RALPH WALDO EMERSON44

"His actions are holy, his ethics divine;Into hearts which are wounded he pours oil and wine.And if, through imposture, those truths are received,It still is a blessing to be thus deceived."

He lived many years at Cirey with the Marchioness of Châtelet; the marquis, her husband, accepting the curious relation without any objection. Then followed the still stranger episode of his residence with Frederic the Great, their love quarrels and reconciliations. After this friendship came to an end, Voltaire went to live near Geneva in Switzerland, but soon bought another estate just out of Switzerland, in France, and a third a short distance away, in the territory of another power. Thus, if threatened in one state, he could easily pass into another. Here he lived and worked till the close of his life, an untiring writer. He was a man of infinite wit, kind-hearted, with little malignity of any sort, wishing in the main to do good. His violent attacks upon Christianity may be explained by the fact of the corruptions of the Church which were around him. The Church of France in that day, in its higher circles, was apersecuting Church, yet without faith: greedy for wealth, living in luxury, careless of the poor, and well deserving the attacks of Voltaire. That he could not look deeper and see the need of religious institutions of a better sort was his misfortune.

This work is a storehouse of facts for the history of Voltaire and his time. We do not think it will materially alter the judgment pronounced on him by such critics as Carlyle, Morley, and the majority of French writers in our day. Voltaire was a shining light in his age, but that age has gone by, and can never return.

Matt.vi. 23.—If thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.

It is natural and fit that many pulpits to-day should take for their theme the character and influence of the great thinker and poet who has just left us; for every such soul is a new revelation of God's truth and love. Each opens the gateway between our lower world of earthly care and earthly pleasure into a higher heavenly world of spirit. Such men lift our lives to a higher plane, and convince us that we, also, belong to God, to eternity, to heaven. And few, in our day, have been such mediators of heavenly things to mankind as Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Last Sunday afternoon, when the town of Concord was mourning through all its streets for the loss of its beloved and revered citizen; when the humblest cottage had on its door the badge of sorrow; when great numbers came from abroad to testify their affection and respect, that which impressed me the most was the inevitable response of the human heart to whatever is true and good. Cynics may tell us that men are duped by charlatans,led by selfish demagogues, incapable of knowing honor and truth when set before them; that they always stone their prophets and crucify their saviors; that they have eyes, and do not see; ears, and never hear. This is all true for a time; but inevitably, by a law as sure as that which governs the movements of the planets, the souls of men turn at last toward what is true, generous, and noble. The prophets and teachers of the race may be stoned by one generation, but their monuments are raised by the next. They are misunderstood and misrepresented to-day, but to-morrow they become the accredited leaders of their time. Jesus, who knew well that he would be rejected and murdered by a people blind and deaf to his truth, also knew that this truth would sooner or later break down all opposition, and make him master and king of the world. "I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me."

Last Sunday afternoon, as the grateful procession followed their teacher to his grave in the Concord cemetery, the harshness of our spring seemed to relent, and Nature became tender toward him who had loved her so well. I thought of his words, "The visible heavens and earth sympathized with Jesus." The town where "the embattled farmers stood;" where the musket was discharged which opened the War of the Revolution—the gun of which Lafayette said, "It was the alarm-gun of the world;" the town of Hawthorne's "Old Manse,"and of his grave, now that Emerson also sleeps in its quiet valley, has received an added glory. It has become one of the "Meccas of the mind."

Let me describe the mental and spiritual condition of New England when Emerson appeared. Calvinism, with its rigorous dogmatism, was slowly dying, and had been succeeded by a calm and somewhat formal rationalism. Locke was still the master in the realm of thought; Addison and Blair in literary expression. In poetry, the school of Pope was engaged in conflict with that of Byron and his contemporaries. Wordsworth had led the way to a deeper view of nature; but Wordsworth could scarcely be called a popular writer. In theology a certain literalism prevailed, and the doctrines of Christianity were inferred from counting and weighing texts on either side. Not the higher reason, with its intuition of eternal ideas, but the analytic understanding, with its logical methods, was considered to be the ruler in the world of thought. There was more of culture than of intellectual life, more of good habits than of moral enthusiasm. Religion had become very much of an external institution. Christianity consisted in holding rational or orthodox opinions, going regularly to church, and listening every Sunday to a certain number of prayers, hymns, and sermons. These sermons, with some striking exceptions, were rather tame and mechanical. In Boston, it is true, Buckminster had appeared,—that soul of flame whichsoon wore to decay its weak body. The consummate orator Edward Everett had followed him in Brattle Square pulpit. Above all, Channing had looked, with a new spiritual insight, into the truths of religion and morality. But still the mechanical treatment prevailed in a majority of the churches of New England, and was considered, on the whole, to be the wisest and safest method. There was an unwritten creed of morals, literature, and social thought to which all were expected to conform. There was little originality and much repetition. On all subjects there were certain formulas which it was considered proper to repeat. "Thou art a blessed fellow," says one of Shakespeare's characters, "to think as other people think. Not a man's thought in the world keeps the roadway better than thine." The thought of New England kept the roadway. Of course, at all times a large part of the belief of the community is derived from memory, custom, and imitation; but in those days, if I remember them aright, it was regarded as a kind of duty to think as every one else thought; a sort of delinquency, or weakness, to differ from the majority.

If the movements of thought are now much more independent and spontaneous; if to-day traditions have lost their despotic power; if even those who hold an orthodox creed are able to treat it as a dead letter, respectable for its past uses, but by no means binding on us now, this is largelyowing to the manly position taken by Emerson. And yet, let it be observed, this influence was not exercised by attacking old opinions, by argument, by denial, by criticism. Theodore Parker did all this, but his influence on thought has been far less than that of Emerson. Parker was a hero who snuffed the battle afar off, and flung himself, sword in hand, into the thick of the conflict. But, much as we love and reverence his honesty, his immense activity, his devotion to truth and right, we must admit to-day, standing by these two friendly graves, that the power of Emerson to soften the rigidity of time-hardened belief was far the greater. It is the old fable of the storm and sun. The violent attacks of the tempest only made the traveler cling more closely to his cloak; the genial heat of the sun compelled him to throw it aside. In all Emerson's writings there is scarcely any argument. He attacks no man's belief; he simply states his own. His method is always positive, constructive. He opens the windows and lets in more light. He is no man's opponent; the enemy of no one. He states what he sees, and that which he does not see he passes by. He was often attacked, but never replied. His answer was to go forward, and say something else. He did not care for what he called the "bugbear consistency." If to-day he said what seemed like Pantheism, and to-morrow he saw some truth which seemed to reveal a divine personality,a supreme will, he uttered the last, as he had declared the first, always faithful to the light within. He left it to the spirit of truth to reconcile such apparent contradictions. He was like his own humble-bee—

"Seeing only what is fair,Sipping only what is sweet;Thou dost mock at fate and care,Leave the chaff and take the wheat."

By this method of positive statement he not only saved the time usually wasted in argument, attack, reply, rejoinder, but he gave us the substance of Truth, instead of its form. Logic and metaphysic reveal no truths; they merely arrange in order what the higher faculties of the mind have made known. Hence the speedy oblivion which descends on polemics of all sorts. The great theological debaters, where are they? The books of Horsley and McGee are buried in the same grave with those of Belsham and Priestley, their old opponents. The bitter attacks on Christianity by Voltaire and Paine are inurned in the same dark and forgotten vaults with the equally bitter defenses of Christianity by its numerous champions. Argument may often be necessary, but no truth is slain by argument; no error can be kept alive by it. Emerson is an eminent example of a man who never replied to attacks, but went on his way, and saw at last all opposition hushed, all hostility at an end. Hedevoted his powers to giving to his readers his insights, knowing that these alone feed the soul. Thus men came to him to be fed. His sheep heard his voice. Those who felt themselves better for his instruction followed him. He collected around him thus an ever-increasing band of disciples, until in England, in Germany, in all lands where men read and think, he is looked up to as a master. Many of these disciples were persons of rare gifts and powers, like Margaret Fuller, Theodore Parker, George Ripley, Hawthorne. Many others were unknown to fame, yet deeply sensible of the blessings they had received from their prophet and seer of the nineteenth century. For this was his office. He was a man who saw. He had the vision and the faculty divine. He sat near the fountain-head, and tasted the waters of Helicon in their source.

His first little book, a duodecimo of less than a hundred pages, called "Nature," published in 1836, indicates all these qualities. It beginsthus:—

"Our age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres of the fathers. It writes biographies, histories, criticisms. The foregoing generations beheld God and Nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight, and not of tradition, and a religion by revelationto us, and not the history of theirs?... The sun shines to-day also.... Undoubtedly we have no questions to ask which are unanswerable."

This was his first doctrine, that of self-reliance. He taught that God had given to every man the power to see with his own eyes, think with his own mind, believe what seemed to him true, plant himself on his instincts, and, as he says, "call a pop-gun a pop-gun, though the ancient and honorable of the earth declare it to be the crack of doom." This was manly and wholesome doctrine. It might, no doubt, be abused, and lead some persons to think they were men of original genius when they were only eccentric. It may have led others to attack all institutions and traditions, as though, if a thing were old, it was necessarily false. But Emerson himself was the best antidote to such extravagance. To a youth who brought to him a manuscript confuting Plato he replied, "When you attack the king you ought to be sure to kill him." But his protest against the prevailing conventionalism was healthy, and his call on all "to be themselves" was inspiring.

The same doctrine is taught in the introductory remarks of the editors of the "Dial." They say they have obeyed with joy the strong current of thought which has led many sincere persons to reprobate that rigor of conventions which is turning them to stone, which renounces hope and only looks backward, which suspects improvement, andholds nothing so much in horror as the dreams of youth. This work, the "Dial," made a great impression, out of all proportion to its small circulation. By the elders it was cordially declared to be unintelligible mysticism, and so, no doubt, much of it was. Those inside, its own friends, often made as much fun of it as those outside. Yet it opened the door for many new and noble thoughts, and was a wild bugle-note, a reveillé, calling on all generous hearts to look toward the coming day.

Here is an extract from one of Emerson's letters from Europe as early as March, 1833. It is datedNaples:—

"And what if it be Naples! It is only the same world of cakes and ale, of man, and truth, and folly. I will not be imposed upon by a name. It is so easy to be overawed by names that it is hard to keep one's judgment upright, and be pleased only after your own way. Baiæ and Pausilippo sound so big that we are ready to surrender at discretion, and not stickle for our private opinion against what seems the human race. But here's for the plain old Adam, the simple, genuine self against the whole world."

Again he says: "Nothing so fatal to genius as genius. Mr. Taylor, author of 'Van Artevelde,' is a man of great intellect, but by study of Shakespeare is forced to reproduce Shakespeare."

Thus the first great lesson taught by Mr. Emersonwas "self-reliance." And the second was like it, though apparently opposed to it, "God-reliance." Not really opposed to it, for it meant this: God is near to your mind and heart, as he was to the mind and heart of the prophets and inspired men of the past. God is ready to inspire you also if you will trust in him. In the little book called "Nature" hesays:—

"The highest is present to the soul of man; the dread universal essence, which is not wisdom, or love, or power, or beauty, but all in one, and each entirely, is that for which all things exist, and by which they are. Believe that throughout nature spirit is present; that it is one, that it does not act upon us from without, but through ourselves.... As a plant on the earth, so man rests on the bosom of God, nourished by unfailing fountains, and drawing at his need inexhaustible power."

And so in his poem called "The Problem" he teaches that all religions are from God; that all the prophets and sibyls and lofty souls that have sung psalms, written scripture, and built the temples and cathedrals of men, were inspired by a spirit above their own. He puts aside the shallow explanation that any of the great religions ever came frompriestcraft:—

"Out from the heart of Nature rolledThe burdens of the Bible old;The litanies of nations came,Like the volcano's tongue of flame,Up from the burning core below,The canticles of love and woe."The word unto the prophet spokenWas writ on tables yet unbroken;The word by seers or sibyls told,In groves of oak or fanes of gold,Still floats upon the moving wind,Still whispers to the willing mind.One accent of the Holy GhostThe heedless world hath never lost."

"Out from the heart of Nature rolledThe burdens of the Bible old;The litanies of nations came,Like the volcano's tongue of flame,Up from the burning core below,The canticles of love and woe.

"The word unto the prophet spokenWas writ on tables yet unbroken;The word by seers or sibyls told,In groves of oak or fanes of gold,Still floats upon the moving wind,Still whispers to the willing mind.One accent of the Holy GhostThe heedless world hath never lost."

In all that Emerson says of nature he is equally devout. He sees God in it all. It is to him full of a divine charm. "In the woods," he says, "is perpetual youth. Within these plantations of God a decorum and sanctity reigns, and we return to reason and faith." "The currents of the Universal Being circulate through me. I am part and particle of God." For saying such things as these he was accused of Pantheism. And he was a Pantheist; yet only as Paul was a Pantheist when he said, "In Him we live and move and have our being;" "From whom and through whom are all things;" "The fullness of him who filleth all in all." Emerson was, in his view of nature, at one with Wordsworth, whosaid:—

"The clouds were touched,And in their silent faces he could readUnutterable love. Sensation, soul, and formAll melted into him; they swallowed upHis animal being; in them did he live,And by them did he live; they were his life.In such high hourOf visitation from the living God,Thought was not; in enjoyment it expired."

Emerson has thus been to our day the prophetof God in the soul, in nature, in life. He has stood for spirit against matter. Darwin, his great peer, the serene master in the school of science, was like him in this,—that he also said what he saw and no more. He also taught what God showed to him in the outward world of sense, as Emerson what God showed in the inward world of spirit. Amid the stormy disputes of their time, each of these men went his own way, his eye single and his whole body full of light. The work of Darwin was the easier, for he floated with the current of the time, which sets at present so strongly toward the study of things seen and temporal. But the work of Emerson was more noble, for he stands for things unseen and eternal,—for a larger religion, a higher faith, a nobler worship. This strong and tender soul has done its work and gone on its way. But he will always fill a niche of the universal Church as a New England prophet. He had the purity of the New England air in his moral nature, a touch of the shrewd Yankee wit in his speech, and the long inheritance of ancestral faith incarnate and consolidated in blood and brain. But to this were added qualities which were derived from some far-off realm of human life: an Oriental cast of thought, a touch of mediæval mysticism, and a vocabulary brought from books unknown to our New England literature. No commonplaces of language are to be found in his writings, and though he read the older writers, hedoes not imitate them. He, also, like his humble-bee, has gathered contributions from remotest fields, and enriched our language with a new and picturesque speech all his own.

Let us, then, be grateful for this best of God's gifts,—another soul sent to us filled with divine light. Thus we learn anew how full are nature and life ofGod:—

"Ever fresh the broad creation,A divine improvisation;From the heart of God proceedsA single will, a million deeds."

One word concerning Mr. Emerson's relation to Christ and to Christianity. The distinction which he made between Jesus and other teachers was, no doubt, one of degree and not one of kind. He put no great gulf of supernatural powers, origin, or office between Christ and the ethnic prophets. But his reverence for Jesus was profound and tender. Nor did he object to the word "Christian" or to the Christian Church. In recent years, at least, he not unfrequently attended the services of the Unitarian Church in his town, and I have met him at Unitarian conventions, a benign and revered presence.

In the cemetery at Bonn, on the Rhine, is the tomb of Niebuhr, the historian, a man of somewhat like type, as I judge, to our Emerson. At least, some texts on his monument would be admirably appropriate for any stone which may beplaced over the remains of the American prophet and poet in the sweet valley of tombs in Concord.

One of these texts was from Sirach xlvii. 14, 17:

"How wise wast thou in thy youth, and as a flood filled with understanding!Thy soul covered the whole earth, and thou filledst it with dark parables.Thy name went far unto the islands, and for thy peace thou wast beloved.The countries marvelled at thee for thy songs and proverbs and parables and interpretations."

And equally appropriate would be this Horatian line, also on Niebuhr'smonument:—

"Quis desiderio sit pudor aut modus tam cari capitis."

From a lifelong friend of Emerson I have just received a letter containing these words, which, better than most descriptions, give the character of hissoul:—

"And so the white wings have spread, and the great soul has left us.

'’Tis death is dead; not he.'

He had no vanity, no selfishness; no greed, no hate; none of the weights that drag on common mortals. His life was an illumination; a large, fair light; the Pharos of New England, as in other days our dear brother called him. And this light shone further and wider the longer it burned."

The wholework46is very interesting. How could it be otherwise, in giving the history of so remarkable a life? The amount of literary work which Miss Martineau performed is amazing. She began to write for the press when she was nineteen, and continued until she could no longer hold her pen. The pen was her sword, which she wielded with a warrior's joy, in the conflict of truth with error, of right with wrong. She wrote many books; but her articles in reviews and newspapers were innumerable. We find no attempt in either part of this biography to give a complete list of her writings. Perhaps it would be impossible. She never seems to have thought of keeping such a record herself, any more than a hero records the number of the blows he strikes, in battle. No sooner had she dismissed one task than another came; and sometimes several were going on together. Like other voluminous writers, she enjoyed the exercise of her productive powers; and, as she somewhere tells us, her happiest hours were those in which she was seated at her desk with her pen.

Her principal works cover a large range of thought and study. One of her first books, "The Traditions of Palestine," she continued to regard long after with more affection than any other of her writings, except "Eastern Life." But her authorship began when she was nineteen, in an article contributed to a Unitarian monthly. Afterwards she obtained three separate prizes offered by the Central Unitarian Association for three essays on different topics. About the same time she wrote "Five Years of Youth," a tale which she never looked at afterward. But her first great step in authorship, and that which at once made her a power in politics and in literature, was taken when she commenced her series of tales on "Political Economy." She began, however, to write these stories, not knowing that she was treating questions of Political Economy, "the very name of which," she says, "was then either unknown to me, or conveyed no meaning." She was then about twenty-five years old. She had the usual difficulties with various publishers which unknown authors are sure to experience, and these tales, which became so popular, were rejected by one firm after another. One of them was refused by the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, as being too dull. The president of that Society, Lord Brougham, afterward vented his rage on the sub-committee which rejected the offered story, and so had permitted their Society, "instituted for that very purpose,to be driven out of the field by a little deaf woman at Norwich." At last a publisher was found who agreed to take the books on very unsatisfactory terms. As soon as the first number appeared, the success of the series was established. A second edition of five thousand copies was immediately called for,—the entire periodical press came out in favor of the tales,—and from that hour Miss Martineau had only to choose what to write, sure that it would at once find a publisher.

She was at this time thirty years old. She was already deaf, her health poor; but she then began a career of intellectual labor seldom equaled by the strongest man through the longest life. She began to write every morning after breakfast; and, unless when traveling, seldom passed a morning during the rest of her life without writing,—working from eight o'clock until two. Her method was, after selecting her subject, to procure all the standard works upon it, and study them. She then proceeded to make the plan of her work, and to draw the outline of her story. If the scene was laid abroad, she procured books of travels and topography. Then she drew up the contents of each chapter in detail, and, after this preliminary labor, the story was written easily and with joy.

Of these stories she wrote thirty-four in two years and a half. She was then thirty-two. She received £2,000 for the whole series,—a sufficiently small compensation,—but she establishedher position and her fame. Her principal books published afterward were her two works on America, the novels "Deerbrook" and "The Hour and the Man;" nine volumes of tales on the Forest and Game Laws; four stories in the "Playfellow;" "Life in the Sick-Room;" "Letters on Mesmerism;" "Eastern Life, Past and Present;" "History of England during the Thirty Years' Peace;" "Letters on the Laws of Man's Social Nature and Development;" "Translation and Condensation of Comte's Positive Philosophy;" besides many smaller works, making fifty-two titles in Allibone. In addition to this, she wrote many articles in reviews and magazines; and Mrs. Chapman mentions that she sent to a single London journal, the "Daily News," sixteen hundred articles, at the rate sometimes of six a week. Surely Harriet Martineau was one who worked faithfully while her day endured.

But, if we would do her justice, we must consider also the motive and spirit in which she worked. Each thing she did had for its purpose nothing merely personal, but some good to mankind. Though there was nothing in her character of the sentimentalism of philanthropy, she was filled with the spirit of philanthropy. A born reformer, she inherited from her Huguenot and her Unitarian ancestors the love of truth and the hatred of error, with the courage which was ready to avow her opinions, however unpopular. Thus, her workwas warfare, and every article or book which she printed was a blow delivered against some flagrant wrong, or what she believed such,—in defense of some struggling truth, or something supposed to be truth. She might be mistaken; but her purposes through life were, in the main, noble, generous, and good.

And there can be no question of her ability, moral and intellectual. No commonplace mind could have overcome such obstacles and achieved such results. Apparently she had no very high opinion of her own intellectual powers. She denies that she possesses genius; but she asserts her own power. She criticises "Deerbrook" with some severity. And, in fact, Harriet Martineau's mind is analytic rather than creative; it is strong rather than subtle; and, if it possesses imagination, it is of rather a prosaic kind. Her intellect is of a curiously masculine order; no other female writer was ever less feminine. With all her broad humanity she has little sympathy for individuals. A large majority of those whom she mentions in her memoirs she treats with a certain contempt.

Her early life seems to have been very sad. We are again and again told how she was misunderstood and maltreated in her own home. Her health was bad until she was thirty; partly owing, as she supposed, to ill-treatment. She needed affection, and was treated with sternness. Justice she did not receive, nor kindness, and her heart was souredand her temper spoiled, so she tells us, by this mismanagement. As she does not specify, or give us the details of this ill-treatment, the story is useless as a warning; and we hardly see the reason for thus publishing the wrongs of her childhood. As children may be sometimes unjust to parents, no less than parents to children, the facts and the moral are both left uncertain. And, on the whole, her chief reason for telling the story appears to be the mental necessity she was under of judging and sentencing those from whom she supposes herself to have received ill-treatment in any part of her life.

This is indeed the most painful feature of the work before us. Knowing the essentially generous and just spirit of Harriet Martineau, it is strange to see how carefully she has loaded this piece of artillery with explosive and lacerating missiles, to be discharged after her death among those with whom she had mingled in social intercourse or literary labors. Some against whom she launches her sarcasms are still living; some are dead, but have left friends behind, to be wounded by her caustic judgments. Is it that her deficiency in a woman's sensibility, or the absence of a poetic imagination, prevented her from realizing the suffering she would inflict? Or is it the habit of mind from which those are apt to suffer who devote themselves to the reform of abuses? As each kind of manual occupation exposes the workman to somespecial disease,—as those who dig canals suffer from malaria, and file-grinders from maladies of the lungs,—so it seems that each moral occupation has its appropriate moral danger. Clergymen are apt to be dogmatic or sectarian; lawyers become sharp and sophistical; musicians and artists are irritable; and the danger of a reformer is of becoming a censorious critic of those who cannot accept his methods, or who will not join his party. That Harriet Martineau did not escape this risk will presently appear.

While writing her politico-economical stories she moved to London, and there exchanged the quiet seclusion of her Norwich life for social triumphs of the first order, and intercourse with every kind of celebrity. All had read her books, from Victoria, who was then a little girl perusing them with her governess, to foreign kings and savants of the highest distinction. So this young author—for she was only thirty—was received at once into the most brilliant circles of London society. But it does not appear that she lost a single particle of her dignity or self-possession. Among the great she neither asserted herself too much nor showed too much deference. Vanity was not her foible; and her head was too solidly set upon her shoulders to be turned by such successes. She enjoyed the society of these people of superior refinement, rank, and culture, but did not come to depend upon it; and in all this Harriet Martineau sinned not in her spirit.

But why, in writing about these people long afterward, should she have thought it necessary to produce such sharp and absolute sentences on each and all? Into this judgment-hall of Osiris-Martineau, every one whom she has ever known is called up to receive his final doom. The poor Unitarian ministers, who had taught the child as they best could, are dismissed with contemptuous severity. This religious instruction had certainly done her some good. Religion, she admits, was her best resource till she wrought her way to something better. Ann Turner, daughter of the Unitarian minister, gave her piety a practical turn, and when afraid of every one she saw, she was not at all afraid of God; and, on the whole, she says religion was a great comfort and pleasure to her. Nevertheless, she is astonished that Unitarians should believe that they are giving their children a Christian education. She accuses these teachers of her childhood of altering the Scripture to suit their own notions; being apparently ignorant that most of the interpolations or mistranslations of which they complained have since been conceded as such by the best Orthodox critics. But she does not hesitate to give her opinion of all her old acquaintances in the frankest manner, and for the most part it is unfavorable. Mrs. Opie and Mrs. John Taylor are among the "mere pedants." William Taylor, from want of truth and conviction, talked blasphemy. She speaks with contempt of a physicianwho politely urged her to come and dine with him, because he had neglected her until she became famous. Lord Brougham was "vain and selfish, low in morals, and unrestrained in temper." Lord Campbell was "flattering to an insulting degree;" Archbishop Whately, "odd and overbearing," "sometimes rude and tiresome," and "singularly overrated;" Stanley, Bishop of Norwich, "timid," "sensitive," "heedless," "without courage or dignity." Macaulay "talked nonsense" about the copyright bill, and "set at naught every principle of justice in regard to authors' earnings." Macaulay's opposition to that bill was based on such grounds of perfect justice that he defeated it single-handed. But Harriet Martineau decided then and there that Macaulay was a failure, and that "he wanted heart," and that he "never has achieved any complete success." The poet Campbell had "a morbid craving for praise." As to women, Lady Morgan, Lady Davy, Mrs. Jameson, Mrs. Austin, "may make women blush and men be insolent" with their "gross and palpable vanities." Landseer was a toady to great people. Morpeth had "evident weaknesses." Sir Charles Bell showed his ignorance by relying on the argument for Design. The resources of Eastlake were verybornés. John Sterling "rudely ignored me." Lady Mary Shepherd was "a pedant." Coleridge, she asserts, will only be remembered as a warning; though twenty years ago she, Miss Martineau,"regarded him as a poet." Godwin was "timid." Basil Montagu was "cowardly;" and Lord Monteagle "agreeable enough to those who were not particular about sincerity." Urquhart had "insane egotism and ferocious discontent." The Howitts made "an unintelligible claim to my friendship," their "tempers are turbulent and unreasonable." It may be some explanation of this unintelligible claim that it was heard through her trumpet. Fredrika Bremer is accused of habits of "flattery" and "a want of common sense." Miss Mitford is praised, but then accused of a "habit of flattery," and blamed for her "disparagement of others." And it is Miss Martineau who brings this charge! She also tells us that Miss Bremer "proposes to reform the world by a floating religiosity," whatever that may be. But perhaps her severest sentence is pronounced on the Kembles, who are accused of "incurable vulgarity" and "unreality." In this case, as in others, Miss Martineau pronounces this public censure on those whom she had learned to know in the intimacy of private friendship and personal confidence. She thus violates the rules rather ostentatiously laid down in her Introduction. For she claims there that she practices self-denial in interdicting the publication of herletters,47and gives her reasonsthus: "Epistolary conversation is written speech; and theonusrests with those who publish it to show why the laws of honor, which are uncontested in regard to conversation, may be violated when the conversation is written instead of spoken." Most of her sharp judgments above quoted are pronounced on those whom she learned to know in the private intercourse of society. Sometimes she recites the substance of what she heard (or supposed that she heard; for she used an ear-tube when she first went to live in London). Thus she tells about a conversation with Wordsworth, and reports his complaints of Jeffrey and other reviewers, and quotes him as saying about one of his own poems, that it was "a chain of veryvalooablethoughts." "You see, it does not best fulfill the conditions of poetry; but it is" (solemnly) "a chain of extremely valooable thoughts." She then proceeds to pronounce her sentence on Wordsworth as she did on Coleridge. She felt at once, she says, in Wordsworth's works, "the absence of sound, accurate, weighty thought, and of genuine poetic inspiration." She also informs us that "the very basis of philosophy is absent in him," and that it is only necessary "to open Shelley, Tennyson, or even poor Keats ... to feel that, with all their truth and all their charm, few of Wordsworth's pieces are poems." "Even poor Keats!" This is herde haut en basstyle of criticism on Wordsworth, one of whose poems is generallyaccepted as the finest written in the English language during the last hundred years. And this is her way of respecting "the code of honor" in regard to private conversation!

In 1834, at the age of thirty-two, Harriet Martineau sailed for the United States, where she remained two years. She went for rest; but the quantity of work done in those two years would have been enough to fill five or six years of any common life. At this point she began a new career; forming new ties, engaging in new duties, studying new problems, and beginning a new activity in another sphere of labor. The same great qualities which she had hitherto displayed showed themselves here again; accompanied with their corresponding defects. Her wonderful power of study enabled her to enter into the very midst of the phenomena of American life; her noble generosity induced her to throw herself heart, hand, and mind into the greatest struggle then waging on the face of the earth. The antislavery question, which the great majority of people of culture despised or disliked, took possession of her soul. She became one of the party of Abolitionists, of which Mr. Garrison was the chief, and lived to see that party triumph in the downfall of slavery. She took her share of the hatred or the scorn heaped on that fiery body of zealous propagandists, and was counted worthy of belonging to what she herself called "the Martyr Age of the United States."

Fortunately for herself, before she visited Boston, and became acquainted with the Abolitionists, she went to Washington, and traveled somewhat extensively in the Southern States. At Washington she saw many eminent Southern senators, who cordially invited her to visit them at their homes. In South Carolina she was welcomed or introduced by Mr. Calhoun, Governor Hayne, and Colonel Preston. Judge Porter took charge of her in Louisiana. In Kentucky she was the guest of Mrs. Irwin, Henry Clay's daughter and neighbor. Without fully accepting Mrs. Chapman's somewhat sweeping assertion that there was no eminent statesman, man of science, politician, partisan, philanthropist, jurist, professor, merchant, divine, nor distinguished woman, in the whole land, who did not pay her homage, there is no doubt that she received the respect and good-will of many such. She was deeply impressed, she says, on arriving in the United States, with a society basking in one bright sunshine of good-will. She thought the New Englanders, perhaps, the best people in the world. Many well-known names appear in these pages, as soon becoming intimate acquaintances or friends; among these were Judge Story, John G. Palfrey, Stephen C. Phillips, the Gilmans of South Carolina, Mr. and Mrs. Furness of Philadelphia, and in Massachusetts the Sedgwicks, the Follens, Mr. and Mrs. Ellis Gray Loring, Mr. and Mrs. Charles G. Loring, Dr. Channing, Mr. and Mrs.Henry Ware, Dr. Flint of Salem, and Ephraim Peabody.

When Miss Martineau had identified herself with Mr. Garrison and his friends by taking part in their meetings, those who had merely sought her on account of her position and reputation naturally fell away. But it may be doubted whether she was in such danger of being mobbed or murdered as she and her editor suppose. She seems to think that Mr. Henry Ware did a very brave deed in driving to Mr. Francis Jackson's house to take her home from an antislavery meeting. She speaks of the reign of terror which existed in Boston at that time. No doubt she, and other Abolitionists, had their share of abuse; but it is not probable that any persons were, as she thought, plotting against her life. She and her friends were deterred from taking a proposed journey to Cincinnati and Louisville by being informed that it was intended to mob her in the first city and to hang her in the second. Now, the writer of this article was at that time residing in Louisville, and though antislavery discussions and antislavery lectures had taken place there about that period, and though antislavery articles not unfrequently appeared in the city journals, no objection or opposition was made to all this by anybody in that place. In fact, it was easier at that time to speak against slavery in Louisville than in Boston. The leading people in Kentucky of all parties were then openlyopposed to slavery, and declared their hope and purpose of making Kentucky a free State. A year later, Dr. Channing published his work on slavery, which was denounced for its abolitionism by the "Boston Statesman," and sharply criticised in a pamphlet by the Massachusetts attorney-general. But copious extracts from this work, especially of the parts which exposed the sophisms of the defenders of slavery, were published in a Louisville magazine, and not the least objection was made to it in that city. At a later period it might have been different, though an antislavery paper was published in Louisville as late as 1845, one of the editors being a native Kentuckian.

After her return from the United States she published her two works, "Society in America," and "Retrospect of Western Travel;" and then wrote her first novel, "Deerbrook." The books on America were perhaps the best then written by any foreigner except De Tocqueville. They were generous, honest, kind, and utterly frank,—they were full of capital descriptions of American scenery. She spoke the truth to us, and she spoke it in love. The chief fault in these works was her tone of dogmatism, and herex cathedrâjudgments; which, as we have before hinted, are among the defects of her qualities.

In 1838, when thirty-six years old, she was taken with serious illness, which confined her to her room for six years. She attributes this illnessto her anxiety about her aged aunt and mother. Her mother, she tells us, was irritable on account of Miss Martineau's fame and position in society; in short, she was jealous of her daughter's success. Miss Martineau was obliged to sit up late after midnight to mend her own clothes, as she was not allowed to have a maid or to hire a working-woman, even at her own expense. How she could have been prevented is difficult to see, especially as she was the money-making member of the family. It seems hardly worth while to give us this glimpse into domestic difficulties. But, no doubt, she is quite correct in adding, as another reason for her illness, the toils which were breaking her down. The strongest men could hardly bear such a strain on the nervous system without giving way.

And here comes in the important episode of Mr. Atkinson, mesmerism, and the New Philosophy. She believes that she was cured of a disease, pronounced incurable by the regular physicians, by mesmerism. By this she means the influence exerted upon her by certain manipulations from another person. And as long as we are confessedly so ignorant of nervous diseases, there seems no reason to question the facts to which Miss Martineau testifies. She was, there is little doubt, cured by these manipulations; what the power was which wrought through them remains to be ascertained.

In regard to Mr. Atkinson and his philosophy,accepted by her with such satisfaction, and which henceforth became the master-light of all her seeing, our allotted space will allow us only to speak very briefly. The results of this new mental departure could not but disturb and afflict many of her friends, to whom faith in God, Christ, and immortality was still dear. To Miss Martineau herself, however, her disbelief in these seemed a happy emancipation. She carried into the assertion of her new and unpopular ideas the same honesty and courage she had always shown, and also the same superb dogmatism and contempt for those who differed from her. Apparently it was always to her an absolute impossibility to imagine herself wrong when she had once come to a conclusion. In theory she might conceive it possible to be mistaken, but practically she felt herself infallible. The following examples will show how she speaks, throughout her biography, of those who held the opinions she had rejected.

Miss Martineau, being a Necessarian, says, "All the best minds I know are Necessarians; all, indeed, who are qualified to discuss the subject at all." "The very smallest amount of science is enough to enable any rational being to see that the constitution and action of will are determined by the influences beyond the control of the possessor of the faculty." She adds, that for more than thirty years she has seen how awful "are the evils which arise from that monstrous remnant of oldsuperstition,—the supposition of a self-determining power, etc." Now, among those she had intimately known were Dr. Channing and James Martineau, neither of them believing in the doctrine of Necessity.

Speaking of Christianity, after she had rejected it, she calls it "a monstrous superstition." Elsewhere she speaks of "the Christian superstition of the contemptible nature of the body;" says that "Christians deprave their moral sense;" talks of "the selfish complacencies of religion," and of "the atmosphere of selfishness which is the very life of Christian doctrine and of every other theological scheme;" speaks of "the Christian mythology as a superstition which fails to make happy, fails to make good, fails to make wise, and has become as great an obstacle in the way of progress as the prior mythologies it took the place of." "For three centuries it has been undermined, and its overthrow completely decided." Thus easily does she settle the question of Christianity.

Miss Martineau ceased to believe in immortality; and immediately all believers in immortality became, to her mind, selfish or stupid, or both. "I neither wish to live longer here," she says, "nor to find life again elsewhere. It seems to me simply absurd to expect it, and a mere act of restricted human imagination and morality to conceive of it." There is "a total absence of evidence for a renewed life." "I myself utterly disbelievein a future life." She would submit, though reluctantly, to live again, if compelled to. "If I find myself conscious after the lapse of life, it will be all right, of course; but, as I said, the supposition appears to me absurd."

Under the instructions of Mr. Atkinson, Miss Martineau ceased to believe in a personal God, or any God but an unknown First Cause, identical with the Universe. The argument for Design, on which Mr. John Stuart Mill, for instance, lays such stress, seemed to her "puerile and unphilosophical." The God of Christians she calls an "invisible idol." He "who does justice to his own faculties" must give up "the personality of the First Cause." She considered the religion in her "Life in the Sick-Room" to have been "insincere;" which we, who know the perfect honesty of Harriet Martineau, must take the liberty to deny. Though declaring herself to be no Atheist, because she believes in an unknown and unknowable First Cause, she regards philosophical Atheists as the best people she had ever known, and was delighted in finding herself unacquainted with God, and so at peace.

It is curious to read these "Letters on the Laws of Man's Nature and Development," of which Harriet Martineau and Mr. Atkinson are the joint authors. The simple joy with which they declare themselves the proud discoverers of this happy land of the unknowable is almost touching. Allthat we know, say they, is matter or its manifestation. "Mind is the product of the brain," and "the brain is not, as even some phrenologists have asserted, the instrument of the mind." The brain is the source of consciousness, will, reason. Man is "a creature of necessity." "It seems certain that mind, or the conditions essential to mind, is evolved from gray vesicular matter." "Nothing in nature indicates a future life." "Knowledge recognizes that nothing can be free, or by chance; no, not even God,—God is the substance of Law." Whereupon Miss Martineau inquires whether Mr. Atkinson, in speaking of God, did not merely use another name for Law. "We know nothing beyond law, do we?" asks this meek disciple, seeking for information. Mr. Atkinson replies that we must assume some fundamental principle "as a thing essential, though unknown; and it is this which I wrongly enough perhaps termed God." But if it is wrong to call this principle God, and if they know nothing else behind phenomena, why do they complain so bitterly at being charged with Atheism? And directly Mr. Atkinson asserts that "Philosophy finds no God in nature; no personal being or creator, nor sees the want of any." "A Creator after the likeness of man" he affirms to be "an impossibility." For, though he professes to knownothingabout God, he somehow contrives to know that God isnotwhat others believe him to be.Eternal sleep after death he professes to be the only hope of a wise man. The idea of free-will is so absurd that it "would make a Democritus fall on his back and roar with laughter." "Christianity is neither reasonable nor moral." Miss Martineau responds that "deep and sweet" is her repose in the conviction that "there is no theory of God, of an author of Nature, of an origin of the Universe, which is not utterly repugnant to my faculties; which is not (to my feelings) so irreverent as to make me blush, so misleading as to make me mourn." And thus do the apostle and the disciple go on, triumphantly proclaiming their own limitations to the end of the volume.

And yet the effect of this book is by no means wholly disagreeable. To be sure, in their constant assertions of the "impossibility" of any belief but their own being true, their honest narrowness may often be a little amusing. They seem like two eyeless fish in the recesses of the darkness of the Mammoth Cave talking to each other of the absurdity of believing in any sun or upper world. But they are so honest, so sincere, so much in love with Truth, and so free from any self-seeking, that we find it easy to sympathize with their naïve sense of discovery, as they go sounding on their dim and perilous way. Only we cannot but think what a disappointment it must be to Harriet Martineau to find herself alive again in the other world. In her case, as Mr. Wentworth Higginson acutelyremarks, we are deprived of the pleasure of sympathizing with her gladness at discovering her mistake, since another life will be to her a disagreeable as well as an unforeseen event.

Nor is it extraordinary, to those who trace Harriet Martineau's intellectual history, that she should have fallen into these melancholy conclusions. In her childhood and youth, most of the Unitarians of England, followers of Priestley, adopted his philosophy of materialism and necessity. Priestley did not believe in a soul, but trusted for a future life to the resurrection of the body. He was also a firm believer in philosophical necessity. An active and logical mind like Miss Martineau's, destitute of the keenness and profundity which belonged to that of her brother James, might very naturally arrive at a disbelief in anything but matter and its phenomena. From ignorance of these facts, Mrs. Chapman expresses surprise that the inconsistency of Harriet Martineau's belief in necessity, with other parts of her Unitarianism, "should not have struck herself, her judges, or the denomination at large." Itwouldhave been inconsistent with American Unitarianism, but it was not foreign from the views of English Unitarians at that time.

The publication of these "Letters" naturally caused pain to religious people, and especially to those of them who had known and honored Miss Martineau for her many past services in the causeof human freedom and progress. Many of these were Unitarians and Unitarian ministers, who had been long proud of her as a member of their denomination and one of their most valued co-workers. It seemed necessary for them to declare their dissent from her new views, and this dissent was expressed in an article in the "Prospective Review," written by her own brother, James Martineau. Mrs. Chapman now makes known, what has hitherto been only a matter of conjecture, that this review gave such serious offense to Miss Martineau that she from that time refused to recognize her brother or to have any further communication with him. Mrs. Chapman, who seldom or never finds her heroine in the wrong, justifies and approves her conduct also here, quoting a passage from the review in support of Miss Martineau's conduct in treating her brother as one of "the defamers of old times whom she must never again meet." In this passage Mr. Martineau only expresses his profound grief that his sister should sit at the feet of such a master as Mr. Atkinson, and lay down at his bidding her early faith in moral obligation, in the living God, in the immortal sanctities. He calls this "an inversion of the natural order of nobleness," implying that Mr. Atkinson ought to have sat at her feet instead; and, turning to the review itself, we find this the only passage in which a single word is said which could be regarded as a censure on Miss Martineau.But Mr. Atkinson is indeed handled with some severity. His language is criticised, and his logic is proved fallacious. Much the largest part of the review is, however, devoted to a refutation of his philosophy and doctrines. Now, as so large a part of the "Letters" is pervaded with denunciations of the bigotry which will not hear the other side of a question, and filled with admiration of those who prefer truth to the ties of kindred, friendship, and old association, we should have thought that Miss Martineau would rejoice in having a brother who could say, "Amica Harriet, sed magis amica veritas." Not at all. It was evident that he had said nothing about herself at which she could take offense; but in speaking against her new philosophy and her new philosopher he had committed the unpardonable sin. And Mrs. Chapman allows herself to regard it as a natural inference that this honest and manly review resulted from "masculine terror, fraternal jealousy of superiority, with a sectarian and provincial impulse to pull down and crush a world-wide celebrity." She considers it "incomprehensible in an advocate of free thought" that he should express his thoughts freely in opposition to a book which argued against all possible knowledge of God and against all faith in a future life. It is, however, only just to Miss Martineau to say that she herself has brought no such charges against her brother, but left the matter in silence. We cannot but thinkthat it would have been better for Miss Martineau's reputation if her biographer had followed her example.

But, though we must object to Mrs. Chapman's views on this point, and on some others, we must add that her part of the second volume is prepared with much ability, and is evidently the result of diligent and loyal friendship. Miss Martineau could not have selected a more faithful friend to whom to confide the history of her life. On two subjects, however, we are obliged to dissent from her statements. One is in regard to Dr. Channing, whom she, for some unknown reason, systematically disparages. He was a good man, Mrs. Chapman admits, "but not in any sense a great one. With benevolent intentions, he could not greatly help the nineteenth century, for he knew very little about it, or, indeed, of any other. He had neither insight, courage, nor firmness. In his own Church had sprung up a vigorous opposition to slavery, which he innocently, in so far as ignorantly, used the little strength he had to stay." Certainly it is not necessary to defend the memory of Dr. Channing against such a supercilious judgment as this. But we might well ask why, if he is not a great man, and did not help the nineteenth century, his works should continue to be circulated all over Europe? Why should such men in France as Laboulaye and Rémusat occupy themselves in translating and diffusing them? Whyshould Bunsen class him among the five prophets of the Divine Consciousness in Human History,—speaking of "his fearless speech," his "unfailing good sense," and "his grandeur of soul, which makes him a prophet of the Christianity of the Future"? Bunsen calls him a Greek in his manly nature, a Roman in his civic qualities, and an apostle in his Christianity. And was that man deficient in courage or firmness who never faltered in the support of any opinions, however unpopular, whether it was to defend Unitarianism in its weak beginnings, to appear in Faneuil Hall as the leader against the defenders of the Alton mob, to head the petition for the pardon of Abner Kneeland, and to lay on the altar of antislavery the fame acquired by past labors? Is he to be accused of repressing the antislavery movement in his own church, when there is on record the letter in which he advocated giving the use of the church building to the society represented by Mrs. Chapman herself; and when the men of influence in his society refused it? Nor, in those days of their unpopularity, did Mrs. Chapman and her friends count Dr. Channing's aid so insignificant. In her article on "The Martyr Age," Miss Martineau describes the profound impression caused by Dr. Channing's sudden appearance in the State House to give his countenance and aid to Garrison and the Abolitionists, in what, she says, was a matter to them of life and death. And she adds,"He was thenceforth considered by the world an accession to their principles, though not to their organized body."

Nor do we quite understand Mrs. Chapman's giving to Miss Martineau the credit of being the cause of the petition for the pardon of Abner Kneeland; as his conviction, and the consequent petition, did not take place until she had been nearly two years out of the country. And why does Mrs. Chapman select for special contempt, as unfaithful to their duty to mankind, the Unitarian ministers? Why does she speak of "the cowardly ranks of American Unitarians" with such peculiar emphasis? It is not our business here to defend this denomination; but we cannot but recall the "Protest against American Slavery" prepared and signed in 1845 by one hundred and seventy-three Unitarian ministers, out of a body containing not more than two hundred and fifty in all. And it was this body which furnished to the cause some of its most honored members. Of those who have belonged to the Unitarian body, we now recall the names of such persons as Samuel J. May, Samuel May, Josiah Quincy, John Quincy Adams, John Pierpont, Mr. and Mrs. Ellis Gray Loring, John G. Palfrey, John P. Hale, Dr. and Mrs. Follen, Theodore Parker, John Parkman, John T. Sargent, James Russell Lowell, Wm. H. Furness, Charles Sumner, Caleb Stetson, John A. Andrew, Lydia Maria Child, Dr. S. G. Howe, HoraceMann, T. W. Higginson. So much for the "cowardly ranks of American Unitarians."

The last years of Miss Martineau were happy and peaceful. She had a pleasant home at Ambleside, on Lake Windermere. She had many friends, was conscious of having done a good work, and if she had no hopes in the hereafter, neither had she any fears concerning it. She was a strong, upright, true-hearted woman; one of those who have helped to vindicate "the right of women to learn the alphabet."

On the first day of January, 1832, when the American Antislavery Society was formed in the office of Samuel E. Sewall in Boston, the abolition of slavery through any such agency seemed impossible. Almost all the great interests of the country were combined to defend and sustain the system. The capital invested in slaves amounted to at least one thousand millions of dollars. This vast pecuniary interest was rapidly increasing by the growing demand for the cotton crop of the Southern States—a demand which continually overlapped the supply. The whole political power of the thirteen slave States was in the hands of the slaveholders. No white man in the South, unless he was a slaveholder, was ever elected to Congress, or to any important political position at home. The two great parties, Whig and Democrat, were pledged to the support of slavery in all its constitutional rights, and vied with each other in giving to these the largest interpretation. By a constitutional provision, which could not be altered, the slave Stateshad in Congress, in 1840, twenty-five more Representatives in proportion to their number of voters than the free States. By the cohesion of this great political and pecuniary interest the slaveholders, though comparatively few in number, were able to govern the nation. The Presidents, both houses of Congress, the Supreme Court of the United States, the two great political parties, the press of the country, the mercantile interest, and that mysterious force which we call society, were virtually in the hands of the slaveholders. Whenever their privileges were attacked, all these powers rallied to their defense. Public opinion, in the highest circles of society and in the lowest, was perfectly agreed on this one question. The saloons of the Fifth Avenue and the mob of the Five Points were equally loyal to the sacred cause of slavery. Thus all the great powers which control free states were combined for its defense; and the attempt to assail this institution might justly be regarded as madness. In fact, all danger seemed so remote, that even so late as 1840 it was common for slaveholders to admit that property in man was an absurdity and an injustice. The system itself was so secure, that they could afford to concede its principle to their opponents. Just as men formerly fought duels as a matter of course, while frankly admitting that it was wrong to do so,—just as at the present time we concede that war is absurd and unchristian, but yet go to war continually, becausewe know no other way of settling international disputes,—so the slaveholders used to say, "Slavery is wrong; we know that: but how is it to be abolished? What can we do about it?"

Such was the state of things in the United States less than half a century ago. On one side was an enormous pecuniary interest, vast political power, the weight of the press, an almost unanimous public opinion, the necessities of commerce, the authority of fashion, the teachings of nearly every denomination in the Christian church, and the moral obligations attributed to the sacred covenants of the fathers of the Republic. On the other side there were only a few voices crying in the wilderness, "It is unjust to claim property in man." The object of the work before us is to show how, after the slave power had reached this summit of influence, it lost it all in a single generation; how, less by the zeal of its opponents than by the madness of its defenders, this enormous fabric of oppression was undermined and overthrown; and how, in a few years, the insignificant handful of antislavery people brought to their side the great majority of the nation.

Certainly a work which should do justice to such a history would be one of the most interesting books ever written. For in this series of events everything was involved which touches most nearly the mind, the conscience, the imagination, and the heart of man. How many radical problems instatesmanship, in political economy, in ethics, in philosophy, in theology, in history, in science, came up for discussion during this long controversy! What pathetic stories of suffering, what separation of families, what tales of torture, what cruelty grown into a custom, what awful depths of misery, came continually to light, as though the judgment-day were beginning to dawn on the dark places of the earth! What romances of adventure, what stories of courage and endurance, of ingenuity in contrivance, of determination of soul, were listened to by breathless audiences as related by the humble lips of the fugitives from bondage! How trite and meagre became all the commonplaces of oratory before the flaming eloquence of these terrible facts! How tame grew all the conventional rhetoric of pulpit and platform, by the side of speech vitalized by the immediate presence of this majestic argument! The book which should reproduce the antislavery history of those thirty years would possess an unimagined charm.

We cannot say that Mr. Wilson's volumes do all this, nor had we any right to expect it. He proposes to himself nothing of the sort. What he gives us is, however, of very great value. It is a very carefully collected, clearly arranged, and accurate account of the rise and progress, decline and catastrophe, of slavery in the United States. Mr. Wilson does not attempt to be philosophical like Bancroft and Draper; nor are his pages as picturesqueas are those of Motley and Carlyle. He tells us a plain unvarnished tale, the interest of which is to be found in the statement of the facts exactly as they occurred. Considering that it is a story of events all of which he saw and a large part of which he was, there is a singular absence of prejudice. He is no man's enemy. He has passed through the fire, and there is no smell of smoke on his garments. An intelligent indignation against the crimes committed in defense of the system he describes pervades his narrative. His impartiality is not indifference, but an absence of personal rancor. Individuals and their conduct are criticised only so far as is necessary to make clear the course of events and the condition of public feeling. The defenders of slavery at the North and South are regarded not as bad men, but as the outcome of a bad system.

Mr. Wilson's book is a treasury of facts, and will never be superseded so far as this peculiar value is concerned. In this respect it somewhat resembles Hildreth's "History of the United States." Taking little space for speculation, comment, or picturesque coloring, there is all the more room left for the steady flow of the narrative.

With a few unimportant omissions, the two volumes now published contain a full history of slavery and antislavery from the Ordinance of 1787 and the compromises of the Constitution down to the election of Lincoln and the outbreak of thecivil war. As a work of reference they are invaluble, for each event in the long struggle for freedom is distinctly and accurately told, while the calm story advances through its various stages. Instead of following this narrative in detail, which our space will not allow, we prefer to call our readers' attention to some of the more striking incidents of this great revolution.

Our fathers, when they founded the nation, had little thought that slavery was ever to attain such vast extension. They supposed that it would gradually die out from the South, as it had disappeared from the North. Yet the whole danger to their work lay here. Slavery, if anything, was the wedge which was to split the Union asunder. When the Constitution was formed, in 1787, the slaveholders, by dint of great effort, succeeded in getting the little end of the wedge inserted. It was very narrow, a mere sharp line, and it went in only a very little way; so it seemed to be nothing at all. The slaveholders at that time did not contend that slavery was right or good. They admitted that it was a political evil. They confessed, many of them, that it was a moral evil. All the great Southern revolutionary bodies had accustomed themselves to believe in the rights of man, in the principles of humanity, in the blessings of liberty; and they could notdefendslavery. Mason of Virginia, in the debates in the Federal Convention, denounced slavery and the slave-trade."The evil of slavery," said he, "affects the whole Union. Slavery discourages arts and manufactures. The poor despise labor when done by slaves. They prevent the immigration of whites, who really enrich a country. They produce the most pernicious effects on the manners. Every master of slaves is born a petty tyrant. They bring the judgment of Heaven on a country." Williamson of North Carolina declared himself in principle and practice opposed to slavery. Madison "thought it wrong to admit in the Constitution the idea that there could be property in man." But the extreme Southern States, South Carolina and Georgia, insisted on the right of importing slaves, at least for a little while; and so they were allowed to import them for twenty years. They also insisted on having their slaves represented by themselves in Congress, and so they were allowed to count three fifths of the slaves in determining the ratio. This seemed a small thing, but it was the entering of the wedge. It was tolerating the principle of slavery; not admitting it, but tolerating it. At the same time that this Convention was forming, the Federal Constitution Congress was prohibiting slavery in all the territory northwest of the Ohio. This prohibition of slavery was adopted by the unanimous votes of the eight States present, including Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia. Two years later it was recognized and confirmed by the first Congress under the Constitution. Jefferson,a commissioner to revise the statute law of Virginia, prepared a bill for gradual emancipation in that State. In 1790 a petition was presented to Congress, signed by Benjamin Franklin, the last public act of his life, declaring equal liberty to be the birthright of all, and asking Congress to "devise means for restoring liberty to the slaves, and so removing this inconsistency from the character of the American people." In 1804 the people of Virginia petitioned Congress to have the Ordinance of 1787 suspended, that they might hold slaves; but a committee of Congress, of which John Randolph of Virginia was chairman, reported that it would be "highly dangerous and inexpedient to impair a provision wisely calculated to promote the happiness and prosperity of the Northwest Territory."

But in 1820 the first heavy blow came on the wedge to drive it into the log. The Union is a tough log, and the wedge could be driven a good way in without splitting it; but the first blow which drove it in was the adopting the Missouri Compromise, allowing slavery to come North and take possession of Missouri.

Back to Index Next