Examine both these portions of American literature, the permanent and the fleeting--you see their educated authors are no higher than the rest of men. They are the slaves of public opinion, as much as the gossip in her little village. It may not be the public opinion of a coterie of crones, but of a great party; that makes little odds, they are worshippers of the same rank, idolaters of the same wealth; the gossiping granny shows her littleness the size of life, while their deformity is magnified by the solar microscope of high office. Many a popular man exhibits his pigmy soul to the mult.i.tude of a whole continent, idly mistaking it for greatness. They are swayed by vulgar pa.s.sions, seek vulgar ends, address vulgar motives, use vulgar means; they may command by their strength, they cannot refine by their beauty or instruct by their guidance, and still less inspire by any eminence of manhood which they were born to or have won. They build on the surface-sand for to-day, not on the rock of ages forever. With so little conscience, they heed not the solemn voice of history, and respect no more the prophetic instincts of mankind.
To most men the approbation of their fellows, is one of the most desirable things. This approbation appears in the various forms of admiration, respect, esteem, confidence, veneration and love. The great man obtains this after a time, and in its highest forms, without seeking it, simply by faithfulness to his nature. He gets it, by rising and doing his work, in the course of nature, as easily and as irresistibly as the sun gathers to the clouds the evaporation of land and sea, and like the sun to shed it down in blessings on mankind. Little men seek this, consciously or not knowing it, by stooping, cringing, flattering the pride, the pa.s.sion, or the prejudice of others. So they get the approbation of men, but never of Man. Sometimes this is sought for by the attainment of some accidental quality, which low-minded men hold in more honor than the genius of sage or poet, or the brave manhood of some great hero of the soul. In England though money is power, it is patrician birth which is n.o.bility, and valued most; and there, accordingly, birth takes precedence of all, of genius and even of gold.
Men seek the companionship or the patronage of t.i.tled lords, and social rank depends upon n.o.bility of blood. The few bishops in the upper house do more to give conventional respectability to the clerical profession there, than all the solid intellect of Hooker, Barrow, and of South, the varied and exact learning of philosophic Cudworth, the eloquence and affluent piety of Taylor, and Butler"s vast and manly mind. In America social rank depends substantially on wealth, an accident as much as n.o.ble birth, but movable. Here gold takes precedence of all,--of genius, and even of n.o.ble birth.
"Though your sire Had royal blood within him, and though you Possess the intellect of angels too, "Tis all in vain;--the world will ne"er inquire On such a score:--Why should it take the pains?
"Tis easier to weigh purses, sure, than brains."
Wealth is sought, not merely as a means of power but of n.o.bility. When obtained, it has the power of n.o.bility: so poor men of superior intellect and education, powerful by nature, not by position, fear to disturb the opinion of wealthy men, to instruct their ignorance or rebuke their sin. Hence the aristocracy of wealth, illiterate and vulgar, goes unrebuked, and debases the natural aristocracy of mind and culture which bows down to it. The artist prost.i.tutes his pencil and his skill, and takes his law of beauty from the fat clown, whose barns and pigs and wife he paints for daily bread. The preacher does the same; and though the stench of the rum-shop infests the pulpit, and death hews down the leaders of his flock, the preacher must cry "Peace, peace," or else be still, for rum is power! But this power of wealth has its antagonistic force--the power of numbers. Much depends on the dollar.
Nine tenths of the property is owned by one tenth of all these men--but much also on the votes of the million. The few are strong by money, the many by their votes. Each is worshipped by its votaries, and its approbation sought. He that can get the men controls the money too. So while one portion of educated men bows to the rich, and consecrates their pa.s.sion and their prejudice, another portion bows, equally prostrate, to the pa.s.sions of the mult.i.tude of men. The many and the rich have each a public opinion of their own, and both are tyrants. Here the tyranny of public opinion is not absolutely greater than in England, Germany or France, but is far greater in comparison with other modes of oppression. It seems inherent in a republic; it is not in a republic of n.o.ble men. But here this sirocco blows flat to the ground full many an aspiring blade. Wealth can establish banks, or factories; votes can lift the meanest man into the highest political place, can dignify any pa.s.sion with the name and force of human law; so it is thought by the worshippers of both, seeking the approbation of the two, that public opinion can make truth of lies, and right even out of foulest wrong.
Politicians begin to say, There is no law of G.o.d above the ephemeral laws of men.
There are few American works of literature which appeal to what is best in men; few that one could wish should go abroad and live. America has grown beyond hope in population, the free and bond, in riches, in land, in public material prosperity, but in a literature that represents the higher elements of manliness far less than wise men thought. They looked for the fresh new child; it is born with wrinkles and dreadfully like his grandmother, only looking older and more effete. Our muse does not come down from an American Parna.s.sus, with a new heaven in her eye, men not daring to look on the face of anointed beauty, coming to tell of n.o.ble thought, to kindle G.o.dlike feelings with her celestial spark, and stir mankind to n.o.ble deeds. She finds Parna.s.sus steep and high and hard to climb; the air austere and cold, the light severe, too stern for her effeminate nerves. So she has a little dwelling in the flat and close-pent town, hard by the public street; breathes its Boeotian breath; walks with the money-lenders at high change; has her account at the bank, her pew in the most fashionable church and least austere; she gets approving nods in the street, flattery in the penny-prints, sweetmeats and sparkling wine in the proper places. What were the inspirations of all G.o.d"s truth to her? He "taunts the lofty land with little men."
There still remains the Exceptional Literature; some of it is only fugitive, some meant for permanent duration. Here is a new and different spirit: a respect for human nature above human history, for man above all the accidents of man, for G.o.d above all the alleged accidents of G.o.d; a veneration for the eternal laws which He only makes and man but finds; a law before all statutes, above all const.i.tutions, and holier than all the writings of human hands. Here you find most fully the sentiments and ideas of America, not such as rule the nation now, but which, unconsciously to the people, have caused the n.o.ble deeds of our history, and now prophesy a splendid future for this young giant here.
These sentiments and ideas are brought to consciousness in this literature. Here a precedent is not a limitation; a fact of history does not eclipse an idea of nature; an investment is not thought more sacred than a right. Here is more hope than memory; little deference to wealth and rank, but a constant aspiration for truth, justice, love and piety; little fear of the public opinion of the many or the few, rather a scorn thereof, almost a defiance of it. It appears in books, in pamphlets, in journals, and in sermons, sorely scant in quant.i.ty as yet. New and fresh, it is often greatly deficient in form; rough, rude and uncouth, it yet has in it a soul that will live. Its authors are often men of a wide and fine culture, though mainly tending to underrate the past achievements of mankind. They have little reverence for great names.
They value the Greek and Hebrew mind for no more than it is worth. With them a wrong is no more respected because well descended, and supported by all the riches, all the votes; a right, not less a right because unjustly kept out of its own. These men are American all through; so intensely national, that they do not fear to tell the nation of the wrong it does.
The form of this literature is American. It is indigenous to our soil, and could come up in no other land. It is unlike the cla.s.sic literature of any other nation. It is American as the Bible is Hebrew, and the Odyssey is Greek. It is wild and fantastic, like all fresh original literature at first. You see in it the image of republican inst.i.tutions--the free school, free state, free church; it reflects the countenance of free men. So the letters of old France, of modern England, of Italy and Spain reflect the monarchic, oligarchic, and ecclesiastic inst.i.tutions of those lands. Here appears the civilization of the nineteenth century, the treasures of human toil for many a thousand years. More than that, you see the result of a fresh contact with nature, and original intuitions of divine things. Acknowledging inspiration of old, these writers of the newness believe in it now not less, not miraculous, but normal. Here is humanity that overleaps the bounds of cla.s.s and of nation, and sees a brother in the beggar, pirate, slave, one family of men variously dressed in cuticles of white or yellow, black or red. Here, too, is a new loveliness, somewhat akin to the savage beauty of our own wild woods, seen in their glorious splendor an hour before autumnal suns go down and leave a trail of glory lingering in the sky. Here, too, is a piety somewhat heedless of scriptures, liturgies, and forms, and creeds; it finds its law written in nature, its glorious everlasting Gospel in the soul of man; careless of circ.u.mcision and baptismal rites, it finds the world a temple, and rejoices everywhere to hold communion with the Infinite Father of us all, and keep a sacrament in daily life, conscious of immortality, and feeding continually on angel"s bread.
The writers of this new literature are full of faults; yet they are often strong, though more by their direction than by native force of mind; more, by their intuitions of the first good, first perfect and first fair, than through their historical knowledge or dialectic power.
Their ship sails swift, not because it is sharper built, or carries broader sails than other craft, but because it steers where the current of the ocean coincides with the current of the sky, and so is borne along by nature"s wind and nature"s wave. Uninvited, its ideas steal into parlor and pulpit, its kingdom coming within men and without observation. The shoemaker feels it as he toils in his narrow shop; it cheers the maiden weaving in the mill, whose wheels the Merrimac is made to turn; the young man at college bids it welcome to his ingenuous soul.
So at the breath of spring new life starts up in every plant; the sloping hills are green with corn, and sunny banks are blue and fragrant with the wealth of violets, which only slept till the enchanter came.
The sentiments of this literature burn in the bosom of holy-hearted girls, of matrons and of men. Ever and anon its great ideas are heard even in Congress, and in the speech of old and young, which comes tingling into most unwilling ears.
This literature has a work to do, and is about its work. Let the old man crow loud as he may, the young one will crow another strain, for it is written of G.o.d, that our march is continually onward, and age shall advance over age forever and forever.
Already America has a few fair specimens from this new field to show. Is the work History? The author writes from the stand-point of American democracy; I mean philanthropy, the celestial democracy, not the satanic; writes with a sense of justice and in the interest of men; writes to tell a nation"s purpose in its deeds, and so reveal the universal law of G.o.d, which overrules the affairs of States as of a single man. You wonder that history was not before so writ that its facts told the nation"s ideas, and its labors were lessons, and so its hard-won life became philosophy.
Is it poetry the man writes? It is not poetry like the old. The poet has seen nature with his own eyes, heard her with his own mortal, bodily ears, and felt her presence, not vicariously through Milton, Uhland, Ariosto, but personally, her heart against his heart. He sings of what he knows, sees, feels, not merely of what he reads in others" song.
Common things are not therefore unclean. In plain New England life he finds his poetry, as magnets iron in the blacksmith"s dust, and as the bee finds dew-bright cups of honey in the common woods and common weeds.
It is not for him to rave of Parna.s.sus, while he knows it not, for the Soul of Song has a seat upon Monadnock, Wachusett, or Katahdin, quite as high. So Scottish Burns was overtaken by the muse of poetry, who met him on his own bleak hills, and showed him beauty in the daisy and the thistle, and the tiny mouse, till to his eye the hills ran o"er with loveliness, and Caledonia became a cla.s.sic land.
Is it religion the author treats of? It is not worship by fear, but through absolute faith, a never-ending love; for it is not worship of a howling and imperfect G.o.d, grim, jealous and revengeful, loving but a few, and them not well, but of the Infinite Father of all mankind, whose universal providence will sure achieve the highest good of all that are.
These men are few; in no land are they numerous, or were or will be.
There were few Hebrew Prophets, but a tribe of priests; there are but few mighty bards that hover o"er the world; but here and there a sage, looking deep and living high, who feels the heart of things, and utters oracles which pa.s.s for proverbs, psalms and prayers, and stimulate a world of men. They draw the nations, as conjoining moon and sun draw waters sh.o.r.e-ward from the ocean-springs; and as electrifying heat they elevate the life of men. Under their influence you cannot be as before.
They stimulate the sound, and intoxicate the silly, but in the heart of n.o.ble youths their idea becomes a fact, and their prayer a daily life.
Scholars of such a stamp are few and rare, not without great faults. For every one of them there will be many imitators, as for each lion a hundred lion-flies, thinking their buzz as valiant as his roar, and wondering the forest does not quake thereat, and while they feed on him fancy they suck the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of heaven.
Such is the Scholars" position in America: such their duty, and such the way in which they pay the debt they owe. Will men of superior culture not all act by scholar-craft and by the Pen? It were a pity if they did. If a man work n.o.bly, the Office is as worthy, and the Purse as blessed in its work. The Pen is power; the Office is power; the Purse is power; and if the purse and office be n.o.bly held, then in a high mode the cultivated man pays for his bringing up, and honors with wide sympathies the ma.s.s of men who give him chance to ride and rule. If not; if these be meanly held, for self and not for man, then the scholar is a debtor and a traitor too.
The scholar never had so fair a chance before; here is the n.o.blest opportunity for one that wields the Pen; it is mightier than the Sword, the Office, or the Purse. All things concede at last to Beauty, Justice, Truth and Love, and these he is to represent. He has what freedom he will pay for and take. Let him talk never so heroic, he will find fit audience, nor will it long be few. Men will rise up and welcome his quickening words as vernal gra.s.s at the first rains of spring. A great nation which cannot live by bread alone, asks for the bread of life; while the State is young, a single great and n.o.ble man can deeply influence the nation"s mind. There are great wrongs which demand redress; the present men who represent the Office and the Purse will not end these wrongs. They linger for the Pen, with magic touch to abolish and destroy this ancient serpent-brood. Shall it be only rude men and unlettered who confront the dragons of our time which prowl about the folds by day and night, while the scholar, the appointed guardian of mankind, but "sports with Amaryllis in the shade, or with the tangles of Neaera"s hair?" The nation asks of her scholar better things than ancient letters ever brought; asks his wonders for the million, not the few alone. Great sentiments burn now in half-unconscious hearts, and great ideas kindle their glories round the heads of men. Unconscious electricity, Truth and Right, flashes out of the earth, out of the air.
It is for the scholar to attract this ground-lightning and this lightning of the sky, condense it into useful thunder to destroy the wrong, then spread it forth a beauteous and a cheering light, shedding sweet influence and kindling life anew. A few great men of other times tell us what may be now.
Nothing will be done without toil--talent is only power of work, and genius greater power for higher forms of work--nothing without self-denial; nothing great and good save by putting your idea before yourself, and counting it dearer than your flesh and blood. Let it hide you, not your obesity conceal the truth G.o.d gave you to reveal. The quality of intellectual work is more than the quant.i.ty. Out of the cloudy world Homer has drawn a spark that lasts three thousand years.
"One, but a lion," should be the scholar"s maxim; let him do many things for daily need; one great thing for the eternal beauty of his art. A single poem of Dante, a book for the bosom, lives through the ages, surrounding its author with the glory of genius in the night of time.
One Sermon on the Mount, compact of truths brought down from G.o.d, all molten by such pious trust in Him, will stir men"s hearts by myriads, while words dilute with other words are a shame to the speaker, and a dishonor to men who have ears to hear.
It is a great charity to give beauty to mankind; part of the scholar"s function. How we honor such as create mere sensuous loveliness! Mozart carves it on the unseen air; Phidias sculptures it out from the marble stone; Raphael fixes ideal angels, maidens, matrons, men, and his triple G.o.d upon the canvas, and the lofty Angelo, with more than Amphionic skill, bids the hills rise into a temple which constrains the crowd to pray. Look, see how grateful man repays these architects of beauty with never-ending fame! Such as create a more than sensuous loveliness, the Homers, Miltons, Shakspeares, who sing of man in never-dying and creative song--see what honors we have in store for such; what honor given for what service paid! But there is a beauty higher than that of art, above philosophy and merely intellectual grace: I mean the loveliness of n.o.ble life; that is a beauty in the sight of man and G.o.d.
This is a new country, the great ideas of a n.o.ble man are easily spread abroad; soon they will appear in the life of the people, and be a blessing in our future history to ages yet unborn. A few great souls can correct the licentiousness of the American press, which is now but the type of covetousness and low ambition; correct the mean economy of the State, and amend the vulgarity of the American church, now the poor prost.i.tute of every wealthy sin.
Oh ingenuous young maid or man, if such you are,--if not, then let me dream you such; seek you this beauty, complete perfection of a man, and having this, go hold the Purse, the Office, or the Pen, as suits you best; but out of that life, writing, voting, acting, living in all forms, you shall pay men back for your culture, and in the scholar"s n.o.ble kind, and represent the higher facts of human thought. Will men still say, "This Wrong is consecrated; it has stood for ages and shall stand for ever!" Tell them, "No. A wrong, though old as Sin, is not now sacred, nor shall it stand!" Will they say, "This Right can never be; that excellence is lovely but impossible!" Show them the fact, who will not hear the speech; the deed goes where the word fails, and life enchants where rhetoric cannot persuade.
Past ages offer their instruction, much warning and a little guidance, many a wreck along the sh.o.r.e of time, a beacon here and there. Far off in the dim distance, present as possibilities, not actual as yet, future generations, with broad and wishful eyes, look at the son of genius, talent, educated skill, and seem to say, "A word for us; it will not be forgot!" Truth and Beauty, G.o.d"s twin daughters, eternal both, yet ever young, wait there to offer each faithful man a budding branch, in their hands budding, in his to blossom and mature its fruit, wherewith he sows the field of time, gladdening the millions yet to come.
END OF VOL. III.