[Pastoral Scene]
INTRODUCTION.
The ancient classical writers of the world are thought to have shown but little sensibility to that natural beauty with which the earth has been clothed, as with a magnificent garment, by her Almighty Creator. Those of their works which have been preserved to us are declared by critics rarely to bear evidence of much depth of feeling of this kind. The German scholars are understood to have been the first to broach this opinion—the first to point out the fact, and to comment on what appears a singular inconsistency.
“If we bear in mind,” says Schiller, “the beautiful scenery with which the Greeks were surrounded, and remember the opportunities possessed by a people living in so genial a climate, of entering into the free enjoyment of the contemplation of nature, and observe how conformable were their mode of thought, the bent of their imaginations, and the habits of their lives to the simplicity of nature, which was so faithfully reflected in their poetic works, we can not fail to remark with surprise how few traces are to be met among them of the sentimental interest with which we in modern times attach ourselves to the individual characteristics of natural scenery. The Greek poet is certainly in the highest degree correct, faithful, and circumstantial in his descriptions of nature, but his heart has more share in his words than if he were treating of a garment, a shield, or a suit of armor. Nature seems to interest his understanding more than his moral perceptions; he does not cling to her charms with the fervor and the plaintive passion of the poet of modern times.”
This passage of Schiller, quoted in “Cosmos,” is supported by similar observations of M. de Humboldt himself: “Specific descriptions of nature occur only as accessories, for in Grecian art all things are centered in the sphere of human life.” And, again: “The description of nature in its manifold richness of form, as a distinct branch of poetic literature, was wholly unknown to the Greeks. The landscape appears among them merely as the background of the picture, of which human figures constitute the main subject.” Touches of description must of course occasionally occur, and whenever these are found, the harmony of Grecian taste gives them the highest beauty possible. The many noble similes and comparisons scattered through the greater poems, form admirable detached pictures; but they occupy the attention very briefly; a rapid glance is thrown upon the hill, the river, or the wood, rather for the purpose of affording greater relief to the figures in the foreground than of enduing the sketch of these features of the earth with any charm or importance in itself. But it is quite impossible to believe for a moment that the Greeks, so fully alive to the spirit of beauty in all its other forms, should have been blind to its effects in the natural world. Other ways of accounting for the apparent inconsistency must be sought for, and the peculiar character and position of the people would seem to suggest these. It was quite consistent with the condition of the world at that early period, and of the Greeks in particular, that nature and art should not then hold the same relative places which they occupy to-day. Art was still in its youth, and of more importance to them than it is to us. Nature, with all her untold wealth, her unharvested magnificence, lay before them, close at hand, always within reach; there was no fear that she should fail them. But human Art was in its earliest stages of culture; every successive step was watched with most lively interest; every progressive movement became of great importance, while the genius of the Greeks particularly led them to feel extreme delight in every achievement of the kind. In fact, all their highest enjoyments flowed from this source, and intothis sphere they threw themselves with their whole soul. Whatever susceptibility to the grandeur and beauty of the inanimate creation was felt among them, sought therefore rather to express itself in forms more positive than the voice of song. What, for instance, was the most noble of their temples but the image in Dorian marble of some grand primeval grove, whose gray, columnar trunks they found reflected in the waves of the Ægean Sea? What were the vase, and the vine wreathed about its lip, but the repetition of living forms of fruits and foliage growing in the vale of Tempe, or at the foot of Hymettus? The Greek mind thus beheld the whole external world chiefly through the medium of human Art. An interesting and very striking instance of this peculiarity occurs in the Iliad; no natural object which has a place in the poem—neither the sea nor the skies, neither the streams nor the mountains, all glowing as these were with the purple light of a Grecian atmosphere—could draw from Homer a description filling half the space allotted by him to the shield of Achilles; nay, more, observe that where rural life and its accessories appear the most distinctly in his verse, it is not the reality which he shows us; we do not ourselves tread the brown soil of the freshly-tilled fallow; we do not pass along the one narrow path in the vineyard, amid the purple clusters, but we are called upon to behold these objects—“sight to be admired of all!”—as they lie curiously graven by the hand of Vulcan on the bronze buckler of the hero, where he
* * * “With devices multiform, the diskCapacious charged, toiling with skill divine.”[1]
* * * “With devices multiform, the diskCapacious charged, toiling with skill divine.”[1]
* * * “With devices multiform, the diskCapacious charged, toiling with skill divine.”[1]
* * * “With devices multiform, the disk
Capacious charged, toiling with skill divine.”[1]
Their very religion was but a work of art, a brilliant web of the human imagination, into which, as on the metal of Vulcan, their poets had wrought
“Borders beauteous, dazzling bright,”
“Borders beauteous, dazzling bright,”
“Borders beauteous, dazzling bright,”
“Borders beauteous, dazzling bright,”
where Olympic deities passed to and fro, with grace and spirit unequaled, but moving ever by the springs of the most commonof human passions. All the inanimate objects of the visible creation had their allotted places in this gorgeous, imaginative tissue, though still appearing under associations purely human. They had, in short, no conceptions of nature independent of man; to them the whole world was but the shield of Achilles.
With the same mythology, the same philosophy as the Greeks, the Romans are admitted to have been essentially plagiarists. They saw the earth, in this sense, with the eyes of the Greeks. Their literature has even been accused of a greater dearth of poetical observation, as regards the natural world, than that of their predecessors. The practical realities of life engrossed their attention more exclusively. A colossal selfishness was their striking national characteristic—a characteristic which was alike the cause, first, of their political prosperity, and later of their downfall. Rome was their deity; to her daily needs, or interests, or pleasures, all was sacrificed; they cared little for the mountains, and forests, and streams of the earth, provided all the wealth and magnificence of these were brought over Roman ways to swell the triumph of the Forum. It has been remarked that Cæsar could pass the Alps, then comparatively an unknown region, without one allusion to their sublime character. Still, a body of men like the great Latin writers could not, of course, exist devoid of susceptibility to the beauty of the inanimate world, and many passages may be drawn from their poems bearing witness to this fact. Although, says M. de Humboldt, there is no individual rural portraiture in the Æneid, yet “a deep and intimate comprehension of nature is depicted in soft colors. Where, for instance, has the gentle play of the waves, or the stillness of night, been more happily described?” The modern reader, however, is still left to wonder that poets so great should not have delighted more frequently in enlarging upon similar topics, and that even in many of their elegiac works social life should so exclusively fill up the space.[2]Weshould have rather supposed that when the earth stood in her primitive freshness, in the morning of her existence, her wealth of beauty as yet unsung, that the works of the first great poets would have been filled with the simple reflection of her natural glory. But, as we have seen, such was not the case with the writers of Greece or of Rome; and, as we have already ventured to intimate, it would appear that the great intellectual activity of those races, connected with the period of time filled by them, where so wide a field opened in every direction, became in itself a prominent cause of this peculiar deficiency of their literature. Whatever admiration they felt for nature expressed itself in positive forms of art, or in an imaginative system of mythology, rather than in song.
But something of a different spirit appears to have actuated the old Asiatic nations. The ancient Indian races, for instance, were more contemplative in character, and more vivid impressions of natural objects are revealed in their writings. The Sanscrit Hymns, and the heroic poems of the same language, are said to contain fine descriptive passages. “The main subject of these writings,” says M. de Humboldt, speaking of the Sanscrit Vedas, “are the veneration and praise of Nature.” A poem, called “The Seasons”—and one starts at the familiar name—with another work, called “The Messenger of the Clouds,” are full, we are told, of the same spirit; they were written by Kalidasa, a cotemporary of Virgil and Horace. It would have given us pleasure to offer the reader a few fragments from writings so ancient and so interesting; one would have liked to compare a passage from the Sanscrit Seasons with those so celebrated and so familiar from our own language and modern time, but no English versions are found within reach. The fact, however, of thischaracteristic of the Sanscrit poems is placed beyond reasonable doubt by the declarations of many distinguished men of learning, more particularly among the German scholars.
The Chinese, that singular people which for ages have separated themselves from the rest of the earth by impassable barriers of prejudice and mystery, are now found—as glimpses are opening into their interior—to have long shown some partiality for natural beauty. Among other poems, touching more or less upon subjects of this kind, they have one bearing the simple name of “The Garden,” which was written by Seema-kuang, a celebrated statesman, some eight or nine centuries since, and which is said to contain agreeable descriptive passages; the sketch of a hermitage among rocks and evergreen woods, and a fine, extensive water view over one of their great rivers, are especially referred to. Lieu-schew, another ancient writer of theirs, dwells at length on the subject of pleasure-grounds, for which he gives admirable directions, in the English style, at a period when a really fine garden was not to be found in all Northern Europe; a short translation from a passage of his will be found in the following selections.[3]Gardening, in fact, appears to have been the sphere in which Chinese love of nature has especially sought to unfold itself; that perception of beauty of coloring and of nicety of detail, very general among them, shows itself here in perfection; they have long been great florists, and have delighted in writing verses upon particular flowers and fruit-trees. Garden and song were thus closely connected by them; and if one may judge from brief views received through others, their poetry has very frequently indeed something of a horticultural character. Their busy, practical habits and close inspection of detail would easily incline them in this direction; but as yet nothing grand or very elevated has been given to us by translators.
The Hebrew poets stand alone. Their position is absolutely different from that of all profane writers, and places them at a distance from the usual limits of a mere literarycomparison. They only, as priests and prophets of the One Living God, beheld the natural world in the holy light of truth. Small as was the space the children of Israel filled among the nations of the earth, the humblest individual of their tribes knew that the God of Abraham was the Lord God of Hosts, and that all things visible were but the works of his hands. “The Lord made the heavens, and the earth, and the sea, and all that in them is;” they bowed the knee to no one object “in the heaven above, or in the earth beneath, or in the water under the earth.” Truth is, of its nature, sublime. No fiction of the human imagination, even in the highest and richest forms which it is capable of assuming, can approach to that majesty which is her inherent prerogative. The views of the earth, open to the children of Israel, had naturally, therefore, a grandeur far beyond what the Greeks, with all the luxuriance of their florid mythology, could attain to. Of this fact—thanks to the translations of the Sacred Writings in the hands of all who speak the English tongue—any one of us is capable of judging; the extreme excellence of the Psalms, merely in the sense of literary compositions, and independently of the far higher claims they have upon mankind, has never failed to impress itself deeply on all minds open to such perceptions. The nineteenth Psalm, with the unequaled grandeur of its opening verses; the twenty-third, with its pastoral sweetness; the hundred and fourth, with the fullness of its natural pictures; the hundred and seventh; the ninety-sixth; the hundred and forty-fifth; the hundred and forty-eighth, with others of a similar character, will recur to every reader. It is generally admitted that, throughout the range of ancient profane writing, nothing has yet been brought to light which can equal these, or other great passages of the Psalms, of the Pentateuch, the Prophets, or the Book of Job. Even for sweetness, also, the old Hebrew writers were very remarkable. The most celebrated author and literary artist of modern Germany, and one little likely to have been influenced on such a subject by warmth of religious feeling, has left it as his written opinion that the Book of Ruth, usuallyattributed to the prophet Samuel, is “the loveliest specimen of epic and idyl poetry which we possess.”[4]But the history of Jacob and his family, and the personal story of David in all its details, with other episodes easily pointed out, are almost equally full of this beautiful pastoral spirit. The same inspired pens which have dwelt on the grandest events of which time has any knowledge, have not disdained to move the lesser chords of human sympathies and affections. It was the most honored of the Prophets who so nobly recorded the greatest of all physical facts, the creation of light: “And God said, Let there be light, and there was light.” And on the page immediately following, while still occupied in recording the grand successive stages of the creation, he condescends to note that out of the earth “the Lord God made to growevery tree that is pleasant to the sight.” This simple phrase, taken in connection with all its sublime relations of time and place, has a gracious tenderness, a compassionate beneficence of detail which moves the heart deeply; all the delight which the trees of the wood have afforded to men, independently of their uses; the many peaceful homes they have overshadowed; the many eyes they have gladdened; all the festal joys of the race in which their branches have waved, seem to crowd the mind in one grateful picture, and force from our lips the familiar invocation, “O all ye green things upon earth, bless ye the Lord; praise him, and magnify him forever.”
The most ancient writings of the world thus afford evidence that in those remote ages the perception of natural beauty was not wanting in the human heart. Different races and individual men may have varied greatly in giving expression to the feeling. David and Homer, the Indian and the Roman, may have sung in very different tones, but wherever intellectual life was at all active, there some strain, at least, from the great Hymn was heard.
But very early, in what may be called Christian literature, this feeling began to receive a fresh impulse and a new direction. On the same soil, and among the same races, where,in the height of heathen civilization it had never received adequate expression, both in Italy and in Greece, the eye of the believer was gradually opening to clearer and more worthy views of the creation.
“Look upward,” says St. Chrysostom, “to the vault of heaven, and around thee on the open fields in which herds graze by the water-side; who does not despise all the creations of art, when, in the stillness of his spirit, he watches with admiration the rising of the sun, as it pours its golden light over the face of the earth; when, resting on the thick grass beside the murmuring spring, or beneath the somber shade of a thick and leafy tree, the eye rests on the far-receding and hazy distance.”
Similar passages may also be gathered from the letters of St. Basil and St. Gregory,[5]fathers of the Greek Church. And still earlier instances of this Christian view of the earth are quoted from the writings of a Roman lawyer, Minucius Felix, who lived in the beginning of the third century; his evening rambles on the shores of the Mediterranean, in the neighborhood of Ostia, were very feelingly described in pages which have been preserved to our own time. The Christian Church possessed a most rich inheritance in the Hebrew literature; and the constant use of the Psalms of the Temple in her public services would alone suffice to produce in the minds of the people a deep impression of the goodness and majesty of the Divine Creator as revealed in his works. The Canticle of the Three Children, composed before the foundation of Rome, and which from the early ages of Christianity to the present hour has formed a portion of public worship, is an exalted offering of praise with which we are all familiar: “O all ye works of the Lord, bless ye the Lord, praise him and magnify him forever!” And in the sublime anthem of the Te Deum we have another earnest, unceasing expression of a feeling inseparable from Christianity: “We praise thee, O God, we acknowledge thee to be the Lord. Heavenandearthare full of the majesty of thy glory!” It is, indeed, revealed truth only which has opened to the human mind views of the creation at all worthy of its dignity. It is from her teaching that we learn to appreciate justly the different works of the Deity, in their distinctive characters, to allot to each its own definite position. There is no confusion in her views. She shows us the earth, and the creatures which people it, in a clear light. She tells us positively that all things are but the works of His holy hands—the visible expression of an Almighty wisdom, and power, and love; and as she speaks, the idle phantoms of the human imagination, the puerile deities of the heathen world, the wretched fallacies of presumptuous philosophy vanish and flee away from the face of the earth, like the mists and shadows of night at the approach of the light of day. Not one of the thousand banners of idolatry, whether unfurled on the mountain-tops, or waving in the groves, or floating on the streams, but falls before her. She points out to man his own position, and that of all about him; he is lord of the earth and of all its creatures. The herb of the field, the trees of the wood, the fowls of the air, the fishes of the sea—every living thing that moveth upon earth—all have been given into his hand—all are subject to his dominion—all are the gifts of Jehovah.
But, ere time had enabled Christian civilization and its ennobling lessons to make any positive progress, or to produce any lasting impression on the character of general literature, the Empire was overwhelmed by races wholly barbarous. A period of darkness and disorder ensued, during which the very art of writing seems to have been all but forgotten. A few rude, unfinished sketches were all that could be expected from such an age, and in these man himself would naturally engross the attention. In societies only half civilized, man, as an individual, must always fill a bolder and more prominent position than in those where order, and knowledge, and truth are more widely diffused; he has in such a state of things far greater power for evil over his fellows; every step becomes of immediate importance, for it is associated with a thousand perils;every turn of private passion, unchecked by vital vigor of law or religion, may work out a fatal tragedy, and consequently the individual, either as tyrant, or victim, or champion, excites unceasing fear and flattery, or pity and commiseration, or gratitude and admiration. Wild legends, now warlike, now religious in spirit, naturally belonged to those centuries. No doubt the birds of heaven sang, and the flowers of the field bloomed in those ages; but we have scanty record of their existence; the eye of man was fixed on darker objects; his ear was filled with fiercer sounds.
Slowly, however, civilization and social order—those natural accessories of the Christian faith—were making progress; but the most striking efforts of reviving intelligence at this period did not assume the shape of letters. That latent poetical spirit, never wholly extinct in the human heart, sought for development during those ages through other channels. Under the hand of the religious architect, pious, though lamentably superstitious, the dignity of the forest was once more embodied in novel and imposing labors of art; scarce a fine effect of the branching woods which was not successfully repeated with great richness of detail in Gothic stone. The beauty of the vegetation, in its noblest forms, must have been deeply impressed on the hearts of the men who, with Teutonic patience, raised those magnificent piles. Every American familiar with the beautiful and varied effects of old forests of blended growth, where fir and pine cross their evergreen branches amid the lighter tracery of deciduous trees, may have often noted some single fir, rising tall and spire-like far above the lesser grove, into the light of sun and star; some similar evergreen, rooted in the soil of Europe, was doubtless the original of that most beautiful of Christian architectural forms, the church spire of the Middle Ages:
* * * * “Preacher to the wise,Less’ning from earth her spiral honors rise,Till, as a spear-point rear’d, the topmost spray,Points to the Eden of eternal day.”[6]
* * * * “Preacher to the wise,Less’ning from earth her spiral honors rise,Till, as a spear-point rear’d, the topmost spray,Points to the Eden of eternal day.”[6]
* * * * “Preacher to the wise,Less’ning from earth her spiral honors rise,Till, as a spear-point rear’d, the topmost spray,Points to the Eden of eternal day.”[6]
* * * * “Preacher to the wise,
Less’ning from earth her spiral honors rise,
Till, as a spear-point rear’d, the topmost spray,
Points to the Eden of eternal day.”[6]
It was about the time when those mediæval churches were rising from the towns of central Europe—slow in their stately growth as the forest whence their forms were drawn—that Troubadour and Trouvère, Minstrel and Minnesinger, began their wanderings in the same region; and amid the strange medley of human passion and religious superstition to which they gave utterance, some strains of great natural sweetness were heard. It was then that the returning cuckoo was greeted in England with song:
“Sumer is ycumen in,Lhude sing cuccu!”
“Sumer is ycumen in,Lhude sing cuccu!”
“Sumer is ycumen in,Lhude sing cuccu!”
“Sumer is ycumen in,
Lhude sing cuccu!”
It was then that merle and mavis, nightingale and lark, were saluted with responsive music by the listening poet; it was then that daisy and lily,la douce Margueriteand theFlower of Light, were so fondly cherished and so highly honored; it was then that the May-pole was raised in the castle court and on the village green, and that high and low, like Arcite, hurried afield on May-day morning “for to fetch some grene.” It was then, in short, that the blossoms and the fowls of Europe were first sung in the modern dialects of the people.
Those old wandering minstrels, troubadour and minnesinger, were, in fact, the heralds of reviving letters; they struck the first sparks of national, indigenous literary feeling in its modern forms. It was from them that Petrarch and Dante learned to speak the language of the living, rather than that of the dead. It was from their example that those great poets took, what was then a very daring step, and, rejecting the Latin, chose their native language as a medium of compositions of the highest order. How they succeeded, the whole world knows; and among the writings of those great Italian masters there are very beautiful descriptive passages, a few of which, in the form of translations, may be found in the later pages of this volume.[7]
Fortunately for all who speak the English tongue, Chaucer,“the morning star” of British verse, as he has been hailed by Denham, followed in the track of the Italian poets; the fountains of his inspiration flowed fresh and full from his native soil. How keenly alive was he to every detail of natural beauty in the green fields of England; to the sweetness and freshness of the opening daisy; of the growing grass; of the unfolding leaf, with its “glad, light green!” He was followed by others with the same happy instincts, and a love of nature was thus infused into the earliest literature of our language. All the great poets of the sixteenth, and those of the best years of the seventeenth centuries, were more or less under the influence of this spirit—Shakspeare, Jonson, Spenser, Drayton, the Fletchers, Milton, Cowley, Denham, Dryden, Walker, Herbert, Herrick. How long is the noble roll of names of that period, who have all contributed something to our wealth in this way! There came a moment, however, when a colder and more artificial style acquired in England the same influence which long proved so paralyzing in France, when poets were content to copy those who had preceded them; when they trod the London pavement and the coffeehouse floors much more frequently than the narrow paths about the fields. Mr. Wordsworth has remarked, that during a period of sixty years, between the publication of “Paradise Lost” and that of the “Seasons,” all the poetry of England, with the exception of a passage or two, does not contain “a single new image of external nature.” Poets were courtiers in those times, or they aimed at becoming so; they prided themselves upon a neatly turned compliment, upon a farfetched dedication; they were wits—they were pretty fellows about town; like Horace Walpole’s lively old friend, Madame du Deffand, they could very conscientiously avow, “Je n’aime pas les plaisirs innocents!”
Mr. Wordsworth dates the dawn of the modern era in poetry from the appearance of the “Seasons,” which were first published in the year 1726. A single great work will no doubt often produce surprisingly general effects in the literary world, when the atmosphere is prepared for it. And suchwas the case when Thomson wrote. Many different influences were gradually combining to work out the same result. A high degree of general education, in connection with the prevalence of Christian religious truth, must always naturally dispose the mind to a more just appreciation of the works of the Deity, as compared with the works of man. The wider our views of each, the higher will be our admiration of the first. We say general civilization, however; for where the advantages of education are confined to a small class, that class will usually be found only in the large towns of a country, and its tastes and habits will therefore necessarily be more or less artificial. The rustic population, in such a state of things, will be rude, coarse, and deemed only fit for ridicule and burlesque. The poet of such a period has no sooner tried his strength, than he is eager to turn his back on the fields; he hurries “to town,” to the center of all enlightenment, and soon becomes metamorphosed into a cockney or a courtier. In their day Paris and London have probably thus swallowed up many a man of genius, country born and country bred, who, had he remained in his native haunts, could never have failed in real honest feeling for that natural beauty which, like the mercy of God, is new every morning. Had Cowper lived all his days in Bond Street he never could have written the “Task.” Conceive a man like Crabbe, or Burns, transported for life to Grub Street, and imagine what would be the inevitable effects of the change on a spirit like theirs. But a general diffusion of civilization produces an entirely different state of things. An intellectual man may now live most of his days in the country without disgrace and without annoyance. He may read and he may write there with pleasure and with impunity. A wide horizon for observation opens about him to-day in the fields, as elsewhere. Science, commerce, painting, sculpture, horticulture—all the higher arts, in fact—are so many noble laborers hourly toiling for his benefit, as well as for that of the townsman. General education is also daily enlarging the public audience, and thus giving more healthful play to diversity oftastes. No single literary class is likely, in such a state of things, to usurp undue authority over others—to impose academical fetters on even the humblest of its cotemporaries. Whatever is really natural and really worthy, may therefore hope in the end for a share of success. But we conceive that it would still be possible for all these circumstances to unite in favoring the literature of the age, without leading it into those views of the natural world which have so decidedly marked its course in our own day, without producing at least results so striking, a change so marked. It is, we believe, the union of Christianity with this general diffusion of a high degree of civilization which has led us to a more deeply felt appreciation of the works of the creation. It has always been from lands blessed with the light of revealed truth that the choir of praise has risen with the greatest fullness. And it would be easy, also, to prove that those individual writers who have sung the natural beauty of the earth with the greatest fervor of feeling and truth of description have been more or less actuated by a religious spirit. Take as examples the poets of our own language; how many of those who have touched upon similar subjects were moved by what may be called Christian impulses? Go back as far even as Chaucer and Dunbar, Shakspeare and Spenser, Milton and Fletcher; if these were not all what is called religious men, yet the writings of even Chaucer and Shakspeare, though tainted with the grossness of their times, were the works of believing Christian hearts. If we look nearer to our own day, from the period of Thomson and Dyer to the present hour, the fact is self-evident, and needs no repetition of names. There have been instances, no doubt, among the greater English poets of the last fifty years, where success in natural description has been combined with an avowed or implied religious skepticism. But no man can be born and bred in a Christian community, taught in its schools, governed by its laws, educated by its literature, without unconsciously, and, as it were, in spite of himself, imbibing many influences of the prevailing faith. Even the greatest English poets ofthe skeptical school are forced to resort to what appears to the reader a combination of an imperfect, enfeebled Christianity with an incomplete and lifeless Paganism. Their views of the material world almost invariably assume a Greek aspect; and we must adhere to the opinion, that, in spite of their florid character, their grace of outline, their richness of detail, these fall unspeakably, immeasurably short of the grandeur, the healthful purity, the living beauty, the power and tenderness of feeling which belong to revealed truth. With the Greek, as with so many others, man was, more or less palpably, the great center of all. Not so with the Christian; while Revelation allots to him a position elevated and ennobling, she also reads him the lowliest lessons. No system connects man by more close and endearing ties, with the earth and all its holds, than Christianity, which leaves nothing to chance, nothing to that most gloomy and most impossible of chimeras, fate, but refers all to Providence, to the omniscient wisdom of a God who is love; but at the same time she warns him that he is himself but the steward and priest of the Almighty Father, responsible for the use of every gift; she plainly proclaims the fact, that even here on earth, within his own domains, his position is subordinate. The highest relation of every created object is that which connects it with its Maker: “For thy pleasure they are, and were created!” This sublime truth Christianity proclaims to us, and there is breadth enough in this single point to make up much of the wide difference between the Christian and the heathen poet. And which of these two views is the most ennobling, each of us may easily decide for himself. Look at the simple flower of the field; behold it blooming at the gracious call of the Almighty, beaming with the light of heavenly mercy, fragrant with the holy blessing, and say if it be not thus more noble to the eye of reason, dearer to the heart, than when fancy dyed its petals with the blood of a fabled Adonis or Hyacinthus? Go out and climb the highest of all the Alps, or stand beside the trackless, ever-moving sea, or look over the broad, unpeopled prairie, and tell us whenceit is that the human spirit is so deeply moved by the spectacle which is there unfolded to its view. Go out at night—stand uncovered beneath the star-lit heavens, and acknowledge the meaning of the silence which has closed your lips. Is it not an overpowering, heartfelt, individual humility, blended with an instinctive adoration or acknowledgment in every faculty of the holy majesty of the One Living God, in whom we live, and move, and have our being? And where, at such a moment, are all the gods with which Homer peopled his narrow world? An additional sense of humiliation for the race to which we belong, and which could so long endure fallacies so puerile, weighs on the spirit at the question, and with a greater than Homer we exclaim: “O worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness; let all the earth stand in awe of Him!”
A distinguished living poet of England, Mr. Keble, has a very pleasing theory in connection with this subject. In his view, the three great divisions of poetry belong naturally to three successive periods of the world: the epic flows from the heroic youth of a race; the drama, with its varied scenes and rival interests, from the ambitious maturity of middle age; while, as civilization advances farther in the cycle of time, the human heart oppressed with the strife of passion, the eye wearied with the restless pageant of vanity, turn instinctively to more simple and more healthful sources of enjoyment, and seeking refreshment from the sweetness and beauty of the natural world, give expression to the feeling in the poetry of rural life. In this sense the verse of the fields—the rural hymn—becomes the last form of song, instead of being the first. Something similar to this has doubtless often been the course of individual life; many of the greatest minds and best hearts of our race have successively gone through these different stages—the aspiring dream of youthful enthusiasm, the struggle in the crowded arena of life, and the placid calm of thoughtful repose and voluntary retirement under the shade of the vine and the fig-tree. Happy will it be for the civilized world, for these latter ages of the earth, if such shouldindeed prove the general course of the race! Most happy will it be for us, the latest born of the nations, we who belong to the aged times of the world, if such should be our own direction!
Probably there never was a people needing more than ourselves all the refreshments, all the solace, to be derived from country life in its better forms. The period at which we have arrived is rife with high excitement; the fever of commercial speculations, the agitation of political passions, the mental exertion required by the rapid progress of science, by the ever-recurring controversies of philosophy, and, above all, that spirit of personal ambition and emulation so wearing upon the individual, and yet so very common in America, all unite to produce a combination of circumstances rendering it very desirable that we should turn, as frequently as possible, into paths of a more quiet and peaceful character. We need repose of mind. We need the shade of the trees and the play of healthful breezes to refresh our heated brow. We need the cup of water, pure from the spring, to cool our parched lips; we need the flowers, to soothe without flattery; the birds, to cheer without excitement; we need the view of the green turf, to teach us the humility of the grave; and we need the view of the open heavens, to tell us where all human hopes should center.
Happily, in spite of the eagerness with which our people throw themselves upon every rallying point of excitement, they are by no means wanting in feeling for a country life. It is true they delight in building up towns; but still, a large portion of those who have a choice look forward to some future day when a country roof shall cover their heads. They hurry to the cities to grow rich; but very many take pleasure in returning at a later hour to their native village, or at least put up a suburban cottage, with a garden and grass-plat of their own. The rural aspect which has been given to our villages and smaller country towns, and which is often preserved with some pains—the space between the buildings, the trees lining the streets and shading every wall, with thelittle door-yard of flowers—all these are evidences of healthful instincts. But another, and very striking proof of the existence of the love of nature in our people may be found in the character of American verse. A very large proportion of the poetical writing of the country partakes of this spirit; how many noble passages, how many pleasing lines, will immediately recur to the mind as the remark suggests itself; scarce a poet of note among us who has not contributed largely to our national riches in this way; and one often meets, in some village paper or inferior magazine, with very pleasing verses of this kind, from pens quite unknown. Probably if an experienced critic were called upon to point out some general characteristic of American poetry, more marked than any other, he would, without hesitation, declare it to be a deeply-felt appreciation of the beauty of the natural world.
But although as a people we have given ample evidence of an instinctive love of nature, yet we have only made a beginning in these pleasant paths. There still remains much for us to do. This natural taste, like all others, is capable of much healthful cultivation; it would be easy to name many steps by which, both as individuals and as communities, it lies in our power to advance the national progress in this course; but to do so would carry us beyond the limits allotted to our present task. It is hoped, however, that we may be forgiven for detaining the reader a moment longer, while we allude at least to one view of the subject which is not altogether without importance. The social condition of Christendom has, in many respects, very materially changed within the last fifty years. Town and country no longer fill what for ages seemed the unalterable relative position of each. A countryman is no longer inevitably a boor, nor a townsman necessarily a cockney; all have, in their turn, trod the pavement and the green turf. This is especially the case in America; the life, the movement in which our people delight, is constantly bringing all classes into contact, one with another, and diffusing the same influences throughout the entire population. Something of that individuality which gives interest and variety to the faceof society is lost in this way; but, on the other hand, we gain many facilities for general improvement by these means. The interchange between town and country has become rapid, ceaseless, regular, as the returns of dawn and dusk. But yet, in spite of the unbroken communication, the perpetual intermingling, there still remains to each a distinctive, inalienable character; the moving spirit of the town must always continue artificial, while that of the country is, by a happy necessity, more natural. We believe that the moment has come when American civilization may assume, in this respect, a new aspect. The wonderful increase of commercial and manufacturing luxury, which is characteristic of the age, must inevitably produce a degree of excess in the cities; all the follies of idle ostentation and extravagant expenditure will, as a matter of course, flourish in such an atmosphere, until, as they expand right and left, they overshadow many things of healthier growth, and give a false glare of coloring to the whole society which fosters them. There are many reasons why our own towns are especially in danger from this state of things; they have no Past; they lack Experience; Time for them has no individual teachings beyond those of yesterday; there are no grave monuments of former generations standing in the solemn silence of a thousand warning years along their streets.
[Pastoral Scene]
Probably there never has been a social condition in which the present is more absolutely absorbing, more encroaching, in fact, than in our American towns. The same influences may extend into the country; but it is impossible for them to be equally powerful in the open fields, where they are weakened by the want of concentration, and by many counteracting circumstances. The situation of the countryman is in this sense favorable; he is surrounded by great natural teachers, by noble monitors, in the works of the Deity; many are the salutary lessons to be learned on the mountain-tops, within the old groves beside the flowing stream. The everlasting hills—the ancient woods—these are his monuments—these tell him of the past, and not a seed drops from his hand but prophesies of the future. The influences which surround the countryman are essentially ennobling, elevating, civilizing, in fact. Strange as the remark might have appeared a hundred years ago, we shall venture deliberately to repeat it at the present hour: We conceive that the spirit which pervades country life to-day, to be more truly civilizing in its nature than that which glitters in our towns. All that is really desirable of the facilities of life may now be readily procured in the fields, while the excesses of luxury and frivolous fashion are more easily avoided there. Many different elements are blended in the composition of true elegance, and some of these are of a very homely, substantial nature; plain common sense, and even a vein of sterner wisdom are requisite; that moderation which avoids excess is absolutely indispensable; order and harmony of combination are needed; dignity and self-respect are essentials; natural feeling must be there, with all its graceful shades of deference and consideration for the rights and tastes of others; intellectual strength, which has no sympathy with the merely vapid and frivolous, is a matter of course; and while cheerfulness and gayety, easy and unforced as the summer breezes, should not fail, yet a spirit of repose is equally desirable; it is evident, also, that a healthful moral tone is requisite, since, where this is wanting, the semblance of it is invariably assumed; and to all these must be added that high finish of culture which years and reflection can alone give. What element is there among these which may not be readily fostered in country life? On the other hand, that very concentration which was formerly so favorable to the progress of the towns, is now producing injurious effects by leading to excesses, and perversion of healthful tastes. The horizon of the townsman becomes fictitiously narrowed; he needs a wider field for observation—greater space for movement—more leisure for reflection. He learns to attach too much importance by far to the trappings of life; he has forgotten, in short, the old adage: “Non è l’abito che fà il monaco!” It can scarcely, therefore, be an error of judgment to believe that while in past generations thecountry has received all its wisdom from the town, the moment has come when in American society many of the higher influences of civilization may rather be sought in the fields, when we may learn there many valuable lessons of life, and particularly all the happy lessons of simplicity.