlet fire.This fire is of course got from the lower sky. I know whence it comes, but how or why it lies in those thin scarlet threads there where it is most wanted, and not elsewhere, I cannot satisfactorily explain.

Realise this picture as well as you may be able, and then put in the final touch. Between the dull calms and theglassy calms there are drawn thin threads of division burning with scarlet fire.

This fire is of course got from the lower sky. I know whence it comes, but how or why it lies in those thin scarlet threads there where it is most wanted, and not elsewhere, I cannot satisfactorily explain.

Then there was a delightful and illuminating chapter called "A Stream at Rest." Hamerton, who is probably now very much out of fashion, taught me the necessity of beauty in life; and, as an accessory to Emerson, the philosophy of enjoying the little, every-day things. It was Emerson who, I think, said first to me, "Take short outlooks"; and I still think that there can be no better introduction to a consideration of the relation of art to nature than "A Painter's Camp." It was "A Painter's Camp" which led me to "The Intellectual Life." There is a particular passage in Hamerton's chapter on "A Little French City" that emphasized the need of beauty.

The cathedral is all poetry; I mean that every part of it affects our emotional nature either by its own grandeur or beauty, or by its allusion to histories of bright virtue or brave fortitude. And this emotional result is independent of belief in the historical truth of these great legends: it would be stronger, no doubt, if we believed them, but we are still capable of feeling their solemn poetry and large significance as we feel the poetry and significance of "Sir Galahad" or "The Idylls of the King."Some persons are so constituted that it is necessary to their happiness to live near some noble work of art or nature. A mountain is satisfactory to them because it is great and ever new, presenting itself every hour under aspects so unforeseen that one can gaze at it for years with unflagging interest. To some minds, to mine amongst others, human life is scarcely supportable far from some stately and magnificent object, worthy of endless study and admiration. But what of life in the plains? Truly, most plains are dreary enough, but still they may have fine trees, or a cathedral. And in the cathedral, here, I find no despicable compensation for the loss of dear old Ben Cruacha.

Some persons are so constituted that it is necessary to their happiness to live near some noble work of art or nature. A mountain is satisfactory to them because it is great and ever new, presenting itself every hour under aspects so unforeseen that one can gaze at it for years with unflagging interest. To some minds, to mine amongst others, human life is scarcely supportable far from some stately and magnificent object, worthy of endless study and admiration. But what of life in the plains? Truly, most plains are dreary enough, but still they may have fine trees, or a cathedral. And in the cathedral, here, I find no despicable compensation for the loss of dear old Ben Cruacha.

There are some humorous and perhaps even comic passages in "The Intellectual Life"; these passages are unconsciously humorous or comic, as Mr. Philip Gilbert Hamerton seems to have no sense of humour. For instance, it was a great surprise to me to discover that poverty was unfavourable to the intellectual life! It was enlightening to know the reason why a man should wear evening dress after six o'clock, and why the sporting of gray clothes in the evening was unworthy of the Intellectual! Besides, it affects the character!

And letter XI "To a Master of Arts who said that a Certain Distinguished Painter was Half-educated," was a useful antidote to youthfulself-conceit. I had not reached the stage, treated in the chapters on "Women and Marriage," "To a Young Gentleman Who Contemplated Marriage," but I thought the author very wise indeed, and found many other pages which were intensely stimulating. Let others decry Hamerton if they like; I owe a great deal to him; and, though I might be induced to throw "The Intellectual Life" to the Young Wolves of the Beginning of this Century, I shall always insist that "A Painter's Camp" ought to be included in every list of books.

It was George Eliot who sent me to "The Following of Christ," and she interested me in Saint Teresa, that illustrious woman so well compounded of mysticism and common sense, of whom, however, I could find no good "Life." But Thomas à Kempis was a revelation! He fitted into nearly every crisis of the soul, but all his words are not for every-day life. He seems to demand too much of us poor folk of the world. Later, I came to understand that the counsel of perfection which Christ gave to the rich young man was not intended for the whole world, and many fine passages in À Kempis were meant for finer temperaments than my own.

Somebody at this time presented me with a copy of Marcus Aurelius. I found him dull, stale, and unprofitable in comparison with À Kempis. His philosophy of life seemed to lead to nothing except the cultivation of a very high opinion of oneself. I gave this conclusion to one of my English friends, who objected to my uncharted course of reading, and he said, "A person like you who finds nothing humorous or even philosophical in 'Alice in Wonderland' cannot be expected to like the works of Marcus Aurelius!"

It takes a prig to divide his reading into nicely staked off little plots, each with its own date. The art of injudicious reading, the art of miscellaneous reading which every normal man ought to cultivate, is a very fine and satisfactory art; for the best guide to books is a book itself. It clasps hands with a thousand other books. It has always seemed to me that "Sesame and Lilies" would not have been conceived by Ruskin if he had not heard well an echo of "The Following of Christ." There was a time when the lovers of Ruskin who wanted to read "The Stones of Venice" and the rest at leisure, felt themselves obliged to form clubs, and to divide the expense,if they were of moderate means, in order to get what was good out of him. But somehow or other, probably because it appealed more to everybody, it was always possible to find a copy of "Sesame and Lilies" at an old book stand. I think I found one most unexpectedly at Leary's in Philadelphia, where I also discovered the copy of Froissart. The Froissart, as I have said, cost me just half of my father's Christmas present that year, which was five dollars. I must have managed to get the Ruskin volume out of some other fund, for I had many things to buy with the other two and one half dollars!

Ruskin is left alone to-day; he does not seem to fill that "long-felt want" which we, the young of the sixties and seventies, admitted. No doubt he is very mannered in his style, mitred and coped when he might have been very simple in his raiment. He was a priest in literature and art; and he clothed himself as a priest. He marched with a stately tread, and yet he stooped to the single violets by the wayside.

By the way, I often wished when I was reading Ruskin, who once made apple blossoms fashionable, that he had led a crusade against the double andthe triple violet, which have destroyed the reputation of the real violet. What can be more repellent to the lovers of simplicity than a bunch of these artificialities, without perfume, tied by dark green ribbon, and with all their leaves removed? "Sesame and Lilies" had the effect of sending me back to the single violet whenever I was inclined to admire thecamellia japonicaor any other thing that was artificial, or distorted from beauty or simplicity.

Circumstances have a great deal to do with our affection for books. Propinquity, they say, leads very frequently to marriage, and if a book happens to be near and if it is any kind of book at all, there is a great temptation to develop an affection for it. All I can say is that I think that "Sesame and Lilies" is a good book, for after all a book must be judged by its effect. It led me further into Ruskin, and helped me to acquire a reverence for art and to estimate the relations of art and life. One would steel oneself against the fallacy that art, true art, might exist only for art's sake, when one had read "Sesame and Lilies" and "The Stones of Venice." Those wise men who make literary "selections" for the young have done well toinclude in their volumes that graphic description, so carefully modulated in tone, of the Cathedral of St. Mark. Its only fault is that it comes too near to being prose poetry; and discriminating readers who ponder over it will find some epithets possible only to a writer who was an artist in lines and pigments before he began to paint with the pen.

Ruskin opened our eyes rather violently to some aspects of life which we, the young, did not know; for the young after all learn very little by intuition. They must be taught things. This is perhaps an excuse for those vagaries in youth, those seemingly inexplicable adventures which shock the old who have forgotten what it is to be young.

In 1872, the attention of readers was forced on a few great names. These were generally the names of Frenchmen. The sympathy of Americans during the Franco-Prussian War had been with France, and during the latter days of the French Empire, before the war, Americans had been much more interested in France than in any other part of the world. There were letters from Paris in the newspapers. The Empress Eugénie and her coterie at the Tuileries, the Operas of Offenbach, and the gossip about literary magnets of the time, which included a great deal of Victor Hugo, had been a constant subject of conversations.

One could buy French books easily in Philadelphia; and the Mercantile Library—now dreadfully shorn of its former pretensions, reduced in size, no longer so comfortable, so delightfully easyof access as to its shelves—had an excellent collection of volumes in French.

How often in later life I blessed the discriminating collectors of that library! Nothing worth while at that time, even "L'Homme" of Ernest Hello, seemed to have been left out; I fear that I was not always guided by the critics of the period. I found Amédée Achard as interesting as Octave Feuillet; George Sand bored me; I could never get through even "La Petite Fadette," although the critics were constantly recommending her for her "vitality." I found Madame de Gérardin's "La Femme qui Déteste Son Mari" one of the cleverest plays I had yet read. I have not seen it since; but, outside of some of the pieces of Augier, it seemed to me to be the best bit of construction I knew, and the human interest and the suspense were so admirably kept up. There were some plays by Octave Feuillet—"Redemption" was one and "Le Roman d'un Jeune Homme Pauvre," which divided my admiration with the management of "Adrienne Lecouvreur," by Scribe, and "Mademoiselle de la Seiglière," by Jules Sandeau. The French playwrights of to-day have not even the technique of their predecessors.

At this time I was very royalist, an infuriated partisan of the Comte de Chambord—Henry V., as a few of us preferred to call him. And this reminds me of my partisanship in things English—if I may turn for the moment from things French—and of a little incident not without humour. I was ardently devoted to the cause of the Stuarts, and was for a time attached to the White Rose Society, whose correspondents in England invariably sent their letters, with the stamp turned upside down, to indicate their contempt for the Guelf dynasty. But when, at a small and frugal reunion at Mr. Green's restaurant in Philadelphia, our host—he was an American Walsh of the family of de Serrant—insisted on waving his glass of beer over the finger bowls, to insinuate that we were drinking to the last of the Stuarts across the water—whoever he might be—and another member suggested that, if it were not for the brutal Hanoverians on the throne of England, we, in the British Colonies, might be still enjoying the blessedness of being ruled by a descendant of Mary Stuart, I resigned! I was still devoutly faithful to the divine Mary of Scotland; but I would not have her mixed up in American politics!

Octave Feuillet satisfied my taste for elegance. Some of his people were not above reproach—notice the lady in "Redemption," who becomes suddenly converted to a belief in God because her twenty-fifth lover is suddenly restored to her. I thought that, though he was somewhat corrupted by the influence of the Tuileries, he was socially so admirably correct.

Everybody at this time talked of Renan. This went by me as an idle dream, for I could never understand why anybody should take a man seriously who was palpably wrong. To-day, when Renan's "Life of Jesus" seems almost forgotten, it is strange to recall the fury of interest it excited in the seventies. Louis Veuillot interested me much more than Renan, whom I avoided deliberately because I understood that he had attacked the Christian religion. Now, Louis Veuillot, in "Les Odeurs de Paris" and "Les Parfums de Rome" delighted me almost beyond bounds. I did often wonder how such a good man as Louis Veuillot could have acquired such un-Christian use of language. When he announced that if his wife wrote such novels as George Sand, he would hesitate to recognize her children, it seemed to me thathe had gone too far—still it was a pleasant thing to shock the chaste Philadelphians by quoting these trenchant words when the novels of the lady in question were mentioned with rapt admiration.

But to come to the poets!

It was, I think, through the reading of the "Lundis" of Sainte-Beuve that I discovered Maurice de Guérin. He almost drove my beloved Keats from my mind. Somebody warned me against Maurice de Guérin on the ground of his pantheism. I had been warned against the poems of Emerson on account of their paganism; but as I had been brought up on Virgil, I looked on pantheism and paganism as rather orthodox compared to Renan's negation and the horrors of Calvinism. And, after all, the Catholic Church had retained so much that was Jewish and pagan that I was sure to find myself almost as much at home among the pagans as I was in the Old Testament at times.

Keats and Maurice de Guérin will be always associated in my mind. I discovered them about the same time. I had been solemnly told by an eminent Philadelphian that Wordsworth was the only poet worth considering, after Shakespeare, and that Keats had no intellectual value whatever. But I was not looking for intellectual value. I mixed up the intellect with a kind of scientific jargon about protoplasm and natural selection and the survival of the fittest, and bathybius, which was then all the fashion; so I promptly devoted myself to De Guérin.

I had already found great pleasure in the "Journal" of his sister Eugénie. The "Journal" ought never to be allowed to go out of fashion, and probably it is only out of fashion in those circles which Mr. Mencken so scorns, that devote themselves to imitations of Marie Bashkirtseff or Sarah McLean. I had begun to enjoy the flavour of the calm life of Eugénie at La Cayla when I found it necessary, in order to understand the allusions, to plunge again into the journals, letters, and poems of Maurice de Guérin. Thus it happened that I had fallen upon "Le Centaure" first. It is very short, as everybody knows. It was to me the most appealing poem I had ever read.

Keats's Greece seems somehow to be a Greece too full of modern colour, too unclassical. This was a mistake, of course, due to the fact that all my Greek reading had been filtered through professors and textbooks; and all my Greek seeing hadbeen centred on pale white statues. It did not occur to me then—at least I did not know it—that the great Greek statues were not colourless, and that at Delphi there were statues that glowed with the hues of life. Strange to say, though "Le Centaure" seemed to me to be Greek in the classical sense, yet it palpitated with human emotion. Who that has read it can forget the simplicity of the opening? Says the Centaur:

I received my birth in the fastnesses of these mountains. As the stream of this valley of which the primitive drops run from the rocks which weep in a deep grotto, the first moment of my life fell among the darkness of a secluded place in which the silence was not troubled. When our mothers come near the time of their deliverance, they flee towards the caverns, and in the depth of the most remote, in the darkest of shadows, their children are born without a moan and the fruits of their womb are as silent as themselves. Their strong milk enables us to overcome without weakness or a doubtful struggle the first difficulties of life; however, we go out from our caves later than you from your cradles. It is understood among us that we must hide and envelope the first moments of existence as days filled by the gods. My growth followed its course almost among the shadows where I was born. The depth of my living place was so lost in the shadow of the mountain that I would not have known where the opening was if rushing sometimes into this opening the winds had not passed about me certain movements suddenly and refreshing breezes. Sometimes, too, mymother came back carrying the perfume of the valleys, or dripping with the waves of the water she frequented. Now these returns of hers gave me no knowledge of the valleys or the stream, but their suggestions disquieted my spirit, and I paced agitatedly in my shades.

After all, it requires leisure to enjoy fully the writings of Eugénie de Guérin and her brother—I inevitably think of this brother and sister together. There always lingers about the genius of these two delicate and sensitive beings a certain perfume of the white lilac which Maurice loved. It happened that through the amiability of my father, when I read the Journals of the De Guérins, I had leisure. A period of ill health stopped my work—I had begun to study law—and there were long days that could easily be filled by strolls in Fairmount Park in the early spring days, when it seems most appropriate to associate one's self with these two who ought to be read in the mood of the early spring, and they ought to be read slowly and even prayerfully. I hope I may be pardoned for quoting a sonnet which had a great vogue in the late 'seventies showing the impression that Maurice de Guérin made. It was a great surprise to find part of the sestette copied in the "Prose Writings"of Walt Whitman, who very rarely quoted any verse.

The old wine filled him, and he saw, with eyesAnoint of Nature, fauns and dryads fairUnseen by others; to him maidenhairAnd waxen lilacs, and those birds that riseA-sudden from tall reeds at slight surprise,Brought charmèd thoughts; and in earth everywhereHe, like sad Jacques, found a music rareAs that of Syrinx to old Grecians wise.A pagan heart, a Christian soul had he:He followed Christ, yet for dead Pan he sighed,Till earth and heaven met within his breast;As if Theocritus in SicilyHad come upon the Figure crucifiedAnd lost his gods in deep, Christ given rest.

I found, too, satisfaction of the taste which Hamerton had corroborated, in Eugénie de Guérin's little sketches of outdoor scenery—sketches which always have a human interest. I had not yet begun to take any pleasure in Wordsworth; and, in fact, all the poets who seemed to be able to enjoy nature for itself—nature unrelieved or unimproved by human figures—had no attractions for me. And here the dear Edward Roth came in, and confirmed my taste. And there were heavy arguments with other clever Philadelphians, DoctorNolan, the scientist who loved letters, and that amateur of literature, Charles Devenny.

As for Pope and his school, they seemed to represent an aspect of the world as unreal as the world of Watteau, and with much less excuse; but pictures of the kind I found in the "Journal" of Eugénie de Guérin had a living charm. At this time, I had not seen Matthew Arnold's paper on Maurice de Guérin, and I did not know that any appreciation of his sister had been written in English. I had seen a paragraph or two written by some third-rate person who objected to her piety as sentimental, and incomprehensible to the "Anglo-Saxon" world! That her piety should be sentimental, if Eugénie's sentiment can be characterized by that term, seemed to me to be questionable; and it was evident that any one who read French literature at all must be aware that there were hundreds of beautiful sentiments and phrases which the average "Anglo-Saxon" world found it impossible to comprehend.

The beloved home of Eugénie, La Cayla, was not a gay place. It was even more circumscribed than Miss Mitford's "Village"; but Eugénie, being less "Anglo-Saxon" than Miss Mitford, had moresentiment and a more sensitive perception of the meaning of nature—though, when it comes to sentimentalism, the English man or woman, who often masquerades under the shelter of "Anglo-Saxonism," is as sentimental as the most sentimental of sentimentalists. This is what I mean by the landscape charm of Eugénie de Guérin, and yet the picture in this case is not a landscape, but the interior of a room:

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