Deem not the ravished glory thine;Nor think the flag shall scathless waveWhereon thou bidd’st its presage shine,—Land of the traitor and the slave!God never set that holy signIn deathless light among His starsTo make its blazonry divineA scutcheon for thine impious wars!And surely as the Wrong must failBefore the everlasting Right,So surely thy device shall paleAnd shrivel in the Northern Light!Look, where its coming splendors stream!The red and white athwart the blue,—While far above, the unconquered gleamOf Freedom’s stars is blazing through!Hark to the rustle and the sweep,Like sound of mighty wings unfurled,And bearing down the sapphire steepHeaven’s hosts to help the imperilled world!Light in the North! Each bristling lanceOf steely sheen a promise bears;And all the midnight where they glanceA rosy flush of morning wears!Yon symbol of your Southern skyShall surely mean but grief and loss;Then tremble, as ye raise on high,In sacrilege, the Southern Cross!O brothers! we entreat in pain,Take ye the unblessed emblem down!Or purge your standard of its stain,And join it with the Northern Crown!
Deem not the ravished glory thine;Nor think the flag shall scathless waveWhereon thou bidd’st its presage shine,—Land of the traitor and the slave!
Deem not the ravished glory thine;
Nor think the flag shall scathless wave
Whereon thou bidd’st its presage shine,—
Land of the traitor and the slave!
God never set that holy signIn deathless light among His starsTo make its blazonry divineA scutcheon for thine impious wars!
God never set that holy sign
In deathless light among His stars
To make its blazonry divine
A scutcheon for thine impious wars!
And surely as the Wrong must failBefore the everlasting Right,So surely thy device shall paleAnd shrivel in the Northern Light!
And surely as the Wrong must fail
Before the everlasting Right,
So surely thy device shall pale
And shrivel in the Northern Light!
Look, where its coming splendors stream!The red and white athwart the blue,—While far above, the unconquered gleamOf Freedom’s stars is blazing through!
Look, where its coming splendors stream!
The red and white athwart the blue,—
While far above, the unconquered gleam
Of Freedom’s stars is blazing through!
Hark to the rustle and the sweep,Like sound of mighty wings unfurled,And bearing down the sapphire steepHeaven’s hosts to help the imperilled world!
Hark to the rustle and the sweep,
Like sound of mighty wings unfurled,
And bearing down the sapphire steep
Heaven’s hosts to help the imperilled world!
Light in the North! Each bristling lanceOf steely sheen a promise bears;And all the midnight where they glanceA rosy flush of morning wears!
Light in the North! Each bristling lance
Of steely sheen a promise bears;
And all the midnight where they glance
A rosy flush of morning wears!
Yon symbol of your Southern skyShall surely mean but grief and loss;Then tremble, as ye raise on high,In sacrilege, the Southern Cross!
Yon symbol of your Southern sky
Shall surely mean but grief and loss;
Then tremble, as ye raise on high,
In sacrilege, the Southern Cross!
O brothers! we entreat in pain,Take ye the unblessed emblem down!Or purge your standard of its stain,And join it with the Northern Crown!
O brothers! we entreat in pain,
Take ye the unblessed emblem down!
Or purge your standard of its stain,
And join it with the Northern Crown!
Return to Table of Contents
Once upon a time, Mr. Smith, who was seven feet in height, went out for a walk with Mr. Brown, whose stature was three feet and a half. It was in a distant age, in which people were different from what they are now, and in which events occurred such as do not usually occur in these days. Smith and Brown, having traversed various paths, and having passed several griffins, serpents, and mail-clad knights, came at length to a certain river. It was needful that they should cross it; and the idea was suggested that they should cross it by wading. They proceeded, accordingly, to wade across; and both arrived safely at the farther side. The water was exactly four feet deep,—not an inch more or less. On reaching the other bank of the river, Mr. Brown said,—
“This is awful work; it is no joke crossing a river likethat. I was nearly drowned.”
“Nonsense!” replied Mr. Smith; “why make a fuss about crossing a shallow stream like this? Why, the water is only four feet deep:thatis nothing at all!”
“Nothing to you, perhaps,” was the response of Mr. Brown, “but a serious matter for me. You observe,” he went on, “that water four feet deep is just six inches over my head. The river may be shallow to you, but it is deep to me.”
Mr. Smith, like many other individuals of great physical bulk and strength, had an intellect not much adapted for comprehending subtile and difficult thoughts. He took up the ground that things are what they are in themselves, and was incapable of grasping the idea that greatness and littleness, depth and shallowness, are relative things. An altercation ensued, which resulted in threats on the part of Smith that he would throw Brown into the river; and a coolness was occasioned between the friends which subsisted for several days.
The acute mind of the reader of this page will perceive that Mr. Smith was in error; and that the principle asserted by Mr. Brown was a sound and true one. It is unquestionable that a thing which is little to one man may be great to another man. And it is just as really and certainly great in this latter case as anything ever can be. And yet, many people do a thing exactly analogous to what was done by Smith. They insist that the water which is shallow to them shall be held to be absolutely shallow; and that, if smaller men declare that it is deep to themselves, these smaller men shall be regarded as weak, fanciful, and mistaken. Many people, as they look back upon the sorrows of their own childhood, or as they look round upon the sorrows of existing childhood, think that these sorrows are or were very light and insignificant, and their causes very small. These people do this, because to them, as they are now,big people, (to use the expressive phrase of childhood,) these sorrows would be light, if they should befall. But though these sorrows may seem light to us now, and their causes small, it is only as water four feet in depth was shallow to the tall Mr. Smith. The same water was very deep to the man whose stature was three feet and a half; and the peril was as great to him as could have been caused by eight feet depth of water to the man seven feet high. The little cause of trouble was great to the little child. The little heart was as full of grief and fear and bewilderment as it could hold.
Yes, I stand up against the common belief that childhood is our happiest time. And whenever I hear grown-up people say that it is so, I think of Mr. Smith, and the water four feet deep. I have always, in my heart, rebelled against that common delusion. I recall, as if it were yesterday, a day which I have left behind me more than twenty years. I see a large hall, the hall of a certain educational institution, which helped to make the present writer what he is. It is the day of the distribution of the prizes. The hall is crowded with little boys, and with the relations and friends of the little boys. And the chief magistrate of that ancient town, in all the pomp of civic majesty, has distributed the prizes. It is neither here nor there what honors were borne off by me; though I remember well thatthatday was the proudest that ever had come in my short life. But I see the face and hear the voice of the kind-hearted old dignitary, who has now been for many years in his grave. And I recall especially one sentence he said, as he made a few eloquent remarks at the close of the day’s proceedings.
“Ah, boys,” said he, “I can tell you this is the happiest time of all your life!”
“Little you know about the matter,” was my inward reply.
I knew that our worries, fears, and sorrows were just as great as those of any one else.
The sorrows of childhood and boyhood are not sorrows of that complicated and perplexing nature which sit heavy on the heart in after-years; but in relation to the little hearts that have to bear them, they are very overwhelming for the time. As has been said, great and little are quite relative terms. A weight which is not absolutely heavy is heavy to a weak person. We think an industrious flea draws a vast weight, if it draw the eighth part of an ounce. And I believe that the sorrows of childhood task the endurance of childhood as severely as those of manhood do the endurance of the man. Yes, we look back now, and we smile at them, and at the anguish they occasioned, because they would be no great matter to us now. Yet in all this we err just as Mr. Smith the tall man erred, in that discussion with the little man, Mr. Brown. Those early sorrows were great things then. Very bitter grief may be in a very little heart. “The sports of childhood,” we know from Goldsmith, “satisfy the child.” The sorrows of childhood overwhelm the poor little thing. I think a sympathetic reader would hardly read without a tear, as well as a smile, an incident in the early life of Patrick Fraser Tytler, recorded in his biography. When five years old, he got hold of the gun of an elder brother and broke the spring of its lock. What anguish the little boy must have endured, what a crushing sense of having caused an irremediable evil, before he sat down and printed in great letters the following epistle to his brother, the owner of the gun:—“Oh, Jamie, think no more of guns, for the main-spring of that is broken, andmy heart is broken!” Doubtless the poor little fellow fancied that for all the remainder of his life he never could feel as he had felt before he touched the unlucky weapon. And looking back over many years, most of us can remember a child crushed and overwhelmed by some trouble which it thought could never be got over; and we can feel for our early self as though sympathizing with another being.
What I wish in this essay is, that we should look away along the path we have come in life; and that we should see, that, though many cares and troubles may now press upon us, still we may well be content. I speak to ordinary people, whose lot has been an ordinary lot. I know there are exceptional cases; but I firmly believe, that, as for most of us, we never have seen better days than these. No doubt, in the retrospect of early youth, we seem to see a time when the summer was brighter, the flowers sweeter, the snowy days of winter more cheerful, than we ever find them now. But, in sober sense, we know that it is all an illusion. It is only as the man travelling over the burning desert sees sparkling water and shady trees where he knows there is nothing but arid sand.
I dare say you know that one of the acutest of living men has maintained that it is foolish to grieve over past suffering. He says, truly enough in one sense, that the suffering which is past is as truly non-existent as the suffering which has never been at all; that, in fact, past suffering is now nothing, and is entitled to no more consideration than that to which nothing is entitled. No doubt, when bodily pain has ceased, it is all over: we do not feel it any more. And you have probably observed that the impression left by bodily pain passes very quickly away. The sleepless night, or the night of torment from toothache, which seemed such a distressing reality while it was dragging over, looks a very shadowy thing the next forenoon. But it may be doubted whether you will ever so far succeed in overcoming the fancies and weaknesses of humanity as to get people to cease to feel that past sufferings and sorrows are a great part of their present life. The remembrance of our past life is a great part of our present life. And, indeed, the greater part of human suffering consists in its anticipation and in its recollection. It is so by the inevitable law of our being. It is because we are rational creatures that it is so. We cannot help looking forward to that which is coming, and looking back on that which is past; nor can we suppress, as we do so, an emotion corresponding to the perception. There is not the least use in telling a little boy who knows that he is to have a tooth pulled out to-morrow, that it is absurd in him to make himself unhappy to-night through the anticipation of it. You may show with irrefragable force of reason, that the pain will last only for the two or three seconds during which the tooth is being wrenched from its place, and that it will be time enough to vex himself about the pain when he has actually to feel it. But the little fellow will pass but an unhappy night in the dismal prospect; and by the time the cold iron lays hold of the tooth, he will have endured by anticipation a vast deal more suffering than the suffering of the actual operation. It is so with bigger people, looking forward to greater trials. And it serves no end whatever to prove that all this ought not to be. The question as to the emotions turned off in the workings of the human mind is one of fact. It is not how the machine ought to work, but how the machine does work. And as with the anticipation of suffering, so with its retrospect. The great grief which is past, even though its consequences no longer directly press upon us, casts its shadow over after-years. There are, indeed, some hardships and trials upon which it is possible that we may look back with satisfaction. The contrast with them enhances the enjoyment of better days. But these trials, it seems to me, must be such as come through the direct intervention of Providence; and they must be clear of the elements of human cruelty or injustice. I do not believe that a man who was a weakly and timid boy can ever look back with pleasure upon the ill-usage of the brutal bully of his school-days, or upon the injustice of his teacher in cheating him out of some well-earned prize. There are kinds of great suffering which can never be thought of without present suffering, so long as human nature continues what it is. And I believe that past sorrows are a great reality in our present life, and exert a great influence over our present life, whether for good or ill. As you may see in the trembling knees of some poor horse, in its drooping head, and spiritless paces, that it was overwrought when young: so, if the human soul were a thing that could be seen, you might discern the scars where the iron entered into it long ago,—you might trace not merely the enduring remembrance, but the enduring results, of the incapacity and dishonesty of teachers, the heartlessness of companions, and the idiotic folly and cruelty of parents. No, it will not do to tell us that past sufferings have ceased to exist, while their remembrance continues so vivid, and their results so great. You are not done with the bitter frosts of last winter, though it be summer now, if your blighted evergreens remain as their result and memorial. And the man who was brought up in an unhappy home in childhood will never feel that that unhappy home has ceased to be a present reality, if he knows that its whole discipline fostered in him a spirit of distrust in his kind which is not yet entirely got over, and made him set himself to the work of life with a heart somewhat soured and prematurely old. The past is a great reality. We are here the living embodiment of all we have seen and felt through all our life,—fashioned into our present form by millions of little touches, and by none with a more real result than the hours of sorrow we have known.
One great cause of the suffering of boyhood is the bullying of bigger boys at school. I know nothing practically of the English system offaggingat public schools, but I am not prepared to join out and out in the cry against it. I see many evils inherent in the system; but I see that various advantages may result from it, too. To organize a recognized subordination of lesser boys to bigger ones must unquestionably tend to cut the ground from under the feet of the unrecognized, unauthorized, private bully. But I know that at large schools, where there is no fagging, bullying on the part of youthful tyrants prevails to a great degree. Human nature is beyond doubt fallen. The systematic cruelty of a school-bully to a little boy is proof enough ofthat, and presents one of the very hatefullest phases of human character. It is worthy of notice, that, as a general rule, the higher you ascend in the social scale among boys, the less of bullying there is to be found. Something of the chivalrous and the magnanimous comes out in the case of the sons of gentlemen: it is only among such that you will ever find a boy, not personally interested in the matter, standing up against the bully in the interest of right and justice. I have watched a big boy thrashing a little one, in the presence of half a dozen other big boys, not one of whom interfered on behalf of the oppressed little fellow. You may be sure I did not watch the transaction longer than was necessary to ascertain whether there was a grain of generosity in the hulking boors; and you may be sure, too, that that thrashing of the little boy was, to the big bully, one of the most unfortunate transactions in which he had engaged in his bestial and blackguard, though brief, life.Itook care ofthat, you may rely on it. And I favored the bully’s companions with my sentiments as to their conduct, with an energy of statement that made them sneak off, looking very like whipped spaniels. My friendly reader, let us never fail to stop a bully, when we can. And we very often can. Among the writer’s possessions might be found by the curious inspector several black kid gloves, no longer fit for use, though apparently not very much worn. Surveying these integuments minutely, you would find the thumb of the right hand rent away, beyond the possibility of mending. Whence the phenomenon? It comes of the writer’s determined habit of stopping the bully. Walking along the street, or the country-road, I occasionally see a big blackguard fellow thrashing a boy much less than himself. I am well aware that some prudent individuals would pass by on the other side, possibly addressing an admonition to the big blackguard. But I approve Thomson’s statement, that “prudence to baseness verges still”; and I follow a different course. Suddenly approaching the blackguard, by a rapid movement, generally quite unforeseen by him, I take him by the arm, and occasionally (let me confess) by the neck, and shake him till his teeth rattle. This, being done with a new glove on the right hand, will generally unfit that glove for further use. For the bully must be taken with a grip so firm and sudden as shall serve to paralyze his nervous system for the time. And never once have I found the bully fail to prove a whimpering coward. The punishment is well deserved, of course; and it is a terribly severe one in ordinary cases. It is a serious thing, in the estimation both of the bully and his companions, that he should have so behaved as to have drawn on himself the notice of a passer-by, and especially of a parson. The bully is instantly cowed; and by a few words to any of his school-associates who may be near, you can render him unenviably conspicuous among them for a week or two. I never permit bullying to pass unchecked; and so long as my strength and life remain, I never will. I trust you never will. If you could stand coolly by, and see the cruelty you could check, or the wrong you could right, and move no finger to do it, you are not the reader I want, nor the human being I choose to know. I hold the cautious and sagacious man, who can look on at an act of bullying without stopping it and punishing it, as a worse and more despicable animal than the bully himself.
Of course, you must interfere with judgment; and you must follow up your interference with firmness. Don’t intermeddle, like Don Quixote, in such a manner as to make things worse. It is only in the case of continued and systematic cruelty that it is worth while to work temporary aggravation, to the end of ultimate and entire relief. And sometimes that is unavoidable. You remember how, when Moses made his application to Pharaoh for release to the Hebrews, the first result was the aggravation of their burdens. The supply of straw was cut off, and the tale of bricks was to remain the same as before. It could not be helped. And though things came right at last, the immediate consequence was that the Hebrews turned in bitterness on their intending deliverer, and charged their aggravated sufferings upon him. Now, my friend, if you set yourself to the discomfiture of a bully, see you do it effectually. If needful, follow up your first shaking. Find out his master, find out his parents; let the fellow see distinctly that your interference is no passing fancy. Make him understand that you are thoroughly determined that his bullying shall cease. And carry out your determination unflinchingly.
I frequently see the boys of a certain large public school, which is attended by boys of the better class; and judging from their cheerful and happy aspect, I judge that bullying among boys of that condition is becoming rare. Still, I doubt not, there yet are poor little nervous fellows whose school-life is embittered by it. I don’t think any one could read the poet Cowper’s account of how he was bullied at school, without feeling his blood a good deal stirred, if not entirely boiling. If I knew of such a case within a good many miles, I should stop it, though I never wore a glove again that was not split across the right palm.
But, doubtless, the greatest cause of the sorrows of childhood is the mismanagement and cruelty of parents. You will find many parents who make favorites of some of their children to the neglect of others: an error and a sin which is bitterly felt by the children who are held down, and which can never by possibility result in good to any party concerned. And there are parents who deliberately lay themselves out to torment their children. There are two classes of parents who are the most inexorably cruel and malignant: it is hard to say which class excels, but it is certain that both classes exceed all ordinary mortals. One is the utterly blackguard: the parents about whom there is no good nor pretence of good. The other is the wrong-headedly conscientious and religious: probably, after all, there is greater rancor and malice about these last than about any other. These act upon a system of unnatural repression, and systematized weeding out of all enjoyment from life. These are the people whose very crowning act of hatred and malice towards any one is to pray for him, or to threaten to pray for him. These are the people who, if their children complain of their bare and joyless life, say that such complaints indicate a wicked heart, or Satanic possession; and have recourse to further persecution to bring about a happier frame of mind. Yes: the wrong-headed and wrong-hearted religionist is probably the very worst type of man or woman on whom the sun looks down. And, oh! how sad to think of the fashion in which stupid, conceited, malicious blockheads set up their own worst passions as the fruits of the working of the Blessed Spirit, and caricature, to the lasting injury of many a young heart, the pure and kindly religion of the Blessed Redeemer! These are the folk who inflict systematic and ingenious torment on their children: and, unhappily, a very contemptible parent can inflict much suffering on a sensitive child. But of this there is more to be said hereafter; and before going on to it, let us think of another evil influence which darkens and embitters the early years of many.
It is the cruelty, injustice, and incompetence of many schoolmasters. I know a young man of twenty-eight, who told me, that, when at school in a certain large city in Peru, (let us say,) he never went into his class any day without feeling quite sick with nervous terror. The entire class of boys lived in that state of cowed submission to a vulgar, stupid, bullying, flogging barbarian. If it prevents the manners from becoming brutal diligently to study the ingenuous arts, it appears certain that diligently to teach them sometimes leads to a directly contrary result. The bullying schoolmaster has now become an almost extinct animal; but it is not very long since the spirit of Mr. Squeers was to be found, in its worst manifestations, far beyond the precincts of Dotheboys Hall. You would find fellows who showed a grim delight in walking down a class with a cane in their hand, enjoying the evident fear they occasioned as they swung it about, occasionally coming down with a savage whack on some poor fellow who was doing nothing whatsoever. These brutal teachers would flog, and that till compelled to cease by pure exhaustion, not merely for moral offences, which possibly deserve it, (though I do not believe any one was ever made better by flogging,) but for making a mistake in saying a lesson, which the poor boy had done his best to prepare, and which was driven out of his head by the fearful aspect of the truculent blackguard with his cane and his hoarse voice. And how indignant, in after-years, many a boy of the last generation must have been, to find that this tyrant of his childhood was in truth a humbug, a liar, a fool, and a sneak! Yet how that miserable piece of humanity was feared! How they watched his eye, and laughed at the old idiot’s wretched jokes! I have several friends who have told me such stories of their school-days, that I used to wonder that they did not, after they became men, return to the schoolboy spot that they might heartily shake their preceptor of other years, or even kick him!
If there be a thing to be wondered at, it is that the human race is not much worse than it is. It has not a fair chance. I am not thinking now of an original defect in the material provided: I am thinking only of the kind of handling it gets. I am thinking of the amount of judgment which may be found in most parents and in most teachers, and of the degree of honesty which may be found in many. I suppose there is no doubt that the accursed system of the cheap Yorkshire schools was by no means caricatured by Mr. Dickens in “Nicholas Nickleby.” I believe that starvation and brutality were the rule at these institutions. And I do not think it says much for the manliness of Yorkshire men and of Yorkshire clergymen, that these foul dens of misery and wickedness were suffered to exist so long without a voice raised to let the world know of them. I venture to think, that, if Dr. Guthrie of Edinburgh had lived anywhere near Greta Bridge, Mr. Squeers and his compeers would have attained a notoriety that would have stopped their trade. I cannot imagine how any one, with the spirit of a man in him, could sleep and wake within sight of one of these schools without lifting a hand or a voice to stop what was going on there. But without supposing these extreme cases, I can remember what I have myself seen of the incompetence and injustice of teachers. I burn with indignation yet, as I think of a malignant blockhead who once taught me for a few months. I have been at various schools; and I spent six years at one venerable university (where my instructors were wise and worthy); and I am now so old, that I may say, without any great exhibition of vanity, that I have always kept well up among my school- and college-companions: but that blockhead kept me steadily at the bottom of my class, and kept a frightful dunce at the top of it, by his peculiar system. I have observed (let me say) that masters and professors who are stupid themselves have a great preference for stupid fellows, and like to keep down clever ones. A professor who was himself a dunce at college, and who has been jobbed into his chair, being quite unfit for it, has a fellow-feeling for other dunces. He is at home with them, you see, and is not afraid that they see through him and despise him. The injustice of the malignant blockhead who was my early instructor, and who succeeded in making several months of my boyhood unhappy enough, was taken up and imitated by several lesser blockheads among the boys. I remember particularly one sneaking wretch who was occasionally set to mark down on a slate the names of such boys as talked in school; such boys being punished by being turned to the bottom of their class. I remember how that sneaking wretch used always to mark my name down, though I kept perfectly silent: and how he put my name last on the list, that I might have to begin the lesson the very lowest in my form. The sneaking wretch was bigger than I, so I could not thrash him; and any representation I made to the malignant blockhead of a schoolmaster was entirely disregarded. I cannot think but with considerable ferocity, that probably there are many schools to-day in Britain containing a master who has taken an unreasonable dislike to some poor boy, and who lays himself out to make that poor boy unhappy. And I know that such may be the case where the boy is neither bad nor stupid. And if the school be one attended by a good many boys of the lower grade, there are sure to be several sneaky boys among them who will devote themselves to tormenting the one whom the master hates and torments.
It cannot be denied that there is a generous and magnanimous tone about the boys of a school attended exclusively by the children of the better classes, which is unknown among the children of uncultivated boors. I have observed, that, if you offer a prize to the cleverest and most industrious boy of a certain form in a school of the upper class, and propose to let the prize be decided by the votes of the boys themselves, you will almost invariably find it fairly given: that is, given to the boy who deserves it best. If you explain, in a frank, manly way, to the little fellows, that, in asking each for whom he votes, you are asking each to say upon his honor whom he thinks the cleverest and most diligent boy in the form, nineteen boys out of twenty will answer honestly. But I have witnessed the signal failure of such an appeal to the honor of the bumpkins of a country school. I was once present at the examination of such a school, and remarked carefully how the boys acquitted themselves. After the examination was over, the master proposed, very absurdly, to let the boys of each class vote the prize for that particular class. The voting began. A class of about twenty was called up: I explained to the boys what they were to do. I told them they were not to vote for the boy they liked best, but were to tell me faithfully who had done best in the class-lessons. I then asked the first boy in the line for whom he gave his vote. To my mortification, instead of voting for a little fellow who had done incomparably best at the examination, he gave his vote for a big sullen-looking blockhead who had done conspicuously ill. I asked the next boy, and received the same answer. So all round the class: all voted for the big sullen-looking blockhead. One or two did not give their votes quite promptly; and I could discern a threatening glance cast at them by the big sullen-looking blockhead, and an ominous clenching of the blockhead’s right fist. I went round the class without remark; and the blockhead made sure of the prize. Of course this would not do. The blockhead could not be suffered to get the prize; and it was expedient that he should be made to remember the occasion on which he had sought to tamper with justice and right. Addressing the blockhead, amid the dead silence of the school, I said: “You shall not get the prize, because I can judge for myself that you don’t deserve it. I can see that you are the stupidest boy in the class; and I have seen reason, during this voting, to believe that you are the worst. You have tried to bully these boys into voting for you. Their votes go for nothing; for their voting for you proves either that they are so stupid as to think you deserve the prize, or so dishonest as to say they think so when they don’t think so.” Then I inducted the blockhead into a seat where I could see him well, and proceeded to take the votes over again. I explained to the boys once more what they had to do; and explained that any boy would be telling a lie who voted the prize unfairly. I also told them that I knew who deserved the prize, and that they knew it too, and that they had better vote fairly. Then, instead of saying to each boy, “For whom do you vote?” I said to each, “Tell me who did best in the class during these months past.” Each boy in reply named the boy who really deserved the prize: and the little fellow got it. I need not record the means I adopted to prevent the sullen-looking blockhead from carrying out his purpose of thrashing the little fellow. It may suffice to say that the means were thoroughly effectual; and that the blockhead was very meek and tractable for about six weeks after that memorable day.
But, after all, the great cause of the sorrows of childhood is unquestionably the mismanagement of parents. You hear a great deal about parents who spoil their children by excessive kindness; but I venture to think that a greater number of children are spoiled by stupidity and cruelty on the part of their parents. You may find parents who, having started from a humble origin, have attained to wealth, and who, instead of being glad to think that their children are better off than they themselves were, exhibit a diabolical jealousy of their children. You will find such wretched beings insisting that their children shall go through needless trials and mortifications, because they themselves went through the like. Why, I do not hesitate to say that one of the thoughts which would most powerfully lead a worthy man to value material prosperity would be the thought that his boys would have a fairer and happier start in life than he had, and would be saved the many difficulties on which he still looks back with pain. You will find parents, especially parents of the pharisaical and wrong-headedly religious class, who seem to hold it a sacred duty to make the little things unhappy; who systematically endeavor to render life as bare, ugly, and wretched a thing as possible; who never praise their children when they do right, but punish them with great severity when they do wrong; who seem to hate to see their children lively or cheerful in their presence; who thoroughly repel all sympathy or confidence on the part of their children, and then mention as a proof that their children are possessed by the Devil, that their children always like to get away from them; who rejoice to cut off any little enjoyment,—rigidly carrying out into practice the fundamental principle of their creed, which undoubtedly is, that “nobody should ever please himself, neither should anybody ever please anybody else, because in either case he is sure to displease God.” No doubt, Mr. Buckle, in his second volume, caricatured and misrepresented the religion of Scotland as a country; but he did not in the least degree caricature or misrepresent the religion of some people in Scotland. The great doctrine underlying all other doctrines, in the creed of a few unfortunate beings, is, that God is spitefully angry to see his creatures happy; and of course the practical lesson follows, that they are following the best example, when they are spitefully angry to see their children happy.
Then a great trouble, always pressing heavily on many a little mind, is that it is overtasked with lessons. You still see here and there idiotic parents striving to make infant phenomena of their children, and recording with much pride how their children could read and write at an unnaturally early age. Such parents are fools: not necessarily malicious fools, but fools beyond question. The great use to which the first six or seven years of life should be given is the laying the foundation of a healthful constitution in body and mind; and the instilling of those first principles of duty and religion which do not need to be taught out of any books. Even if you do not permanently injure the young brain and mind by prematurely overtasking them,—even if you do not permanently blight the bodily health and break the mind’s cheerful spring, you gain nothing. Your child at fourteen years old is not a bit farther advanced in his education than a child who began his years after him; and the entire result of your stupid driving has been to overcloud some days which should have been among the happiest of his life. It is a woful sight to me to see the little forehead corrugated with mental effort, though the effort be to do no more than master the multiplication table: it was a sad story I lately heard of a little boy repeating his Latin lesson over and over again in the delirium of the fever of which he died, and saying piteously that indeed he could not do it better. I don’t like to see a little face looking unnaturally anxious and earnest about a horrible task of spelling; and even when children pass that stage, and grow up into school-boys who can read Thucydides and write Greek iambics, it is not wise in parents to stimulate a clever boy’s anxiety to hold the first place in his class. That anxiety is strong enough already; it needs rather to be repressed. It is bad enough even at college to work on late into the night; but at school it ought not to be suffered for one moment. If a lad takes his place in his class every day in a state of nervous tremor, he may be in the way to get his gold medal, indeed; but he is in the way to shatter his constitution for life.
We all know, of course, that children are subjected to worse things than these. I think of little things early set to hard work, to add a little to their parents’ scanty store. Yet, if it be only work, they bear it cheerfully. This afternoon, I was walking through a certain quiet street, when I saw a little child standing with a basket at a door. The little man looked at various passers-by; and I am happy to say, that, when he saw me, he asked me to ring the door-bell for him: for, though he had been sent with that basket, which was not a light one, he could not reach up to the bell. I asked him how old he was. “Five years past,” said the child, quite cheerfully and independently. “God help you, poor little man!” I thought; “the doom of toil has fallen early upon you!” If you visit much among the poor, few things will touch you more than the unnatural sagacity and trustworthiness of children who are little more than babies. You will find these little things left in a bare room by themselves,—the eldest six years old,—while the poor mother is out at her work. And the eldest will reply to your questions in a way that will astonish you, till you get accustomed to such things. I think that almost as heart-rending a sight as you will readily see is the misery of a little thing who has spilt in the street the milk she was sent to fetch, or broken a jug, and who is sitting in despair beside the spilt milk or the broken fragments. Good Samaritan, never pass by such a sight; bring out your two-pence; set things completely right: a small matter and a kind word will cheer and comfort an overwhelmed heart. That child has a truculent step-mother, or (alas!) mother, at home, who would punish that mishap as nothing should be punished but the gravest moral delinquency. And lower down the scale than this, it is awful to see want, cold, hunger, rags, in a little child. I have seen the wee thing shuffling along the pavement in great men’s shoes, holding up its sorry tatters with its hands, and casting on the passengers a look so eager, yet so hopeless, as went to one’s heart. Let us thank God that there is one large city in the empire where you need never see such a sight, and where, if you do, you know how to relieve it effectually; and let us bless the name and the labors and the genius of Thomas Guthrie! It is a sad thing to see the toys of such little children as I can think of. What curious things they are able to seek amusement in! I have known a brass button at the end of a string a much prized possession. I have seen a grave little boy standing by a broken chair in a bare garret, solemnly arranging and rearranging two pins upon the broken chair. A machine much employed by poor children in country places is a slate tied to a bit of string: this, being drawn along the road, constitutes a cart; and you may find it attended by the admiration of the entire young population of three or four cottages standing in the moorland miles from any neighbor.
You will not unfrequently find parents who, if they cannot keep back their children from some little treat, will try to infuse a sting into it, so as to prevent the children from enjoying it. They will impress on their children that they must be very wicked to care so much about going out to some children’s party; or they will insist that their children should return home at some preposterously early hour, so as to lose the best part of the fun, and so as to appear ridiculous in the eyes of their young companions. You will find this amiable tendency in people intrusted with the care of older children. I have heard of a man whose nephew lived with him, and lived a very cheerless life. When the season came round at which the lad hoped to be allowed to go and visit his parents, he ventured, after much hesitation, to hint this to his uncle. Of course the uncle felt that it was quite right the lad should go, but he grudged him the chance of the little enjoyment, and the happy thought struck him that he might let the lad go, and at the same time make the poor fellow uncomfortable in going. Accordingly he conveyed his permission to the lad to go by roaring out in a savage manner, “Begone!” This made the poor lad feel as if it were his duty to stay, and as if it were very wicked in him to wish to go; and though he ultimately went, he enjoyed his visit with only half a heart. There are parents and guardians who take great pains to make their children think themselves very bad,—to make the little things grow up in the endurance of the pangs of a bad conscience. For conscience, in children, is a quite artificial thing: you may dictate to it what it is to say. And parents, often injudicious, sometimes malignant, not seldom apply hard names to their children, which sink down into the little heart and memory far more deeply than they think. If a child cannot eat fat, you may instil into him that it is because he is so wicked; and he will believe you for a while. A favorite weapon in the hands of some parents, who have devoted themselves diligently to making their children miserable, is to frequently predict to the children the remorse which they (the children) will feel after they (the parents) are dead. In such cases, it would be difficult to specify the precise things which the children are to feel remorseful about. It must just be, generally, because they were so wicked, and because they did not sufficiently believe the infallibility and impeccability of their ancestors. I am reminded of the woman mentioned by Sam Weller, whose husband disappeared. The woman had been a fearful termagant; the husband, a very inoffensive man. After his disappearance, the woman issued an advertisement, assuring him, that, if he returned, he would be fully forgiven; which, as Mr. Weller justly remarked, was very generous, seeing he had never done anything at all.
Yes, the conscience of children is an artificial and a sensitive thing. The other day, a friend of mine, who is one of the kindest of parents and the most amiable of men, told me what happened in his house on a certainFast-day. A Scotch Fast-day, you may remember, is the institution which so completely puzzled Mr. Buckle. That historian fancied thatto fastmeans in Scotland to abstain from food. Had Mr. Buckle known anything whatever about Scotland, he would have known that a Scotch Fast-day means a week-day on which people go to church, but on which (especially in the dwellings of the clergy) there is a better dinner than usual. I never knew man or woman in all my life who on a Fast-day refrained from eating. And quite right, too. The growth of common sense has gradually abolished literal fasting. In a Oriental climate, abstinence from food may give the mind the preeminence over the body, and so leave the mind better fitted for religious duties. In our country, literal fasting would have just the contrary effect: it would give the body the mastery over the soul; it would make a man so physically uncomfortable that he could not attend with profit to his religious duties at all. I am aware, Anglican reader, of the defects of my countrymen; but commend me to the average Scotchman for sound practical sense. But to return. These Fast-days are by many people observed as rigorously as the Scotch Sunday. On the forenoon of such a day, my friend’s little child, three years old, came to him in much distress. She said, as one who had a fearful sin to confess, “I have been playing with my toys this morning”; and then began to cry as if her little heart would break. I know some stupid parents who would have strongly encouraged this needless sensitiveness; and who would thus have made their child unhappy at the time, and prepared the way for an indignant bursting of these artificial trammels when the child had grown up to maturity. But my friend was not of that stamp. He comforted the little thing, and told her, that, though it might be as well not to play with her toys on a Fast-day, what she had done was nothing to cry about. I think, my reader, that, even if you were a Scotch minister, you would appear with considerable confidence before your Judge, if you had never done worse than failed to observe a Scotch Fast-day with the Covenanting austerity.
But when one looks back and looks round, and tries to reckon up the sorrows of childhood arising from parental folly, one feels that the task is endless. There are parents who will not suffer their children to go to the little feasts which children occasionally have, either on that wicked principle that all enjoyment is sinful, or because the children have recently committed some small offence, which is to be thus punished. There are parents who take pleasure in informing strangers, in their children’s presence, about their children’s faults, to the extreme bitterness of the children’s hearts. There are parents who will not allow their children to be taught dancing, regarding dancing as sinful. The result is, that the children are awkward and unlike other children; and when they are suffered to spend an evening among a number of companions who have all learned dancing, they suffer a keen mortification which older people ought to be able to understand. Then you will find parents, possessing ample means, who will not dress their children like others, but send them out in very shabby garments. Few things cause a more painful sense of humiliation to a child. It is a sad sight to see a little fellow hiding round the corner when some one passes who is likely to recognize him, afraid to go through the decent streets, and creeping out of sight by back-ways. We have all seenthat. We have all sympathized heartily with the reduced widow who has it not in her power to dress her boy better; and we have all felt lively indignation at the parents who had the power to attire their children becomingly, but whose heartless parsimony made the little things go about under a constant sense of painful degradation.
An extremely wicked way of punishing children is by shutting them up in a dark place. Darkness is naturally fearful to human beings, and the stupid ghost-stories of many nurses make it especially fearful to a child. It is a stupid and wicked thing to send a child on an errand in a dark night. I do not remember passing through a greater trial in my youth than once walking three miles alone (it was not going on an errand) in the dark, along a road thickly shaded with trees. I was a little fellow; but I got over the distance in half an hour. Part of the way was along the wall of a church-yard, one of those ghastly, weedy, neglected, accursed-looking spots where stupidity has done what it can to add circumstances of disgust and horror to the Christian’s long sleep. Nobody ever supposed that this walk was a trial to a boy of twelve years old: so little are the thoughts of children understood. And children are reticent: I am telling now about that dismal walk for the very first time. And in the illnesses of childhood, children sometimes get very close and real views of death. I remember, when I was nine years old, how every evening, when I lay down to sleep, I used for about a year to picture myself lying dead, till I felt as though the coffin were closing round me. I used to read at that period, with a curious feeling of fascination, Blair’s poem, “The Grave.” But I never dreamed of telling anybody about these thoughts. I believe that thoughtful children keep most of their thoughts to themselves, and in respect of the things of which they think most are as profoundly alone as the Ancient Mariner in the Pacific. I have heard of a parent, an important member of a very strait sect of the Pharisees, whose child, when dying, begged to be buried not in a certain foul old hideous church-yard, but in a certain cheerful cemetery. This request the poor little creature made with all the energy of terror and despair. But the strait Pharisee refused the dying request, and pointed out with polemical bitterness to the child that he must be very wicked indeed to care at such a time where he was to be buried, or what might be done with his body after death. How I should enjoy the spectacle of that unnatural, heartless, stupid wretch tarred and feathered! The dying child was caring for a thing about which Shakspeare cared; and it was not in mere human weakness, but “by faith,” that “Joseph, when he was a-dying, gave commandment concerning his bones.”
I believe that real depression of spirits, usually the sad heritage of after-years, is often felt in very early youth. It sometimes comes of the child’s belief that he must be very bad, because he is so frequently told that he is so. It sometimes comes of the child’s fears, early felt, as to what is to become of him. His parents, possibly, with the good sense and kind feeling which distinguish various parents, have taken pains to drive it into the child, that, if his father should die, he will certainly starve, and may very probably have to become a wandering beggar. And these sayings have sunk deep into the little heart. I remember how a friend told me that his constant wonder, when he was twelve or thirteen years old, wasthis: If life was such a burden already, and so miserable to look back upon, how could he ever bear it when be had grown older?
But now, my reader, I am going to stop. I have a great deal more marked down to say; but the subject is growing so thoroughly distressing to me, as I go on, that I shall go on no farther. It would make me sour and wretched for the next week, if I were to state and illustrate the varied sorrows of childhood of which I intended yet to speak: and if I were to talk out my heart to you about the people who cause these, I fear my character for good-nature would be gone with you forever. “This genial writer,” as the newspapers call me, would show but little geniality: I am aware, indeed, that I have already been writing in a style which, to say the least, is snappish. So I shall say nothing of the first death that comes in the family in our childish days,—its hurry, its confusion, its awe-struck mystery, its wonderfully vivid recalling of the words and looks of the dead; nor of the terrible trial to a little child of being sent away from home to school,—the heart-sickness, and the weary counting of the weeks and days before the time of returning home again. But let me say to every reader who has it in his power directly or indirectly to do so, Oh, do what you can to make children happy! oh, seek to give that great enduring blessing of a happy youth! Whatever after-life may prove, let there be something bright to look back upon in the horizon of their early time! You may sour the human spirit forever, by cruelty and injustice in youth. There is a past suffering which exalts and purifies; butthisleaves only an evil result: it darkens all the world, and all our views of it. Let us try to make every little child happy. The most selfish parent might try to please a little child, if it were only to see the fresh expression of unblunted feeling, and a liveliness of pleasurable emotion which in after-years we shall never know, I do not believe a great English barrister is so happy when he has the Great Seal committed to him as two little and rather ragged urchins whom I saw this very afternoon. I was walking along a country-road, and overtook them. They were about five years old. I walked slower, and talked to them for a few minutes, and found that they were good boys, and went to school every day. Then I produced two coins of the copper coinage of Britain: one a large penny of ancient days, another a small penny of the present age. “There is a penny for each of you,” I said, with some solemnity: “one is large, you see, and the other small; but they are each worth exactly the same. Go and get something good.” I wish you had seen them go off! It is a cheap and easy thing to make a little heart happy. May this hand never write another essay, if it ever wilfully miss the chance of doing so! It is all quite right in after-years to be careworn and sad. We understand these matters ourselves. Let others bear the burden which we ourselves bear, and which is doubtless good for us. But the poor little things! I can enter into the feeling of a kind-hearted man who told me that he never could look at a number of little children but the tears came into his eyes. How much these young creatures have to bear yet! I think you can, as you look at them, in some degree understand and sympathize with the Redeemer, who, when he “saw a great multitude, was moved with compassion toward them”! Ah, you smooth little face, (you may think,) I know what years will make of you, if they find you in this world! And you, light little heart, will know your weight of care!
And I remember, as I write these concluding lines, who they were that the Best and Kindest this world ever saw liked to have near him; and what the reason was he gave why he felt most in his element when they were by his side. He wished to have little children round him, and would not have them chidden away; and this because there was something about them that reminded him of the Place from which he came. He liked the little faces and the little voices,—he to whom the wisest are in understanding as children. And oftentimes, I believe, these little ones still do his work. Oftentimes, I believe, when the worn man is led to him in childlike confidence, it is by the hand of a little child.
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Three hundred and fifty years ago, a Spanish gentleman sailed on a cruise that may be considered remarkable even in the history of the wonderful adventures of the age of Columbus and Da Gama. Juan Ponce de Leon, having lost the government of Porto Rico, resolved to discover a world for himself, and so become as renowned as “The Admiral.” With the strong fanaticism of his time and his race, he believed that there was a third world to be found, and that it “had been saved up” for him, a gentleman of Leon, and a loyal subject of their Catholic Majesties, who had done good service for his sovereigns and the faith in Granada, and later in the Indies. While he was thinking of the course in which he should sail, he was told that to the North there lay a land which not only contained unlimited gold, and many other material good things, but also a fountain of such marvellous nature that to bathe in it was to secure the return of youth. This revival of an old classic story13fired the imagination of the adventurous cavalier, and he sailed forthwith (March 3, 1512) in search of a land so rich in things that all men, from philosophers to politicians, desire to have,—perfect health and boundless wealth. We need not say that Ponce de Leon failed as completely as if he had sailed in search of the Northwest Passage, for he died in less than ten years, a worn-out old man, aged beyond his years, leaving little gold behind him, and presenting at his parting hour anything but the appearance of youth. He was a type of the Spaniards of those days, who believed everything, and whose valor was as great as their credulity; and his cruise in search of theFontaine de Jouvencewas quite worthy of a native of a country which seems to be allowed the privilege of an occasional “dip” into that fountain, though at long intervals, but is denied the power of constantly bathing in it.
Spain, unlike most other countries, rises and falls, and apparently is never so near to degradation as when she is most strong, and never so near to power as when she is at the weakest point to which a nation can sink and still remain a nation. All states have had both good and evil fortune, but no other great European kingdom has known the extreme and extraordinary changes that have been experienced by Spain. France has met with heavy reverses, but she has been a great and powerful country ever since the days of Philip Augustus, whose body was turned up the other day, after a repose of more than six centuries. Even the victories of the English Plantagenets could but temporarily check her growth; and notwithstanding the successes of Eugène and Marlborough, Louis XIV. left France a greater country than he found it. England’s lowest point was reached during the reigns of her first four Stuart monarchs, but her weakness was exhibited only on the side of foreign politics: it being absurd to suppose that the country which could produce Hampden and Cromwell, Strafford and Falkland, and the men who formed the Cavalier and Roundhead armies, was then in a state of decay. At the worst, she was but depressed, and the removal of such dead weights from her as Charles I. and James II. was all that was necessary to enable her to vindicate her claim to a first-rate place in the European family. In 1783, at the close of the American War, men said that all was over with England; but so mistaken were they, that at that very time were growing up the men who were to lead her fleets and armies with success in contests compared with which the combats of Gates and Burgoyne, of Cornwallis and Washington, were but as skirmishes. No other nation, perhaps, ever had so sudden and so great a fall as that which France met with in 1814-15. It was the most perfect specimen of the “grand smash” order of things that history mentions, if we consider both what was lost, and how quickly it was lost. But it was humiliating merely, and was attended with no loss of true strength. There was taken from France that which she had no right to hold, any more than England has at this moment to hold Gibraltar and Aden and India. France remained much as she had been under the old monarchy, and there were some millions more of Frenchmen than had ever lived under a Bourbon of former days, and they were of a better breed than the political slaves, and in some instances the personal serfs, who had existed under kings that misruled at Versailles and Marly. How rapidly France rose above the effects of her fall we have seen, as her recovery belongs to contemporary history. Her various mind was never more vigorous than it has been since 1815. As to her political and military greatness, millions of men who were living on Waterloo’s day, and who read of that “dishonest victory” as “news,” lived to read the details of Solferino, and of the redemption of Italy.
Not so has it been with Spain. Unlike all other nations in all other respects, she could not allow herself to resemble them even in the matter of making sacrifices to Mutability. Had Juan Ponce de Leon been so unlucky as to find the Fountain of Youth, and had he been so unwise as to reserve its waters for his own private washing and drinking, and so have lived from the age of American discovery to the age of American secession, he would, as a Spaniard, have been forced to undergo many mortifications in the course of the dozen generations that he would then have survived beyond his originally appointed time. Spain has been a greater country than any other in Europe, but she has experienced greater changes than any other European country. She has never known such a catastrophe as that which befell France in the early part of our century, but her losses have been far beyond those which France has ever met with. It was the lot of France to fall at once, to pass from the highest place in the world to the lowest at one step, to abdicate her hegemony with something of that rapidity which is common in dreams, but which is of rare occurrence in real life. It has been the lot of Spain to perish by the dry rot, and to lose imperial positions through the operation of internal causes. So situated as to be almost beyond the reach of effective foreign attack, Spain has had to contend against the processes of domestic decay more than any other leading nation of modern times. To these she has often had to succumb, but she has never failed in due time to redeem herself, and, after having been a by-word for imbecility, to rise again to a commanding place. Three times in less than three centuries have the Spaniards fallen so low as to become of less account in the European system than the feeblest of the Northern peoples; and on each occasion has the native, inherent vigor of the race enabled it to astonish mankind by entering again upon the career of greatness, not always, it must be allowed, after the wisest fashion, but so as to testify to the continued existence of those high qualities which made the Castilian the Roman of the sixteenth century.
Spain was of considerable importance in Europe from a very early period of modern history; but the want of union among her communities, and the presence of Mussulman power in the Peninsula, prevented her from exercising more influence in the Old World than would fall to our share in the New, should the principles of the Secession party prevail. It was not until a union had been effected through the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella, that the power of Christian Spain was brought to bear upon the remnant of the Mussulmans of that country, and rounded and completed the work of redeeming it from the dominion of the followers of the Prophet, who had, on the whole, ruled their possessions better than the Christian states had been ruled. The fall of Granada, in 1492, was hailed throughout Christendom as a great triumph for the Cross, as in one sense it was; but there was not a Christian country which would not have been the gainer, if the Mussulmans of Spain had risen victorious from the last game which they played with the adversaries of their religion in a duel that had endured for more than seven hundred years. Many a Pagan country, too, which had never heard either of Jesus or of Mahomet, was interested in the event of the War of Granada. Montezuma and Atahuallpa, who never had so much as dreamed of Europe, had their fate determined by the decision of the long struggle between the rival religions and peoples of the Peninsula; and Boabdil was not the only monarch, by many, who then and there had his lot decided. Much of America, and not a little of Europe, were conquered on the Plains of Granada; and “the Last Sigh of the Moor” may have been given, not so much to his own sad fate, as over the evil that was to come, and which was to affect popes and princes and peoples alike. There was not a country in the world but might have served itself well, if it had sent aid to the struggling Moors. Instead of rejoicing over the victory of the Spanish Christians, the world might have sent forth a wail in consequence of it, as best expressing the sense that should have existed of the woes which that victory was to be the means of bringing upon mankind. The issue of that Peninsular contest was in every way bad, and no good has ever come from it, but evil in abundance. The fountain that was then unsealed was one of bitter waters only. The sympathies of men should be with the Moors, who were the more enlightened, the more liberal, and the wiser of the two races that then grappled for a final encounter. Being the weaker party, they fell, but they were destined to have grand funeral games.
Freed from the presence of any Mussulman states, Spain was enabled to begin a grand European career in the latter years of the fifteenth century, the conquest of Granada and the discovery of America having given her a degree of power that gained for her the world’s profoundest respect. Partly by success in war, and partly through a series of fortunate marriages, she became the first member of the European commonwealth in a quarter of a century after the overthrow of the Moors. The first of her Austro-Burgundian kings was made Emperor of Germany, and by birth he was lord of the Netherlands. In a few years, and after the conquest of Mexico, he had a French king among his captives, and the Pope was shut up by one of his armies in the Castle of St. Angelo. Yet a few years more, and Peru was added to the dominions of Spain. The position and principles of the Emperor-King made him the champion of the old order of things in Europe as against the Reformation, which added immensely to his power. Spain was then, as she is now, and as probably she ever will be, intensely Catholic, and as Papal as any country valuing its independence well could be. How she regarded Protestantism, and all other forms of “heresy,” we know from the fiery energy—it was literally of a fiery character—with which she disposed of all the Reformers, of every degree, upon whom her iron hand could be laid. Had Charles V. been inclined to favor the Reformation, from his position as Emperor of Germany, he would soon have been diverted from any such thought by considerations drawn from his position as King of the Spains. A Mussulman, or a Hebrew, or an avowed atheist would have had a better chance of being a powerful and popular sovereign at Valladolid than a pious man who should have been inclined to look with favor upon Dr. Luther. It may be doubted if even a king could have been safe from the inquiries of the Inquisition. Thus Spain was not only at the head of Europe because of her military superiority and the extent of her home territory and foreign dominion, but, as the champion of the Church, she had a moral power such as no other country has ever possessed, her championship of the Pope being something very different from Napoleon III.’s championship of the Pope of to-day. The German aristocracy might be after the loaves and fishes of the Church, when they professed readiness to aid in warfare against the Reformers; but no one could doubt the zeal of the Spanish patricians, whentheydedicated their swords and lances to the work of extirpating all enemies of the faith. An Englishman of 1857 could not have been more hostile to a Sepoy than a Spaniard of 1557 was to a Protestant. Religious power, political power, military power, and long-continued success in the cabinet and in the field, all combined to place Spain in a position such as no other nation had ever known, such as no other nation ever will know. Even the failures of Charles V.—his flight before Maurice of Saxony, and his defeat at Metz—did not sensibly abate the power of Spain, for they concerned Germany more than they did the Peninsular subjects of the disappointed monarch.
When Philip II. succeeded to most of his father’s abdicated thrones, there was no diminution of Spanish pretensions, and he became the mightiest sovereign that Europe had known since Charlemagne. Philip’s failure to obtain the Imperial throne was a personal disappointment to both father and son, but it was no loss of real power to the elder branch of the House of Austria. The death of Mary of England, though it prevented Philip from availing himself of the men and money of his wife’s kingdom, was rather beneficial to him, as chief of the Spanish dominion, than otherwise. What could he have done with the haughty, arrogant, self-sufficient islanders, who were as proud as the Castilians themselves, without any of the imperial pretensions of the Castilians to justify their pride, had Mary lived and reigned, while he alone should have ruled? There would have been civil war in England but for Mary’s death, which occurred at a happy time both for her and for her subjects. Philip also lost a portion of his Northern hereditary dominions, because he would have a tyranny established in the Netherlands. But all that he lost in Germany, in the Netherlands, and in Britain was compensated by his easy conquest of Portugal after the extinction of the House of Avis. The Portugal of those times was a very different country from the Portugal of these times. It was not only Portugal and the Algarves that Philip added to the dominions of Spain,—and that alone would have been a great thing, for it would have perfected the Spanish rule of the Peninsula, always a most desirable event in the eyes of Castilians,—but the enormous and wide-spread possessions of Portugal in Africa, in America, and in Asia became subject to the conqueror. Portugal alone was of far more value to Spain than England could have been; but Portugal and her colonies together made a greater prize than England, Holland, and Germany could have made, recollecting how full of “heretics” those countries were, and that the more heretical subjects Philip should have had, the less powerful he would have been. Portugal was as “Faithful” as Spain was “Catholic,” and both titles now belonged to Philip. At that time, Philip’s power, to outward seeming, was at its height. It was not certain that he would lose Holland, and it was certain that he had gained Portugal and all her dependencies. He was absolute master of the Spanish Peninsula, and his will was law over nearly all the Italian Peninsula except that portion of it which was ruled by Venice. He alone of European sovereigns had vast possessions in both Indies, the East and the West. He was monarch of no insignificant part of Africa, and in America he was the Great King, his dominion there being almost as little disputed as was that of Selkirk in his island. He was still master of the best part of the Low Countries, and the Hollanders were regarded as nothing more than his rebellious subjects. He was the sole Western potentate who had lieutenants in the East, who ruled over Indian territories that never had been reached even by the Macedonian Alexander. From his cabinet in Madrid, he fixed the fate of many millions of the first peoples in the world, members of the races most advanced in all the arts of war and of peace. His least whisper could affect the every-day life of men in the principal cities of both hemispheres. He who was sovereign at Madrid and Lisbon, at Naples and Milan, at Brussels and Antwerp, was sovereign also at Mexico and Lima, at Goa and Ormuz.
Philip’s power was by no means to be measured solely by the extent and various character of his dominions. His position, as a great monarch, and as the chief champion of the Catholic cause, made him, at times, master of many European countries over which he could exercise no direct rule. England trembled before him even after the “Armada’s pride” had been rebuked, and Elizabeth came much nearer being vanquished by him than is generally supposed. Nothing but the blockade of Parma’s forces by the Dutch, and the occurrence of storms, saved England from experiencing that sad fate which she has ever been so ready, with cause and without cause, to visit upon other countries. In Ireland the Spanish monarch was more respected than Elizabeth, its nominal ruler, and he was regarded by the Irish not only with reverence as the first of Catholic princes, but also with that affection which men ever feel for the enemies of their enemies. Whoso hates England is sure of Irish affection, and as it is today so was it three hundred years ago, and so will it ever be, unless the very human heart itself shall undergo a complete change. Scotland furnished a Spanish party that might have become formidable to England, had events taken a slightly different turn; and the old Caledonian hatred of Southrons had not been extinguished by the success of the Reform party in both countries. The Scotch Catholics called Philip “the pillar of the Christian commonwealth,” (Totius reipublicæ Christianæ columen,) and sought his assistance to restore the old religion to their country. France was for several years more at the command of Philip than at that of any of its own sovereigns, the weak dregs of the line of Valois. The League would willingly have transferred the French crown to any person whom he might have named to wear it; and perhaps nothing but the sensible decision of Henry IV., that Paris was worth a mass, prevented that crown from passing to some member of the Spanish branch of the House of Austria. In Germany Philip had an influence corresponding to his power, which was all the greater because he was the head of a Germanic house that under him seemed destined to develop an old idea that it should become ruler of the world. If anything marred his strength in that quarter, it was the fact that the junior branch of the Austrian family was at that time inclined to liberalism in politics,—an offence against the purposes and traditions of the whole family of which few members of it have ever been guilty, before or since.
But this mighty Spanish power came to an end with the monarch in whom it was represented. The sources of Spanish strength had been drying up for a century, but the personal character of the successive monarchs, and vast foreign acquisitions, had disguised the fact from the world. Philip died in 1598, and in reality left his empire but a skeleton to his son, a youth of feeble mind, but under whose rule a change of policy was effected, not, as has been sometimes supposed, from any deep views on the part of the Count-Duke Lerma, but because it was impossible for Spain to maintain the place she had held under Philip II. Even had Philip III. been as able a man as his father, or his grandfather, he could not have preserved the ascendency of Spain,—that country having changed much, and Europe more. Every European nation, with the exception of Turkey,—and the Turks were only encamped in Europe,—had advanced during the sixteenth century, except Spain, which had declined. Thus had she become weak, positively and relatively. Rest was necessary to her, and under the rule of Lerma she obtained it. He supported the peace policy of that old aristocratical party of which Ruy Gomez had been the chief, but which had been hardly heard of in the last twenty years of Philip II.’s reign. That monarch, on his death-bed, regretted that “to his grace in bestowing on him so great a realm, God had not been pleased to add the grace of granting him a successor capable of continuing to rule it”; but had his son been all that the most unreasonable parent could have desired, he could not have pursued his father’s policy. Lerma did but act as he was forced to act. The circumstance that the Catholic Reaction had triumphed was alone sufficient to make a change necessary. Spanish greatness was no longer the leading political interest of the Church, and Rome was at liberty to have some regard to the new powers that were growing up in Europe. Pacific ideas prevailed. Spain ceased to make war in every direction, and husbanded her resources, and began to renew her native strength. The skeleton bequeathed by Philip II. became clothed with flesh, and sinewy. Could this policy have been continued for a generation, Spanish history might have been made to read differently from the melancholy text it now presents. But the process of rehabilitation was not allowed to go on. There had always been a strong party opposed to Lerma, and that statesman’s friendliness to the English and the Dutch made him liable to the charge of favoring heresy,—a charge that was the heaviest that could be brought against any one in the estimation of Philip III., who was as bigoted as his father. The Catholic and warlike policy of Idiaquez, Granvella, and Moura was revived. The two branches of the Austrian family were again brought into the closest alliance, and at a time when the German branch had become even more Catholic than the elder branch. Spain stepped once more into the European arena, and her generals and armies by their abilities and exploits revived recollections of what had been done by Parma and his hosts. Spinola, who was scarcely inferior to Farnese, conquered the Palatinate, and so began the Thirty Years’ War favorably to the Catholic cause. The great victory of Nordlingen, won by the Catholics in 1635, was due to the valor of the Spanish troops in the Imperial army. Spain appeared to be as powerful as at any former period, and the revival of her ascendency might have been expected by those who judged only from external indications of strength. Yet a few years, however, and it was clear to all politicians at least that Spain was far gone into a decline, and that the course of Olivarez had been fatal to her greatness; and the mass of mankind, who judge only from glaring actions, could not fail to appreciate the nature of such events as the defeat of Rocroi and the loss of Portugal, the latter including the loss of all the dependencies of the Portuguese in Africa, America, and India. No historical transaction of the seventeenth century testifies so strongly to the weakness of a first-class power as the Revolution of Portugal. Though Portugal lay at the very door of Spain, that country slipped from her feeble hands, and she never could recover it. Having resumed her encroaching, domineering course before she had fairly recovered her strength, she broke down in less than a quarter of a century, though even then the full extent of her weakness was not generally understood. It is an amusement to read works that were written in the reigns of Philip IV. and Charles II., in which Spain is spoken of as a great power, and to compare the words of their writers with the actual facts of the case. If we were to fix upon any one date as indicating the final breaking down of Austrian Spain, it would be the year 1659, when the treaty of the Pyrenees was made, and when the old rival of France became virtually her vassal. From that time we must date the beginning of that strange interference in Spanish affairs which has formed so much of the public business of France, whereby one of the proudest of peoples have become, as it were, provincials to one of the vainest of peoples. It is true that there were more wars between Austrian Spain and France, but they served only to show that the former had lost the power to contend with her rival, who might look forward to the day when the empire of Philip II. should fall to pieces, and furnish spoil to those strong nations that watch over the beds of sick men in purple.
The state of decay in which the first Bourbon king of Spain found his inheritance, in 1701, is well known. The War of the Succession soon followed, and Spain was shorn of some of her most magnificent foreign possessions. All that she had held in Flanders was lost,—and so were Naples, and Sicily, and Sardinia, and the Milanese, and other lands that had been ruled, and wellnigh ruined, by the Austro-Burgundian kings. The English had Gibraltar, and were holding Minorca also. Bourbon Spain was not to be Austrian Spain,—that was clear. But this trimming and pruning of the Peninsular monarchy were very useful to it; and Spain, having been ploughed up by the sword for twelve successive years, was in condition to yield something beyond what it had produced since the death of Philip II. Accordingly, under the ascendency of the Italian Alberoni, Spain became rapidly powerful; and could that remarkable statesman have confined his labors to affairs purely Spanish in their character and purpose, that country might have taken, and have continued to hold, the first place in Europe. He, however, with all his talents, was intellectually deficient in some important respects, and so all his schemes came to nought, and he fell. He tried to effect too much, and though fully sensible of the necessity of peace to Spain, he plunged into war. He did, in fact, what the rulers of Spain are doing to-day: he sought to restore the old Castilian influence by engaging the country in wars that would have been foolish, even if they had not been unjust, when he should have continued to direct all his attention to its internal affairs. Had he been at the head of any other than a Spanish ministry, Alberoni would probably have borne himself rationally; but there is something in the politics of Spain that affects even the wisest of heads, often turning them, as it were, and rendering their owners the strangest of caricatures. It is sometimes said that the most Irish of the people of Ireland are those who have come latest into the green island, there being something in its air and soil that soon converts the stranger into a true Hibernian in all moral respects; but the remark is more applicable to Spain than to Ireland, as in the former country foreign statesmen have more than once made Spanish policy ridiculous by taking that one step which separates that quality from the sublime. What in the person of a Castilian is at the worst but Quixotic becomes in the foreigner, or man of foreign descent, the merest burlesque upon statesmanship.