"He who fights and runs awayMay live to fight another day,"
"He who fights and runs awayMay live to fight another day,"
prevailed on him to wait for retaliation until a more favorable opportunity.
It may be satisfactory to the reader to hear, that, after Miselle had left Oil Creek, she was informed that Mr. Williams,John, and a body of men, equal in number to the colliers, paid them a visit, with authority from the owner of the mine to pull down their house and eject them from the premises. They also contemplated, it is supposed, a more direct and personal vengeance; but, on making known their intentions, the pretty bride again appeared, and, assaulting poor Williams with a whole battery of tearful eyes, trembling lips, and eloquent appeals, vindicated once more the superiority of woman's wiles to man's determination. An abject apology from the colliers, and a decided intimation from the "Regulators" of the consequences sure to follow any future incivility to visitors, closed the affair, and the parties separated without further hostilities.
The evening was so far advanced when the little party of fugitives were once moreen route, that a proposed visit to a working mine at some little distance was given up, and at the door of the farm-house the party dispersed to their respective homes.
The next day had been appointed for a visit to Oil City, the farthest and most important station upon the Creek; and one object in visiting the house was to engage Jamie, with his "team," for the expedition. It fortunately happened that the old Scotchman and his wife were going to Oil City on the same day, and it was arranged that the two parties should unite.
At an early hour in the morning, therefore, Mr. and Mrs. Williams, with Miselle, once more climbed the mountain to the little log-house, and found Jamie just harnessing a pair of fine black horses to a wagon, similar to the "hack-carriage" of Schaeffer's Farm. In the bottom was a quantity of clean hay, and across the sides were fastened two planks, covered with bedquilts. Upon one of these were seated Mr. and Mrs. Williams, while Miselle was invited to the post of honor beside Mrs. Miller, and the old Scotchman shared the driver's seat with his son.
"Dinna ye be feared now, dearie. Our Jamie's a car'fu' driver, wi' all his wild ways," said the old woman kindly, as the wagon, with a premonitory lurch and twist, turned into the forest road.
Road! Let the reader call to mind the most precipitous wooded mountain of his acquaintance, and fancy a road formed over it by the simple process of cutting off the trees, leaving the stumps and rocks undisturbed, and then fancy himself dragged over it in a springless wagon behind two fast horses.
"Eh, then! It maks an auld body's banes ache sair, siccan a road, as yon!" said the Scotchwoman, with a significant grimace, as the wagon paused a moment at the foot of a perpendicular ascent.
"I reckon ye wad nae ken whatten the Auld Country roads were med for, gin ye suld see them. They're nae like this, ony way."
The dear old creature had entered the United States through the St. Lawrence and the Lakes, and supposed Tarr Farm to be America. Miselle was so weak as to try to describe the aspect of things about her native city, and was evidently suspected of patriotic romancing for her pains.
But such magnificent views! Such glimpses of far mountain-peaks, seen through vistas of rounded hills! Such flashing streams, tumbling heels over head across the forest road in their haste to mingle with the blue waters of the Alleghany! Such wide stretches of country, as the road crept along the mountain-brow, or curved sinuously down to the far valley!
Pictures were there, as yet uncopied, that should hold Church breathless, with the pencil of the Andes and Niagara quivering in his fingers,—pictures that Turner might well cross the seas to look upon; but Miselle remembers them through a distracting mist of bodily terror and discomfort,—as some painter showed a dance of demons encircling a maiden's couch, while above it hung her first love-dream.
"Yon in the valley, where the wood looks so yaller, is a sulphur spring; an' here in the road's the place where I'm going to tip you all over," suddenly remarked Jamie, twisting himself roundon the box to enjoy the consternation of his female passengers, while the wagon paused on the verge of a long gully, some six feet in depth, occupying the whole middle of the road.
"Wull ye get out?" continued he, addressing Miselle for the first time.
"Had we better?" asked she, tremulously.
"If you're easy scared. But I'm no going to upset, I'll promise you."
"Then I'll stay in," said Miselle, in the desperate courage of extreme cowardice; and the wagon went on, two wheels deep in the gully, crumbling down the clayey mud, two wheels high on the mountain-side, crashing through brush and over stones. And yet there was no upset.
"Didn't I tell ye?" inquired Jamie, again twisting himself to look in Miselle's white face, with a broad smile of delight at her evident terror.
"Be done, you bold bairn! Isn't he a sturdy, stirring lad, Ma'am?" said the proud mother, as Jamie, addressing himself again to his work, shouted to the black nags, and put them along the bit of level road in the valley at a pace precluding all further conversation.
Another precipitous ascent, where the road had been mended by felling a large tree across it, over whose trunk the horses were obliged to pull the heavy wagon, and then an equally precipitous descent, gave a view of the Alleghany River and Oil Creek, with Oil City at their confluence, and a background of bluffs and mountains cutting sharp against the clear blue sky.
This view Miselle contemplated with one eye; but the other remained rigidly fixed upon the road before her.
Even Jamie paused, and finally suggested,—
"Reckon, men, you'd best get out and walk alongside. The women can stay in; and if she's going over, you can shore up."
Under these cheerful auspices the descent was accomplished, and, by some miracle, without accident.
At the foot of the bluff commences the slough in which Oil City is set; and as it deepened, the horses gradually sank from view, until only their backs were visible, floundering through a sea of oily mud of a peculiarly tenacious character. Miselle has the warning of Munchausen before her eyes; but, in all sadness, she avers that in the principal street of Oil City, and at the door of the principal hotel, the mud was on that day above the hubs of the wagon-wheels.
Having refreshed themselves in body and mind at the Petroleum House, where a lady in a soiled print dress and much jewelry kindly played at them upon a gorgeous piano, the party went forth to view the city.
The same mingling of urgent civilization and unsubdued Nature observable in Corry characterizes Oil City to a greater extent. On one side of the street, crowded with oil-wagons, the freight of each worth thousands of dollars, stand long rows of dwellings, shops, and warehouses, all built within two years, and on the other impinges a bluff still covered with its forest growth of shrubs and wood-plants,—while upon the frowning front of a cliff that has for centuries faced nothing meaner than the Alleghany, with its mountain background, some Vandal has daubed the advertisement of a quack nostrum.
Farther on, where the bluff is less precipitous, it has been graded after a fashion; and the houses built at the upper side of the new street seem to be sliding rapidly across it to join their opposite neighbors, which, in their turn, are sinking modestly into the mud.
A plank sidewalk renders it possible to walk through the principal streets of this city; but temptation to do so is of the slightest.
Monotonous lines of frail houses, shops whose scanty assortment of goods must be sold at enormous prices to pay the expense of transportation from New York or Philadelphia, crowds of oil-speculators, oil-dealers, oil-teamsters, a clumsy bridge across the Creek, a prevailing atmosphere of petroleum,—such is Oil City.
At the water-side the view is somewhatmore interesting. No wharves have yet been built; and the swarming flatboats "tie up" all along the bank, just as they used to do three years ago, when, with a freight of lumber instead of oil, they stopped for the night at the solitary little Dutch tavern then monopolizing the site of the present city.
A rakish little stern-wheel steamer lay in the stream, bound for Pittsburg, and sorely was Miselle tempted to take passage down the Alleghany in her; but lingering memories of home and the long-suffering Caleb at last prevailed, and, with a sigh, she turned her back upon the beautiful river, and retraced her steps through yards crowded with barrels of oil waiting for shipment,—oil in rows, oil in stacks, oil in columns, and oil in pyramids wellnigh as tall and as costly as that of Cheops himself.
Returned to the Petroleum House, Miselle bade a reluctant good-bye to the kindly Scots, who here took stage for Franklin, and watched them float away, as it appeared, upon the sea of mud in a wagon-body whose wheels and horses were too nearly submerged to make any noticeable feature in the arrangement.
Soon after, Jamie appeared at the door of the parlor nominally to announce himself ready to return; but, after a fierce struggle with his natural modesty of disposition, he advanced into the room, and silently laid two of the biggest apples that ever grew in the laps of Mrs. Williams and Miselle. Putting aside all acknowledgments with "Ho! what's an apple or two?" the woodsman next proceeded on a tour of inspection round the room, serenely unconscious of the magnificent scorn withering him from the eyes of the jewelled lady, who now reclined upon a broken-backed sofa, taking a leisurely survey of the strangers.
Jamie paused some time at the piano.
"And what might such a thing as that cost noo?" asked he, at length, giving the case a little back-handed blow.
"About eight hundred dollars," ventured Miselle, to whom the inquiry was addressed.
Jamie opened his wide black eyes.
"Hoot! Feyther could ha' bought Jim Tarr's whole farm for that, three year ago," said he; and, with one more contemptuous stare at the piano, he left the room, and was presently seen in the stable-yard, shouldering from his path a wagon laden with coals.
Soon after, Miselle and her friends gladly bade farewell to Oil City, leaving the scornful lady seated at the piano executing the charming melody of "We're a band of brothers from the old Granite State."
Having entered the city by the hill-road, it was proposed to return along the Creek, although, as Jamie candidly stated, the road "might, like enough, be a thought worser than the other."
And it was.
Before the oil fever swept through this region, a man might have travelled from the mouth of the Creek to its head-waters, and seen no more buildings than he could have numbered on his ten fingers. Now the line of derricks, shanties, engine-houses, and oil-tanks is continuous through the whole distance; and thousands of men may be seen to-day accumulating millions of dollars where three years ago the squirrel and his wife, hoarding their winter stores, were the only creatures that took thought for the morrow.
After its incongruous mixture of society, the social peculiarity of Oil Creek is a total disregard of truth.
A mechanic, a tradesman, or a boatman makes the most solemn promise of service at a certain time. Terms are settled, a definite hour appointed for the fulfilment of the contract; the man departs, and is seen no more. His employer is neither disappointed nor angry; he expects nothing else.
A cart laden with country produce enters the settlement from the farms behind it. Every housewife drops her broom, and rushes out to waylay the huckster, and induce him to sell her the provisions already engaged to her neighbor. Happy she, if stout enough of arm to convey her booty home with her; for if she trust the vendor to leave it at herhouse, even after paying him his price, she may bid good-bye to the green delights, as eagerly craved here as on a long sea-voyage.
This "peculiar institution" is all very well, doubtless, for those who understand it, but is somewhat inconvenient to a stranger, as Miselle discovered during the three days she was trying to leave Tarr Farm.
On the third morning, after waiting two hours upon the bank of the Creek for a perjured boatman, Mr. Williams rushed desperately into a crowd of teamsters and captured the youth whose first impressions of a railway have been chronicled on a preceding page. Probably even he, had time been allowed to consider the proposition at length, would have declined the journey; but, overborne by the vehemence of his employer, he found himself well upon the road to Schaeffer's Farm before he had by any means decided to go thither.
The pleasantest part of the "carriage exercise" on this road is fording the Creek, a course adopted wherever the bluff comes down to the bank, and the flat reappears upon the opposite side, no one having yet spent time to grade a continuous road on one side or the other. A railway company has, however, made a beginning in this direction; and it is promised that in another year the traveller may proceed from Schaeffer's to Oil City by rail.
At Titusville Miselle bade good-bye to her kind friend Williams, and once more took herself under her own protection.
Spending the night at Corry, she next day found herself in the city of Erie, and could have fancied it Heidelberg instead, the signs bearing such names as Schultz, Seelinger, Jantzen, Cronenberger, Heidt, and Heybeck. Hans Preuss sells bread, Valentin Ulrich manufactures saddles, and P. Loesch keeps a meat-market, with a sign representing one gentleman holding a mad bull by a bit of packthread tied to his horns, while an assistant leisurely strolls up to annihilate the creature with a tack-hammer.
Here, too, a little beyond the middle of the town, was a girl herding a flock of geese, precisely as did the princess in the "Brüder Grimm Tales," while a doltish boy stared at her with just the imbecile admiration of Kurdkin for the wily maiden who combed her golden, hair and chanted her naughty spell in the same breath.
A little farther on stood a charming old Dutch cottage with cabbages in the front yard, and a hop-vine clambering the porch. An infant Teuton swung upon the gate, who, being addressed by Miselle, lisped an answer in High Dutch, while his mother shrilly exchanged the news with her next neighbor in the same tongue.
Two hours sufficed to exhaust the wonders of Erie, and Miselle gladly took the cars for Buffalo, and on the road thither fell in with a good Samaritan, who solaced her weary faintness with delicate titbits of grouse, shot and roasted upon an Ohio prairie.
At Buffalo waited the Eastern-bound cars of the New-York Central Railway; but only twenty miles farther on, thundered Niagara, and Miselle could not choose but obey the sonorous summons. So, after spending the night at a "white man's" hotel in Buffalo, the next morning found her standing, an insignificant atom, before one of the world's great wonders. One or two other travellers, however, have mentioned Niagara; and Miselle refrains from expressing more than her thanks for the kindness which enabled her to fulfil her darling wish of standing behind the great fall on the Canada side.
Truly, it is no empty boast that places Americans preëminent over the men of every other nation in their courtesy to women; and Miselle would fain most gratefully acknowledge the constant attention and kindness everywhere offered to her, while never once was she annoyed by obtrusive or unwelcome approach; and not the vast resources of her country, not the grandeur of Niagara, give her such pride and satisfaction as does the new knowledge she has gained of her countrymen.:
O sailors, did sweet eyes look after you,The day you sailed away from sunny Spain?Bright eyes that followed fading ship and crew,Melting in tender rain?Did no one dream of that drear night to be,Wild with the wind, fierce with the stinging snow,When, on yon granite point that frets the sea,The ship met her death-blow?Fifty long years ago these sailors died:(None know how many sleep beneath the waves:)Fourteen gray headstones, rising side by side,Point out their nameless graves,—Lonely, unknown, deserted, but for me,And the wild birds that flit with mournful cry,And sadder winds, and voices of the seaThat moans perpetually.Wives, mothers, maidens, wistfully, in vainQuestioned the distance for the yearning sail,That, leaning landward, should have stretched againWhite arms wide on the gale,To bring back their beloved. Year by year,Weary they watched, till youth and beauty passed,And lustrous eyes grew dim, and age drew near,And hope was dead at last.Still summer broods o'er that delicious land,Rich, fragrant, warm with skies of golden glow:Live any yet of that forsaken bandWho loved so long ago?O Spanish women, over the far seas,Could I but show you where your dead repose!Could I send tidings on this northern breeze,That strong and steady blows!Dear dark-eyed sisters, you remember yetThese you have lost, but you can never knowOne stands at their bleak graves whose eyes are wetWith thinking of your woe!
O sailors, did sweet eyes look after you,The day you sailed away from sunny Spain?Bright eyes that followed fading ship and crew,Melting in tender rain?
Did no one dream of that drear night to be,Wild with the wind, fierce with the stinging snow,When, on yon granite point that frets the sea,The ship met her death-blow?
Fifty long years ago these sailors died:(None know how many sleep beneath the waves:)Fourteen gray headstones, rising side by side,Point out their nameless graves,—
Lonely, unknown, deserted, but for me,And the wild birds that flit with mournful cry,And sadder winds, and voices of the seaThat moans perpetually.
Wives, mothers, maidens, wistfully, in vainQuestioned the distance for the yearning sail,That, leaning landward, should have stretched againWhite arms wide on the gale,
To bring back their beloved. Year by year,Weary they watched, till youth and beauty passed,And lustrous eyes grew dim, and age drew near,And hope was dead at last.
Still summer broods o'er that delicious land,Rich, fragrant, warm with skies of golden glow:Live any yet of that forsaken bandWho loved so long ago?
O Spanish women, over the far seas,Could I but show you where your dead repose!Could I send tidings on this northern breeze,That strong and steady blows!
Dear dark-eyed sisters, you remember yetThese you have lost, but you can never knowOne stands at their bleak graves whose eyes are wetWith thinking of your woe!
There is an influential form of practical force, compounded of strong will, strong sense, and strong egotism, which long waited for a strong monosyllable to announce its nature. Facts of character, indeed, are never at rest until they have become terms of language; and that peculiar thing which is not exactly courage or heroism, but which unmistakably is "Grit," has coined its own word to blurt out its own quality. If the word has not yet pushed its way into classic usage, or effected a lodgement in the dictionaries, the force it names is no less a reality of the popular consciousness, and the word itself no less a part of popular speech. Men who possessed the thing were just the men to snub elegance and stun propriety by giving it an inelegant, though vitally appropriate name. There is defiance in its very sound. The word is used by vast numbers of people to express their highest ideal of manliness, which is "real grit." It is impossible for anybody to acquire the reputation it confers by the most dexterous mimicry of its outside expressions; for a swift analysis, which drives directly to the heart of the man, instantly detects the impostor behind the braggart, and curtly declares him to lack "the true grit." The word is so close to the thing it names, has so much pith and point, is so tart on the tongue, and so stings the ear with its meaning, that foreigners ignorant of the language might at once feel its significance by its griding utterance as it is shot impatiently through the resisting teeth.
Grit is in the grain of character. It may generally be described as heroism materialized,—spirit and will thrust into heart, brain, and backbone, so as to form part of the physical substance of the man. The feeling with which it rushes into consciousness is akin to physical sensation; and the whole body—every nerve, muscle, and drop of blood—is thrilled with purpose and passion. "Spunk" does not express it; for "spunk," besides beingpetitein itself, is courage in effervescence rather than courage in essence. A person usually cowardly may be kicked or bullied into the exhibition of spunk; but the man of grit carries in his presence a power which spares him the necessity of resenting insult; for insult sneaks away from his look. It is not mere "pluck"; for pluck also comes by fits and starts, and can be disconnected from the other elements of character. A tradesman once had the pluck to demand of Talleyrand, at the time that trickster-statesman was at the height of his power, when he intended to pay his bill; but he was instantly extinguished by the impassive insolence of Talleyrand's answer,—"My faith, how curious you are!" Considered as an efficient force, it is sometimes below heroism, sometimes above it: below heroism, when heroism is the permanent condition of the soul; above heroism, when heroism is simply the soul's transient mood. Thus, Demosthenes had flashes of splendid heroism, but his valor depended on his genius being kindled,—his brave actions naming out from mental ecstasy rather than intrepid character. The moment his will dropped from its eminence of impassioned thought, he was scared by dangers which common soldiers faced with gay indifference. Erskine, the great advocate, was a hero at the bar; but when he entered the House of Commons, there was something in the fixed imperiousness and scorn of Pitt which made him feel inwardly weak and fluttered. Erskine had flashes of heroism; Pitt had consistent and persistent grit. If we may take the judgment of Sir Sidney Smith, Wellington had more grit than Napoleon had heroism. Just before the Battle of Waterloo, Sir Sidney, at Paris, was told that the Duke had decided to keep hisposition at all events. "Oh!" he exclaimed, "if the Duke has said that, of course t' other fellow must give way."
And this is essentially the sign of grit, that, when it appears, t' other fellow or t' other opinion must give way. Its power comes from its tough hold on the real, and the surly boldness with which it utters and acts it out. Thus, in social life, it puts itself in rude opposition to all those substitutes for reality which the weakness and hypocrisy and courtesy of men find necessary for their mutual defence. It denies that it has ever surrendered its original rights and aboriginal force, or that it has assented to the social compact. When it goes into any company of civilized persons, its pugnacity is roused by seeing that social life does not rest on the vigor of the persons who compose it, but on the authority of certain rules and manners to which all are required to conform. These appear to grit as external defences, thrown up to protect elegant feebleness against any direct collision with positive character, and to keep men and women at a respectful distance from ladies and gentlemen. Life is carried on there at one or more removes from the realities of life, on this principle, that, "I won't speak the truth of you, if you won't speak the truth of me"; and the name of this principle is politeness. It is impolite to tell foolish men that they are foolish, mean men that they are mean, wicked men that they are wicked, traitorous men that they are traitors; for smooth lies cement what impolite veracities would shatter. The system, it is contended, on the whole, civilizes the individuals whose natures it may repress, and is better than a sincerity which would set them by the ears, and put a veto on all social intercourse whatever. But strong as may be the argument in favor of the system, it is certainly as important that it should be assailed as that it should exist, and that it should be assailed from within; for, carried out unchecked to its last consequences, it results in sinking its victims into the realm of vapors and vacuity, its representative being the all-accomplished London man of fashion who committed suicide to save himself from the bore of dressing and undressing. Besides, in "good society," so called, the best sentiments and ideas can sometimes get expression only through the form of bad manners. It is charming to be in a circle where human nature is pranked out in purple and fine linen, and where you sometimes see manners as beautiful as the masterpieces of the arts; yet some people cannot get rid of the uneasy consciousness that a subtle tyranny pervades the room and ties the tongue,—that philanthropy is impolite, that heroism is ungenteel, that truth, honor, freedom, humanity, strongly asserted, are marks of a vulgar mind; and many a person, daring enough to defend his opinions anywhere else, by speech or by the sword, quails in the parlor before some supercilious coxcomb,
"Weak in his watery smileAnd educated whisker,"
"Weak in his watery smileAnd educated whisker,"
who can still tattle to the girls that the reformer is "no gentleman."
Now how different all this is, when a man of social grit thrusts himself into a drawing-room, and with an easy audacity tosses out disagreeable facts and unfashionable truths, the porcelain crashing as his words fall, and saying everything that no gentleman ought to say, indifferent to the titter or terror of the women and the offended looks and frightened stare of the men. How the gilded lies vanish in his presence! How he states, contradicts, confutes! how he smashes through proprieties to realities, flooding the room with his aggressive vitality, mastering by main force a position in the most exclusive set, and, by being perfectly indifferent to their opinion, making it impossible for them to put him down! He thus becomes a social power by becoming a social rebel,—persecutes conventional politeness into submission to rude veracity,—establishes an autocracy of man over the gentleman,—and practises a kind of "Come-Outerism," while insisting on enjoying all the advantages ofGo-Interism. Ben Jonson in the age of Elizabeth, SamuelJohnson in the last century, Carlyle and Brougham in the present, are prominent examples of this somewhat insolent manhood in the presence of social forms. It is, however, one of the rarest, as it is one of the ugliest, kinds of human strength; it requires, perhaps, in its combination, full as many defects as merits; and how difficult is its justifiable exercise we see in the career of so illustrious a philanthropist as Wilberforce,—a man whose speech in Parliament showed no lack of vivid conceptions and smiting words, a man whom no threats of personal violence could intimidate, and who would cheerfully have risked his life for his cause, yet still a man who could never forget that he was a Tory and a gentleman, who had no grit before lords and ladies, whose Abolitionism was not sufficiently blunt and downright in the good company of cabinet ministers, whose sensitive nature flinched at the thought of being conscientiously impolite and heroically ill-natured, and whose manners were thus frequently in the way of the full efficiency of his morals. In many respects a hero, in all respects benevolent, he still was not like Romilly, a man of grit. Politeness has been defined as benevolence in small things. To be benevolent in great things, decorum must sometimes yield to duty; and Draco, though in the king's drawing-room, and loyally supporting in Parliament the measures of the ministry, is still Draco, though cruelty in him has learned the dialect of fashion and clothed itself in the privileges of the genteel.
Proceeding from social life to business life, we shall find that it is this unamiable, but indomitable, quality of grit which not only acquires fortunes, but preserves them after they have been acquired. The ruin which overtakes so many merchants is due not so much to their lack of business talent as to their lack of business nerve. How many lovable persons we see in trade, endowed with brilliant capacities, but cursed with yielding dispositions,—who are resolute in no business habits and fixed in no business principles,—who are prone to follow the instincts of a weak good-nature against the ominous hints of a clear intelligence, now obliging this friend by indorsing an unsafe note, and then pleasing that neighbor by sharing his risk in a hopeless speculation,—and who, after all the capital they have earned by their industry and sagacity has been sunk in benevolent attempts to assist blundering or plundering incapacity, are doomed, in their bankruptcy, to be the mark of bitter taunts from growling creditors and insolent pity from a gossiping public. Much has been said about the pleasures of a good conscience; and among these I reckon the act of that man who, having wickedly lent certain moneys to a casual acquaintance, was in the end called upon to advance a sum which transcended his honest means, with a dark hint, that, if the money was refused, there was but one thing for the casual acquaintance to do,—that is, to commit suicide. The person thus solicited, in a transient fit of moral enthusiasm, caught at the hint, and with great earnestness advised the casual acquaintance to do it, on the ground that it was the only reparation he could make to the numerous persons he had swindled. And this advice was given with no fear that the guilt of that gentleman's blood would lie on his soul, for the mission of that gentleman was to continue his existence by sucking out the life of others, and his last thought was to destroy his own; and it is hardly necessary to announce that he is still alive and sponging. Indeed, a courageous merchant must ever by ready to face the fact that he will be called a curmudgeon, if he will not ruin himself to please others, and a weak fool, if he does. Many a fortune has melted away in the hesitating utterance of the placable "Yes," which might have been saved by the unhesitating utterance of the implacable "No!" Indeed, in business, the perfection of grit is this power of saying "No," and saying it with such wrathful emphasis that the whole race of vampires and harpies are scared from you counting-room, and your reputation as unenterprising, unbearable niggard isfully established among all borrowers of money never meant to be repaid, and all projectors of schemes intended for the benefit of the projectors alone. At the expense of a little temporary obloquy, a man can thus conquer the right to mind his own business; and having done this, he has shown his possession of that nerve which, in his business, puts inexorable purpose into clear conceptions, follows out a plan of operations with sturdy intelligence, and conducts to fortune by the road of real enterprise. Many others may evince equal shrewdness in framing a project, but they hesitate, become timid, become confused, at some step in its development. Their character is not strong enough to back up their intellect. But the iron-like tenacity of the merchant of grit holds on to the successful end.
You can watch the operation of this quality in every-day business transactions. Your man of grit seems never deficient in news of the markets, though he may employ no telegraph-operator. Thus, about two years ago, a great Boston holder of flour went to considerable expense in obtaining special intelligence, which would, when generally known, carry flour up to ten dollars and a half a barrel. Another dealer, suspecting something, went to him and said, "What do you say flour's worth to-day?"—"Oh," was the careless answer, "I suppose it might bring ten dollars."—"Well," retorted the querist, gruffly, "I've got five thousand barrels on hand, and I should like toseethe man who would give me ten dollars barrel for it!"—"I will," said the other, quickly, disclosing his secret by the eagerness of his manner, "Well," was the reply, "all I can say is, then, that I haveseenthe man."
The importance of this quality as a business power is most apparent in those frightful panics which periodically occur in our country, and which sometimes tax the people more severely than wars and standing armies. In regard to one of the last of these financial hurricanes, that of 1857, there can be little doubt, that, if the acknowledged holders of financial power had been men of real grit, it might have been averted; there can be as little doubt, that, when it burst, if they had been men of real grit, it might have been made less disastrous. But they kept nearly all their sails set up to the point of danger, and when the tempest was on them ignominiously took to their boats and abandoned the ship. And as for the crew and passengers, it was the old spectacle of a shipwreck,—individuals squabbling to get a plank, instead of combining to construct a raft.
Indeed, there was something pitiable in the state of things which that panic revealed in the business centres of the country. Common sense seemed to be disowned by mutual consent; an infectious fear went shivering from man to man; and a strange fascination led people to increase by suspicions and reports the peril which threatened their own destruction. Men, being thus thrown back upon the resources of character, were put to terrible tests. As the intellect cannot act when the will is paralyzed, many a merchant, whose debts really bore no proportion to his property, was seen sitting, like the French prisoner in the iron cage whose sides were hourly contracting, stupidly gazing at the bars which were closing in upon him, and feeling in advance the pang of the iron which was to cut into his flesh and crush his bones.
In invigorating contrast to the panic-smitten, we had the privilege to witness many an example of the grit-inspired. Then it was that the grouty, taciturn, obstinate trader, so unpopular in ordinary times, showed the stuff he was made of. Then his bearing was cheer and hope to all who looked upon him. How he girded himself for the fight, resolved, if he died, to die hard! How he tugged with obstacles as if they were personal affronts, and hurled them to the right and to the left! How grandly, amid the chatter of the madmen about him, came his few words of sense and sanity! And then his brain, brightened, not bewildered, by the danger, how clear and alert it was, how fertile in expedients,how firm in principles, with a glance that pierced through the ignorant present to the future, seeing as calmly and judging as accurately in the tempest as it had in the sunshine. Never losing heart and never losing head, with as strong a grip on his honor as on his property, detesting the very thought of failure, knowing that he might be broken to pieces, but determined that he would not weakly "go to pieces," he performed the greatest service to the community, as well as to himself, by resolutely, at any sacrifice, paying his debts when they became due. It is a pity that such austere Luthers of commerce, trade-militant instead of church-militant, who meet hard times with a harder will, had not a little beauty in their toughness, so that grit, lifted to heroism, would allure affection as well as enforce respect. But their sense is so rigid, their integrity so gruff, and their courage so unjoyous, that all the genial graces fly their companionship; and a libertine Sheridan, with Ancient Pistol's motto of "Base is the slave that pays," will often be more popular, even among the creditor portion of the public, than these crabbed heroes, and, if need be, surly martyrs, of mercantile honesty and personal honor.
In regard to public life, and the influence of this rough manliness in politics, it is a matter of daily observation, that, in the strife of parties and principles, backbone without brain will carry it against brain without backbone. A politician weakly and amiably in the right is no match for a politician tenaciously and pugnaciously in the wrong. You cannot, by tying an opinion to a man's tongue, make him the representative of that opinion; and at the close of any battle for principles, his name will be found neither among the dead nor among the wounded, but among the missing. The true motto for a party is neither "Measures, not men," nor "Men, not measures," but "Measuresinmen,"—measures which are in their blood as well as in their brain and on their lips. Wellington said that Napoleon's presence in the French army was equivalent to forty thousand additional soldiers; and in a legislative assembly, Mirabeau and John Adams and John Quincy Adams are not simply persons who hold a single vote, but forces whose power thrills through the whole mass of voters. Mean natures always feel a sort of terror before great natures; and many a base thought has been unuttered, many a sneaking vote withheld, through the fear inspired by the rebuking presence of one noble man.
Opinions embodied in men, and thus made aggressive and militant, are the opinions which mark the union of thought with grit. A politician of this class is not content to comprehend and wield the elements of power already existing in a community, but he aims to make his individual conviction and purpose dominant over the convictions and purposes of the accredited exponents of public opinion. He cares little about his unpopularity at the start, and doggedly persists in his course against obstacles which seem insurmountable. A great, but mischievous, example of this power appeared in our own generation in the person of Mr. Calhoun, a statesman who stamped his individual mind on the policy and thinking of the country more definitely, perhaps, than any statesman since Hamilton, though his influence has, on the whole, been as evil as Hamilton's was, on the whole, beneficent. Keen-sighted, far-sighted, and inflexible, Mr. Calhoun clearly saw the logical foundations and logical results of the institution of Slavery; and though at first called an abstractionist and a fanatic by the looser thinkers of his own region, his inexorable argumentation, conquering by degrees politicians who could reason, made itself felt at last among politicians who could not reason; and the conclusions of his logic were adopted by thousands whose brains would have broken in the attempt to follow its processes. One of those rare deductive reasoners whose audacity marches abreast their genius, he would have been willing to fight to the last gasp for a conclusion which he had laboriously reached by rigid deductionthrough a score of intermediate steps, from premises in themselves repugnant to the primal instincts both of reason and humanity. Always ready to meet anybody in argument, he detested all reasoners who attempted to show the fallacy of his argument by pointing out the dangerous results to which it led. In this he sometimes brought to mind that inflexible professor of the deductive method who was timidly informed that his principles, if carried out, would split the world to pieces. "Let it split," was his careless answer; "there are enough more planets." By pure intellectual grit, he thus effected a revolution in the ideas and sentiments of the South, and through the South made his mind act on the policy of the nation. The present war has its root in the principles he advocated. Never flinching from any logical consequence of his principles, Mr. Calhoun did not rest until through him religion, morality, statesmanship, the Constitution of the United States, the constitution of man, were all bound in black. Chattel slavery, the most nonsensical as well as detestable of oppressions, was, to him, the most beneficent contrivance of human wisdom. He called it an institution: Mr. Emerson has more happily styled it a destitution. At last the chains of his iron logic were heard clanking on the whole Southern intellect. Reasoning the most masterly was employed to annihilate the first principles of reason; the understanding of man was insanely placed in direct antagonism to his moral instincts; and finally the astounding conclusion was reached, that the Creator of mankind has his pet races,—that God himself scouts his colored children, and nicknames them "Niggers."
It is delicious to watch the exulting and somewhat contemptuous audacity with which he hurries to the unforeseen conclusion those who have once been simple enough to admit his premises. Towards men who have some logical capacity his tone is that of respectful impatience; but as he goads on the reluctant and resentful victims of his reasoning, who loiter and limp painfully in the steps of his rapid deductions, he seems to say, with ironic scorn, "A little faster, my poor cripples!"
So confident was Mr. Calhoun in his capacity to demonstrate the validity of his horrible creed, that he was ever eager to measure swords with the most accomplished of his antagonists in the duel of debate. And it must be said that he despised all the subterfuges and evasions by which, in ordinary controversies, the real question is dodged, and went directly to the heart of the matter,—a resolute intellect, burning to grapple with another resolute intellect in a vital encounter. In common legislative debates, on the contrary, there is no vital encounter. The exasperated opponents, personally courageous, but deficient in clear and fixed ideas, mutually contrive to avoid the things essential to be discussed, while wantoning in all the forms of discussion. They assert, brag, browbeat, dogmatize, domineer, pummel each other with theargumentum ad hominem, and abundantly prove that they stand for opposite opinions; we watch them as we watch the feints and hits of a couple of pugilists in the ring; but after the sparring is over, we find that neither the Southern champion nor the Northern bruiser has touched the inner reality of the question to decide which they stripped themselves for the fight. In regard to the intellectual issue, they are like two bullies enveloping themselves in an immense concealing dust of arrogant words, and, as they fearfully retreat from personal collision, shouting furiously to each other, "Let me get at him!" And this is what is commonly called grit in politics,—abundant backbone to face persons, deficient brain-bone to encounter principles.
Not so was it when two debaters like Mr. Calhoun and Mr. Webster engaged in the contest of argument. Take, for example, as specimens of pure mental manliness, their speeches in the Senate, in 1833, on the question whether or not the Constitution is a compact between sovereign States. Give Mr. Calhounthose two words, "compact" and "sovereign," and he conducts you logically to Nullification and to all the consequences of Nullification. Andrew Jackson, a man in his kind, of indomitable resolution, intended to arrest the argument at a convenient point by the sword, and thus save himself the bother of going farther in the chain of inferences than he pleased. Mr. Webster grappled with the argument and with the man; and it is curious to watch that spectacle of a meeting between two such hostile minds. Each is confident of the strength of his own position; each is eager for a close hug of dialectics. Far from avoiding the point, they drive directly towards it, clearing their essential propositions from mutual misconception by the sharpest analysis and exactest statement. To get their minds near each other, to think close to the subject, to feel the griding contact of pure intellect with pure intellect, and, as spiritual beings, to conduct the war of reason with spiritual weapons,—this is their ambition. Conventionally courteous to each other, they are really in the deadliest antagonism; for their contest is the tug and strain of soul with soul, and each feels that defeat would be worse than death. No nervous irritation, no hard words, no passionate recriminations, no flinching from unexpected difficulties, no substitution of declamatory sophisms for rigorous inferences—but close, calm, ruthless grapple of thought with thought. To each, at the time, life seems to depend on the issue—not merely the life which a sword-cut or pistol-bullet can destroy, but immortal life, the life of immaterial minds and personalities, thus brought into spiritual feud. They know very well, that, whatever be the real result, the Webster-men will give the victory of argument to Webster, the Calhoun-men the victory of argument to Calhoun; but that consideration does not enter their thoughts as they prepare to close in that combat which is to determine, not to the world, but to each other, which is the stronger intellect, and which is in the right Few ever appreciate great men in this hostile attitude, not of their passions, but of their minds; and those who do it the least are their furious partisans. Most people are contented with the argument that tells, and are apt to be bored with the argument which refutes; but a true reasoner despises even his success, if he feels that two persons, himself and his opponent, know that he is in the wrong. And the strain on the whole being in this contest of intellect with intellect, and the reluctance with which the most combative enter it unless they are consciously strong, is well illustrated by Dr. Johnson's remark to some friends, when sickness had relaxed the tough fibre of his brain,—"If that fellow Burke were here now, he would kill me."
A peculiar kind of grit, not falling under any of the special expressions I have noted, yet partaking in some degree of all, is illustrated in the character of Lieutenant-General Grant. Without an atom of pretension or rhetoric, with none of the external signs of energy and intrepidity, making no parade of the immovable purpose, iron nerve, and silent, penetrating intelligence God has put into him, his tranquil greatness is hidden from superficial scrutiny behind a cigar, as President Lincoln's is behind a joke. When anybody tries to coax, cajole, overawe, browbeat, or deceive Lincoln, the President nurses his leg, and is reminded of a story; when anybody tries the same game with Grant, the General listens and—smokes. If you try to wheedle out of him his plans for a campaign, he stolidly smokes; if you call him an imbecile and a blunderer, he blandly lights another cigar; if you praise him as the greatest general living, he placidly returns the puff from his regalia; and if you tell him he should run for the Presidency, it does not disturb the equanimity with which he inhales and exhales the unsubstantial vapor which typifies the politician's promises. While you are wondering what kind of man this creature without a tongue is, you are suddenly electrified with the news of some splendid victory, proving that behindthe cigar, and behind the face discharged of all tell-tale expression, is the best brain to plan and the strongest heart to dare among the generals of the Republic.
It is curious to mark a variation of this intellectual hardihood and personal force when the premises are not in the solidities, but in the oddities of thought and character, and whim stands stiffly up to the remotest inferences which may be deduced from its insanest freaks of individual opinion. Thus it is said that in one of our country towns there is an old gentleman who is an eccentric hater of women; and this crotchet of his character he carries to its extreme logical consequences. Not content with general declamation against the sex, he turns eagerly, the moment he receives the daily newspaper, to the list of deaths; and if he sees the death of a woman recorded, he gleefully exclaims,—"Good! good! there's another of 'em gone!"
We have heard of a man who had conceived a violent eccentric prejudice against negroes; and he was not content with chiming in with the usual cant of the prejudice that they ought not to be allowed in our churches and in our rail-road-cars, but vociferated, that, if he had his way, they should not be allowed in Africa! The advantage of grit in this respect is in its annihilating a prejudice by presenting a vivid vision of its theoretical consequences. Carlyle has an eccentric hatred of the eighteenth century, its manners, morals, politics, religion, and men. He has expressed this in various ways for thirty years; but in his last work, the "Life of Frederick the Great," his prejudice reached its logical climax in the assertion, that the only sensible thing the eighteenth century ever did was blowing out its own brains in the French Revolution.
Again, in discussion, some men have felicity in replying to a question, others a felicity in replying to the motive which prompted the question. In one case you get an answer addressed to your understanding; in the other, an answer which smites like a slap in the face. Thus, when a pert skeptic asked Martin Luther where God was before He created heaven, Martin stunned his querist with the retort,—"He was building hell for such idle, presumptuous, fluttering, and inquisitive spirits as you." And everybody will recollect the story of the self-complacent cardinal who went to confess to a holy monk, and thought by self-accusation to get the reputation of a saint.
"I have been guilty of every kind of sin," snivelled the cardinal.
"It is a solemn fact," replied the impassive monk.
"I have indulged in pride, ambition, malice, and revenge," groaned the cardinal.
"It is too true," answered the monk.
"Why, you fool," exclaimed the enraged dignitary, "you don't imagine that I mean all this to the letter!"
"Ho! ho!" said the monk, "so you have been a liar, too, have you?"
This relentless rebuker of shams furnishes us with a good transition to another department of the subject, namely, moral hardihood, or grit organized in conscience, and applying the most rigorous laws of ethics to the practical affairs of life. Now there is a wide difference between moral men, so called, and men moralized,—between men who lazily adopt and lazily practise the conventional moral proprieties of the time, and men transformed into the image of inexorable, unmerciful moral ideas, men in whom moral maxims appear organized as moral might. There are thousands who are prodigal of moral and benevolent opinions, and honestly eloquent in loud professions of what they would do in case circumstances called upon them to act; but when the occasion is suddenly thrust upon them, when temptation, leering into every corner and crevice of their weak and selfish natures, connects the notion of virtue with the reality of sacrifice, then, in that sharp pinch, they become suddenly apprised of the difference between rhetoric and rectitude, and find that their speeches have been far ahead of their powers of performance. Thus, in one of Gerald Griffin's novels, there is ascene in which a young Irish student, fresh from his scholastic ethics, amazes the company at his father's table, who are all devout believers in the virtues of the hair-trigger, by an eloquent declamation against the folly and the sin of duelling. At last one of the set gets sufficient breath to call him a coward. The hot Irish blood is up in an instant, a tumbler is thrown at the head of the doubter of his courage, and in ten seconds the young moralist is crossing swords with his antagonist in a duel.
But the characteristic of moral grit is equality with the occasions which exact its exercise. It is morality with thews and sinews and blood and passions,—morality made man, and eager to put its phrases to the test of action. It gives and takes hard blows,—aims not only to be upright in deed, but downright in word,—silences with a "Thus saith the Lord" all palliations of convenient sins,—scowls ominously at every attempt to reconcile the old feud between the right and the expedient and make them socially shake hands,—and when cant taints the air, clears it with good wholesome rage and execration. On the virtues of this stubborn conscientiousness it is needless to dilate; its limitations spring from its tendency to disconnect morality from mercy, and law from love,—its too frequent substitution of moral antipathies for moral insight,—and its habit of describing individual men, not as they are in themselves, but as they appear to its offended conscience. Understanding sin better than it understands sinners, it sometimes sketches phantoms rather than paints portraits,—identifies the weakly wicked with the extreme of Satanic wickedness,—and in its assaults, pitchesatits adversaries rather than really pitchesintothem. But, in a large moral view, the light of intellectual perception should shine far in advance of the heat of ethical invective, and an ounce of characterization is worth a ton of imprecations. Indeed, moral grit, relatively admirable as it is, partakes of the inherent defect of other and lower kinds of grit, inasmuch as its force is apt to be as unsympathetic as it is uncompromising, as ungracious as it is invincible. It drives rather than draws, cuffs rather than coaxes. Intolerant of human infirmity, it is likewise often intolerant of all forms of human excellence which do not square with its own conceptions of right; and its philanthropy in the abstract is apt to secrete a subtile misanthropy in the concrete. Brave, unselfish, self-sacrificing, and flinching from no consequences which its principles may bring upon itself, it flinches from no consequences which they may bring upon others; and its attitude towards the laws and customs of instituted imperfection is almost as sourly belligerent as towards those of instituted iniquity.
Men of this austere and somewhat crabbed rectitude may be found in every department of life, but they are most prominent and most efficient when they engage in the reform of abuses, whether those abuses be in manners, institutions, or religion; and here they never shrink from the rough, rude work of the cause they espouse. They are commonly adored by their followers, commonly execrated by their opponents; but they receive the execration as the most convincing proof that they have performed their duties, as the shrieks of the wounded testify to the certainty of the shots. Indeed, they take a kind of grim delight in so pointing their invective that the adversaries of their principles are turned into enemies of their persons, and scout at all fame which does not spring from obloquy. As they thus exist in a state of war, the gentler elements of their being fall into the background; the bitterness of the strife works into their souls, and gives to their conscientious wrath a certain Puritan pitilessness of temper and tone. In the thick of the fight, their battle-cry is, "No quarter to the enemies of God and man!"—and as, unfortunately, there are few men who, tried by their standards, are friends of man, population very palpably thins as the lava-tide of their invective sweeps over it, and to the mental eye men, disappear as man emerges.
The gulf which yawns between uncompromising moral obligation and compromising human conduct is so immense that these fierce servants of the Lord seem to be fanatics and visionaries. But history demonstrates that they are among the most practical of all the forces which work in human affairs; for, without taking into account the response which their inflexible morality finds in the breasts of inflexibly moral men, their morality, in its application to common life, often becomes materialized, and shows an intimate connection with the most ordinary human appetites and passions. They commune with the mass of men through the subtile freemasonry of discontent. Compelled to hurl the thunderbolts of the moral law against injustice in possession, they unwittingly set fire to injustice smouldering in unrealized passions; and their speech is translated and transformed, in its passage into the public mind, into some such shape as this:—"These few persons who are dominant in Church and State, and who, while you physically and spiritually starve, are fed fat by the products of your labor and the illusions of your superstition, are powerful and prosperous, not from any virtue in themselves, but from the violation of those laws which God has ordained for the beneficent government of the universe. Their property and their power are the signs, not of their merits, but of their sins." The instinctive love of property and power are thus addressed to overturn the present possessors of property and power; and the vices of men are unconsciously enlisted in the service of the regeneration of man. The motives which impel whole masses of the community are commonly different from the motives of those reformers who urge the community to revolt; and their fervent denunciations of injustice bring to their side thousands of men who, perhaps unconsciously to themselves, only desire a chance to be unjust. The annals of all emancipations, revolutions, and reformations are disfigured by this fact. Better than what they supplant, their good is still relative, not absolute.
In the history of religious reforms, few men better illustrate this hard moral manliness, as distinguished from the highest moral heroism, than the sturdy Scotch reformer, John Knox. Tenacious, pugnacious, thoroughly honest and thoroughly earnest, superior to all physical and moral fear, destitute equally of fine sentiments and weak emotions, blurting out unwelcome opinions to queens as readily as to peasants, and in words which hit and hurt like knocks with the fist, he is one of those large, but somewhat coarse-grained natures, that influence rude populations by having so much in common with them, and in which the piety of the Christian, the thought of the Protestant, and the zeal of the martyr are curiously blended with the ferocity of the demagogue. Jenny Geddes, at the time when Archbishop Laud attempted to force Episcopacy upon Scotland, is a fair specimen of the kind of character which the teachings and the practice of such a man would tend to produce in a nation. This rustic heroine was present when the new bishop, hateful to Presbyterian eyes, began the service, with the smooth saying, "Let us read the Collect of the Day." Jenny rose in wrath, and cried out to the surpliced official of the Lord,—"Thou foul thief, wilt thou say mass at my lug?" and hurled her stool at his head. Then rose cries of "A Pope! a Pope! Stone him!" And "the worship of the Lord in Episcopal decency and order" was ignominiously stopped. And in the next reign, when the same thing was attempted, the Covenanters, the true spiritual descendants of Knox, opposed to the most brutal persecution a fierce, morose heroism, strangely compounded of barbaric passion and Christian fortitude. They were the most perfect specimens of pure moral grit the world has ever seen. In the great theological humorist of the nineteenth century, the Reverend Sydney Smith, the legitimate intellectual successor of the Reverend Rabelais and the Reverend Swift and the Reverend Sterne, their sullenintrepidity excites a mingled feeling, in which fun strives with admiration. In arguing against all intolerance, the intolerance of the church to which he belonged as well as the intolerance of the churches to which he was opposed, he said that persecution and bloodshed had no effect in preventing the Scotch, "that metaphysical people, from going to heaven in their true way instead of our true way"; and then comes the humorous sally,—"With a little oatmeal for food and a little sulphur for friction, allaying cutaneous irritation with one hand and grasping his Calvinistical creed with the other, Sawney ran away to the flinty hills, sung his psalm out of tune his own way, and listened to his sermon of two hours long, amid the rough and imposing melancholy of the tallest thistles." But from the graver historian, developing the historic significance of their determined resistance to the insolent claims of ecclesiastical authority, their desperate hardihood elicits a more fitting tribute. "Hunted down," he says, "like wild beasts, tortured till their bones were beaten flat, imprisoned by hundreds, hanged by scores, exposed at one time to the license of soldiers from England, abandoned at another time to the mercy of bands of marauders from the Highlands, they still stood at bay in a mood so savage that the boldest and mightiest oppressor could not but dread the audacity of their despair."
But the man who, in modern times, stands out most prominently as the representative of this tough physical and moral fibre is Oliver Cromwell, the greatest of that class of Puritans who combined the intensest religious passions with the powers of the soldier and the statesman, and who, in some wild way, reconciled their austere piety with remorseless efficiency in the world of facts. After all the materials for an accurate judgment of Cromwell which have been collected by the malice of his libellers and the veneration of his partisans, he is still a puzzle to psychologists; for no one, so far, has bridged the space which separates the seeming anarchy of his mind from the executive decision of his conduct. A coarse, strong, massive English nature, thoroughly impregnated with Hebrew thought and Hebrew passion,—democratic in his sympathy with the rudest political and religious feelings of his party, autocratic in the consciousness of superior abilities and tyrannic will,—emancipated from the illusions of vanity, but not from those of ambition and pride,—shrinking from no duty and no policy from the fear of obloquy or the fear of death,—a fanatic and a politician,—a demagogue and a dictator,—seeking the kingdom of heaven, but determined to take the kingdom of England by the way,—believing in God, believing in himself, and believing in his Ironsides,—clothing spiritual faith in physical force, and backing dogmas and prayers with pikes and cannon,—anxious at once that his troops should trust in God and keep their powder dry,—with a mind deep indeed, but distracted by internal conflicts, and prolific only in enormous, half-shaped ideas, which stammer into expression at once obscure and ominous, the language a strange compound of the slang of the camp and the mystic phrases of inspired prophets and apostles,—we still feel throughout, that, whatever may be the contradictions of his character, they are not such as to impair the ruthless energy of his will. Whatever he dared to think he dared to do. No practical emergency ever found him deficient either in sagacity or resolution, however it might have found him deficient in mercy. He overrode the moral judgments of ordinary men as fiercely as he overrode their physical resistance, crushing prejudices as well as Parliaments, ideas as well as armies; and whether his task was to cut off the head of an unmanageable king, or disperse an unmanageable legislative assembly, or massacre an unmanageable Irish garrison, or boldly establish himself as the uncontrolled supreme authority of the land, he ever did it thoroughly and unrelentingly, and could always throw the responsibilityof the deed on the God of battles and the God of Cromwell. In all this we observe the operation of a colossal practical force rather than an ideal power, of grit rather than heroism. However much he may command that portion of our sympathies which thrill at the touch of vigorous action, there are other sentiments of our being which detect something partial, vulgar, and repulsive even in his undisputed greatness.
In truth, grit, in its highest forms, is not a form of courage deserving of unmixed respect and admiration. Admitting its immense practical influence in public and private life, conceding its value in the rough, direct struggle of person with person and opinions with institutions, it is still by no means the top and crown of heroic character; for it lacks the element of beauty and the element of sympathy; it is individual, unsocial, bigoted, relatively to occasions; and its force has no necessary connection with grandeur, generosity, and enlargement of soul. Even in great men, like Cromwell, there is something in its aspect which is harsh, ugly, haggard, and ungenial; even in them it is strong by the stifling of many a generous thought and tolerant feeling; and when it descends to animate sterile and stunted natures, endowed with sufficient will to make their meanness or malignity efficient, its unfruitful force is absolutely hateful. It has done good work for the cause of truth and right; but it has also done bad work for the cause of falsehood and wrong: for evil has its grit as well as virtue. As it lacks, suppresses, or subordinates imagination, it is shorn of an important portion of a complete manhood; for it not only loses the perception of beauty, but the power of passing into other minds. It never takes the point of view of the persons it opposes; its object is victory, not insight; and it thus fails in that modified mercy to men which springs from an interior knowledge of their characters. Even when it is the undaunted force through which moral wrath expresses its hatred of injustice and wrong, its want of imaginative perception makes it somewhat caricature the sinners it inveighs against. It converts imperfect or immoral men into perfect demons, which humanity as well as reason refuses to accept; and it is therefore not surprising that the prayer of its indignant morality sometimes is, "Almighty God, condemn them, for theyknowwhat they do!" But we cannot forget that there sounds down the ages, from the saddest and most triumphant of all martyrdoms, a different and a diviner prayer,—"Father, forgive them, for they knownotwhat they do!"
Indeed, however much we may be struck with the startling immediateness of effect which follows the exercise of practical force, we must not forget the immense agency in human affairs of the ideal powers of the soul. These work creatively from within to mould character, not only inflaming great passions, but touching the springs of pity, tenderness, gentleness, and love,—above all, infusing that wide-reaching sympathy which sends the individual out of the grit-guarded fortress of his personality into the wide plain of the race. The culmination of these ideal powers is in genius and heroism, which draw their inspiration from ideal and spiritual sources, and radiate it in thoughts beautifully large and deeds beautifully brave. They do not merely exert power, they communicate it. If you are overcome by a man of grit, he insolently makes you conscious of your own weakness. If you are overcome by genius and heroism, you are made participants in their strength; for they overcome only to invigorate and uplift. They sweep on their gathering disciples to the object they have in view, by making it an object of affection as well as duty. Their power to allure and to attract is not lost even when their goal is the stake or the cross. They never, in transient ignominy and pain, lose sight and feeling of the beauty and bliss inseparably associated with goodness and virtue; and the happiest death-beds have often been on the rack or in the flame of the hero-martyr. Andthey are also, in their results, great practical influences; for they break down the walls which separate man from man,—by magnanimous thought or magnanimous act shame us out of our bitter personal contentions, and flash the sentiment of a common nature into our individual hatreds and oppositions. As grit decomposes society into an aggregate of strong and weak persons, genius and heroism unite them in one humanity. Thus, not many years ago, we were all battling about the higher law and the law to return fugitive slaves. It was argument against argument, passion against passion, person against person, grit against grit. The notions advanced regarding virtue and vice, justice and injustice, humanity and inhumanity, were as different as if the controversy had not been between men and men, but between men and cattle. There were no signs among the combatants that they had the common reason and the common instincts of a common nature. Then came a woman of genius, who refused to credit the horrible conceit that the diversity was essential, who resolutely believed that the human heart was a unit, and whose glance, piercing the mist of opinions and interests, saw in the deep and universal sources of humane and human action the exact point where her blow would tell; and in a novel unexampled in the annals of literature for popular effect, shook the whole public reason and public conscience of the country, by the most searching of all appeals to its heart and imagination.