‘Why drew Marseilles’ good bishop purer breath,When the air sickened, and each gale was death?’Because he was sustained by a cheerful reliance upon Providence, a firm determination to do his duty, and have no fear of consequences. The whole scope of my own observation, beside the sick bed, perfectly coincides with these views. I do not say that there are not numberless exceptions. But of this I am confident, that the general rule is, that persons who attend the sick and dying, in cases of epidemic disease of a mortal type, with a fearless and cheerful mind, escape; while the timid, who are alarmed and have an implicit belief in the danger of contagion, succumb.Note 19, page 83.If there ever was an age when invalids and the suffering might promise themselves sympathy in the dolorous detail of their symptoms, which is questionable, it certainly is not now, during the era of labor-saving machinery, political economy, and the all-engrossing influence of money and corporate achievement. He who now suffers from acute pain, in any form, will do wisely to summon all his strength andphilosophy to suppress any manifestation in his countenance and muscles, rather than task his eloquence in framing his tale of symptoms.This whole chapter upon health abounds in the highest practical wisdom, and the hints in it might easily be expanded to a volume. I only add, that I earnestly recommend a poem upon the same subject, one, as it seems to me, among the most classical and beautiful in our language, and which has become strangely and undeservedly obsolete—Dr Armstrong’s Art of Health.Note 20, page 83.How often have similar thoughts pressed upon my mind, as I have stood over the bed of the sick and dying! Here is the peculiar empire of minds truly and nobly benevolent, where the head and main prop of a family is preparing to conflict with the last enemy: where pain and groans, terror and death, fill the foreground, and the dim but inevitable perspective of desolation, struggle and want, in contact with indifference and selfishness, opens in the distance before the survivors. Let us thank God for religion. Philosophy may inculcate stern endurance and wise submission; but knows not a fit and adequate remedy. The hopes and the example imparted by himwho went about doing good, are alone sufficient for the relief of such cases, of which, alas! our world is full.Note 21, page 86.No view of human life is more consoling or just than that presented in these paragraphs. Yet no human calculation will ever reach the sum of agony that has been inflicted by the jealousy, envy and heart-burning that have resulted from that most erroneous persuasion, that certain conditions and circumstances of life bring happiness in themselves. Beautifully has the bible said, that ‘God has set one thing over against another’—has balanced the real advantages of the different human conditions. The result of my experiencewould leave me in doubt and at a loss, in selecting the condition which I should deem most congenial to happiness. I should have to balance abundance of food, on the one hand, against abundance of appetite, on the other; the habit superinduced by the necessity of being satisfied with a little, with the habit of being disgusted with the trial of much. There are joys, numerous and vivid, peculiar to the rich; and others, in which none but those in the humbler conditions of life can participate. In the whole range of the enjoyment of the senses, if there be any advantage, it belongs to the poor. The laws of our being have surrounded the utmost extent of human enjoyment with adamantine walls, which one condition can no more overleap than another. It is wonderful to see this admirable adjustment, like the universal laws of nature, acting everywhere and upon everything. Even in the physical world, what is granted to one country is denied to another; and the wanderer who has seen strange lands and many cities, in different climes, only returns to announce, as the sum of his experience and the teaching of years, that light and shadow, comfort and discomfort, pleasure and pain, like air and water, are diffused in nearly similar measures over the whole earth.Note 21a, page 88.It needs but little acquaintance with human condition to perceive, in the general adjustment of advantages settled by Providence, that great proportions of them have been thrown into opposite scales, and so contrasted that the selection of one class implies the rejection of the other. For example, smitten with the thousand temptations of wealth, you are determined to be rich. Be it so. Industry, frugality and the convergence of your faculties to this single point will hardly fail to render you so. But then you will not be so absurd as to envy another the fame of talents and acquirements which required absorbing devotion to pursuits incompatible with yours.You are rich, and complain of satiety andennui. Knewyou not, when you determined to be rich, that poor people sing and dance about their cabin fires? You have gained power and distinction and discovered the heartless selfishness of your competitors and dependents. Were you ignorant that friendship can only be purchased by friendship; and that, in selecting your all-engrossing pursuit, you have precluded yourself from furnishing your quota of the reciprocity? The choices of life are alternatives. You may select from this scale, or that. But, in most cases, you cannot take from both. How much murmuring would be arrested if this most obvious truth were understood and men would learn to be satisfied with their alternative! Choose wisely and deliberately; and then quietly repose on your choice. Say, ‘I have this; another has that. I am certain that I have my choice. I do not know but his condition was forced upon him.’Note 22, page 89.If I have ever allowed myself the indulgence of envy, it is after having tasted the pleasure of rewarding merit, or relieving distress, in thinking how continually such celestial satisfactions are within the reach of the opulent. What a calm is left in the mind after having wiped away tears! What aspirations are excited in noting the joy and gratitude consequent upon misery relieved! How delightful to recur to the remembrance during the vigils of the night watches! How it expands the heart to reflect upon the consciousness of the all powerful and all good Being, measuring the circuit of the universe in doing good! Unhappily, the experience of all time demonstrates that the possession of opulence and power not only has no direct tendency to inspire increased sensibility to such satisfactions, but has an opposite influence. For one, rendered more kind and benevolent by good fortune, how many become callous, selfish and proud by it! Kindly and wisely has Providence seen fit to spare most men this dangerous trial.Note 23, page 92.This chapter of the author, among the rest, has been obnoxious to severe strictures. I am sensible that the young require the exercise of cautious discretion in few questions more than in this, ‘How far is it wise to disregard public opinion?’ To press the point too far is to incur the reputation of eccentricity and arrogant confidence in our own judgment. Implicitly to copy the expressions and habits of the multitude precludes all pursuit of happiness by system; and reduces the whole inquiry to the injunction, to walk with the rest, and add ourennuiand disappointment to the mass of the unhappiness of all those who have gone before. If certain modes appear to me, after the most deliberate examination, conducive to my happiness, why should I be deterred from adopting them, because I am not countenanced by the general opinion and example of a crowd, each individual of which I should altogether reject as a teacher and an example? If I avow that the ten thousand, in all time, have formed the most erroneous judgments, touching the wisdom of human pursuits, why should I continue blindly to copy their errors? He is certainly the most fortunate man who, if an exact account of his sensations and thoughts could be cast into a sum at his last hour, would be found to have enjoyed the greatest number of agreeable moments, pleasurable sensations and happy reflections. If to court retirement, repose, the regulation of the desires and passions, and the cultivation of those affections which are best nurtured in the shade, be the most certain route to happiness, why should I be swayed from choosing that path by the suggestions of ambition, avarice and the spirit of the world, which enjoin the common course?Yet every one is, more or less, a slave to the prevalent fashions of thinking and acting. How much vile hypocrisy does this slavery which covers the face of society with a vast mask of semblance, engender? Contemplate the routine of all the professions which we make and infringe in a single day, in the manifest violation of our inward thought andbelief; and we must admit that the world agrees to enact a general lie, alike deceiving and deceived, through terror of being the first to revolt against the thraldom of opinion. The very persons, too, who cherish the profoundest secret contempt for the judgment of the multitude, are generally the loudest and the first in decrying any departure from the standard of public opinion almost as an immorality.I would by no means desire to see those most dear to me arrogantly setting at defiance received ideas and usages. These have, as the author justly remarks, a salutary moral sway in repressing the influence of the impudent and abandoned. I am not insensible to the danger of following our independent judgment beyond the limits of a regulated discretion. But there is no trait in the young for which I feel a more profound respect, than the fixed resolve to consult their own light, in setting the rules of their conduct and selecting their alternatives. A calm and reflecting independence, an unshaken firmness in encountering vulgar prejudices, is what I admire as the evidence of strong character, fearless thinking and capability of self-direction.Note 24, page 98.How often must every reflecting mind have been led to similar views of human nature! To form just estimates and entertain right sentiments of our kind, we must not contemplate men under the action of the narrowness of sectarian hate, or through the jaundiced vision of party feeling. We must see them in positions like those so happily presented by the author, when great and sweeping calamities level men to the consciousness and the sympathies of a common nature, and a sense of common exposure to misery, and open the fountains of generous feeling. Who has not seen men, on such occasions, forget their pride, their miserable questions of rank and precedence, and meet with open arms and the mingled tears of gratitude and relief, persons, the view of whom under other circumstances, would have called forth only feelings of scornful comparison and reckless contempt?The incident of the hostile French and German posts is a singularly touching one. In what a horrid light does it place the character and passions of princes, generals, conquerors and warriors, in all time, who for their measureless cupidity, or the whim of their ambition, have used these amiable beings, formed with natural sympathies to aid and love each other, as the mechanical engines of their purposes, to meet breast to breast as enemies, and plunge the murderous steel into each others’ hearts! Hence, rivers of life blood have flowed as uselessly as rain falls upon the ocean! It is difficult to determine whether we ought most to execrate the accursed ambition of the few, or despise the weak stupidity of the many who have been led, unresistingly, like animals to the slaughter, only the more firmly to rivet the chains of the survivors. What a view does war present, of the miserable ignorance, the brute stupidity of the mass of the species, and the detestable passions of those called the great, in all time! Who does not exult to see the era, every day approaching, when men will be too wise, too vigilant and careful of their rights to become instruments in the hands of others; when the rational consciousness of their own predominant physical power shall be guided by wisdom, self-watchfulness and self-respect? Then, instead of being tamely led out to slay each other, when invoked to this detestable sport of kings, they will show their steel to their oppressors.Note 24a, page 99.I am as much impressed with the eloquence of this passage as with its truth. I reserve more particular views of religion for comments on the letter upon the subject. I wish to present in this place, as consonant with the spirit of this passage, one view of religion which has long been one of my most fixed and undoubting conclusions. It is, that man is a religious being, by the organic constitution of his frame, still more than by any intellectual process of reasoning. I have no doubt, that a rightly organized and well endowed man, born and reared in a desert isle, without ever being broughtinto contact with man or any discipline to call forth reason or speech, would be subject to precisely the same emotions as, varied and moulded by the circumstances of birth and education, constitute the substance of all the religions in the world; in other words, that man is constituted a religious animal in the same way as he clearly is an animal with other instincts and passions. I am aware, that divines and moralists do not often insist upon the religious instinct, as one of the most conclusive and convincing arguments (to me, at least,) of the soul’s immortality. It seems with them the favorite view to consider religion a science that may be taught, like geometry or chemistry.To me, this absorbing subject presents a very different aspect. I see man everywhere religious in some form. The sentiment takes the molding of his accidental circumstances. It is poetry, enthusiasm, eloquence, bravery; but in every form an aspiration after the vast, illimitable, eternal, shadowy conceptions of an unknown hereafter, that the senses have not embodied. It is rational or fanciful, it is respectable or superstitious, it is a pure abstraction or a gorgeous appeal to the senses, according to one’s country, training and temperament. But man, whether he be a dweller in the far isles of the sea, or in the crowded mart, whether christian or savage, is everywhere found, in some form, invoking a God and reposing the hopes and affections of his worn heart in another and a better world; and extending his faith to an immortal life and an eternal sphere of action.Instead of searching for this universal principle with metaphysicians, pronouncing upon it with dogmatists, or deducing it from creeds, or creeds from it, I behold in it the same unwritten revelation which we call instinct. Vague and undefined as is this law, and questioned by some as is even its existence, it announces to us one of the most impressive and beautiful homilies upon the truth and goodness of the Author of our being. It may be called the scripture of the lower orders, guiding them, with unerring certainty, to their enjoyments and their end. Beasts feel it, and graze the plain. Birds feel it, and soar in the air. Fishes feel it, and dartalong their liquid domain; each feeding, moving, resting, playing and perpetuating its kind, according to its organic laws. Winter comes upon the gregarious tribes of water fowls enjoying themselves in the Canadian lakes. They listen to this call from heaven, and mount the autumnal winds; and without chart or compass, by a course to which that of circumnavigators is devious, they sail to the shores of the south, where a softer atmosphere and new supplies of food await them. It leads the young one of these animals, scarcely yet disengaged from the shell, to patter its bill in the dry sand, impatiently to search for water before it has yet seen it. It creates in the new born infant a purpose to search for its supplies in the yet untasted fountains of the maternal bosom. It guides all the lower orders of being through the whole mysterious range of their peculiar habits and modes of life. Under its influence, animals and men exercise powers which transcend the utmost efforts of our reason. Who can tell me why the duckling plunges into the water with the shell on its head? Who can inform me how the affectionate house dog, blindfolded and conveyed in utter darkness in a carriage to a distance of fifty leagues, the moment he is emancipated, returns by a more direct route than that by which he came? There would be no use in presenting the most extended details of these developments of instinct through the whole range of animated nature. Every one knows that wherever we discern them, either in the structure or habits of the animal, or both, they are indications of unerring guidance, the voice of eternal and unswerving truth, which, as soon as promulgated, is received as the parental counsel of the Author of nature.He who could interpret the language and the gestures of the lower orders would see in the structure and manifested wants of fishes, that water was provided as a home for them, had he seen them in the air. When he had noted the movements and heard the cries of the new born infant, he would be in no doubt, that the nutriment in the maternal bosom was stored for it somewhere. Seeing the structure, the starting pinions and plumage of the unfledged bird in its nest, hecould be at no loss in reasoning, that as these indications of contrivance for other modes of life were lost in its present manner of existence, it was intended for movements, where pinions and plumage would avail it.As certain as these instincts and indications are the pledged verity of the Author of nature, that a sphere is provided for the exercise of these undeveloped powers, and a corresponding gratification for these instinctive desires, so sure as they point out, in a language, which can neither deceive nor be mistaken, the aim and end of the animal to which they belong, so sure, if religion be an instinctive sentiment, and the hope, and the persuasion of another existence result from the organic constitution of our nature, there must be another life. That it is so, the usages and modes of all people that have yet been known, the people of the first ages, and the last, the people of the highest refinement, and those, who scarcely know the use of fire, have concurred to prove to us. Superficial travellers, indeed, have told us of newly discovered tribes, who had no visions of a God—a worship, or an hereafter. Other travellers have followed them, and observed better, and discovered, that their predecessors based the fact on their own ignorance. They have been found to belong to the general analogy, and to look to‘Some happier land in depth of woods embraced;Some lovelier island in the watery waste.’It seems to me, that this universal agreement of religious ideas is the most unequivocal manifestation, that the sentiment of religion is an instinct, that is exhibited in the whole range of animated nature. If so, it is the offered pledge of the divine veracity, that the soul is immortal; and that as certain as the instinct of migrating birds is proof, that the milder skies which they seek, exist, and are prepared for them, so surely the undeveloped powers of the spirit, which have no range on the earth, have a country prepared also for them. Our aspirations, ourlongings after immortality, every mode of worship, and every form of faith—are the rudiments, thegerms, the starting pinions of the embryo spirit, which is to escape from its nest at death, and fly in the celestial atmosphere, in which it was formed to move.To me these universal religious manifestations are proofs, that religion springs not, as some suppose, from tradition; or, as others think, from reasoning. It is a sentiment. It is an inwrought feeling in our mental constitution, an unwritten, universal, and everlasting gospel, pointing to God and immortality. Bring the most uninstructed peasant, who has seen nothing of the earth, but its plains, in sight of Chimborazo. The thrill of awe and sublimity, that springs within him at the view, and lifts his spirit above the blue summits to the divinity, is one of the forms, in which this sentiment acts. The natural mental movements, in view of the illimitable main, of the starry firmament, of elevated mountains, of whatever is vast in dimension, irresistible in power, terrible in the exercise of anger, in short, all those emotions, which we call the sublime, are modified actings of the religious sentiment. Justly has the author pronounced the universality of these ideas the highest testimony to the elevation of human nature. It is the most impressive and interesting attribute of the soul, that it is subject to these impulses. It is a standing index, that the godlike stranger, imprisoned in clay, has, inwrought in its consciousness, indelible impressions of its future destiny.Note 25, page 101.Whoever philosophically considers the constitution of the human mind—how much we are the creatures of our circumstances, how much we are blown about by impulse and passion, the dimness of our own mental vision upon most subjects, the narrow limit, which separates between truth and falsehood, right and wrong, and moreover, that we ourselves view everything through the coloring of our own pride and prejudice—will perceive at once, that, under all circumstances of error and even of crime, men are quite as worthy of pity, as of vindictive blame. A little, cold andselfish mind invariably finds much matter for bitter censure in every act, that, according to its own chart, is an aberration. On the contrary, nothing, in my estimate, so decidedly marks a generous and noble, as well as an enlightened and a philosophic spirit, as the disposition to be indulgent in its construction of the views and conduct of others, and to interpret all by the comment of palliation and kindness, whenever the case will admit of them. Great minds fail not to be conscious what a weak, miserable compound of vanity, impulse, ignorance and selfishness is that lord of creation, that passive molding of circumstances, which we call man. Of course in calmly scanning his views and conduct, all other sensations than those of pity and kindness, die away within him. As the human mind is exalted by its light, and its intrinsic elevation towards the divinity, in the same proportion it soars above the mists of its own passions and prejudices, and sees little in humanity to inspire other feelings, than those of compassion and benevolence. What is the view of human nature, presented to a wise and good man?‘’Tis but to know how little can be known,To see all others’ faults, and feel our own.’Note 26, page 102.I am not certain, that the real spirit of tolerance has made so much progress in this age, as is commonly imagined. Who among us admits in practice, as well as theory, that the mind is passive in receiving evidence, and forming conclusions, which it cannot shape, except according to impressions, which it has much less power to exclude, or evade, than is generally believed? Who among us acts on the conviction, that errors of opinion are almost invariably involuntary? Every view of human nature, and the laws of the human mind ought to inspire us with an unlimited feeling of tolerance towards those who differ from us in opinion, howsoever widely. We cannot fail so to feel, if we reflect that, had we been in their situation, and under their circumstances, and they in ours, our views might have been reversed. Yet it is scarcely possible to converse with any one a few moments, without startingthem by some opposing opinion, that jars with their excited feelings and a certain amount of estrangement is the result. Who can conduct a disputed point, in politics or religion, with an unruffled temper? Angry disputation is only another form of intolerance. If we narrowly inspect the actings of human nature, we shall discover, that the whole world is composed of individuals, almost every one of whom thinks he has a right to be offended with every other one, who does not adopt his opinions.It is very true, that the age of actual persecution, by fines, imprisonment and death, is gone by. But this results rather from practical political progress of ideas, than from a settled conviction that no one mind has a right to find, in the opinions of another mind, cause of offence. Whoever cannot look upon the most opposite faith and opinions of his neighbor, in religion, in politics, and the ordinary concerns of life, without any feeling of temper and bitterness, in view of that difference, is in heart and spirit intolerant. In this view, who can justly and fully lay claim to toleration? The whole world is divided into millions of little parties and sects, often finding the bitterest germs of contention in the smallest differences. Scarcely one in ten thousand, of all these sects and parties, has real philosophic magnanimity enough to perceive, that all other men have as much claim for indulgence to their opinions, as he exacts for his own.Note 27, page 102.It would be amusing, if such important consequences did not flow from the error, to perceive, how much weight most people attach to the sect and party to which the persons, about whom they are forming an estimate, belong. The externals, the deportment, dress and manner are often strongly influenced by these matters; but the mental complexion or temperament far less than is commonly supposed. We meet with people, every day, of the most exclusive and bigoted creeds, who act liberally: and again with people, who have much liberality and catholicism in their mouths, and very little in their temper and spirit. I have met with liberal andilliberal people, in almost equal proportions, in all the sects, parties and denominations, with which I have been acquainted. Still, I do not, as from these remarks it might be inferred that I do, deem error, even in abstract opinions, such as those which appertain to religious and metaphysical subjects, as of no consequence. But I have not time, nor have I place, in a note, for explaining my convictions on this subject.Note 27a, page 104.An indiscreet and exaggerating zeal often injures the cause it would wish to serve. The gospel is best sustained by its own unborrowed glory, and is prejudiced by adventitious appendages. I have often heard ministers declare, from the pulpit, that the duty of forgiveness, and of loving and doing good to enemies was a peculiar discovery of the gospel, a precept unknown before. We have never considered it among the objects of the mission of our Lord, to reveal a new code of morals. The grand eternal principles of this science were originally engraven on the heart. Man could not have existed in society without them. Whoever has read the elaborate and eloquent treatises of heathen moralists, will perceive, that there was little left incomplete in the code; and that these sublime virtues were eulogized, as beautiful and just in theory, if not to be expected in practice. It is the spirit, unction and tenderness of gospel inculcation, that is unique and original. The heathen ethical writers had not failed to enjoin it upon the members of communities, to aid and love one another. But it is only necessary to glance upon the apostolic epistles, to see that Christians were a new and peculiar people, bound together by cords of affection, altogether unknown in the previous records of the human heart. What tenderness, what love,stronger than death, what sublime disinterestedness! How reckless to the sordid motives of ambition and interest, which ruled the surrounding world! We scarcely need other evidence, that this simplicity of love, so unlike aught the world had seen before, was not an affection of earthly mold; and that this new and strong people were not bound together byties, which had relation to the grossness of earthly bonds. To me there is something inexpressibly delightful and of which I am never weary, in contemplating the originality and simplicity of early Christian affection, nor is it one of the feeblest testimonies to the glory and divinity of the gospel.For the rest, I have much abridged the paragraphs, to which this note alludes, and have interpolated some expressions, not found in the original—because I would not allow myself to leave anything equivocal, touching my own views of the importance of Christian morals and example.It would be useless to add to the beautiful views, presented by the author, of the disposition to oblige, and the necessity of cultivating modesty, and an equal and serene temper. One cannot enlarge upon these beaten topics, as he has foreseen, without running into common-places. These virtues are preëminently their own reward. Whoever chooses to indulge the opposite tempers has only to reflect, that he assumes the thankless office of becoming a self-tormentor, and injures no one so much as himself. Of these fierce passions, the heathen poets have given us an affecting emblem in the undying vultures, gnawing upon the ever growing entrails of Tityus. If you would form the sublimest conceptions of the eternal and underived satisfaction of the divinity, cultivate dispositions to oblige, and seize occasions to practise beneficence. If you would image more impressive ideas of the torment of demons than poets have dreamed, muse upon injuries; cultivate envy and revenge, and wish that you had the bolts of the thunderer, only that you might hurl them upon your foes. If you would experience the eternal gnawing of the vulture allow yourself in the constant indulgence of your temper.Note 28, page 109.To those, who have already assumed this tie, or contemplate assuming it, not a word need be said upon the most worn of all themes, the paramount influence of marriage, beyond all other relations, in imparting the coloring of brightness orgloom to all subsequent life. The place, in which the only satisfactions of life, that are worth any serious pursuit, are to be found, is within the domestic walls. Honor, fame, wealth, luxury, literary distinction, everything is extrinsic, and hollow, everything the mere mockery and shadow of joy, but the comfort of a quiet and affectionate home. Whoever does not share this faith with me, will hardly be enlightened to the true sources of enjoyment by any lucubrations of mine. Instead of details and declamation upon this truth, I present an unvarnished, unexaggerated view, an abstract, if I may so say, of the circumstances, under which the greater number of marriages are consummated in our country, and I imagine, in most civilized countries. It may not embrace the exact train of the incidents connected with every case; but will serve, in the phrase of the makers of calendars, ‘without material variation,’ as an outline of the history of those courtships that terminate in matrimony. What wonder, that wedded life is so often unhappy!I am compelled to believe, that very few marriages take place in consequence of such an intimate acquaintance of the parties with each other’s unsophisticated and interior character, as to justify the chances of affection and domestic happiness. The first adverse circumstance is, that both are constantly on such a trial to make a show of wit, good temper, and manners, as to render the whole scene, from commencement to close, a drama, in which all is acting; in which there is no admission to the real life behind the scenes, until after marriage. How often does the actor or actress, who successfully personated a wit, and an angel, detect in the other party a simpleton, a brute, or a termagant! The walk of life, in which they are found, may vary the shades, but it changes not the natural circumstances of a picture, which, in its broader features, applies alike to elevated and humble life.The parties, in the bloom of life, in all the excitement of juvenile buoyancy, moving in the illumined atmosphere of imagination, meet at the party, ball-room, assembly, church, or other place of concourse, for which the young dress, tolook around, and be gazed upon. They are clad in their gayest, and stand on their best. No airs, or graces, that mothers, or friends, or society, or their Chesterfield, or their imaginations can suggest, are pretermitted. No attempted inflictions are spared from any relentings of mercy. Many gratuitous nods and smiles and remarks, and much odious affectation, inspired by the love of conquest, pass well enough in the tinsel illusion of the scene and circumstances. Accident brings the couple into contact. They sing, dance, walk, converse, or, in some of these ways, are thrown together. Or, perhaps, some officious mediator reports, to the one, flattering remarks made by the other. The first impulses to the acquaintance are those of vanity, and the instinctive attraction of persons, so situated, towards each other. A vague and momentary liking, which might be effaced, as easily as mists vanish in the sun, is the result. The lady, from the delicacy of her organization, and the quickness of her perceptions, is the first aware of the new state of mutual feeling; and by conjoining a happy combination of coquetry, shyness, and encouragement, adds fuel to the kindling spark. They converse apart, and the masonic pressure of hands is interchanged. Compliments ensue, more or less polished, and eloquent, according to their native readiness and artificial training. Vanity comes in with her legion of auxiliaries, and, in the same proportion as memory invests this intercourse with pleasant sensations and agreeable associations, conversation with other persons, between whom and themselves these processes have not commenced, becomes tasteless and irksome; and ennui in all other society does its part to put imagination in action. They find themselves weary and sad in separation. Fancy runs riot and begins to weave her fairy tissue, and to build her oriental bowers. The parties are now in love, as they believe, and as the world pronounces. Now commence the hours of poetry and sentimentality; and the spring time of their new born passion. Not a moment, for discriminating observation of each other’s character, has yet occurred.The freshness of the vernal inclination acquires the fervorof settled and summer passion. The preliminaries of form are commenced; and under such associations, and with such mutual inclinations, incompatibility, unfitness, opposition of friends, all obstacles that are not absolutely insurmountable, disappear. What parent can resist the impassioned eloquence of a child, or contemplate for a moment the prospect of inflicting the agony of a disappointed and hopeless love! Have they measured each other’s understanding and good sense? No: this requires a discrimination, for which in the fever, the delirium of the senses, they have no capacity. Know they aught of each other’s worth and good temper? No. Lovers find nothing to jar their temper, or try their disposition. Surrounded by a halo of imagination, everything about them is invested with its brilliancy. The silliest remark of theinamoratasounds in the ears of the lover, like the response of an oracle; and he is astonished and enraged that all others do not see, and hear with him. Everything that is said becomes wisdom, and everything done noble and graceful. Who has not heard all these ascriptions, all these extravagant eulogies, applied to a fair female, uttering nothing, and incapable of uttering anything, but voluble and vapid nonsense; or worse, ebullitions of envy, detraction and bad feeling! Meanwhile, the parties, enveloped in illusion, would not see real character, if they could; and could not, if they would. Is this extravagant, or exaggerated? Let the well known fact, that sensible men oftener marry fools, and gifted women coxcombs, than otherwise, be received as evidence, that this great transaction is generally commenced, and terminated under a spell, in which the actors see nothing, as it really is, and as it appears to disinterested spectators. After having united many hundred pairs myself, and seen all aspects of society, such seem to me the most common circumstances appended to the beginning, progress and issue of courtship, in its common forms.When ambitious views, the lust of wealth, and purposes of aggrandizement, are the prompting incitements, the order of circumstances indeed may be essentially varied, without muchaltering the result. The excitement of the senses and the illusions of the imagination give place to these more sordid motives. They are, however, equally absorbing with the former. The faculties, having converged to the point of cautious and keen speculation, allow no greater scope, and furnish no happier facilities, for noting the development of understanding, character and temper, than in the other predicament. The appetite for money, and the burning of ambition may as effectually blind the aspirant to the silliness and bad temper of her who is seen through the flattering medium of his plans and his hopes, as could his vanity and his youthful inclinations. How can a person be expected to compare, and discriminate traits, and the almost imperceptible lights and shades of character, whose whole mind is intensely concentrated on the chances of his speculation, the fear of rivals, the danger of mishap, and the means of hastening the issue? Who, under such circumstances, inquires about the elements of happiness or misery, the good sense, the regulated temper, the discretion, health, temperament, and habits, that appertain to the means, by which a fortune and a name are to be obtained? These are passed by, as subordinate considerations. Suppose inquiries touching these points to glance through the mind. Suppose the speculator to have lucid glimpses, and some startling premonitions of the importance of settled and discriminating views, in relation to these matters; contemplated through golden associations and in the glare of ambitious hopes, they will be hardly likely to undergo a very severe or sifting scrutiny.The marriage, whether of love, of ambition, of convenience or mere animal impulse, takes place. The music and dancing are no more, and the brilliancy of the bridal torch is extinct, and with those physicalparapharnalia, one mental illusion after another begins to melt into thin air. The discriminating faculties, judgment and the critical vision, now become morbidly sensitive and severe, since satiety and the extinction of fancy and the imagination have left these capacities to unchecked action, beholding the object of their scrutiny continually,and close at hand. The medium becomes as unnaturally dark, as it was unnaturally light before. A thousand circumstances, never dreamed of in the philosophy of love and courtship, crowd upon this disposition to cynical and bilious criticism. Manifestations of temper and character, that once indicated to the lover, amiability and intelligence, become, to the moody husband or the discontented wife, marks of a weak understanding and a bad heart; and in proportion, as they nourish despondency and disappointment, they destroy the capability of indulgence and forbearance, and resist efforts to soothe, and correct, and conciliate.In proportion as they become dissatisfied with each other, by a mental progress, exactly the reverse of that which brought them together, home is enveloped with associations of gloom. The imagination finds sunshine in every other place; and every other person is sensible and attractive, but the one they have sworn to love and honor until death.There are those who will see in these revolting representations, a coloring of misanthropy; and pronounce this statement of the case harsh beyond nature. I would it were so; for, unless I deceive myself, I love my kind; and my only object is, to impress upon the young the importance of inquiring, when contemplating this vital and all important transaction, whether they see things in the clear light of truth, and as they will certainly appear after the delirium of love has passed away; or under the nameless and numberless illusions of that fever of the senses, of vanity, and instinct, too often miscalled by the name of love. I much mistake, if the greater portion of the domestic infelicity, which is loudly charged upon the wedded state in the abstract, is not owing to this fascination, this incapacity to examine the only elements, on which the happiness of a family must depend. All I would say, is, before entering on this union, remember, that it is easier to repent before, than after the evil is without a remedy. Pause and scrutinize; and let not the first glimpse of real light open your eyes to your true condition, when it is irretrievable.I am as well aware, as the author can be, that there are many more happy marriages, than vulgar opinion allows, and that even in those, which are not reputed happy, in which the parties themselves have had their criminating and complainingéclaircissements, there is often much more affection, than has been allowed to exist. Such is generally found to be the case, in the numberless attempted separations, which prove abortive, when the final alternative is to be adopted. I know, too, that the history of the manifestation of conjugal affection is one of the most affecting and honorable to human nature, that has ever been exhibited. No union of tenderness and fortitude has ever been displayed in the annals of human nature, that can be compared with the maternal love and conjugal affection of a devoted wife. Of this, if I had space, and my scope were different, I could cite numerous, and most impressive examples.Note 28a, page 110.I beg leave to enter my utter dissent to this doctrine. It seems from a note appended to this chapter of the author, that dislike to female authorship has been carried to the most ridiculous lengths in France. This is the more astonishing, as no country has produced so many admirable female writers, many of them peculiarly noted for possessing the charm of simplicity, and freedom from pedantry and affectation. A woman, not less than a man, is more amiable, interesting and capable of sustaining any relation with honor and dignity, in proportion as she is more instructed and enlightened. It is to female pedants only, that the ridiculous question of the French academy, whether a reputable woman could write a book, ought to apply. If a woman really deserves a crown of laurels, it sits more gracefully on her brow, than any chaplet of roses that poet ever dreamed of. But let us have real, unpresuming knowledge, without pedantry or affectation, either of which is always odious in man or woman, but certainly, as it seems to me, most so in woman.Note 30, page 115.Nothing, however, is more common, than this contemptible ambition of wives to govern their husbands. It is said that there are coteries of wives, who impart the rules in masonic conclave. Be it so. Whoever exults in having usurped this empire, glories in her shame. If there be any axiom universally applying to this partnership, it is, that the interest and reputation of the concern must be identical. However much a wife may humble her husband, in general estimation, by presenting him in the light of a weak and docile subject, with all sensible persons, she humbles herself still more. If the slave is contemptible, the tyrant is still more so. For the rest, this chapter contains more truth and impressive eloquence upon this all important theme, than I have elsewhere met in so small a compass.Note 31, page 117.I present you with the following development of these new emotions, which, I hope, you will not find amiss. ‘William and Yensi were as happy in this vale, as man can hope to be here below. They would have requested nothing more of heaven, than thousands of years of this half dreaming, yet satisfying existence. A daughter was born to them, a desert flower of exquisite beauty even from its birth. New and unmoved fountains of slumbering and mysterious affections were awakened in the deepest sanctuary of their hearts. In the clear waters of the brook, which chafed over pebbles, turfed with wild sage and numberless desert flowers, under the overhanging pines, in the tops of which the southern breeze played the grand cathedral service of the mountain solitudes, William performed, as priest, father and Christian, the touching ceremony of baptizing his babe. Adding the name Jessy to that of the mother, it was called Jessy Yensi. The sacred rite was performed on the sabbath, as the sun was sinking in cloud-curtained majesty behind the western mountains. Thedomestics, Ellswatta and Josepha, looked on with awe. William read the Scriptures, prayed, and sang a hymn; baptized his babe, and handed the nursling of the desert to Yensi. As she received the beloved infant in her arms, after it had been consecrated, as an inmate in the family of the Redeemer, while tears of tenderness and piety filled her eyes and fell from her cheeks, she declared, that she would no longer invoke the universal Tien, that the God of William and her babe should be her God, and that they would both call on the same name, when they prayed together for the dear babe even unto death.’—Shoshonee Valley, vol. i. p. 52, 53.Of the emotions excited by all the incidents between the cradle and the grave, none can be compared for depth and tenderness to those, called forth by the birth and baptism of the first child of an affectionate and happy husband and wife. Those, for whom this work is more peculiarly intended, will be aware, to what incident in our common stock of remembrances the above extract refers. Delightful sentiments, and yet deeply tinged with sadness! What a mystery is this conjoined miniature image of the parents, the babe itself! What a mystery the world with its mingled lights and shadows, upon which the feeble stranger is entering! What a mystery the unknown bourne to which it is bound! What a mystery the God, to whom it is consecrated! Callous and cold must be the heart of parents, that this mutual pledge of love and duty will not unite in one unchangeable sentiment of love and identity of interest, until death.Note 33, page 122.My views touching the modes, in which the best results of education are to be obtained, whether just or erroneous, have at least the advantage of being entirely practical. I am sufficiently convinced, that there must be an adequate and happy organization and mental development, without which no education, however wise and assiduous, will ever effect anything more, than mediocrity of character and acquirement. In the present state of public opinion, as great mistakes aremade by expecting too much from the training of schools, as were formerly committed by attempting too little. The opulent, and people in the higher walks especially, are tempted by their condition to believe, that wealth and distinction can purchase, and even command mind, and that cultivation of it, by which more enlarged and distinguished minds differ from the common measure of intellect; a mistake, than which no other is more universally, and palpably taught by every day’s experience. The Author of our being reserves, and will never impart his own high prerogative, to bestow mind; and he as often dispenses the noblest and richest endowment of it in the lower, as in the upper walks of life; though, as we have seen, he has indicated, in the order of nature, a process of unlimited improvement of organization and endowment.But the substratum of a practical and well endowed mind, to begin with, being granted, I beg leave to add my conviction to that of M. Droz, a conviction, which, as I think, will resume its authority and influence, when most of the present tedious and endless systems and projects of education will have passed into their merited oblivion. It is, that strong, latent and distinguished character and acquirement receive in domestic education, that predominant and fashioning direction, which they retain through life. The peculiar impress of a parent, a family-friend, a single tutor, is often as distinctly marked upon the whole after life of the scholar, that becomes truly distinguished, as though he had been wax in the hands of a moulder. The numerous tutors of opulent families, and of public institutions, seldom impart the same advantage. Their different views and modes of discipline countervail, and neutralize each other. The Greeks and the great Romans taught at home, the master being a member and an honored one of the family. The master and the pupil walked, conversed, and pursued their amusements together; and the sweet associations of home and the shade and freedom from restraint were conjoined with the lessons. When the good Plutarch paints to us, with his inimitablenaiveté, one of his favorite characters, he indicates as his first felicity, that it was his lotto have the training of an Aristotle, or some similar worthy. Consult the English Plutarch for the same fact. Could all the commencing circumstances of most of the great men, who have lived, be exactly traced, we should find the same truth disclosed. That the development of strong inclination for books, studies and literature depends almost entirely on domestic habits and pursuits, the family, in whichourcommon remembrances centre, is a striking example. During the years, in which the minds of this family received their unchangeable impress, the members were almost as vagrant in their modes, as the Tartars. All their education, except domestic, was exceedingly imperfect and desultory. Books were often wanting; adequate teachers always. But the love of the parents for books and reading was a simple, natural, unaffected and intense impulse. They loved the thing for its own sake, and independent of all its results. The first instruments of pleasure, and things of estimated value, that greeted the infant eyes of the children, were books; not furniture, dress, and the imposing ostentation of a modern parlor. Pleasant conversations, disputes, between laughter and seriousness, about these books, were the first conversations that greeted their listening ears. These conversations were perceived to be of deep and heart-felt interest, and as little mixed with pedantry and formality, as the manifestations of instinct. The children saw, that to those, they most loved, admired, and were disposed to imitate, books were the grand sources of interest, converse and enjoyment. They as naturally imbibed similar tastes, as, to use a coarse illustration, the children of savages learn to love hunting. The first thing for which they contended, and with which they wished to play, was a book, or a picture. Their first lispings were trials of skill, touching the comparative progress, which they had made in their knowledge of the contents of these books, and the application of it to present use. These trials they saw to be the chief points of interest and amusement for their parents. Thus, habits of reading and applicationgrew with their growth and strengthened with their strength; and many a criticism, ifnot erudite and profound, at least eliciting hearty praise and laughter, passed away unrecorded in their domestic privacy. Their neighbors admired, and, I fear, envied, and calumniated; but could not but take astonished note of such results in a family without wealth, without the common appliances, which themselves could so much better afford, and which they had been accustomed to consider the only price, at which intellectual improvement could be purchased. It was placed beyond question, or denial, that the members of that family had right views, quiet and unawed self-respect, and could converse rationally, upon every other topic, as well as books; that tact and discrimination pervaded their manifestations of thought and pursuit; and that they possessed an inexhaustible source of amusement, and satisfaction independent of wealth, fashion, society, distinction, or any external resource whatever—the habit of internal reflection, comparison and pleasant converse with themselves.Parents, when you have imparted to your children habits and tastes, like these, you have bequeathed them an intellectual fortune, which few changes can take away; and which is as strictly independent, as anything earthly can be. You have unlocked to their gratuitous use perennial fountains of innocent and improving enjoyment. You have secured them forever against the heart-wearing gloom ofennui, insufficiency to themselves, and slavish dependence upon others for amusement. Spend as lavishly as you may, in multiplying fashionable instructers, and blazon, as much as you will, the advantages of your children; if they do not perceive, while the rudiments of their taste and habits are forming, that you consider literature, science and the improvement of intellect a matter of paramount interest and importance, you will never cause their stream to flow higher, than your fountain. An occasional parlor lecture, or a high wrought eulogy, will not convince them, or avail to your purpose. They must see this preference, as all others, which they will be inclined to copy, manifested in your whole deportment and conversation.But, while I am convinced, that parents will find efforts totrain their children to be highly intellectual, rowing against the current, unless they evince, themselves, by their habitual examples, that they consider it a higher attainment, to possess literature and conversational powers, than fashion, or wealth or the common objects of pursuit, in other words, that all efficient education must be essentially domestic, I would not be understood to undervalue public schools and colleges. I am aware, that in these places are best imparted the knowledge and adroitness that fit them for the keen scramble of ambitious competition. But in regard to those boys who leave their competitions behind the classes of the university, I think on examination, we shall find, that the germ and the stamina of this progress were early communicated by instruction and example at home. At table, around the evening fire, in the Sabbath walk, in the common family intercourse, in the intervals of the toil of your profession, whatever it be, the taste and the permanent inclination for literature and intellectual cultivation are imparted. This can never be, if behind all your eulogy of these things, you discover, that your ruling passion is money, or the sordid objects of common pursuit.Note 34, page 124.It is a common and, I much fear, a well founded complaint, that some latent mischief in our system of education, political institutions, the ordering of our establishments, or in all these together, has generated, as a prevalent moral evil, filial unkindness and ingratitude. Scramble, competition and rivalry are the first, last, and universally witnessed order of things in our country. Nothing becomes a topic of conversation that is of absorbing interest, but acquisition and distinction. The manifestations of an intellect, sharpened for the pursuit of these things, is the subject of most earnest eulogy. Children, by our usages, are early cast upon their own resources, and taught to shift for themselves. The consequence seems to be, that the parental and filial ties are severed, as soon as the children are able to take care of themselves,almost as recklessly, in regard to subsequent duty, piety or affection, as those of the lower animals. When we see a spectacle so revolting, and unhappily so common, of sons who, as soon as they have realizedthe portion of goods that falleth to them, or of daughters, as soon as they have secured lovers or husbands, forgetting the authors of their days, it becomes us to search deeply for the defect in our discipline, or institutions, that originates the evil. The callous hearts of such children may no longer be appalled by the terrible execution of the Jewish law against such monsters. They may neither feel, nor care, howsharper than a serpent’s tooth, may be this want of filial piety to their parents. But, by a righteous reaction of the divine justice, more terribly vindictive than the threatened judgment of the Jewish law, thankless children bear in their hearts the certain guaranty of their own self-inflicted punishment. They part forever with the purest and noblest sentiments of the human heart; and they procure for themselves the sad certainty of being cast off in their turn, by their children, in the helpless period of their old age.Note 35, page 124.The history of literature proves, that none of the more unworthy sentiments of human nature have been so adverse to friendship, as the vanity of literary rivals. From many noble examples of a contrary kind, which we might cite, I select the intercourse between Racine and Boileau. When Racine was persuaded, that his malady would end in death, he charged his eldest son to write to M. de Cavoye, to ask him to solicit the payment of what was due of his pension, that his family might not be left without ready money. He wrote the letter and read it to his father. ‘Why did you not,’ said he, ‘request the payment of the pension of Boileau at the same time? Write again, and let him know, that I was his friend in death.’ This friend came to receive his last adieu. Racine rose in bed, as far as his weakness would allow. As he embraced his friend, he said ‘I regard it a happiness to die in your presence.’Note 36, page 126.The celebrated Voiture, one of thebeaux espritsof the age of Louis XIII. had lost all his money, and had an immediate call for 200 pistoles. He wrote to the Abbe Costar, his faithful friend. This admirable letter presents us with a trait of that confidence and frankness, which sincere friendship inspires. It was this.‘I yesterday lost all my money, and 200 pistoles more, which I have promised to pay today. If you have that sum, do not fail to send it. If not, borrow it. Obtain it, as you may, you must lend it me. Be careful, to allow no one to anticipate you, in giving me this pleasure. I should be concerned lest it might affect my love for you. I know you so well, that I am aware, you would find it difficult to console yourself. To avoid this misfortune, rather sell what will raise it. You see how imperious my love for you is. I take a pleasure in conducting in this manner towards you. I feel, that I should have a still greater, if you would be as frank with me. But you have not my courage in this point. Judge, if I am not perfectly assured in regard to you, since I will give my promise to him, who shall bring the money.’ The Abbe Costar replied—‘I feel extreme joy, to be in condition to render you the trifling service, you ask of me. I had never thought, that one could purchase so much pleasure for 200 pistoles. Having experienced it, I give you my word, that, for the rest of my life, I will retain a little capital, always ready for your occasions. Order confidently at your pleasure. You cannot take half the satisfaction in commanding, that I shall in obeying. But submissive as you may find me in other respects, I shall be revolted, if you wish to compel me to take a promise from you.’Note 37, page 128.Although I do not intend to cite in this place the story of Damon and Pythias, nor to harp upon discussions of a theme,upon which there has been more odious prosing, and more semblance of sentiment than all others, yet a subject, intrinsically of the first importance, and founded in nature, can never cease to have claims upon attention, in consequence of having been hackneyed to thread-bare triteness. There is such an affection, as friendship. It belongs to man, and is the highest honor of his nature, less gross and terrene, than the short epilepsy, the transient and fitful fever of the senses, commonly dignified with the name of love, and warmer, more exhilarating, and elevated, than mere esteem, and common liking; it excites, without inflaming; it thrills, without jealousy, corroding fear, or morbid solicitude. It is that sentiment, which a poet would naturally assign to intellectual beings of a higher order, who were never invested with the corporeal elements of mortality.I wish those, most dear to me, implicitly to believe in friendship. I would a thousand times prefer, that they should err on the side of credulity, than of suspicion and distrust. I deprecate, above all things, that they should give up human nature. I consider real misanthropy the last misfortune. I would, rather, my children should meet with treachery and inconstancy every day of their lives, than resign themselves to the morbid and heartless persuasion, weakly considered an attribute of wisdom and greatness, that men are altogether selfish, and unworthy of confidence. It is a persuasion, that not only forever invests the universe in an Egyptian gloom, ‘that may be felt,’ but, by an energetic bearing on all the faculties and sources of feeling, causes the heart, that entertains such views to become what it believes to be the character of the species.No scruples of false decorum shall withhold me from saying, that, amidst all the selfishness, which optics of the most charitable vision could not but discover on every side, I have seen friendship, pure, holy, disinterested, like that of the angels; nay, more—have been myself the subject of it. My heart swells, and will to its latest pulsation, with the remembered proofs. True, the instances, that have fallenwithin the compass of my experience, are very few. But they are sufficient to settle my conviction, that the sentiment, which has inspired the enthusiasm of eloquence, painting and song, in all time, is not the illusion of a weak and misguided imagination. Selfish as man is, we often see instances of the most generous and devoted friendship, even in this silver age, the age of revenue and political economy.With my author I believe, that where the sentiment exists between a man and a woman, admitting each to possess the estimable endowments peculiar to each sex, and so exists, as not to be modified by any of those countless associations of another order of sentiment, that almost imperceptibly invest relations between the two sexes, it is more vivid, permanent and disinterested, more capable of making sacrifices, and more tender and delightful than it can be between persons of the same sex. Of this class are the most noble, touching and sublime examples of a constancy under every form of proof, that the history of the human heart records.While every one is sensible, that there must exist between characters, that are susceptible of all the fidelity and beauty of this sentiment, a certain adaptation of circumstances, and conformity of disposition, mind, development and temperament, I believe with St Pierre, that it is desirable, that there should be a certain contrast as well as much fitness. Constant assentation, the same opinions, tastes, tempers and views have been found by experience, not to generate the most permanent, and pleasant unions of the sort. The moral, as well as the physical appetite, would grow weary of perpetual uniformity and unvarying similarity, and requires the spice, afforded by the mixture of various ingredients of affectionate contrariety. Both the love and friendship, most likely to endure, spring up between the placid and piquant, the tranquil and energetic, the monotonously sweet tempered and the sensitive, whose irritability is held in check by good sense, kindness and self-control;—between the temperament, connected with blue eyes and fair hair, and that of the keen, deep black eye, and raven locks. ‘Soldiers,’says St Pierre, ‘on long and distant expeditions, should be associated with ministers, lawyers with naturalists, and in general, the strongest contrasts of profession’—all nature’s discord thus making all nature’s peace. But I am perfectly aware, that there will be great danger of making fatal mistakes, in acting on this principle. I am confident, that is true in the abstract; but let sentimentalists beware of trenching too confidently on ground, where the limits between safety and ruin are so narrow, and difficult to discern. Doves of a different feather may pair happily, but not doves and vultures. There must be a certain compatibility not only of character, but of age, condition and circumstances, as we are broadly instructed in the fable of the frog thinking to wed with the ox.Any discussion of the details, touching the requisite circumstances of compatibility to form friendships with any chance of their being pleasant and permanent, as well as the obligations and duties involved by it, would require a volume, and would carry me utterly beyond my present purpose. Books are ample, if not interesting and just, in the information which they impart upon this subject. With my views of its obligations and duties in few words, I shall dismiss it.In a pecuniary point of view the claims of friendship are only limited by the sterner demands of justice. The common adage, which calls upon us to be just, before we allow ourselves to be generous, is worthy to be written in letters of gold; though it has been a thousand times wrested by selfish and cold hearts, into a pretext for their avarice. Whoever should think of lavishing his money upon a friend, in order to absolve himself from the more difficult calls of justice, would show a mind, too weak and incapable of discrimination, to honor that friend by his bounty. But, grant that the friends have delicacy, consideration and gentlemanly tact, and they may possess a common purse, without danger to the duties of either.The fame and character of the one are strictly the property of the other. Let no one, who has the least particle ofthe base alloy of envy in his feelings towards him, whom he calls his friend, who is willing to hear, and countenance abatements of his qualities, talents, or virtues, dare to assume that almost sacred name. He is equally unworthy of it, if he stand by in neutrality when calumny is busily passing against him; and still more, if by smiles he gives his countenance, and half his consent to the story of detraction and abatement. It is a forfeiture of the right to the name, though it may be a less worthy one, to make the person, called friend, the subject of jest and ridicule. In regard to all these points, the duties are clear, distinct, palpable and not to be compromised. Every honorable mind feels, in witnessing any infraction of the laws of equity, or strict justice, a sentiment of recoil and disgust, difficult perhaps to define, but one which instantly designates the person guilty of it, as unworthy of the name of friend. Honest, frank and disinterested advice, especially in relation to concerns of great interest to the party, is a paramount obligation, whether the advised will bear, or forbear. This prerogative may, indeed, be claimed by unfeeling and rude bluntness. But, by a discriminating mind, the suggestions of a counterfeit, will never be mistaken for those of genuine friendship.The time, the courtesy and the amount of intercourse, due from one friend to another, can never be brought under subjection to rules. Moral, like physical attraction, acting unconsciously, will regulate this portion of duty, with the unvarying certainty of the laws of nature. If persons, claiming to sustain this relation to each other, do not wish to be as much together, as duty and propriety will admit; if they allow this matter to be settled by the rigid tithing of etiquette, they are anything rather than real friends.I have been struck by an incident in the life of a religious woman, I think it was Mrs Graham. There was a sacramental pledge between her and a friend, that, whichever of them should be first called from life, the other should visit her in the sickness, which she should consider her last, and not leave her, until she had received her last sigh. Sublime test of affection!What a tender, sacred office, after a life of friendship, thus, by a sacramental contract, to close the eyes of the friend beloved in life, and separated only by death! There can be no doubt that the feelings, called thus into action, are peculiarly fitted to mitigate the last sorrows; and in the simple grandeur of such a sentiment, so manifested, the departing friend will see a proof, that such affections are, in their own nature, immortal; and that such ties shall be renewed in the eternal regions of the living.When friends are separated wide from each other by distance, duty, and the stern calls of our pursuits, I admire the custom of baptizing, if I may so say, our remembrances, by giving the names of our dear and distant friends to the hills, valleys, streams, trees or pleasant views in our walks; or the objects most familiar and pleasant to our view. The stern silence of nature may thus be compelled to find a tongue, and discourse with us of those we love.In a word, the name, I am sensible, is too often a morbid mockery of cold and affected sentimentalism, both weak and disgusting, the cant term for the intercourse between the enlarged prisoners of boarding schools. But the sentiment exists, pure, simple delightful. Neither fawning, nor cant, nor flattery, nor any mixture of earth’s mould makes any part of it. Honorable, dignified, unshaken, it feels its obligations, and discharges them. The reputation, character and whole interest of the friend is its object; and his highest happiness its prayer. In holy segregation from the hollow intercourse, false phrases and deceitful compliments of fashion, and what is called the world, it is faithful and consistent, under all proofs and trials, until death; and when the eyes of the departed are closed, his memory is enshrined in the remembrance of the survivor. Thank God! I have seen, I have felt, that there are such friendships; and if there is anything honorable, dignified and attractive in aught, that earth presents, it is the sight of two friends, whose attachment dates from their first remembered sentiment; and has survived difference of opinion and interest, the changes of distance,time and disease, and those weaning influences, which, while they crumble the most durable monuments, convert most hearts to stone.
‘Why drew Marseilles’ good bishop purer breath,When the air sickened, and each gale was death?’
‘Why drew Marseilles’ good bishop purer breath,When the air sickened, and each gale was death?’
‘Why drew Marseilles’ good bishop purer breath,
When the air sickened, and each gale was death?’
Because he was sustained by a cheerful reliance upon Providence, a firm determination to do his duty, and have no fear of consequences. The whole scope of my own observation, beside the sick bed, perfectly coincides with these views. I do not say that there are not numberless exceptions. But of this I am confident, that the general rule is, that persons who attend the sick and dying, in cases of epidemic disease of a mortal type, with a fearless and cheerful mind, escape; while the timid, who are alarmed and have an implicit belief in the danger of contagion, succumb.
Note 19, page 83.
If there ever was an age when invalids and the suffering might promise themselves sympathy in the dolorous detail of their symptoms, which is questionable, it certainly is not now, during the era of labor-saving machinery, political economy, and the all-engrossing influence of money and corporate achievement. He who now suffers from acute pain, in any form, will do wisely to summon all his strength andphilosophy to suppress any manifestation in his countenance and muscles, rather than task his eloquence in framing his tale of symptoms.
This whole chapter upon health abounds in the highest practical wisdom, and the hints in it might easily be expanded to a volume. I only add, that I earnestly recommend a poem upon the same subject, one, as it seems to me, among the most classical and beautiful in our language, and which has become strangely and undeservedly obsolete—Dr Armstrong’s Art of Health.
Note 20, page 83.
How often have similar thoughts pressed upon my mind, as I have stood over the bed of the sick and dying! Here is the peculiar empire of minds truly and nobly benevolent, where the head and main prop of a family is preparing to conflict with the last enemy: where pain and groans, terror and death, fill the foreground, and the dim but inevitable perspective of desolation, struggle and want, in contact with indifference and selfishness, opens in the distance before the survivors. Let us thank God for religion. Philosophy may inculcate stern endurance and wise submission; but knows not a fit and adequate remedy. The hopes and the example imparted by himwho went about doing good, are alone sufficient for the relief of such cases, of which, alas! our world is full.
Note 21, page 86.
No view of human life is more consoling or just than that presented in these paragraphs. Yet no human calculation will ever reach the sum of agony that has been inflicted by the jealousy, envy and heart-burning that have resulted from that most erroneous persuasion, that certain conditions and circumstances of life bring happiness in themselves. Beautifully has the bible said, that ‘God has set one thing over against another’—has balanced the real advantages of the different human conditions. The result of my experiencewould leave me in doubt and at a loss, in selecting the condition which I should deem most congenial to happiness. I should have to balance abundance of food, on the one hand, against abundance of appetite, on the other; the habit superinduced by the necessity of being satisfied with a little, with the habit of being disgusted with the trial of much. There are joys, numerous and vivid, peculiar to the rich; and others, in which none but those in the humbler conditions of life can participate. In the whole range of the enjoyment of the senses, if there be any advantage, it belongs to the poor. The laws of our being have surrounded the utmost extent of human enjoyment with adamantine walls, which one condition can no more overleap than another. It is wonderful to see this admirable adjustment, like the universal laws of nature, acting everywhere and upon everything. Even in the physical world, what is granted to one country is denied to another; and the wanderer who has seen strange lands and many cities, in different climes, only returns to announce, as the sum of his experience and the teaching of years, that light and shadow, comfort and discomfort, pleasure and pain, like air and water, are diffused in nearly similar measures over the whole earth.
Note 21a, page 88.
It needs but little acquaintance with human condition to perceive, in the general adjustment of advantages settled by Providence, that great proportions of them have been thrown into opposite scales, and so contrasted that the selection of one class implies the rejection of the other. For example, smitten with the thousand temptations of wealth, you are determined to be rich. Be it so. Industry, frugality and the convergence of your faculties to this single point will hardly fail to render you so. But then you will not be so absurd as to envy another the fame of talents and acquirements which required absorbing devotion to pursuits incompatible with yours.
You are rich, and complain of satiety andennui. Knewyou not, when you determined to be rich, that poor people sing and dance about their cabin fires? You have gained power and distinction and discovered the heartless selfishness of your competitors and dependents. Were you ignorant that friendship can only be purchased by friendship; and that, in selecting your all-engrossing pursuit, you have precluded yourself from furnishing your quota of the reciprocity? The choices of life are alternatives. You may select from this scale, or that. But, in most cases, you cannot take from both. How much murmuring would be arrested if this most obvious truth were understood and men would learn to be satisfied with their alternative! Choose wisely and deliberately; and then quietly repose on your choice. Say, ‘I have this; another has that. I am certain that I have my choice. I do not know but his condition was forced upon him.’
Note 22, page 89.
If I have ever allowed myself the indulgence of envy, it is after having tasted the pleasure of rewarding merit, or relieving distress, in thinking how continually such celestial satisfactions are within the reach of the opulent. What a calm is left in the mind after having wiped away tears! What aspirations are excited in noting the joy and gratitude consequent upon misery relieved! How delightful to recur to the remembrance during the vigils of the night watches! How it expands the heart to reflect upon the consciousness of the all powerful and all good Being, measuring the circuit of the universe in doing good! Unhappily, the experience of all time demonstrates that the possession of opulence and power not only has no direct tendency to inspire increased sensibility to such satisfactions, but has an opposite influence. For one, rendered more kind and benevolent by good fortune, how many become callous, selfish and proud by it! Kindly and wisely has Providence seen fit to spare most men this dangerous trial.
Note 23, page 92.
This chapter of the author, among the rest, has been obnoxious to severe strictures. I am sensible that the young require the exercise of cautious discretion in few questions more than in this, ‘How far is it wise to disregard public opinion?’ To press the point too far is to incur the reputation of eccentricity and arrogant confidence in our own judgment. Implicitly to copy the expressions and habits of the multitude precludes all pursuit of happiness by system; and reduces the whole inquiry to the injunction, to walk with the rest, and add ourennuiand disappointment to the mass of the unhappiness of all those who have gone before. If certain modes appear to me, after the most deliberate examination, conducive to my happiness, why should I be deterred from adopting them, because I am not countenanced by the general opinion and example of a crowd, each individual of which I should altogether reject as a teacher and an example? If I avow that the ten thousand, in all time, have formed the most erroneous judgments, touching the wisdom of human pursuits, why should I continue blindly to copy their errors? He is certainly the most fortunate man who, if an exact account of his sensations and thoughts could be cast into a sum at his last hour, would be found to have enjoyed the greatest number of agreeable moments, pleasurable sensations and happy reflections. If to court retirement, repose, the regulation of the desires and passions, and the cultivation of those affections which are best nurtured in the shade, be the most certain route to happiness, why should I be swayed from choosing that path by the suggestions of ambition, avarice and the spirit of the world, which enjoin the common course?
Yet every one is, more or less, a slave to the prevalent fashions of thinking and acting. How much vile hypocrisy does this slavery which covers the face of society with a vast mask of semblance, engender? Contemplate the routine of all the professions which we make and infringe in a single day, in the manifest violation of our inward thought andbelief; and we must admit that the world agrees to enact a general lie, alike deceiving and deceived, through terror of being the first to revolt against the thraldom of opinion. The very persons, too, who cherish the profoundest secret contempt for the judgment of the multitude, are generally the loudest and the first in decrying any departure from the standard of public opinion almost as an immorality.
I would by no means desire to see those most dear to me arrogantly setting at defiance received ideas and usages. These have, as the author justly remarks, a salutary moral sway in repressing the influence of the impudent and abandoned. I am not insensible to the danger of following our independent judgment beyond the limits of a regulated discretion. But there is no trait in the young for which I feel a more profound respect, than the fixed resolve to consult their own light, in setting the rules of their conduct and selecting their alternatives. A calm and reflecting independence, an unshaken firmness in encountering vulgar prejudices, is what I admire as the evidence of strong character, fearless thinking and capability of self-direction.
Note 24, page 98.
How often must every reflecting mind have been led to similar views of human nature! To form just estimates and entertain right sentiments of our kind, we must not contemplate men under the action of the narrowness of sectarian hate, or through the jaundiced vision of party feeling. We must see them in positions like those so happily presented by the author, when great and sweeping calamities level men to the consciousness and the sympathies of a common nature, and a sense of common exposure to misery, and open the fountains of generous feeling. Who has not seen men, on such occasions, forget their pride, their miserable questions of rank and precedence, and meet with open arms and the mingled tears of gratitude and relief, persons, the view of whom under other circumstances, would have called forth only feelings of scornful comparison and reckless contempt?
The incident of the hostile French and German posts is a singularly touching one. In what a horrid light does it place the character and passions of princes, generals, conquerors and warriors, in all time, who for their measureless cupidity, or the whim of their ambition, have used these amiable beings, formed with natural sympathies to aid and love each other, as the mechanical engines of their purposes, to meet breast to breast as enemies, and plunge the murderous steel into each others’ hearts! Hence, rivers of life blood have flowed as uselessly as rain falls upon the ocean! It is difficult to determine whether we ought most to execrate the accursed ambition of the few, or despise the weak stupidity of the many who have been led, unresistingly, like animals to the slaughter, only the more firmly to rivet the chains of the survivors. What a view does war present, of the miserable ignorance, the brute stupidity of the mass of the species, and the detestable passions of those called the great, in all time! Who does not exult to see the era, every day approaching, when men will be too wise, too vigilant and careful of their rights to become instruments in the hands of others; when the rational consciousness of their own predominant physical power shall be guided by wisdom, self-watchfulness and self-respect? Then, instead of being tamely led out to slay each other, when invoked to this detestable sport of kings, they will show their steel to their oppressors.
Note 24a, page 99.
I am as much impressed with the eloquence of this passage as with its truth. I reserve more particular views of religion for comments on the letter upon the subject. I wish to present in this place, as consonant with the spirit of this passage, one view of religion which has long been one of my most fixed and undoubting conclusions. It is, that man is a religious being, by the organic constitution of his frame, still more than by any intellectual process of reasoning. I have no doubt, that a rightly organized and well endowed man, born and reared in a desert isle, without ever being broughtinto contact with man or any discipline to call forth reason or speech, would be subject to precisely the same emotions as, varied and moulded by the circumstances of birth and education, constitute the substance of all the religions in the world; in other words, that man is constituted a religious animal in the same way as he clearly is an animal with other instincts and passions. I am aware, that divines and moralists do not often insist upon the religious instinct, as one of the most conclusive and convincing arguments (to me, at least,) of the soul’s immortality. It seems with them the favorite view to consider religion a science that may be taught, like geometry or chemistry.
To me, this absorbing subject presents a very different aspect. I see man everywhere religious in some form. The sentiment takes the molding of his accidental circumstances. It is poetry, enthusiasm, eloquence, bravery; but in every form an aspiration after the vast, illimitable, eternal, shadowy conceptions of an unknown hereafter, that the senses have not embodied. It is rational or fanciful, it is respectable or superstitious, it is a pure abstraction or a gorgeous appeal to the senses, according to one’s country, training and temperament. But man, whether he be a dweller in the far isles of the sea, or in the crowded mart, whether christian or savage, is everywhere found, in some form, invoking a God and reposing the hopes and affections of his worn heart in another and a better world; and extending his faith to an immortal life and an eternal sphere of action.
Instead of searching for this universal principle with metaphysicians, pronouncing upon it with dogmatists, or deducing it from creeds, or creeds from it, I behold in it the same unwritten revelation which we call instinct. Vague and undefined as is this law, and questioned by some as is even its existence, it announces to us one of the most impressive and beautiful homilies upon the truth and goodness of the Author of our being. It may be called the scripture of the lower orders, guiding them, with unerring certainty, to their enjoyments and their end. Beasts feel it, and graze the plain. Birds feel it, and soar in the air. Fishes feel it, and dartalong their liquid domain; each feeding, moving, resting, playing and perpetuating its kind, according to its organic laws. Winter comes upon the gregarious tribes of water fowls enjoying themselves in the Canadian lakes. They listen to this call from heaven, and mount the autumnal winds; and without chart or compass, by a course to which that of circumnavigators is devious, they sail to the shores of the south, where a softer atmosphere and new supplies of food await them. It leads the young one of these animals, scarcely yet disengaged from the shell, to patter its bill in the dry sand, impatiently to search for water before it has yet seen it. It creates in the new born infant a purpose to search for its supplies in the yet untasted fountains of the maternal bosom. It guides all the lower orders of being through the whole mysterious range of their peculiar habits and modes of life. Under its influence, animals and men exercise powers which transcend the utmost efforts of our reason. Who can tell me why the duckling plunges into the water with the shell on its head? Who can inform me how the affectionate house dog, blindfolded and conveyed in utter darkness in a carriage to a distance of fifty leagues, the moment he is emancipated, returns by a more direct route than that by which he came? There would be no use in presenting the most extended details of these developments of instinct through the whole range of animated nature. Every one knows that wherever we discern them, either in the structure or habits of the animal, or both, they are indications of unerring guidance, the voice of eternal and unswerving truth, which, as soon as promulgated, is received as the parental counsel of the Author of nature.
He who could interpret the language and the gestures of the lower orders would see in the structure and manifested wants of fishes, that water was provided as a home for them, had he seen them in the air. When he had noted the movements and heard the cries of the new born infant, he would be in no doubt, that the nutriment in the maternal bosom was stored for it somewhere. Seeing the structure, the starting pinions and plumage of the unfledged bird in its nest, hecould be at no loss in reasoning, that as these indications of contrivance for other modes of life were lost in its present manner of existence, it was intended for movements, where pinions and plumage would avail it.
As certain as these instincts and indications are the pledged verity of the Author of nature, that a sphere is provided for the exercise of these undeveloped powers, and a corresponding gratification for these instinctive desires, so sure as they point out, in a language, which can neither deceive nor be mistaken, the aim and end of the animal to which they belong, so sure, if religion be an instinctive sentiment, and the hope, and the persuasion of another existence result from the organic constitution of our nature, there must be another life. That it is so, the usages and modes of all people that have yet been known, the people of the first ages, and the last, the people of the highest refinement, and those, who scarcely know the use of fire, have concurred to prove to us. Superficial travellers, indeed, have told us of newly discovered tribes, who had no visions of a God—a worship, or an hereafter. Other travellers have followed them, and observed better, and discovered, that their predecessors based the fact on their own ignorance. They have been found to belong to the general analogy, and to look to
‘Some happier land in depth of woods embraced;Some lovelier island in the watery waste.’
‘Some happier land in depth of woods embraced;Some lovelier island in the watery waste.’
‘Some happier land in depth of woods embraced;
Some lovelier island in the watery waste.’
It seems to me, that this universal agreement of religious ideas is the most unequivocal manifestation, that the sentiment of religion is an instinct, that is exhibited in the whole range of animated nature. If so, it is the offered pledge of the divine veracity, that the soul is immortal; and that as certain as the instinct of migrating birds is proof, that the milder skies which they seek, exist, and are prepared for them, so surely the undeveloped powers of the spirit, which have no range on the earth, have a country prepared also for them. Our aspirations, ourlongings after immortality, every mode of worship, and every form of faith—are the rudiments, thegerms, the starting pinions of the embryo spirit, which is to escape from its nest at death, and fly in the celestial atmosphere, in which it was formed to move.
To me these universal religious manifestations are proofs, that religion springs not, as some suppose, from tradition; or, as others think, from reasoning. It is a sentiment. It is an inwrought feeling in our mental constitution, an unwritten, universal, and everlasting gospel, pointing to God and immortality. Bring the most uninstructed peasant, who has seen nothing of the earth, but its plains, in sight of Chimborazo. The thrill of awe and sublimity, that springs within him at the view, and lifts his spirit above the blue summits to the divinity, is one of the forms, in which this sentiment acts. The natural mental movements, in view of the illimitable main, of the starry firmament, of elevated mountains, of whatever is vast in dimension, irresistible in power, terrible in the exercise of anger, in short, all those emotions, which we call the sublime, are modified actings of the religious sentiment. Justly has the author pronounced the universality of these ideas the highest testimony to the elevation of human nature. It is the most impressive and interesting attribute of the soul, that it is subject to these impulses. It is a standing index, that the godlike stranger, imprisoned in clay, has, inwrought in its consciousness, indelible impressions of its future destiny.
Note 25, page 101.
Whoever philosophically considers the constitution of the human mind—how much we are the creatures of our circumstances, how much we are blown about by impulse and passion, the dimness of our own mental vision upon most subjects, the narrow limit, which separates between truth and falsehood, right and wrong, and moreover, that we ourselves view everything through the coloring of our own pride and prejudice—will perceive at once, that, under all circumstances of error and even of crime, men are quite as worthy of pity, as of vindictive blame. A little, cold andselfish mind invariably finds much matter for bitter censure in every act, that, according to its own chart, is an aberration. On the contrary, nothing, in my estimate, so decidedly marks a generous and noble, as well as an enlightened and a philosophic spirit, as the disposition to be indulgent in its construction of the views and conduct of others, and to interpret all by the comment of palliation and kindness, whenever the case will admit of them. Great minds fail not to be conscious what a weak, miserable compound of vanity, impulse, ignorance and selfishness is that lord of creation, that passive molding of circumstances, which we call man. Of course in calmly scanning his views and conduct, all other sensations than those of pity and kindness, die away within him. As the human mind is exalted by its light, and its intrinsic elevation towards the divinity, in the same proportion it soars above the mists of its own passions and prejudices, and sees little in humanity to inspire other feelings, than those of compassion and benevolence. What is the view of human nature, presented to a wise and good man?
‘’Tis but to know how little can be known,To see all others’ faults, and feel our own.’
‘’Tis but to know how little can be known,To see all others’ faults, and feel our own.’
‘’Tis but to know how little can be known,
To see all others’ faults, and feel our own.’
Note 26, page 102.
I am not certain, that the real spirit of tolerance has made so much progress in this age, as is commonly imagined. Who among us admits in practice, as well as theory, that the mind is passive in receiving evidence, and forming conclusions, which it cannot shape, except according to impressions, which it has much less power to exclude, or evade, than is generally believed? Who among us acts on the conviction, that errors of opinion are almost invariably involuntary? Every view of human nature, and the laws of the human mind ought to inspire us with an unlimited feeling of tolerance towards those who differ from us in opinion, howsoever widely. We cannot fail so to feel, if we reflect that, had we been in their situation, and under their circumstances, and they in ours, our views might have been reversed. Yet it is scarcely possible to converse with any one a few moments, without startingthem by some opposing opinion, that jars with their excited feelings and a certain amount of estrangement is the result. Who can conduct a disputed point, in politics or religion, with an unruffled temper? Angry disputation is only another form of intolerance. If we narrowly inspect the actings of human nature, we shall discover, that the whole world is composed of individuals, almost every one of whom thinks he has a right to be offended with every other one, who does not adopt his opinions.
It is very true, that the age of actual persecution, by fines, imprisonment and death, is gone by. But this results rather from practical political progress of ideas, than from a settled conviction that no one mind has a right to find, in the opinions of another mind, cause of offence. Whoever cannot look upon the most opposite faith and opinions of his neighbor, in religion, in politics, and the ordinary concerns of life, without any feeling of temper and bitterness, in view of that difference, is in heart and spirit intolerant. In this view, who can justly and fully lay claim to toleration? The whole world is divided into millions of little parties and sects, often finding the bitterest germs of contention in the smallest differences. Scarcely one in ten thousand, of all these sects and parties, has real philosophic magnanimity enough to perceive, that all other men have as much claim for indulgence to their opinions, as he exacts for his own.
Note 27, page 102.
It would be amusing, if such important consequences did not flow from the error, to perceive, how much weight most people attach to the sect and party to which the persons, about whom they are forming an estimate, belong. The externals, the deportment, dress and manner are often strongly influenced by these matters; but the mental complexion or temperament far less than is commonly supposed. We meet with people, every day, of the most exclusive and bigoted creeds, who act liberally: and again with people, who have much liberality and catholicism in their mouths, and very little in their temper and spirit. I have met with liberal andilliberal people, in almost equal proportions, in all the sects, parties and denominations, with which I have been acquainted. Still, I do not, as from these remarks it might be inferred that I do, deem error, even in abstract opinions, such as those which appertain to religious and metaphysical subjects, as of no consequence. But I have not time, nor have I place, in a note, for explaining my convictions on this subject.
Note 27a, page 104.
An indiscreet and exaggerating zeal often injures the cause it would wish to serve. The gospel is best sustained by its own unborrowed glory, and is prejudiced by adventitious appendages. I have often heard ministers declare, from the pulpit, that the duty of forgiveness, and of loving and doing good to enemies was a peculiar discovery of the gospel, a precept unknown before. We have never considered it among the objects of the mission of our Lord, to reveal a new code of morals. The grand eternal principles of this science were originally engraven on the heart. Man could not have existed in society without them. Whoever has read the elaborate and eloquent treatises of heathen moralists, will perceive, that there was little left incomplete in the code; and that these sublime virtues were eulogized, as beautiful and just in theory, if not to be expected in practice. It is the spirit, unction and tenderness of gospel inculcation, that is unique and original. The heathen ethical writers had not failed to enjoin it upon the members of communities, to aid and love one another. But it is only necessary to glance upon the apostolic epistles, to see that Christians were a new and peculiar people, bound together by cords of affection, altogether unknown in the previous records of the human heart. What tenderness, what love,stronger than death, what sublime disinterestedness! How reckless to the sordid motives of ambition and interest, which ruled the surrounding world! We scarcely need other evidence, that this simplicity of love, so unlike aught the world had seen before, was not an affection of earthly mold; and that this new and strong people were not bound together byties, which had relation to the grossness of earthly bonds. To me there is something inexpressibly delightful and of which I am never weary, in contemplating the originality and simplicity of early Christian affection, nor is it one of the feeblest testimonies to the glory and divinity of the gospel.
For the rest, I have much abridged the paragraphs, to which this note alludes, and have interpolated some expressions, not found in the original—because I would not allow myself to leave anything equivocal, touching my own views of the importance of Christian morals and example.
It would be useless to add to the beautiful views, presented by the author, of the disposition to oblige, and the necessity of cultivating modesty, and an equal and serene temper. One cannot enlarge upon these beaten topics, as he has foreseen, without running into common-places. These virtues are preëminently their own reward. Whoever chooses to indulge the opposite tempers has only to reflect, that he assumes the thankless office of becoming a self-tormentor, and injures no one so much as himself. Of these fierce passions, the heathen poets have given us an affecting emblem in the undying vultures, gnawing upon the ever growing entrails of Tityus. If you would form the sublimest conceptions of the eternal and underived satisfaction of the divinity, cultivate dispositions to oblige, and seize occasions to practise beneficence. If you would image more impressive ideas of the torment of demons than poets have dreamed, muse upon injuries; cultivate envy and revenge, and wish that you had the bolts of the thunderer, only that you might hurl them upon your foes. If you would experience the eternal gnawing of the vulture allow yourself in the constant indulgence of your temper.
Note 28, page 109.
To those, who have already assumed this tie, or contemplate assuming it, not a word need be said upon the most worn of all themes, the paramount influence of marriage, beyond all other relations, in imparting the coloring of brightness orgloom to all subsequent life. The place, in which the only satisfactions of life, that are worth any serious pursuit, are to be found, is within the domestic walls. Honor, fame, wealth, luxury, literary distinction, everything is extrinsic, and hollow, everything the mere mockery and shadow of joy, but the comfort of a quiet and affectionate home. Whoever does not share this faith with me, will hardly be enlightened to the true sources of enjoyment by any lucubrations of mine. Instead of details and declamation upon this truth, I present an unvarnished, unexaggerated view, an abstract, if I may so say, of the circumstances, under which the greater number of marriages are consummated in our country, and I imagine, in most civilized countries. It may not embrace the exact train of the incidents connected with every case; but will serve, in the phrase of the makers of calendars, ‘without material variation,’ as an outline of the history of those courtships that terminate in matrimony. What wonder, that wedded life is so often unhappy!
I am compelled to believe, that very few marriages take place in consequence of such an intimate acquaintance of the parties with each other’s unsophisticated and interior character, as to justify the chances of affection and domestic happiness. The first adverse circumstance is, that both are constantly on such a trial to make a show of wit, good temper, and manners, as to render the whole scene, from commencement to close, a drama, in which all is acting; in which there is no admission to the real life behind the scenes, until after marriage. How often does the actor or actress, who successfully personated a wit, and an angel, detect in the other party a simpleton, a brute, or a termagant! The walk of life, in which they are found, may vary the shades, but it changes not the natural circumstances of a picture, which, in its broader features, applies alike to elevated and humble life.
The parties, in the bloom of life, in all the excitement of juvenile buoyancy, moving in the illumined atmosphere of imagination, meet at the party, ball-room, assembly, church, or other place of concourse, for which the young dress, tolook around, and be gazed upon. They are clad in their gayest, and stand on their best. No airs, or graces, that mothers, or friends, or society, or their Chesterfield, or their imaginations can suggest, are pretermitted. No attempted inflictions are spared from any relentings of mercy. Many gratuitous nods and smiles and remarks, and much odious affectation, inspired by the love of conquest, pass well enough in the tinsel illusion of the scene and circumstances. Accident brings the couple into contact. They sing, dance, walk, converse, or, in some of these ways, are thrown together. Or, perhaps, some officious mediator reports, to the one, flattering remarks made by the other. The first impulses to the acquaintance are those of vanity, and the instinctive attraction of persons, so situated, towards each other. A vague and momentary liking, which might be effaced, as easily as mists vanish in the sun, is the result. The lady, from the delicacy of her organization, and the quickness of her perceptions, is the first aware of the new state of mutual feeling; and by conjoining a happy combination of coquetry, shyness, and encouragement, adds fuel to the kindling spark. They converse apart, and the masonic pressure of hands is interchanged. Compliments ensue, more or less polished, and eloquent, according to their native readiness and artificial training. Vanity comes in with her legion of auxiliaries, and, in the same proportion as memory invests this intercourse with pleasant sensations and agreeable associations, conversation with other persons, between whom and themselves these processes have not commenced, becomes tasteless and irksome; and ennui in all other society does its part to put imagination in action. They find themselves weary and sad in separation. Fancy runs riot and begins to weave her fairy tissue, and to build her oriental bowers. The parties are now in love, as they believe, and as the world pronounces. Now commence the hours of poetry and sentimentality; and the spring time of their new born passion. Not a moment, for discriminating observation of each other’s character, has yet occurred.
The freshness of the vernal inclination acquires the fervorof settled and summer passion. The preliminaries of form are commenced; and under such associations, and with such mutual inclinations, incompatibility, unfitness, opposition of friends, all obstacles that are not absolutely insurmountable, disappear. What parent can resist the impassioned eloquence of a child, or contemplate for a moment the prospect of inflicting the agony of a disappointed and hopeless love! Have they measured each other’s understanding and good sense? No: this requires a discrimination, for which in the fever, the delirium of the senses, they have no capacity. Know they aught of each other’s worth and good temper? No. Lovers find nothing to jar their temper, or try their disposition. Surrounded by a halo of imagination, everything about them is invested with its brilliancy. The silliest remark of theinamoratasounds in the ears of the lover, like the response of an oracle; and he is astonished and enraged that all others do not see, and hear with him. Everything that is said becomes wisdom, and everything done noble and graceful. Who has not heard all these ascriptions, all these extravagant eulogies, applied to a fair female, uttering nothing, and incapable of uttering anything, but voluble and vapid nonsense; or worse, ebullitions of envy, detraction and bad feeling! Meanwhile, the parties, enveloped in illusion, would not see real character, if they could; and could not, if they would. Is this extravagant, or exaggerated? Let the well known fact, that sensible men oftener marry fools, and gifted women coxcombs, than otherwise, be received as evidence, that this great transaction is generally commenced, and terminated under a spell, in which the actors see nothing, as it really is, and as it appears to disinterested spectators. After having united many hundred pairs myself, and seen all aspects of society, such seem to me the most common circumstances appended to the beginning, progress and issue of courtship, in its common forms.
When ambitious views, the lust of wealth, and purposes of aggrandizement, are the prompting incitements, the order of circumstances indeed may be essentially varied, without muchaltering the result. The excitement of the senses and the illusions of the imagination give place to these more sordid motives. They are, however, equally absorbing with the former. The faculties, having converged to the point of cautious and keen speculation, allow no greater scope, and furnish no happier facilities, for noting the development of understanding, character and temper, than in the other predicament. The appetite for money, and the burning of ambition may as effectually blind the aspirant to the silliness and bad temper of her who is seen through the flattering medium of his plans and his hopes, as could his vanity and his youthful inclinations. How can a person be expected to compare, and discriminate traits, and the almost imperceptible lights and shades of character, whose whole mind is intensely concentrated on the chances of his speculation, the fear of rivals, the danger of mishap, and the means of hastening the issue? Who, under such circumstances, inquires about the elements of happiness or misery, the good sense, the regulated temper, the discretion, health, temperament, and habits, that appertain to the means, by which a fortune and a name are to be obtained? These are passed by, as subordinate considerations. Suppose inquiries touching these points to glance through the mind. Suppose the speculator to have lucid glimpses, and some startling premonitions of the importance of settled and discriminating views, in relation to these matters; contemplated through golden associations and in the glare of ambitious hopes, they will be hardly likely to undergo a very severe or sifting scrutiny.
The marriage, whether of love, of ambition, of convenience or mere animal impulse, takes place. The music and dancing are no more, and the brilliancy of the bridal torch is extinct, and with those physicalparapharnalia, one mental illusion after another begins to melt into thin air. The discriminating faculties, judgment and the critical vision, now become morbidly sensitive and severe, since satiety and the extinction of fancy and the imagination have left these capacities to unchecked action, beholding the object of their scrutiny continually,and close at hand. The medium becomes as unnaturally dark, as it was unnaturally light before. A thousand circumstances, never dreamed of in the philosophy of love and courtship, crowd upon this disposition to cynical and bilious criticism. Manifestations of temper and character, that once indicated to the lover, amiability and intelligence, become, to the moody husband or the discontented wife, marks of a weak understanding and a bad heart; and in proportion, as they nourish despondency and disappointment, they destroy the capability of indulgence and forbearance, and resist efforts to soothe, and correct, and conciliate.
In proportion as they become dissatisfied with each other, by a mental progress, exactly the reverse of that which brought them together, home is enveloped with associations of gloom. The imagination finds sunshine in every other place; and every other person is sensible and attractive, but the one they have sworn to love and honor until death.
There are those who will see in these revolting representations, a coloring of misanthropy; and pronounce this statement of the case harsh beyond nature. I would it were so; for, unless I deceive myself, I love my kind; and my only object is, to impress upon the young the importance of inquiring, when contemplating this vital and all important transaction, whether they see things in the clear light of truth, and as they will certainly appear after the delirium of love has passed away; or under the nameless and numberless illusions of that fever of the senses, of vanity, and instinct, too often miscalled by the name of love. I much mistake, if the greater portion of the domestic infelicity, which is loudly charged upon the wedded state in the abstract, is not owing to this fascination, this incapacity to examine the only elements, on which the happiness of a family must depend. All I would say, is, before entering on this union, remember, that it is easier to repent before, than after the evil is without a remedy. Pause and scrutinize; and let not the first glimpse of real light open your eyes to your true condition, when it is irretrievable.
I am as well aware, as the author can be, that there are many more happy marriages, than vulgar opinion allows, and that even in those, which are not reputed happy, in which the parties themselves have had their criminating and complainingéclaircissements, there is often much more affection, than has been allowed to exist. Such is generally found to be the case, in the numberless attempted separations, which prove abortive, when the final alternative is to be adopted. I know, too, that the history of the manifestation of conjugal affection is one of the most affecting and honorable to human nature, that has ever been exhibited. No union of tenderness and fortitude has ever been displayed in the annals of human nature, that can be compared with the maternal love and conjugal affection of a devoted wife. Of this, if I had space, and my scope were different, I could cite numerous, and most impressive examples.
Note 28a, page 110.
I beg leave to enter my utter dissent to this doctrine. It seems from a note appended to this chapter of the author, that dislike to female authorship has been carried to the most ridiculous lengths in France. This is the more astonishing, as no country has produced so many admirable female writers, many of them peculiarly noted for possessing the charm of simplicity, and freedom from pedantry and affectation. A woman, not less than a man, is more amiable, interesting and capable of sustaining any relation with honor and dignity, in proportion as she is more instructed and enlightened. It is to female pedants only, that the ridiculous question of the French academy, whether a reputable woman could write a book, ought to apply. If a woman really deserves a crown of laurels, it sits more gracefully on her brow, than any chaplet of roses that poet ever dreamed of. But let us have real, unpresuming knowledge, without pedantry or affectation, either of which is always odious in man or woman, but certainly, as it seems to me, most so in woman.
Note 30, page 115.
Nothing, however, is more common, than this contemptible ambition of wives to govern their husbands. It is said that there are coteries of wives, who impart the rules in masonic conclave. Be it so. Whoever exults in having usurped this empire, glories in her shame. If there be any axiom universally applying to this partnership, it is, that the interest and reputation of the concern must be identical. However much a wife may humble her husband, in general estimation, by presenting him in the light of a weak and docile subject, with all sensible persons, she humbles herself still more. If the slave is contemptible, the tyrant is still more so. For the rest, this chapter contains more truth and impressive eloquence upon this all important theme, than I have elsewhere met in so small a compass.
Note 31, page 117.
I present you with the following development of these new emotions, which, I hope, you will not find amiss. ‘William and Yensi were as happy in this vale, as man can hope to be here below. They would have requested nothing more of heaven, than thousands of years of this half dreaming, yet satisfying existence. A daughter was born to them, a desert flower of exquisite beauty even from its birth. New and unmoved fountains of slumbering and mysterious affections were awakened in the deepest sanctuary of their hearts. In the clear waters of the brook, which chafed over pebbles, turfed with wild sage and numberless desert flowers, under the overhanging pines, in the tops of which the southern breeze played the grand cathedral service of the mountain solitudes, William performed, as priest, father and Christian, the touching ceremony of baptizing his babe. Adding the name Jessy to that of the mother, it was called Jessy Yensi. The sacred rite was performed on the sabbath, as the sun was sinking in cloud-curtained majesty behind the western mountains. Thedomestics, Ellswatta and Josepha, looked on with awe. William read the Scriptures, prayed, and sang a hymn; baptized his babe, and handed the nursling of the desert to Yensi. As she received the beloved infant in her arms, after it had been consecrated, as an inmate in the family of the Redeemer, while tears of tenderness and piety filled her eyes and fell from her cheeks, she declared, that she would no longer invoke the universal Tien, that the God of William and her babe should be her God, and that they would both call on the same name, when they prayed together for the dear babe even unto death.’—Shoshonee Valley, vol. i. p. 52, 53.
Of the emotions excited by all the incidents between the cradle and the grave, none can be compared for depth and tenderness to those, called forth by the birth and baptism of the first child of an affectionate and happy husband and wife. Those, for whom this work is more peculiarly intended, will be aware, to what incident in our common stock of remembrances the above extract refers. Delightful sentiments, and yet deeply tinged with sadness! What a mystery is this conjoined miniature image of the parents, the babe itself! What a mystery the world with its mingled lights and shadows, upon which the feeble stranger is entering! What a mystery the unknown bourne to which it is bound! What a mystery the God, to whom it is consecrated! Callous and cold must be the heart of parents, that this mutual pledge of love and duty will not unite in one unchangeable sentiment of love and identity of interest, until death.
Note 33, page 122.
My views touching the modes, in which the best results of education are to be obtained, whether just or erroneous, have at least the advantage of being entirely practical. I am sufficiently convinced, that there must be an adequate and happy organization and mental development, without which no education, however wise and assiduous, will ever effect anything more, than mediocrity of character and acquirement. In the present state of public opinion, as great mistakes aremade by expecting too much from the training of schools, as were formerly committed by attempting too little. The opulent, and people in the higher walks especially, are tempted by their condition to believe, that wealth and distinction can purchase, and even command mind, and that cultivation of it, by which more enlarged and distinguished minds differ from the common measure of intellect; a mistake, than which no other is more universally, and palpably taught by every day’s experience. The Author of our being reserves, and will never impart his own high prerogative, to bestow mind; and he as often dispenses the noblest and richest endowment of it in the lower, as in the upper walks of life; though, as we have seen, he has indicated, in the order of nature, a process of unlimited improvement of organization and endowment.
But the substratum of a practical and well endowed mind, to begin with, being granted, I beg leave to add my conviction to that of M. Droz, a conviction, which, as I think, will resume its authority and influence, when most of the present tedious and endless systems and projects of education will have passed into their merited oblivion. It is, that strong, latent and distinguished character and acquirement receive in domestic education, that predominant and fashioning direction, which they retain through life. The peculiar impress of a parent, a family-friend, a single tutor, is often as distinctly marked upon the whole after life of the scholar, that becomes truly distinguished, as though he had been wax in the hands of a moulder. The numerous tutors of opulent families, and of public institutions, seldom impart the same advantage. Their different views and modes of discipline countervail, and neutralize each other. The Greeks and the great Romans taught at home, the master being a member and an honored one of the family. The master and the pupil walked, conversed, and pursued their amusements together; and the sweet associations of home and the shade and freedom from restraint were conjoined with the lessons. When the good Plutarch paints to us, with his inimitablenaiveté, one of his favorite characters, he indicates as his first felicity, that it was his lotto have the training of an Aristotle, or some similar worthy. Consult the English Plutarch for the same fact. Could all the commencing circumstances of most of the great men, who have lived, be exactly traced, we should find the same truth disclosed. That the development of strong inclination for books, studies and literature depends almost entirely on domestic habits and pursuits, the family, in whichourcommon remembrances centre, is a striking example. During the years, in which the minds of this family received their unchangeable impress, the members were almost as vagrant in their modes, as the Tartars. All their education, except domestic, was exceedingly imperfect and desultory. Books were often wanting; adequate teachers always. But the love of the parents for books and reading was a simple, natural, unaffected and intense impulse. They loved the thing for its own sake, and independent of all its results. The first instruments of pleasure, and things of estimated value, that greeted the infant eyes of the children, were books; not furniture, dress, and the imposing ostentation of a modern parlor. Pleasant conversations, disputes, between laughter and seriousness, about these books, were the first conversations that greeted their listening ears. These conversations were perceived to be of deep and heart-felt interest, and as little mixed with pedantry and formality, as the manifestations of instinct. The children saw, that to those, they most loved, admired, and were disposed to imitate, books were the grand sources of interest, converse and enjoyment. They as naturally imbibed similar tastes, as, to use a coarse illustration, the children of savages learn to love hunting. The first thing for which they contended, and with which they wished to play, was a book, or a picture. Their first lispings were trials of skill, touching the comparative progress, which they had made in their knowledge of the contents of these books, and the application of it to present use. These trials they saw to be the chief points of interest and amusement for their parents. Thus, habits of reading and applicationgrew with their growth and strengthened with their strength; and many a criticism, ifnot erudite and profound, at least eliciting hearty praise and laughter, passed away unrecorded in their domestic privacy. Their neighbors admired, and, I fear, envied, and calumniated; but could not but take astonished note of such results in a family without wealth, without the common appliances, which themselves could so much better afford, and which they had been accustomed to consider the only price, at which intellectual improvement could be purchased. It was placed beyond question, or denial, that the members of that family had right views, quiet and unawed self-respect, and could converse rationally, upon every other topic, as well as books; that tact and discrimination pervaded their manifestations of thought and pursuit; and that they possessed an inexhaustible source of amusement, and satisfaction independent of wealth, fashion, society, distinction, or any external resource whatever—the habit of internal reflection, comparison and pleasant converse with themselves.
Parents, when you have imparted to your children habits and tastes, like these, you have bequeathed them an intellectual fortune, which few changes can take away; and which is as strictly independent, as anything earthly can be. You have unlocked to their gratuitous use perennial fountains of innocent and improving enjoyment. You have secured them forever against the heart-wearing gloom ofennui, insufficiency to themselves, and slavish dependence upon others for amusement. Spend as lavishly as you may, in multiplying fashionable instructers, and blazon, as much as you will, the advantages of your children; if they do not perceive, while the rudiments of their taste and habits are forming, that you consider literature, science and the improvement of intellect a matter of paramount interest and importance, you will never cause their stream to flow higher, than your fountain. An occasional parlor lecture, or a high wrought eulogy, will not convince them, or avail to your purpose. They must see this preference, as all others, which they will be inclined to copy, manifested in your whole deportment and conversation.
But, while I am convinced, that parents will find efforts totrain their children to be highly intellectual, rowing against the current, unless they evince, themselves, by their habitual examples, that they consider it a higher attainment, to possess literature and conversational powers, than fashion, or wealth or the common objects of pursuit, in other words, that all efficient education must be essentially domestic, I would not be understood to undervalue public schools and colleges. I am aware, that in these places are best imparted the knowledge and adroitness that fit them for the keen scramble of ambitious competition. But in regard to those boys who leave their competitions behind the classes of the university, I think on examination, we shall find, that the germ and the stamina of this progress were early communicated by instruction and example at home. At table, around the evening fire, in the Sabbath walk, in the common family intercourse, in the intervals of the toil of your profession, whatever it be, the taste and the permanent inclination for literature and intellectual cultivation are imparted. This can never be, if behind all your eulogy of these things, you discover, that your ruling passion is money, or the sordid objects of common pursuit.
Note 34, page 124.
It is a common and, I much fear, a well founded complaint, that some latent mischief in our system of education, political institutions, the ordering of our establishments, or in all these together, has generated, as a prevalent moral evil, filial unkindness and ingratitude. Scramble, competition and rivalry are the first, last, and universally witnessed order of things in our country. Nothing becomes a topic of conversation that is of absorbing interest, but acquisition and distinction. The manifestations of an intellect, sharpened for the pursuit of these things, is the subject of most earnest eulogy. Children, by our usages, are early cast upon their own resources, and taught to shift for themselves. The consequence seems to be, that the parental and filial ties are severed, as soon as the children are able to take care of themselves,almost as recklessly, in regard to subsequent duty, piety or affection, as those of the lower animals. When we see a spectacle so revolting, and unhappily so common, of sons who, as soon as they have realizedthe portion of goods that falleth to them, or of daughters, as soon as they have secured lovers or husbands, forgetting the authors of their days, it becomes us to search deeply for the defect in our discipline, or institutions, that originates the evil. The callous hearts of such children may no longer be appalled by the terrible execution of the Jewish law against such monsters. They may neither feel, nor care, howsharper than a serpent’s tooth, may be this want of filial piety to their parents. But, by a righteous reaction of the divine justice, more terribly vindictive than the threatened judgment of the Jewish law, thankless children bear in their hearts the certain guaranty of their own self-inflicted punishment. They part forever with the purest and noblest sentiments of the human heart; and they procure for themselves the sad certainty of being cast off in their turn, by their children, in the helpless period of their old age.
Note 35, page 124.
The history of literature proves, that none of the more unworthy sentiments of human nature have been so adverse to friendship, as the vanity of literary rivals. From many noble examples of a contrary kind, which we might cite, I select the intercourse between Racine and Boileau. When Racine was persuaded, that his malady would end in death, he charged his eldest son to write to M. de Cavoye, to ask him to solicit the payment of what was due of his pension, that his family might not be left without ready money. He wrote the letter and read it to his father. ‘Why did you not,’ said he, ‘request the payment of the pension of Boileau at the same time? Write again, and let him know, that I was his friend in death.’ This friend came to receive his last adieu. Racine rose in bed, as far as his weakness would allow. As he embraced his friend, he said ‘I regard it a happiness to die in your presence.’
Note 36, page 126.
The celebrated Voiture, one of thebeaux espritsof the age of Louis XIII. had lost all his money, and had an immediate call for 200 pistoles. He wrote to the Abbe Costar, his faithful friend. This admirable letter presents us with a trait of that confidence and frankness, which sincere friendship inspires. It was this.
‘I yesterday lost all my money, and 200 pistoles more, which I have promised to pay today. If you have that sum, do not fail to send it. If not, borrow it. Obtain it, as you may, you must lend it me. Be careful, to allow no one to anticipate you, in giving me this pleasure. I should be concerned lest it might affect my love for you. I know you so well, that I am aware, you would find it difficult to console yourself. To avoid this misfortune, rather sell what will raise it. You see how imperious my love for you is. I take a pleasure in conducting in this manner towards you. I feel, that I should have a still greater, if you would be as frank with me. But you have not my courage in this point. Judge, if I am not perfectly assured in regard to you, since I will give my promise to him, who shall bring the money.’ The Abbe Costar replied—‘I feel extreme joy, to be in condition to render you the trifling service, you ask of me. I had never thought, that one could purchase so much pleasure for 200 pistoles. Having experienced it, I give you my word, that, for the rest of my life, I will retain a little capital, always ready for your occasions. Order confidently at your pleasure. You cannot take half the satisfaction in commanding, that I shall in obeying. But submissive as you may find me in other respects, I shall be revolted, if you wish to compel me to take a promise from you.’
Note 37, page 128.
Although I do not intend to cite in this place the story of Damon and Pythias, nor to harp upon discussions of a theme,upon which there has been more odious prosing, and more semblance of sentiment than all others, yet a subject, intrinsically of the first importance, and founded in nature, can never cease to have claims upon attention, in consequence of having been hackneyed to thread-bare triteness. There is such an affection, as friendship. It belongs to man, and is the highest honor of his nature, less gross and terrene, than the short epilepsy, the transient and fitful fever of the senses, commonly dignified with the name of love, and warmer, more exhilarating, and elevated, than mere esteem, and common liking; it excites, without inflaming; it thrills, without jealousy, corroding fear, or morbid solicitude. It is that sentiment, which a poet would naturally assign to intellectual beings of a higher order, who were never invested with the corporeal elements of mortality.
I wish those, most dear to me, implicitly to believe in friendship. I would a thousand times prefer, that they should err on the side of credulity, than of suspicion and distrust. I deprecate, above all things, that they should give up human nature. I consider real misanthropy the last misfortune. I would, rather, my children should meet with treachery and inconstancy every day of their lives, than resign themselves to the morbid and heartless persuasion, weakly considered an attribute of wisdom and greatness, that men are altogether selfish, and unworthy of confidence. It is a persuasion, that not only forever invests the universe in an Egyptian gloom, ‘that may be felt,’ but, by an energetic bearing on all the faculties and sources of feeling, causes the heart, that entertains such views to become what it believes to be the character of the species.
No scruples of false decorum shall withhold me from saying, that, amidst all the selfishness, which optics of the most charitable vision could not but discover on every side, I have seen friendship, pure, holy, disinterested, like that of the angels; nay, more—have been myself the subject of it. My heart swells, and will to its latest pulsation, with the remembered proofs. True, the instances, that have fallenwithin the compass of my experience, are very few. But they are sufficient to settle my conviction, that the sentiment, which has inspired the enthusiasm of eloquence, painting and song, in all time, is not the illusion of a weak and misguided imagination. Selfish as man is, we often see instances of the most generous and devoted friendship, even in this silver age, the age of revenue and political economy.
With my author I believe, that where the sentiment exists between a man and a woman, admitting each to possess the estimable endowments peculiar to each sex, and so exists, as not to be modified by any of those countless associations of another order of sentiment, that almost imperceptibly invest relations between the two sexes, it is more vivid, permanent and disinterested, more capable of making sacrifices, and more tender and delightful than it can be between persons of the same sex. Of this class are the most noble, touching and sublime examples of a constancy under every form of proof, that the history of the human heart records.
While every one is sensible, that there must exist between characters, that are susceptible of all the fidelity and beauty of this sentiment, a certain adaptation of circumstances, and conformity of disposition, mind, development and temperament, I believe with St Pierre, that it is desirable, that there should be a certain contrast as well as much fitness. Constant assentation, the same opinions, tastes, tempers and views have been found by experience, not to generate the most permanent, and pleasant unions of the sort. The moral, as well as the physical appetite, would grow weary of perpetual uniformity and unvarying similarity, and requires the spice, afforded by the mixture of various ingredients of affectionate contrariety. Both the love and friendship, most likely to endure, spring up between the placid and piquant, the tranquil and energetic, the monotonously sweet tempered and the sensitive, whose irritability is held in check by good sense, kindness and self-control;—between the temperament, connected with blue eyes and fair hair, and that of the keen, deep black eye, and raven locks. ‘Soldiers,’says St Pierre, ‘on long and distant expeditions, should be associated with ministers, lawyers with naturalists, and in general, the strongest contrasts of profession’—all nature’s discord thus making all nature’s peace. But I am perfectly aware, that there will be great danger of making fatal mistakes, in acting on this principle. I am confident, that is true in the abstract; but let sentimentalists beware of trenching too confidently on ground, where the limits between safety and ruin are so narrow, and difficult to discern. Doves of a different feather may pair happily, but not doves and vultures. There must be a certain compatibility not only of character, but of age, condition and circumstances, as we are broadly instructed in the fable of the frog thinking to wed with the ox.
Any discussion of the details, touching the requisite circumstances of compatibility to form friendships with any chance of their being pleasant and permanent, as well as the obligations and duties involved by it, would require a volume, and would carry me utterly beyond my present purpose. Books are ample, if not interesting and just, in the information which they impart upon this subject. With my views of its obligations and duties in few words, I shall dismiss it.
In a pecuniary point of view the claims of friendship are only limited by the sterner demands of justice. The common adage, which calls upon us to be just, before we allow ourselves to be generous, is worthy to be written in letters of gold; though it has been a thousand times wrested by selfish and cold hearts, into a pretext for their avarice. Whoever should think of lavishing his money upon a friend, in order to absolve himself from the more difficult calls of justice, would show a mind, too weak and incapable of discrimination, to honor that friend by his bounty. But, grant that the friends have delicacy, consideration and gentlemanly tact, and they may possess a common purse, without danger to the duties of either.
The fame and character of the one are strictly the property of the other. Let no one, who has the least particle ofthe base alloy of envy in his feelings towards him, whom he calls his friend, who is willing to hear, and countenance abatements of his qualities, talents, or virtues, dare to assume that almost sacred name. He is equally unworthy of it, if he stand by in neutrality when calumny is busily passing against him; and still more, if by smiles he gives his countenance, and half his consent to the story of detraction and abatement. It is a forfeiture of the right to the name, though it may be a less worthy one, to make the person, called friend, the subject of jest and ridicule. In regard to all these points, the duties are clear, distinct, palpable and not to be compromised. Every honorable mind feels, in witnessing any infraction of the laws of equity, or strict justice, a sentiment of recoil and disgust, difficult perhaps to define, but one which instantly designates the person guilty of it, as unworthy of the name of friend. Honest, frank and disinterested advice, especially in relation to concerns of great interest to the party, is a paramount obligation, whether the advised will bear, or forbear. This prerogative may, indeed, be claimed by unfeeling and rude bluntness. But, by a discriminating mind, the suggestions of a counterfeit, will never be mistaken for those of genuine friendship.
The time, the courtesy and the amount of intercourse, due from one friend to another, can never be brought under subjection to rules. Moral, like physical attraction, acting unconsciously, will regulate this portion of duty, with the unvarying certainty of the laws of nature. If persons, claiming to sustain this relation to each other, do not wish to be as much together, as duty and propriety will admit; if they allow this matter to be settled by the rigid tithing of etiquette, they are anything rather than real friends.
I have been struck by an incident in the life of a religious woman, I think it was Mrs Graham. There was a sacramental pledge between her and a friend, that, whichever of them should be first called from life, the other should visit her in the sickness, which she should consider her last, and not leave her, until she had received her last sigh. Sublime test of affection!What a tender, sacred office, after a life of friendship, thus, by a sacramental contract, to close the eyes of the friend beloved in life, and separated only by death! There can be no doubt that the feelings, called thus into action, are peculiarly fitted to mitigate the last sorrows; and in the simple grandeur of such a sentiment, so manifested, the departing friend will see a proof, that such affections are, in their own nature, immortal; and that such ties shall be renewed in the eternal regions of the living.
When friends are separated wide from each other by distance, duty, and the stern calls of our pursuits, I admire the custom of baptizing, if I may so say, our remembrances, by giving the names of our dear and distant friends to the hills, valleys, streams, trees or pleasant views in our walks; or the objects most familiar and pleasant to our view. The stern silence of nature may thus be compelled to find a tongue, and discourse with us of those we love.
In a word, the name, I am sensible, is too often a morbid mockery of cold and affected sentimentalism, both weak and disgusting, the cant term for the intercourse between the enlarged prisoners of boarding schools. But the sentiment exists, pure, simple delightful. Neither fawning, nor cant, nor flattery, nor any mixture of earth’s mould makes any part of it. Honorable, dignified, unshaken, it feels its obligations, and discharges them. The reputation, character and whole interest of the friend is its object; and his highest happiness its prayer. In holy segregation from the hollow intercourse, false phrases and deceitful compliments of fashion, and what is called the world, it is faithful and consistent, under all proofs and trials, until death; and when the eyes of the departed are closed, his memory is enshrined in the remembrance of the survivor. Thank God! I have seen, I have felt, that there are such friendships; and if there is anything honorable, dignified and attractive in aught, that earth presents, it is the sight of two friends, whose attachment dates from their first remembered sentiment; and has survived difference of opinion and interest, the changes of distance,time and disease, and those weaning influences, which, while they crumble the most durable monuments, convert most hearts to stone.