FOOTNOTES:[B]The Baine is a small stream which puts into the Big Sandy, a short distance from the town of Louisa, Ky.
[B]The Baine is a small stream which puts into the Big Sandy, a short distance from the town of Louisa, Ky.
[B]The Baine is a small stream which puts into the Big Sandy, a short distance from the town of Louisa, Ky.
L'Académie en respect,Nonobstant l'incorrection,A la faveur du sujet,Ture-lure,N'y fera point de rature;Noël! ture-lure-lure.Gui-Barôzai.
L'Académie en respect,Nonobstant l'incorrection,A la faveur du sujet,Ture-lure,N'y fera point de rature;Noël! ture-lure-lure.
Gui-Barôzai.
1.Quand les astres de NoëlBrillaient, palpitaient au ciel,Six gaillards, et chacun ivre,Chantaient gaîment dans le givre,"Bons amis,Allons done chez Agassiz!"2.Ces illustres PèlerinsD'Outre-Mer, adroits et fins,Se donnant des airs de prêtre,A l'envi se vantaient d'être"Bons amisDe Jean Rudolphe Agassiz!"3.Œil-de-Perdrix, grand farceur,Sans reproche et sans pudeur,Dans son patois de Bourgogne,Bredouillait comme un ivrogne,"Bons amis,J'ai dansé chez Agassiz!"4.Verzenay le Champenois,Bon Français, point New-Yorquois,Mais des environs d'Avize,Fredonne, à mainte reprise,"Bons amis,J'ai chanté chez Agassiz!"5.A côté marchait un vieuxHidalgo, mais non mousseux;Dans le temps de CharlemagneFut son père Grand d'Espagne!"Bons amis,J'ai dîné chez Agassiz!"6.Derrière eux un Bordelais,Gascon, s'il en fut jamais,Parfumé de poésieRiait, chantait plein de vie,"Bons amis,J'ai soupé chez Agassiz!"7.Avec ce beau cadet roux,Bras dessus et bras dessous,Mine altière et couleur terne,Vint le Sire de Sauterne:"Bons amis,J'ai couché chez Agassiz!"8.Mais le dernier de ces preuxÉtait un pauvre Chartreux,Qui disait, d'un ton robuste,"Bénédictions sur le Juste!Bons amis,Bénissons Père Agassiz!"9.Ils arrivent trois à trois,Montent l'escalier de boisClopin-clopant! quel gendarmePeut permettre ce vacarme,Bons amis,A la porte d'Agassiz!10."Ouvrez donc, mon bon Seigneur,Ouvrez vite et n'ayez peur;Ouvrez, ouvrez, car nous sommesGens de bien et gentilshommes,Bons amisDe la famille Agassiz!"11.Chut, ganaches! taisez-vous!C'en est trop de vos glouglous;Épargnez aux PhilosophesVos abominables strophes!Bons amis,Respectez mon Agassiz!
1.
Quand les astres de NoëlBrillaient, palpitaient au ciel,Six gaillards, et chacun ivre,Chantaient gaîment dans le givre,"Bons amis,Allons done chez Agassiz!"
2.
Ces illustres PèlerinsD'Outre-Mer, adroits et fins,Se donnant des airs de prêtre,A l'envi se vantaient d'être"Bons amisDe Jean Rudolphe Agassiz!"
3.
Œil-de-Perdrix, grand farceur,Sans reproche et sans pudeur,Dans son patois de Bourgogne,Bredouillait comme un ivrogne,"Bons amis,J'ai dansé chez Agassiz!"
4.
Verzenay le Champenois,Bon Français, point New-Yorquois,Mais des environs d'Avize,Fredonne, à mainte reprise,"Bons amis,J'ai chanté chez Agassiz!"
5.
A côté marchait un vieuxHidalgo, mais non mousseux;Dans le temps de CharlemagneFut son père Grand d'Espagne!"Bons amis,J'ai dîné chez Agassiz!"
6.
Derrière eux un Bordelais,Gascon, s'il en fut jamais,Parfumé de poésieRiait, chantait plein de vie,"Bons amis,J'ai soupé chez Agassiz!"
7.
Avec ce beau cadet roux,Bras dessus et bras dessous,Mine altière et couleur terne,Vint le Sire de Sauterne:"Bons amis,J'ai couché chez Agassiz!"
8.
Mais le dernier de ces preuxÉtait un pauvre Chartreux,Qui disait, d'un ton robuste,"Bénédictions sur le Juste!Bons amis,Bénissons Père Agassiz!"
9.
Ils arrivent trois à trois,Montent l'escalier de boisClopin-clopant! quel gendarmePeut permettre ce vacarme,Bons amis,A la porte d'Agassiz!
10.
"Ouvrez donc, mon bon Seigneur,Ouvrez vite et n'ayez peur;Ouvrez, ouvrez, car nous sommesGens de bien et gentilshommes,Bons amisDe la famille Agassiz!"
11.
Chut, ganaches! taisez-vous!C'en est trop de vos glouglous;Épargnez aux PhilosophesVos abominables strophes!Bons amis,Respectez mon Agassiz!
FOOTNOTES:[C]Sent to Mr. Agassiz, with a basket of wine, on Christmas Eve, 1864.
[C]Sent to Mr. Agassiz, with a basket of wine, on Christmas Eve, 1864.
[C]Sent to Mr. Agassiz, with a basket of wine, on Christmas Eve, 1864.
In a preceding paper I have sought to trace the main lines of spiritual growth, as these appear in Goethe's great picture. But is such growth possible in this world? Do the circumstances in which modern men are placed comport with it? Or is it, perhaps, a cherub onlypaintedwith wings, and despite the laws of anatomy? These questions are pertinent. It concerns us little to know what results the crescent powers of life might produce, if, by good luck, Eden rather than our struggling century, another world instead of this world, were here. This world, it happens, is here undoubtedly; our century and our place in it are facts, which decline to take their leave, bid them good morning and show them the door how one may. Let us know, then, what of good sufficing may be achieved in their company. If Goethe's picture be only a picture, and not a possibility, we will be pleased with him, provided his work prove pleasant; we will partake of his literary dessert, and give him his meed of languid praise. But if, on the other hand, his book be written in full, unblinking view of all that is fixed and limitary in man and around him, and if, in face of this, it conduct growth to its consummation, then we may give him something better than any praise,—namely, heed.
Is it, then, written in this spirit of reality? In proof that it is so, I call to witness the most poignant reproach, save one, ever uttered against it by a superior man. Novalis censured it as "thoroughly modern and prosaic." Well,on one side, it is so,—just as modern and prosaic as the modern world and actual European civilization. What is this but to say that Goethe faces the facts? What is it but to say that he accepts the conditions of his problem? He is to show that the high possibilities of growth can be realizedhere. To run off, get up a fancy world, and then picture these possibilities as coming to fruitionthere, would be a mere toying with his readers. Here is modern civilization, with its fixed forms, its rigid limits, its traditional mechanisms. Here is this life, where men make, execute, and obey laws, own and manage property, buy and sell, plant, sail, build, marry and beget children and maintain households, pay taxes, keep out of debt, if they are wise, and go to the poorhouse, or beg, or do worse, if they are unwise or unfortunate. Here such trivialities as starched collars, blacked boots, and coats according to the mode compel attention. Society has its fixed rules, by which it enforces social continuity and connection. To neglect these throws one off the ring; and, with rare exceptions, isolation is barrenness and death. One cannot even go into the street in a wilfully strange costume, without establishing repulsions and balking relations between him and his neighbors which destroy their use to each other. Every man is bound to the actual form of society by his necessities at least, if not by his good-will.
To step violently out of all this puts one in a social vacuum,—a position in which few respire well, while most either perish or become in some degree monstrous. It is necessary that one should live and work with his fellows, if he is to obtain the largest growth. On the other hand, to be merely in and of this—a wheel, spoke, or screw, in this vast social mechanism—makes one, not a man, but a thing, and precludes all growth but such as is obscure and indirect. Thousands, indeed, have no desire but to obtain some advantageous place in this machinery. Meanwhile this enormous conventional civilization strives, and must strive, to make every soul its puppet. Let each fall into theroutine, pursue it in some shining manner, asking no radical questions, and he shall have his heart's desire. "Blessed is he," it cries, "who handsomely and with his whole soul reads upwards from man to position and estate,—from man to millionnaire, judge, lord, bishop! Cursed is he who questions, who aims to strike down beneath this great mechanism, and to connect himself with the primal resources of his being! There are no such resources. It is a wickedness to dream of them. Man has no root but in tradition and custom, no blessing but in serving them."
As that assurance is taken, and as that spirit prevails, man forfeits his manhood. His life becomes mechanical. Ideas disappear in the forms that once embodied them; imagination is buried beneath symbol; belief dies of creed, and morality of custom. Nothing remains but a world-wide pantomime. Worship itself becomes only a more extended place-hunting, and man the walking dummy of society. And then, since man no longer is properly vitalized, disease sets in, consumption, decay, putrefaction, filling all the air with the breath of their foulness.
The earlier part of the eighteenth century found all Europe in this stage. Then came a stir in the heart of man: for Nature would not let him die altogether. First came recoil, complaint, reproach, mockery. Voltaire's light, piercing, taunting laugh—with a screaming wail inside it, if one can hear well—rang over Europe. "Aha, you are found out! Up, toad, in your true shape!" Then came wild, shallow theories, half true; then wild attempt to make the theories real; then carnage and chaos.
Accompanying and following this comes another and purer phase of reaction. "Let us get out of this dead, conventional world!" cry a few noble spirits, in whose hearts throbs newly the divine blood of life. "Leave it behind; it is dead. Leave behind all formal civilization; let us live only from within, and let the outward be formless,—momentarily created by our souls, momentarily vanishing."
The noblest type I have ever known of thisextra-vagance, this wandering outside of actual civilization, was Thoreau. With his purity, as of a newborn babe,—with his moral steadiness, unsurpassed in my observation,—with his indomitable persistency,—by the aid also of that all-fertilizing imaginative sympathy with outward Nature which was his priceless gift,—he did, indeed, lend to his mode of life an indescribable charm. In him it came at once to beauty and to consecration.
Yet even he must leave out marriage, to make his scheme of life practicable. He must ignore Nature's demand that humanity continue, or recognize it only with loathing. "Marriage is that!" said he to a friend,—and held up a carrion-flower.
Moreover, the success of his life—nay, the very quality of his being—implied New England and its civilization. To suppose him born among the Flathead Indians were to supposehim, the Thoreau of our love and pride, unborn still. The civilization he slighted was an air that he breathed; it was implied, as impulse and audience, in those books of his, wherein he enshrined his spirit, and whereby he kept its health.
A fixed social order is indirectly necessary even to him who, by rare gifts of Nature, can stand nobly and unfalteringly aside from it. And it is directly, instantly necessary to him who, either by less power of self-support or by a more flowing human sympathy,mustlive with men, andmustcomply with the conditions by which social connection is preserved.
The problem, therefore, recurs. Here are the two terms: the soul, the primal, immortal imagination of man, on the one side; the enormous, engrossing, dehumanizing mechanism of society, on the other. A noble few elect the one; an ignoble multitude pray to its opposite. The reconciling word,—is there a reconciling word?
Here, now, comes one who answers,Yes. And he answers thus, not by a bald assertion, but by a picture wherein these opposites lose their antagonism,—by a picture which is true to both, yet embraces both, and shapes them into a unity. That is Goethe. This attempt represents the grandnisusof his life. It is most fully made in "Wilhelm Meister."
Above the world he places the growing spirit of man, the vessel of all uses, with his resource in eternal Nature. Then he seizes with a sovereign hand upon actual society, upon formal civilization, and of it all makes food and service for man's spirit. This prosaic civilization, he says, is prosaic only in itself, not when put in relation to its true end. So he first recognizes it with remorseless verity, depicts it in all its littleness and limitation; then strikes its connection with growth: and lo, the littleness becomes great in serving the greater; the harsh prosaicism begins to move in melodious measure; and out of that jarring, creaking mechanism of conventional society arise the grand rolling organ-harmonies of life.
That he succeeds to perfection I do not say. I could find fault enough with his book, if there were either time or need. There is no need: its faults are obvious. In binding himself by such unsparing oaths to recognize and admit all the outward truth of society, he has, indeed, grappled with the whole problem, but also made its solution a little cumbrous and incomplete. Nay, this which he so admits in his picture was also sufficiently, perhaps a touch more than sufficiently, admitted in his own being. He would have been a conventionalist and epicurean, unless he had been a seer. He would have been a mere man of the world, had he not been Goethe. But whereas a man of the world reads up from man to dignity, estate, and social advantage, he reverses the process, and reads up from these to man. Say that he does it with some stammering, with some want of the last nicety. What then? It were enough, if he set forth upon the true road, though his own strength fail before the end is reached. It is enough, if, falling midway, even though it be by excess of the earthly weight he bears, he still point forward, and his voice out of the dust whisper, "There lies your way!" This alone makes him a benefactor of mankind.
This specific aim of Goethe's work makes it, indeed, a novel. Conventional society and the actual conditions of life are, with respect to eternal truth, but thenoveltiesof time. The novelist is to picture these, and, in picturing, subordinate them to that which is perpetual and inspiring. Just so far as he opens the ravishing possibilities of life in commanding reconciliation with the formal civilization of a particular time, he does his true work.
The function of the poet is different. His business it is simply torefreshthe spirit of man. To its lip he holds the purest ichors of existence; with ennobling draughts of awe, pity, sympathy, and joy, he quickens its blood and strengthens its vital assimilations. The particular circumstances he uses are merely the cup wherein this wine of life is contained. This he may obtain as most easily he can; the world is all before him where to choose.
The novelist has no such liberty. His business it is to find the ideal possibilities of manhere, in the midst of actual society. He shall teach us to free the heart, while respecting the bonds of circumstance. And the more strictly he clings to that which is central in man on the one hand, and the more broadly and faithfully he embraces the existing prosaic limitations on the other, the more his work answers to the whole nature of his function. Goethe has done the latter thoroughly, his accusers themselves being judges; that he has done the other, and how he has done it, I have sought to show in a preceding paper. He looks on actual men and actual society with an eye of piercing observation; he depicts them with remorseless verity; and through and by all builds, builds at the great architectures of spiritual growth.
Hence the difference between him andsatirists like Thackeray, who equal him in keenness of observation, are not behind him in verity of report, while surpassing him often in pictorial effect,—but who bring to the picture out of themselves only a noble indignation against baseness. They contemn; he uses. They cry, "Fie!" upon unclean substances; he ploughs the offence into the soil, and sows wheat over it. They see the world as it is; he sees it, and through it. They probe sores; he leads forth into the air and the sunshine. They tinge the cheek with blushes of honorable shame; he paints it with the glow of wholesome activity. Their point of view is that of pathology; his, that of physiology. The great satirists, at best, give a medicine to sickness; Goethe gives a task to health. They open a door into a hospital; he opens a dooroutof one, and cries, "Lo, the green earth and blue heaven, the fields of labor, the skies of growth!"
On the other hand, by this relentless fidelity to observation, by his stern refusal to give men supposititious qualities and characters, by his resolute acceptance of European civilization, by his unalterable determination to practicable results, by always limiting himselfto that which all superior men might be expected not merely to read of with gusto, but to do, he is widely differenced from novelists like the authoress of "Consuelo." He does not propose to furnish a moral luxury, over which at the close one may smack the lips, and cry, "How sweet!" No gardener's manual ever looked more simply to results. His aim is, to get somethingdone, to getalldone which he suggests. Accordingly, he does not gratify us with vasty magnanimities, holy beggaries voluntarily assumed, Bouddhistic "missions"; he shows us no more than high-minded, incorruptible men, fixed in their regards upon the high ends of life, established in noble, fruitful fellowship, willing and glad to help others so far as they can clearly see their way, not making public distribution of their property, but managing it so that it shall in themselves and others serve culture, health, and all well-being of body and mind. Wealth here is a trust; it is held for use; its uses are, to subserve the high ends of Nature in the spirit of man. Lothario seeks association with all who can aid him in these applications. So intent is he, that helovesTheresa because she has a genius at once for economizing means and for seeing where they may be applied to the service of the more common natures. He keeps the great-minded, penetrating, providential Abbé in his pay, that this inevitable eye may distinguish for him the more capable natures, and find out whether or how they may be forwarded on their proper paths. Here are no sublime professions, but a steady, modest, resolute, discriminate doing.
For suggestion of what one may reallydo, and for impelling one toward the practicable best, I find this book worth a moonful of "Consuelos." The latter work has, indeed, beautiful pictures; and simply as a picture of a fresh, sweet, young life, it is charming. But in its aim at a higher import I find it simply an arrow shot into the air, goingsohigh, but at—nothing! If one crave a moral luxury, it is here. If he desire a lash for egoism, this, perhaps, is also here. If he is already praying the heavens for a sufficing worth and work in life, and is asking only thewhatandhow, this book, taken in connection with its sequel, says, "Distribute your property, and begin wandering about and 'doing good.'"
I decline. After due consideration, I have fully determined to own a house, and provide each day a respectable dinner for my table, if the fates agree; to secure, still in submission to the fates, such a competency as will give me leisure for the best work I can do; to further justice and general well-being, so far as is in me to further or hinder, but always on the basis of the existing civilization; to cherish sympathy and good-will in myself, and in others by cherishing them in myself; to help another when I clearly can; and to give, when what I give will obviously do more service toward the high ends of life, in thehands of another than in my own. Toward carrying out these purposes "Consuelo" has not given me a hint, not one; "Wilhelm Meister" has given me invaluable hints. Therefore I feel no great gratitude to the one, and am profoundly grateful to the other.
It is not the mere absence of suffering, it is not a pound of beef on every peasant's plate, that makes life worth living. Health, happiness, even education, however diffused, do not alone make life worth living. Tell me the quality of a man's happiness before I can very rapturously congratulate him upon it; tell me the quality of his suffering before I can grieve over it without solace. Noble pain is worth more than ignoble pleasure; and there is a health in thedyingSchiller which beggars in comparison that of the fat cattle on a thousand hills. All the world might be well fed, well clothed, well sheltered, and very properly behaved, and be a pitiful world nevertheless, were this all.
Let us get out of this business of merely improvingconditions. There are two things which make life worth living. First, the absolute worth and significance of man's spirit in its harmonious completeness; and hence the absolute value of culture and growth in the deepest sense of the words. Secondly, the relevancy of actual experience and the actual world to these ends. Goethe attends to both these, and to both in a spirit of great sanity. He fixes his eye with imperturbable steadiness on the central fact, then with serene, intrepid modesty suggests the relevancy to this of the world as it is around us, andthen trusts the healthy attraction of the higher to modify and better the lower. Give man, he says, something to workfor, namely, the high uses of his spirit; give him next something to workwith, namely, actual civilization, the powers, limits, and conditions which actually exist in and around him; and if these instruments be poor, be sure he will begin to improve upon them, the moment he has found somewhat inspiring and sufficing to do with them. Actual conditions will improve precisely in proportion asallconditions are utilized, are placed in relations of service to a result which contents the soul of men. And to establish in this relation all the existing conditions of life, natural and artificial, is the task which Goethe has undertaken.
I invite the reader to dwell upon this fact, that, the moment life has an inspiring significance, and the moment also the men, industries, and conditions around us become instrumental toward resolving that, in this moment one must begin, so far as he may, bettering these conditions. If I hire a man to work in my garden, how much is it worth to me, if he bring not merely his hands and gardening skill, but also an appreciable soul, with him! So soon as that fact is apparent, fruitful relations are established between us, and sympathies begin to fly like bees, bearing pollen and winning honey, from each heart to the other. To let a man be degraded, or stupid, or thwarted in all his inward life, when Icanmake it otherwise? Not unless I am insensate. To allow anywhere a disserviceable condition, when I could make it serviceable? Not in full view of the fact that all which thwarts the inward being of another thwarts me. If there be in the world a man who might write a grand book, but through ill conditions cannot write it, then in me and you a door will remain closed, which might have opened—who knows upon what treasure? With the high ends of life before him, no man canaffordto be selfish. With the fact before him that formal civilization is instrumental, no man can afford to run away from it. With the fact in view that each man needs every other, and needs that every other should do and be the best he can, no one can afford to withhold help, where it can be rendered. Finally, seeing that means are limited, and that the means and services which are crammed into others, without being spiritually assimilated, breed only indigestion, no one must throw his services about at random, but see where Nature has prepared the way for him, and there in modesty do what he can.
To strike the connection, then, betweenthe inward and the outward, between the spiritual and the conventional, between man and society, between moral possibility and formal civilization,—to give growth, with all its immortal issues, a place, and means, and opportunity,—this was Goethe's aim; and if the execution be less than perfect, as I admit, it yet suggests the whole; and if the shortcoming be due in part to his personal imperfections, which doubtless may be affirmed, it yet does not mar the sincerity of his effort. His hand trembles, his aim is not nicely sure, but it is an aim at the right object nevertheless.
There are limits and conditions in man, as well as around him, to which the like justice is done. Such are Special Character, Natural Degree and Vocation, Moral Imperfection, and Limitation of Self-Knowledge. Each of these plays a part of vast importance in life; each is portrayed and used in Goethe's picture. But, though with reluctance, I must merely name and pass them by. Enough to say here, that he sees them and sees through them. Enough that they appear, and as means and material. Nor does he merely distinguish and harp upon them, after the hard analytic fashion one would use here; but, as the violinist sweeps all the strings of his instrument, not to show that one soundssoand anotherso, but out of all to bring a complete melody, so does this master touch the chords of life, and, in thus recognizing, bring out of them the melodious completeness of a human soul.
One inquiry remains. What of inspirational impulse does Goethe bring to his work? He depicts growth; what leads him to do so? Is it nothing but cold curiosity? and does he leave the reader in a like mood? Or is he commanded by some imperial inward necessity? and does he awaken in the reader a like noble necessity, not indeed to write, but tolive?
The inspiration which he feels and communicates is art infinite, unspeakable reverence for Personality, for the completed, spiritual reality of man. Literally unspeakable, it is the silent spirit in which he writes, sovereign in him and in his work,—the soul of every sentence, and professed in none. You find it scarcely otherwise than in his manner of treating his material. But there youmayfind it: the silent, majestic homage that he pays to everyrealgrace and spiritual accomplishment of man or woman. Any smallest trait of this is delineated with a heed that makes no account of time or pains, with a venerating fidelity and religious care thatunutterablyimply its preciousness. Indeed, it is one point of his art to bestow elaborate, reverential attention upon some minor grace of manhood or womanhood, that one may say, "If this be of such price, how priceless is the whole!" He resorts habitually to this inferential suggestion,—puzzling hasty readers, who think him frivolously exalting little things, rather than hinting beyond all power of direct speech at the worth of the greater. In landscape paintings a bush in the foreground may occupy more space than a whole range of mountains in the distance: perhaps the bush is there to show the scale of the drawing, and intimate the greatness, rather than littleness, of the mountains.
The undertone of every page, should we mask its force in hortatives, would be,—"Buy manhood; buy verity and completeness of being; buy spiritual endowment and accomplishment; buy insight and clearness of heart and wholeness of spirit; pay ease, estimation, estate,—never consider what you pay: for though pleasure is not despicable, though wealth, leisure, and social regard are good, yet there is no tint of inherent grace, no grain nor atom of man's spiritual substance, but it outweighs kingdoms, outweighs all that is external to itself."
But hortatives and assertions represent feebly, and without truth of tone, the subtile, sovereign persuasion of the book. This is said sovereignly bynotbeing said expressly. We are at pains to affirm only that which may be conceived of as doubtful, therefore admit a certain doubtfulness by the act of asserting. When one begins to asseverate his honesty, his hearers begin toquestion it. The last persuasion lies in assumptions,—not in assumptions made consciously and with effort, but in those which one makes because he cannot help it, and even without being too much aware what he does. All that a man of power assumes utterly, so that he were not himself without assuming it, he will impress upon others with a persuasion that has in it somewhat of the infinite. Jesus never said, "There is a God,"—nor even, "God is our Father,"—nor even, "Man is immortal"; he took all this as implicit basis of labor and prayer. Implicit assumptions rule the world; they build and destroy cities, make and unmake empires, open and close epochs; and whenever Destiny in any powerful soul has ripened a new truth to this degree,—made it for him aninevitableassumption—then there is in history an end and a beginning. Goethe's homage to Personality, to the full spiritual being of man, is of this degree, and is a soul of eloquence in his book.
Nor can we set this aside as a piece of blind and gratuitous sentiment. Blind and gratuitous sentiment is clearly not his forte. Every line of every page exhibits to us a man who has betaken himself, once for all, to the use of his eyes. All sentiment, as such, he ruled back, with a sovereign energy, into his heart,—and then, as it were, compelling his heart into his eyes, made it an organ for discerning truth. His head was an observatory, and every power of his soul did duty there. He enjoyed, he suffered, intensely; but behind joy and pain alike lay the sleepless questioner, demanding of each its message. And this, the supreme function, the exceeding praise and preciousness of the man, the one thing that he was born to do, and religiously did, this has been made his chief reproach.
No zealot, then, no sentimentalist, no devotee of the god Wish, have we here; but an imperturbable beholder, whose dauntless and relentless eyeballs, telescopic and microscopic by turns, can and will see what the factis. If the universe be bad, as some dream, he will see how bad; if good, he will perceive and respect its goodness. A man, for once, equal to the act of seeing! Having, as the indispensable preliminary, encountered himself, and victoriously fought on all the fields of his being the battle against self-deception, he now comes armed with new and strange powers of vision to encounter life and the world,—ready either to soar of dive,—above no fact, beneath none, by none appalled, by none dazzled,—a falcon, whose prey is truth, and whose wing and eye are well mated. Andheit is who sets that ineffable price on the being of a real man.
This is manifested in many ways, all of them silent, rather than obstreperous and obtrusive. It is shown by a certain gracious, ineffable expectation with which for the first time he approaches any human soul, as if unknown and incalculable possibilities were opening here; by a noble ceremonial which he ever observes toward his higher characters, standing uncovered in their presence; by the space in his eye, not altogether measurable, which a man of worth is perceived to fill. Each of his principal characters has an atmosphere about him, like the earth itself; each has a vast perspective, and rounds off into mystery and depths of including sky.
The common novelist holds his characters in the palm of his hand, as he would his watch; winds them up, regulates, pockets them, is exceedingly handy with them. He may continue some little, pitiful puzzle about them for his readers; buthecan see over, under, around them, and can make them stop or go, tick or be silent, altogether at pleasure. To Goethe his characters are as intelligible and as mysterious as Nature herself. He sees them, studies them, and with an eye how penetrating, how subtile and sure! But over, under, and around them he would hold it for no less than a profanity to pretend that he sees. They come upon the scene to prove what they are; he and the reader study them together; and when best known, their possibilities are obviously unexhausted, the unknown remainsin them still. They go forward into their future, with a real future before them, with an unexplained life to live: not goblets whose contents have been drained, but fountains that still flow when the traveller who drank from them has passed on. Jarno, for example, a man of firm and definite outlines, and drawn here with masterly distinctness, without a blur or a wavering of the hand in the whole delineation, is yet the unexplained, unexhausted Jarno, when the book closes. He goes forward with the rest, known and yet unknown, a man of very definite limitations, and yet also of possibilities which the future will ever be defining.
In this sense, the book, almost alone among novels, consists with the hope of immortality. In average novels, there is nothing left of the hero when the book ends. "He is utterly married," as "Eothen" says. Utterly, sure enough! He ends at the altar, like a burnt-out candle over which the priest puts an extinguisher to keep it from smoking. One yawns over the last page, not considering himself any longer in company. Think of giving perpetuity to such lives! What could they do but get unmarried, and begin fussing at courtship again? But when Goethe's characters leave the stage, they seem to be rather entering upon life than quitting it; possibility opens, expectation runs before them, and our interest grows where observation ceases.
Goethe looks at Personality as through a telescope, and sees it shade away, beyond its cosmic systems, into star-dust and shining nebulæ; he inspects it as with a microscope, and on that side also resolves it only in part. He brings to it all the most spacious, all the most delicate interpretations of his wit, yet confessedly leaves more beyond.
Now it is this large-eyed, liberal regard of man, this grand, childlike, all-credent appreciation, which distinguishes the earlier and Scriptural literatures. Abraham fills up all the space between earth and heaven. Later, we arrive at limitations and secondary laws; we heap these up till the primal fact is obscured, is hidden by them. Then ensues an impression of man's littleness, emptiness, insignificance, utter, mechanical limitation. Then sharp-eyed gentlemen discover that man has a trick of dressing up his littleness in large terms,—liberty, intuition, inspiration, immortality,—and that he only is a philosopher, who cannot be deceived by this shallow stratagem. Your "philosopher" sees what men are made of. Populaces may fancy that man is central in the world, that he is the all-containing vessel of its uses: but your philosopher, admirable gentleman, sees through all that; he is superior to any such vulgar partiality for that particular species of insect to which he happens to belong. "A fly thinks himself the greatest of created beings," says philosopher; "man flatters himself in the same way; but I, I am not merely man, I am philosopher, and know better."
The early seers and poets had not attained to this sublime superciliousness of self-contempt; for this, of course, is a fruit to be borne only by the "progress of the species." They are still weak enough to believe in gods and godlike men, in spirit and inspiration, in the ineffable fulness and meaning of a noble life, in the cosmic relationship of man, in thedivinenessof speech and thought. In their books man is placed in a large light; honor and estimation come to him out of the heavens; what he does, if it be in any profound way characteristic, is told without misgiving, without fear to be superfluous; he is the care, or even the companion, of the immortals. To go forth, therefore, from our little cells of criticism and controversy, and to enter upon the pages where man's being appears so spacious and significant,—where, at length, it is reallyimagined,—is like leaving stove-heated, paper-walled rooms, and passing out beneath the blue cope and into the sweet air of heaven.
Quite this epic boldness and wholeness we cannot attribute to Goethe. He is still a little straitened, a little pestered by the doubting and critical optics which our time turns upon man, a little victimizedby his knowledge of limitary conditions and secondary laws. Nevertheless, a noble man is not to his eye "contained between hat and boots," but is of untold depth and dimension. He indicates traits of the soul with that repose in his facts and respect for them which Lyell shows in spelling out terrestrial history, or Herschel in tracing that of the solar system. Observe how he relates the plays of a child,—with what grave, imperial respect, with what undoubting, reverential minuteness! He does not say, "Bear with me, ladies and gentlemen; I will come to something of importance soon." This is important,—the formation of suns not more so.
In this respect he stands in wide contrast to the prevailing tone of the time. It seems right and admirable that Tyndale should risk life and limb in learning the laws of glaciers, that large-brained Agassiz should pursue for years, if need be, his microscopic researches into the natural history of turtles; and were life or eyesight lost so, we should all say, "Lost, but well and worthily." But ask a conclave of sobersavansto listen to reports on the natural-spiritual history of babies and little children,—ask them to join, one and all, in this piece of discovery, spending labor and lifetime in watching the sports, the moods, the imaginations, the fanciful loves and fears, the whole baby unfolding of these budding revelations of divine uses in Nature,—and see what they will think of your sanity. You may, indeed, if such be your humor, observe these matters, nay, even write books upon them, and still escape the lunatic asylum,—providedyou do so in the way of pleasantry. In this case, the gravestsavant, if he have children, may condescend to listen, and even to smile. But ask him to attend to thisin his quality of man of science, and no less seriously than he would investigate the history of mud-worms, and you become ridiculous in his eyes.
Goethe is guiltless of this inversion of interest. Truth of outward Nature he respects; truth of the soul he reverences. He can reallyimaginemen,—that is, can so depict them that they shall not be mere bundles of finite quantities, a yard of this and a pound of that, but so that the illimitable possibilities and immortal ancestries of man shall look forth from their eyes, shall show in their features, and give to them a certain grace of the infinite. The powers which created for the Greeks their gods are active in him, even in his observation of men; and this gives him that other eye, without which the effigies of men are seen, but never man himself. And because he has this divine eye for the inner reality of personal being, and yet also that eagle eye of his for conditions and limits,—because he can see man as central in Nature, the sum of all uses, the vessel of all significance, and yet has no "carpenter theory" of the universe,—and because he can discern the substance and therevealingform of man, while yet no satirist sees more clearly man's accidental and concealing form,—because of this, history comes in him to new blood, regaining its inspirations without forfeiture of its experience.
Carlyle has the same eye, but less creative, and tinctured always with the special humors of his temperament; yet the attitude he can hold toward a human personality, the spirit in which he can contemplate it, gives that to his books which will keep them alive, I think, while the world lasts.
Among the recent writers of prose fiction in England, I know of but one who, in a degree worth naming in this connection, has regarded and delineated persons in the large, old, believing way. That one is the author of "Counterparts." In many respects her book seems to me weak; its theories are crude, its tone extravagant. But man and woman are wonderful to her; and when she names them in full voice of admiration, one thinks he has never heard the words before. And this merit is so commanding, that, despite faults and imbecilities, it renders the book almost unique in excellence. Sarona is impossible: thanks for that noble impossibility!Impossible, he yet embodies more reality, more true suggestion of human possibility and resource, than a whole swarming limbo of the ordinary heroes of fiction,—very credible, and the more's the pity! He is finelyimagined, and poorlyconceived,—true, that is, to the inspiring substance of man, but not true to his limitary form: for imagination gives the revealing form, conception the form which limits and conceals.
In spite, therefore, of marked infirmities and extravagances, the book remains a superior, perhaps a great work. The writer can look at a human existence with childlike, all-believing, Homeric eyes. That creative vision which of old peopled Olympus still peoples the world for her, beholding gods where the skeptic, critical eye sees only a medical doctor and a sick woman. So is she stamped a true child of the Muse, descended on the one side from Memory, or superficial fact, but on the other from Zeus, thesoulof fact; and being gifted to discern the divine halo on the brows of humanity, she rightly obtains the laurel upon her own.
Goethe, at least, rivals her in this Olympic intelligence, while he combines it with a practical wisdom far profounder, with a survey and fulness of knowledge incomparably wider and more various, with a tone tempered to the last sobriety, for the whole of actual life, which no man of the world ever surpassed, and no seer ever equalled. And thus I must abide in my opinion, that he has given us the one prose epic of the world, up to this date. In other words, he has best reconciled World with the final vessel of its uses, Man,—and best reconciled actual civilization and the fixed conditions of man with the uses of that in which all the meaning of his existence is summed, his seeing and unseen spirit.
Reuben has in many respects vastly improved under his city education. It would be wrong to say that the good Doctor did not take a very human pride in his increased alertness of mind, in his vivacity, in his self-possession,—nay, even in that very air of world-acquaintance which now covered entirely the old homely manner of the country lad. He thought within himself, what a glad smile of triumph would have been kindled upon the face of the lost Rachel, could she but have seen this tall youth with his kindly attentions and his graceful speech. May-be she did see it all,—but with far other eyes, now. Was the child ripening into fellowship with the sainted mother?
The Doctor underneath all his pride carried a great deal of anxious doubt; and as he walked beside his boy upon the thronged street, elated in some strange way by the touch of that strong arm of the youth, whose blood was his own,—so dearly his own,—he pondered gravely with himself, if the mocking delusions of the Evil One were not the occasion of his pride? Was not Satan setting himself artfully to the work of quieting all sense of responsibility in regard to the lad's future, by thus kindling in his old heart anew the vanities of the flesh and the pride of life?
"I say, father, I want to put you through now. It'll do you a great deal of good to see some of our wonders here in the city."
"The very voice,—the very voice of Rachel!" says the Doctor to himself, quickening his laggard step to keep pace with Reuben.
"There are such lots of things toshow you, father! Look in this store, now. You can step in, if you like. It's the largest carpet-store in the United States, three stories packed full. There's the head man of the firm,—the stout man in a white choker; with half a million, they say: he's a deacon in Mowry's church."
"I hope, then, Reuben, that he makes a worthy use of his wealth."
"Oh, he gives thunderingly to the missionary societies," said Reuben, with a glibness that grated on the father's ear.
"You see that building yonder? That's Gothic. They've got the finest bowling-alleys in the world there."
"I hope, my son, you never go to such places?"
"Bowl? Oh, yes, I bowl sometimes: the physicians recommend it; good exercise for the chest. Besides, it's kept by a fine man, and he's got one of the prettiest little trotting horses you ever saw in your life."
"Why, my son, you don't mean to tell me that you know the keeper of this bowling-alley?"
"Oh, yes, father,—we fellows all know him; and he gave me a splendid cigar the last time I was there."
"You don't mean to say that you smoke, Reuben?" said the old gentleman, gravely.
"Not much, father: but then everybody smokes now and then. Mowry—Dr. Mowry smokes, you know; and they say he has prime cigars."
"Is it possible? Well, well!"
"You see that fine building over there?" said Reuben, as they passed on.
"Yes, my son."
"That's the theatre,—the Old Park."
The Doctor ran his eye over it, and its effigy of Shakspeare upon the niche in the wall, as Gabriel might have looked upon the armor of Beelzebub.
"I hope, Reuben, you never enter those doors?"
"Well, father, since Kean and Mathews are gone, there's really nothing worth the seeing."
"Kean! Mathews!" said the Doctor, stopping in his walk and confronting Reuben with a stern brow,—"is it possible, my son, that I hear you talking in this familiar way of play-actors? You don't tell me that you have been a participant in such orgies of Satan?"
"Why, father," says Reuben, a little startled by the Doctor's earnestness, "the truth is, Aunt Mabel goes occasionally, like 'most all the ladies; but we go, you know, to see the moral pieces, generally."
"Moral pieces! moral pieces!" says the Doctor, with a withering scowl. "Reuben! those who go thither take hold on the door-posts of hell!"
"That's the Tract Society building yonder," said Reuben, wishing to divert the Doctor, if possible, from the special object of his reflections.
"Rachel's voice!—always Rachel's voice!"—said the Doctor to himself.
"Would you like to go in, father?"
"No, my son, we have no time; and yet"—meditating, and thrusting his hand in his pocket—"there is a tract or two I would like to buy for you, Reuben."
"Go in, then," says Reuben. "Let me tell them who you are, father, and you can get them at wholesale prices. It's the merest song."
"No, my son, no," said the Doctor, disheartened by the blithe air of Reuben. "I fear it would be wasted effort. Yet I trust that you do not wholly neglect the opportunities for religious instruction on the Sabbath?"
"Oh, no," says Reuben, gayly. "I see Dr. Mowry off and on, pretty often. He's a clever old gentleman,—Dr. Mowry."
Clever old gentleman!
The Doctor walked on oppressed with grief,—silent, but with lips moving in prayer,—beseeching God to take away the stony heart from this poor child of his, and to give him a heart of flesh.
Reuben had improved, as we said, by his New York schooling. He was quick of apprehension, well informed; and his familiarity with the counting-room of Mr. Brindlock had given hima business promptitude that was specially agreeable to the Doctor, whose habits in that regard were of woful slackness. But religiously, the good man looked upon his son as a castaway. It was only too apparent that Reuben had not derived the desired improvement from attendance at the Fulton-Street Church. That attendance had been punctual, indeed, for nearly all the first year of his city life, in virtue of the inexorable habit of his education; but Dr. Mowry had not won upon him by any personal magnetism. The city Doctor was a ponderously good man, preaching for the most part ponderous sermons, and possessed of a most imposing friendliness of manner. When Reuben had presented to him the credentials from his father, (which he could hardly have done, save for the urgency of the Brindlocks,) the ponderous Doctor had patted him upon the shoulder, and said,—
"My young friend, your father is a most worthy man,—most worthy. I should be delighted to see you following in his steps. I shall be most glad to be of service to you. Our meetings for Bible instruction are on Wednesdays, at seven: the young men upon the left, the young ladies on the right."
The Doctor appeared to Reuben a man solemnly preoccupied with the immensity of his charge; and it seemed to him (though it was doubtless a wicked thought of the boy) that the ponderous minister would have counted it a matter of far smaller merit to instruct, and guide, and save a wanderer from the country, than to perform the same offices for a good fat sinner of the city.
As we have said, the memory of old teachings for a year or more made any divergence from the severe path of boyhood seem to Reuben a sin; and these divergencies so multiplied by easy accessions as to have made him, after a time, look upon himself very confidently, and almost cheerily, as a reprobate. And if a reprobate, why not taste the Devil's cup to the full?
That first visit to the theatre was like a bold push into the very domain of Satan. Even the ticket-seller at the door seemed to him on that eventful night an understrapper of Beelzebub, who looked out at him with the goggle eyes of a demon. That such a man could have a family, or family affections, or friendships, or any sense of duty or honor, was to him a thing incomprehensible; and when he passed the wicket for the first time into the vestibule of the old Park Theatre, the very usher in the corridor had to his eye a look like the Giant Dagon, and he conceived of him as mumbling, in his leisure moments, the flesh from human bones. And when at last the curtain rose, and the damp air came out upon him from behind the scenes as he sat in the pit, and the play began with some wonderful creature in tight bodice and painted cheeks, sailing across the stage, it seemed to him that the flames of Divine wrath might presently be bursting out over the house, or a great judgment of God break down the roof and destroy them all.
But it did not; and he took courage. It is so easy to find courage in those battles where we take no bodily harm! If conscience, sharpened by the severe discipline he had known, pricked him awkwardly at the first, he bore the stings with a good deal of sturdiness. A sinner, no doubt,—that he knew long ago: a little slip, or indeed no slip at all, had ranked him with the unregenerate. Once a sinner, (thus he pleasantly reasoned,) and a fellow may as well be ten times a sinner: a bad job anyhow. If in his moments of reflection—these being not yet wholly crowded out from his life—there comes a shadowy hope of better things, of some moral poise that should be in keeping with the tenderer recollections of his boyhood,—all this can never come, (he bethinks himself, in view of his old teaching,) except on the heel of some terrible conviction of sin; and the conviction will hardly come without some deeper and more damning weight of it than he feels as yet. A heavy cumulation of the weight may some day serve him a good turn. Thusthe Devil twists his vague yearning for a condition of spiritual repose into a pleasantly smacking lash with which to scourge his grosser appetites; so that, upon the whole, Reuben drives a fine, showy team along the high-road of indulgence.
Yet the minister's son had no love for gross vices; there were human instincts in him (if it maybe said) that rebelled against his more deliberate sinnings. Nay, he affected with his boon companions an enjoyment of wanton excesses that he only half felt. A certain adventurous, dare-devil reach in him craved exercise. The character of Reuben at this stage would surely have offered a good subject for the study and the handling of Dr. Mowry, if that worthy gentleman could have won his way to the lad's confidence; but the ponderous methods of the city parson showed no fineness of touch. Even the father, as we have seen, could not reach down to any religious convictions of the son; and Reuben keeps him at bay with a banter, and an exaggerated attention to the personal comforts of the old gentleman, that utterly baffle him. Reuben holds too much in dread the old catechismal dogmas and the ultimate "anathema maran-atha."
So it was with a profound sigh that the father bade his son adieu after this city visit.
"Good bye, father! Love to them all in Ashfield."
So like Rachel's voice! So like Rachel's! And the heart of the old man yearned toward him and ached bitterly for him."O my son Absalom! my son! my son Absalom!"
Maverick hurried his departure from the city; and Adèle, writing to Rose to announce the programme of her journey, says only this much of Reuben:—"We have of course seen R——, who was very attentive and kind. He has grown tall,—taller, I should think, than Phil; and he is quite well-looking and gentlemanly. I think he has a very good opinion of himself."
The summer's travel offered a season of rare enjoyment to Adèle. The lively sentiment of girlhood was not yet wholly gone, and the thoughtfulness of womanhood was just beginning to tone, without controlling, her sensibilities. The delicate attentions of Maverick were more like those of a lover than of a father. Through his ever watchful eyes, Adèle looked upon the beauties of Nature with a new halo on them. How the water sparkled to her vision! How the days came and went like golden dreams!
Ah, happy youth-time! The Hudson, Lake George, Saratoga, the Mountains, the Beach,—to us old stagers, who have breasted the tide of so many years, and flung off long ago all the iridescent sparkles of our sentiment, these are only names of summer thronging-places. Upon the river we watch the growth of the crops, or ask our neighbors about the cost of our friend Faro's new country-seat; we lounge upon the piazzas of the hotels, reading price-lists, or (if not too old) an editorial; we complain of the windy currents upon the lake, and find our chiefest pleasure in a trout boiled plain, with a dressing of Champagne sauce; we linger at Fabian's on a sunny porch, talking politics with a rheumatic old gentleman in his overcoat, while the youngsters go ambling through the fir woods and up the mountains with shouts and laughter. Yet it was not always thus. There were times in the lives of us old travellers—let us say from sixteen to twenty—when the great river was a glorious legend trailing its storied length through the Highlands; when in every opening valley there lay purple shadows whereon we painted castles; when the corridors and shaded walks of the "United States" were like a fairy land, with flitting skirts and waving plumes, and some delicately gloved hand beating its reveille upon the heart; and when every floating film of mist along the sea, whether at Newport or Nahant, tenderly entreated the fancy.
But we forget ourselves, and we forget Adèle. In her wild exuberance of joy Maverick shares with a spirit that he had believed to be dead in him utterly. And if he finds it necessary to check from time to time the noisy effervescence of her pleasure, as he certainly does at the first, he does it in the most tender and considerate way; and Adèle learns, what many of her warm-hearted sisters never do learn, that a well-bred control over our enthusiasms in no way diminishes the exquisiteness of their savor.
Maverick should be something over fifty now, and his keenness of observation in respect to feminine charms is not perhaps so great as it once was; but even he cannot fail to see, with a pride that he makes no great effort to conceal, the admiring looks that follow the lithe, graceful figure of Adèle, wherever their journey may lead them. Nor, indeed, were there any more comely toilettes for a young girl to be met with anywhere than those which had been provided for the young traveller under the advice of Mrs. Brindlock.
It may be true—what his friend Papiol had predicted—that Maverick will be too proud of his child to keep her in a secluded corner of New England. For his pride there is certainly abundant reason; and what father does not love to see the child of whom he is proud admired?
Yet weeks had run by and Maverick had never once broached the question of a return. The truth was, that the new experience was so charming and so engrossing for him, the sweet, intelligent face ever at his side was so full of eager wonder, and he so delightfully intent upon providing new sources of pleasure and calling out again and again the gushes of her girlish enthusiasm, that he shrunk instinctively from a decision in which must be involved so largely her future happiness.
At last it was Adèle herself who suggested the inquiry,—
"Is it true, dear papa, what the Doctor tells me, that you may possibly take, me back to France with you?"
"What say you, Adèle? Would you like to go?"
"Dearly!"
"But," said Maverick, "your friends here,—can you so easily cast them away?"
"No, no, no!" said Adèle,—"not cast them away! Couldn't I come again some day? Besides, there is your home, papa; I should love any home of yours, and love your friends."
"For instance, Adèle, there is my book-keeper, a lean Savoyard, who wears a red wig and spectacles,—and Lucille, a great, gaunt woman, with a golden crucifix about her neck, who keeps my little parlor in order,—and Papiol, a fat Frenchman, with a bristly moustache and iron-gray hair, who, I dare say, would want to kiss the pet of his dear friend,—and Jeannette, who washes the dishes for us, and wears great wooden sabots"——
"Nonsense, papa! I am sure you have other friends; and then there's the good godmother."
"Ah, yes,—she indeed," said Maverick; "what a precious hug she would give you, Adèle!"
"And then—and then—should I see mamma?"
The pleasant humor died out of the face of Maverick on the instant; and then, in a slow, measured tone,—
"Impossible, Adèle,—impossible! Come here, darling!" and as he fondled her in a wild, passionate way, "I will love you for both, Adèle; she was not worthy of you, child."
Adèle, too, is overcome with a sudden seriousness.
"Is she living, papa?" And she gives him an appealing look that must be answered.
And Maverick seems somehow appalled by that innocent, confiding expression of hers.
"May-be, may-be, my darling; she was living not long since; yet it can never matter to you or me more. You will trust me in this, Adèle?" And he kisses her tenderly.
And she, returning the caress, but bursting into tears as she does so, says,—
"I will, I do, papa."
"There, there, darling!"—as he folds her to him; "no more tears,—no more tears,chérie!"
But even while he says it, he is nervously searching his pockets, since there is a little dew that must be wiped from his own eyes. Maverick's emotion, however, was but a little momentary contagious sympathy with the daughter,—he having no understanding of that unsatisfied yearning in her heart of which this sudden tumult of feeling was the passionate outbreak.
Meantime Adèle is not without her little mementos of the life at Ashfield, which come in the shape of thick double letters from that good girl Rose,—her dear, dear friend, who has been advised by the little traveller to what towns she should direct these tender missives; and Adèle is no sooner arrived at these postal stations than she sends for the budget which she knows must be waiting for her. And of course she has her own little pen in a certain travelling-escritoire the good papa has given her; and she plies her white fingers with it often and often of an evening, after the day's sight-seeing is over, to tell Rose, in return, what a charming journey she is having, and how kind papa is, and what a world of strange things she is seeing; and there are descriptions of sunsets and sunrises, and of lakes and of mountains, on those close-written sheets of hers, which Rose, in her enthusiasm, declares to be equal to many descriptions in print. We dare say they were better than a great many such.
Poor Rose feels that she has only very humdrum stories to tell in return for these; but she ekes out her letters pretty well, after all, and what they lack in novelty is made up in affection.
"There is really nothing new to tell," she writes, "except it be that our old friend, Miss Almira Tourtelot, astonished us all with a new bonnet last Sunday, and with new saffron ribbons; and she has come out, too, in the new tight sleeves, in which she looks drolly enough. Phil is very uneasy, now that his schooling is done, and talks of going to the West Indies about some business in which papa is concerned. I hope he will go, if he doesn't stay too long. He is such a dear, good fellow! Madame Arles asks after you, when I see her, which is not very often now; for since the Doctor has come back from New York, he has had a new talk with mamma, and has quite won her over tohis view of the matter. So good bye to French for the present! Heigho! But I don't know that I'm sorry, now that you are not here, dear Ady.
"Another queer thing I had almost forgotten to tell you. The poor Boody girl,—you must remember her? Well, she has come back on a sudden; and they say her father would not receive her in his house,—there areterrible storiesabout it!—and now she is living with an old woman far out upon the river-road,—only a little garret-chamber for herself andthe child she brought back with her. Of coursenobodygoes near her, or looks at her, if she comes on the street. But—the queerest thing!—when Madame Arles heard of it and of her story, what does she do butwalk far out to visit her, and talked with her in her broken English for an hour, they say. Papa says she (Madame A.) must be a very bad woman or a very good woman. Miss Johns saysshe always thought she was a bad woman. The Bowriggs are, of course, very indignant, and I doubt if Madame A. comes to Ashfield again with them."
And again, at a later date, Rose writes,—
"The Bowriggs are all off for the winter, and the house closed. Reuben has been here on a flying visit to the parsonage; and how proud Miss Eliza was ofher nephew! He came over to see Phil, I suppose; but Phil had gone two weeks before. Mamma thinks he isfine-looking. I fancy he will never live in the country again. When shall I see you again,dear, dearAdy? I haveso muchto talk to you about!"
A month thereafter Maverick and hisdaughter find their way back to Ashfield. Of course Miss Johns has made magnificent preparations to receive them. She surpassed herself in her toilette on the day of their arrival, and fairly astonished Maverick with the warmth of her welcome to his child. Yet he could not help observing that Adèle met it more coolly than was her wont, and that her tenderest words were reserved for the good Doctor. And how proud she was to walk with her father upon the village street, glancing timidly up at the windows from which she knew those stiff old Miss Hapgoods must be peeping out! How proud to sit beside him in the parson's pew, feeling that the eyes of half the congregation were fastened on the tall gentleman beside her! Ah, happy daughter! may your beautiful filial pride never have a fall!
Important business letters command Maverick's early presence abroad; and, after conference with the Doctor, he decides to leave Adèle once more under the roof of the parsonage.
"Under God, I will do for her what I can," said the Doctor.
"I know it, I know it, my good friend," says Maverick. "Teach her self-reliance; she may need it some day. And mind what I have said of this French woman. Adèle seems to have atendressethat way. Those French women are very insidious, Johns."
"You know their ways better than I," said the Doctor, dryly.
"Good! a smack of the old college humor there, Johns. Well, well, at least you don't doubt the sacredness of my love for Adèle?"
"I trust, Maverick, I may never doubt the sacredness of your love in any direction. I only hope you may direct it where I fear you do not."
"God bless you, Johns! I wish I were as good a man as you."
A little afterwards Maverick was humming a snatch from an opera under the trees of the orchard; and Adèle went bounding toward him, to take the last walk with him for so long,—so long!
Autumn and winter passed by, and the summer of 1838 opened upon the old quiet life of Ashfield. The stiff Miss Johns, busy with her household duties, or with her stately visitings. The Doctor's hat and cane in their usual place upon the little table within the door, and of a Sunday his voice is lifted up under the old meeting-house roof in earnest expostulation. The birds pipe their old songs, and the orchard has shown once more its wondrous glory of bloom. But all these things have lost their novelty for Adèle. Would it be strange, if the tranquil life of the little town had lost something of its early charm? That swift French blood of hers has been stirred by contact with the outside world. She has, perhaps, not been wholly insensible to those admiring glances which so quickened the pride of the father. Do not such things leave a hunger in the heart of a girl of seventeen which the sleepy streets of a country town can but poorly gratify?
The young girl is, moreover, greatly disturbed at the thought of the new separation from her father for some indefinite period. Her affections have knitted themselves around him, during that delightful journey of the summer, in a way that has made her feel with new weight the parting. It is all the worse that she does not clearly perceive the necessity for it. Is she not of an age now to contribute to the cheer of whatever home he may have beyond the sea? Why, pray, has he given her such uninviting pictures of his companions there? Or what should she care for his companions, if only she could enjoy his tender watchfulness? Or is it that her religious education is not yet thoroughly complete, and that she still holds out against a full and public avowal of all the doctrines which the Doctor urges upon her acceptance? And the thought of this makes his kindly severities appear more irksome than ever.
Another cause of grief to Adèle is the extreme disfavor in which she findsthat Madame Arles is now regarded by the townspeople. Her sympathies had run out towards the unfortunate woman in some inexplicable way, and held there even now, so strongly that contemptuous mention of her stung like a reproach to herself. At least she was a countrywoman, and alone among strangers; and in this Adèle found abundant reason for a generous sympathy. As for her religion, was it not the religion of her mother and of her good godmother? And with this thought flaming in her, is it wonderful, if Adèle toys more fondly than ever, in the solitude of her chamber, with the little rosary she has guarded so long? Not, indeed, that she has much faith in its efficacy; but it is a silent protest against the harsh speeches of Miss Eliza, who had been specially jealous of the influence of the French teacher.
"I never liked her countenance, Adèle," said the spinster, in her solemn manner; "and I am rejoiced that you will not be under her influence the present summer."
"And I'm sorry," said Adèle, petulantly.
"It is gratifying to me," continued Miss Eliza, without notice of Adèle's interruption, "that Mr. Maverick has confirmed my own impressions, and urged the Doctor against permitting so unwise association."
"When? how?" said Adèle, sharply. "Papa has never seen her."
"But he has seen other French women, Adèle, and he fears their influence."
Adèle looked keenly at the spinster for a moment, as if to fathom the depth of this reply, then burst into tears.
"Oh, why, why didn't he take me with him?" But this she says under breath, and to herself, as she rushes into the Doctor's study to question him.
"Is it true, New Papa, that papa thought badly of Madame Arles?"
"Not personally, my child, since he had never seen her. But, Adaly, your father, though I fear he is far away from the true path, wishes you to find it, my child. He has faith in the religion we teach so imperfectly; he wishes you to be exposed to no influences that will forbid your full acceptance of it."
"But Madame Arles never talked of religion to me"; and Adèle taps impatiently upon the floor.
"That may be true, Adaly,—it may be true; but we cannot be thrown into habits of intimacy with those reared in iniquity without fear of contracting stain. I could wish, my child, that you would so far subdue your rebellious heart, and put on the complete armor of righteousness, as to be able to resist all attacks."
"And it was for this papa left me here?" And Adèle says it with a smile of mockery that alarms the good Doctor.
"I trust, Adaly, that he had that hope."
The good man does not know what swift antagonism to his pleadings he has suddenly kindled in her. The little foot taps more and more impatiently as he goes on to set forth (as he had so often done) the heinousness of her offences and the weight of her just condemnation. Yet the antagonism did not incline her to open doubt; but after she had said her evening prayer that night, (taught her by the parson,) she drew out her little rosary and kissed reverently the crucifix. It is so much easier at this juncture for her tried and distracted spirit to bolster its faith upon such material symbol than to find repose in any merely intellectual conviction of truth!
Adèle's intimacy with Rose and with her family retained all its old tenderness, but that good fellow Phil was gone. A blithe and merry companion he had been! Adèle missed his kindly attentions more than she would have believed. The Bowriggs have come to Ashfield, but their clamorous friendship is more than ever distasteful to Adèle. Over and over she makes a feint of illness to escape the noisy hilarity. Nor, indeed, is it wholly a feint. Whether it were that her state of moral perturbation and unrest reacted upon the physical system, or that there were other disturbingcauses, certain it was that the roses were fading from her cheeks, and that her step was losing day by day something of its old buoyancy. It is even thought best to summon the village doctor to the family council. He is a gossiping, kindly old gentleman, who spends an easy life, free from much mental strain, in trying to make his daily experiences tally with the little fund of medical science which he accumulated thirty years before.