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Books by William Roscoe Thayer

  THE DAWN OF ITALIAN INDEPENDENCE: Italy from the Congress of
    Vienna, 1814, to the Fall of Venice, 1849. In the series on
    Continental History. With maps. 2 vols. crown 8vo, $4.00.

  THRONE-MAKERS. Papers on Bismarck, Napoleon III., Kossuth,
    Garibaldi, etc. 12mo, $1.50.

  POEMS, NEW AND OLD. 16mo, $1.00.

  HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO.
  BOSTON AND NEW YORK.




  THRONE-MAKERS

    BY
    WILLIAM ROSCOE THAYER

    [Illustration]

  BOSTON AND NEW YORK
  HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
  The Riverside Press, Cambridge
  1899




  COPYRIGHT, 1899, BY WILLIAM ROSCOE THAYER
  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED




  TO
  DR. MORRIS LONGSTRETH
  IN MEDICINE, ORIGINAL AND WISE
  IN FRIENDSHIP, STEADFAST




PREFACE


Since 1789 every European people has been busy making a throne, or seat
of government and authority, from which its ruler might preside. These
thrones have been of many patterns, to correspond to the diversity in
tastes of races, parties, and times. Often, the business of destroying
seems to have left no leisure for building. In England alone have men
learned how to remodel a throne without disturbing its occupant; as we
in America raise or move large houses without interrupting the daily
life of the families who dwell in them.

To portray the personality of some of the conspicuous Throne-Makers
of the century is the purpose of the following studies. I have wished
to show just enough of the condition of the countries under review to
enable the reader to understand what Bismarck, or Napoleon III, or
Kossuth, or Garibaldi, achieved. I have been brief, and yet I trust
that this method has afforded scope for exhibiting that influence of
the individual on the multitude which--however our partial science may
try to belittle it--was never more strikingly illustrated than by such
careers as these in our own time.

The group of Portraits which follow require no special introduction.
In the “Tintoret” and “Giordano Bruno” I have brought together as
compactly as possible, for the convenience of English readers, what
little is known about these two men. Berti’s work on Bruno, from which
I have drawn largely, deserves a wider recognition than it has received
outside of Italy; whoever reads it will regret that that eminent
scholar was prevented from completing his volume on Bruno’s philosophy.
The sketch of Bryant was written in 1894, that of Carlyle in 1895, on
the occasion of their centenaries.

My thanks are due to the proprietors of _The Atlantic Monthly_,
_The Forum_, and _The American Review of Reviews_ for permission to
reprint such of the following articles as originally appeared in those
periodicals.

                                                            W. R. T.

  8 BERKELEY STREET, CAMBRIDGE,
        December 8, 1898.




CONTENTS

  THRONE-MAKERS:       PAGE
    BISMARCK              3
    NAPOLEON III         44
    KOSSUTH              79
    GARIBALDI           115


  PORTRAITS:
    CARLYLE             163
    TINTORET            193
    GIORDANO BRUNO      252
    BRYANT              309




THRONE-MAKERS




BISMARCK


One by one the nations of the world come to their own, have free play
for their faculties, express themselves, and eventually pass onward
into silence. Our age has beheld the elevation of Prussia. Well may we
ask, “What has been her message? What the path by which she climbed
into preëminence?” That she would reach the summit, the work of
Frederick the Great in the last century, and of Stein at the beginning
of this, portended. It has been Bismarck’s mission to amplify and
complete their task. Through him Prussia has come to her own. What,
then, does she express?

The Prussians have excelled even the Romans in the art of turning men
into machines. Set a Yankee down before a heap of coal and another of
iron, and he will not rest until he has changed them into an implement
to save the labor of many hands; the Prussian takes flesh and blood,
and the will-power latent therein, and converts them into a machine.
Such soldiers, such government clerks, such administrators, have never
been manufactured elsewhere. Methodical, punctilious, thorough,
are those officers and officials. The government which makes them
relies not on sudden spurts, but on the cumulative force of habit. It
substitutes rule for whim; it suppresses individual spontaneity, unless
this can be transformed into energy for the great machine to use. That
Prussian system takes a turnip-fed peasant, and in a few months makes
of him a military weapon, the length of whose stride is prescribed in
centimetres--a machine which presents arms to a passing lieutenant with
as much gravity and precision as if the fate of Prussia hinged on that
special act. It takes the average tradesman’s son, puts him into the
educational mill, and brings him out a professor,--equipped even to the
spectacles,--a nonpareil of knowledge, who fastens on some subject,
great or small, timely or remote, with the dispassionate persistence of
a leech; and who, after many years, revolutionizes our theory of Greek
roots, or of microbes, or of religion. Patient and noiseless as the
earthworm, this scholar accomplishes a similarly incalculable work.

A spirit of obedience, which on its upper side passes into deference
not always distinguishable from servility, and on its lower side is
not always free from arrogance, lies at the bottom of the Prussian
nature. Except in India, caste has nowhere had more power. The
Prussian does not chafe at social inequality, but he cannot endure
social uncertainty; he must know where he stands, if it be only on the
bootblack’s level. The satisfaction he gets from requiring from those
below him every scrape and nod of deference proper to his position
more than compensates him for the deference he must pay to those above
him. Classification is carried to the fraction of an inch. Everybody,
be he privy councilor or chimney-sweep, is known by his office. On
a hotel register you will see such entries as “Frau X, widow of a
school-inspector,” or “Fräulein Y, niece of an apothecary.”

This excessive particularization, which amuses foreigners, enables the
Prussian to lift his hat at the height appropriate to the position
occupied by each person whom he salutes. It naturally develops
acuteness in detecting social grades, and a solicitude to show the
proper degree of respect to superiors and to expect as much from
inferiors,--a solicitude which a stranger might mistake for servility
or arrogance, according as he looked up or down. Yet, amid a punctilio
so stringent, fine-breeding--the true politeness which we associate
with the word “gentleman”--rarely exists; for a gentleman cannot be
made by the rank he holds, which is external, but only by qualities
within himself.

Nevertheless, these Prussians--so unsympathetic and rude compared with
their kinsmen in the south and along the Rhine, not to speak of races
more amiable still--kept down to our own time a strength and tenacity
of character that intercourse with Western Europeans scarcely affected.
Frederick the Great tried to graft on them the polished arts and the
grace of the French: he might as well have decorated the granite
faces of his fortresses with dainty Parisian wall-paper. But when he
touched the dominant chord of his race,--its aptitude for system,--he
had a large response. The genuine Prussian nature embodied itself
in the army, in the bureaucracy, in state education, through all of
which its astonishing talent for rules found congenial exercise. One
dissipation, indeed, the Prussians allowed themselves, earlier in
this century,--they reveled in Hegelianism. But even here they were
true to their instinct; for the philosophy of Hegel commended itself
to them because it assumed to reduce the universe to a system, and to
pigeon-hole God himself.

We see, then, the elements out of which Prussia grew to be a strong
state, not yet large in population, but compact and carefully
organized. Let us look now at Germany, of which she formed a part.

We are struck at once by the fact that until 1871 Germany had no
political unity. During the centuries when France, England, and Spain
were being welded into political units by their respective dynasties,
the great Teutonic race in Central Europe escaped the unifying process.
The Holy Roman Empire--at best a reminiscence--was too weak to prevent
the rise of many petty princedoms and duchies and of a few large
states, whose rulers were hereditary, whereas the emperor was elective.
Thus particularism--what we might call states’ rights--flourished,
to the detriment of national union. At the end of the last century,
Germany had four hundred independent sovereigns: the most powerful
being the King of Prussia; the weakest, some knight whose realm
embraced but a few hundred acres, or some free city whose jurisdiction
was bounded by its walls. When Napoleon, the great simplifier, reduced
the number of little German states, he had no idea of encouraging the
formation of a strong, coherent German Empire. To guard against this,
which might menace the supremacy of France, he created the kingdoms
of Bavaria and Westphalia, and set up the Confederation of the Rhine.
After his downfall the German Confederation was organized,--a weak
institution, consisting of thirty-nine members, whose common affairs
were regulated by a Diet which sat at Frankfort. Representation in
this Diet was so unequal that Austria and Prussia, with forty-two
million inhabitants, had only one eighth of the votes, while the small
states, with but twelve million inhabitants, had seven eighths. Four
tiny principalities, with two hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants
each, could exactly offset Prussia with eight millions. By a similar
anomaly, Nevada and New York have an equal representation in the United
States Senate.

From 1816 to 1848 Austria ruled the Diet. Yet Austria was herself
an interloper in any combination of German states, for her German
subjects, through whom she gained admission to the Diet, numbered
only four millions; but her prestige was augmented by the backing of
her thirty million non-German subjects besides. Prussia fretted at
this Austrian supremacy, fretted, and could not counteract it. Beside
the Confederation, which so loosely bound the German particularists
together, there was a Customs Union, which, though simply commercial,
fostered among the Germans the idea of common interests. The spirit of
nationality, potent everywhere, awakened also in the Germans a vision
of political unity, but for the most part those who beheld the vision
were unpractical; the men of action, the rulers, opposed a scheme which
enfolded among its possibilities the curtailing of their autocracy
through the adoption of constitutional government. No state held more
rigidly than Prussia the tenets of absolutism.

Great, therefore, was the general surprise, and among Liberals the
joy, at the announcement, in February, 1847, that the King of Prussia
had consented to the creation of a Prussian Parliament. He granted
to it hardly more power than would suffice for it to assemble and
adjourn; but even this, to the Liberals thirsty for a constitution,
was as the first premonitory raindrops after a long drought. Among the
members of this Parliament, or Diet, was a tall, slim, blond-bearded,
massive-headed Brandenburger, thirty-two years old, who sat as proxy
for a country gentleman. A few of his colleagues recognized him as Otto
von Bismarck; the majority had never heard of him.

Bismarck was born at Schönhausen, Prussia, April 1, 1815. His paternal
ancestors had been soldiers back to the time when they helped to
defend the Brandenburg March against the inroads of Slav barbarians.
His mother was the daughter of an employee in Frederick the Great’s
War Office. Thus, on both sides his roots were struck in true Prussian
soil. At the age of six he was placed in a Berlin boarding-school, of
which he afterward ridiculed the “spurious Spartanism;” at twelve
he entered a gymnasium, where for five years he pursued the usual
course of studies,--an average scholar, but already noteworthy for
his fine physique; at seventeen he went up to the University at
Göttingen. In the life of a Prussian, there is but one period between
the cradle and the grave during which he escapes the restraints of
iron-grooved routine: that period comprises the years he spends at
the university. There a strange license is accorded him. By day he
swaggers through the streets, leering at the women and affronting the
men; by night he carouses. And from time to time he varies the monotony
of drinking-bouts by a duel. Such, at least, was the life of the
university student in Bismarck’s time. At Göttingen, and subsequently
at Berlin, he had the reputation of being the greatest beer-drinker
and the fiercest fighter; yet he must also have studied somewhat,
for in due time he received his degree in law, and became official
reporter in one of the Berlin courts. Then he served as referendary at
Aix-la-Chapelle, and passed a year in military service.

At twenty-four he set about recuperating the family fortunes, which
had suffered through his father’s incompetence. He took charge of the
estates, devoted himself to agriculture, and was known for many miles
round as the “mad squire.” Tales of his revels at his country house,
of his wild pranks and practical jokes, horrified the neighborhood.
Yet here, again, his recklessness did not preclude good results. He
made the lands pay, and he tamed into usefulness that restive animal,
his body, which was to serve as mount for his mighty soul. Some
biographers, referring to his bucolic apprenticeship, have compared him
to Cromwell; in his youthful roistering he reminds us of Mirabeau.

To the Diet of 1847 the mad squire came, and during several sittings
he held his peace. At last, however, when a Liberal deputy declared
that Prussia had risen in arms in 1813, in the hope of getting a
constitution quite as much as of expelling the French, the blond
Brandenburger got leave to speak. In a voice which seemed incongruously
small for his stature, but which carried far and produced the effect of
being the utterance of an inflexible will, he deprecated the assertions
just made, and declared that the desire to shake off foreign tyranny
was a sufficient motive for the uprising in 1813. These words set
the House in confusion. Liberal deputies hissed and shouted so that
Bismarck could not go on; but, nothing daunted, he took a newspaper
out of his pocket and read it, there in the tribune, till order was
restored. Then, having added that whoever deemed that motive inadequate
held Prussia’s honor cheap, he strode haughtily to his seat, amid
renewed jeers and clamor. Such was Bismarck’s parliamentary baptism of
fire.

Before the session adjourned, the deputies had come to know him well.
They discovered that the mad squire, the blunt “captain of the dikes,”
was doubly redoubtable; he had strong opinions, and utter fearlessness
in proclaiming them.

His political creed was short,--it comprised but two clauses: “I
believe in the supremacy of Prussia, and in absolute monarchy.” More
royalist than the King, he opposed every concession which might
diminish by a hair’s breadth the royal prerogative. Constitutional
government, popular representation, whatever Liberals had been
struggling and dying for since 1789, he detested. Democracy, and
especially German democracy, he scoffed at. For sixty years reformers
had been railing at the absurdities of the Old Régime; they had
denounced the injustice of the privileged classes; they had made odious
the tyranny of paternalism. Bismarck entered the lists as the champion
of “divine right,” and first proved his strength by exposing the
defects of democracy.

Those who believe most firmly in democracy acknowledge, nevertheless,
that it has many objections, both in theory and in practice. Universal
suffrage--the abandoning of the state to the caprice of millions of
voters, among whom the proportion of intelligence to ignorance is
as one to ten--seems a process worthy of Bedlam. The ballot-box is
hardly more accurate than the dice-box, as a test of the fitness of
candidates. Popular government means party government, and parties
are dogmatic, overbearing, insincere, and corrupt. The men who
legislate and administer, chosen by this method, avowedly serve their
party, and not the state; and though, by chance, they should be both
skilful and honest, they may be overturned by a sudden revulsion
of the popular will. Such a system breeds a class of professional
politicians,--men who make a business of getting into office, and
whose only recommendation is their proficiency in the art of cajoling
voters. A government should be managed as a great business corporation
is managed: it has to deal with the weightiest problems of finance,
and with delicate diplomatic questions, for which the trained efforts
of judicious experts are needed; but instead of being intrusted to
them, it is given over to politicians elected by multitudes who cannot
even conduct their private business successfully, much less entertain
large and patriotic views of the common welfare. To decide an election
by a show of hands seems not a whit less absurd than to decide it
by the aggregate weight or the color of the hair of the voters. We
speak of the will of the majority as if it were infallibly right. The
vast majority of men to-day would vote that the sun revolves round
the earth: should this belief of a million ignoramuses countervail
the knowledge of one astronomer? Shall knowledge be the test of
fitness in all concerns except government, the most critical, the
most far-reaching and responsible of all? Majority rule substitutes
mere numbers, bulk, and quantity for quality. Putting a saddle on
Intelligence, it bids Ignorance mount and ride whither it will,--even
to the devil. It is the dupe of its own folly; for the politicians whom
it chooses turn out to be, not the representatives of the people, but
the attorneys of some mill or mine or railway.

These and similar objections to democracy Bismarck urged with a sarcasm
and directness hitherto unknown in German politics. When half the world
was repeating the words “Liberalism,” “Constitution,” “Equality,”--as
if the words themselves possessed magic to regenerate society,--he
insisted that firm nations must be based upon facts, not phrases. He
had the twofold advantage of invariably separating the actual from
the apparent, and of being opposed by the most incompetent Liberals
in Europe. However noble the ideals of the German reformers, the men
themselves were singularly incapable of dealing with realities. Nor
should this surprise us; for they had but recently broken away from
the machine we have described, and as they had not yet a new machine
to work in, they whirled to and fro in vehement confusion, the very
rigidity of their previous restraint increasing their dogmatism and
their discord.

The revolution of 1848 soon put them to the ordeal. The German Liberals
aimed at national unity under a constitution. Like their brothers in
Austria and Italy, they enjoyed a temporary triumph; but they could not
construct. Their Parliament became a cave of the winds. Their schemes
clashed. By the beginning of 1850 the old order was restored.

During this stormy crisis, Bismarck, as deputy in two successive
Diets, had resolutely withstood the popular tide. He regarded the
revolutionists as men in whom the qualities of knave, fool, and
maniac alternately ruled; the revolution itself, he said, had no
other motive than “a lust of theft.” One of its leaders he dismissed
as a “phrase-watering-pot.” The right of assemblages he ridiculed as
furnishing democracy with bellows; a free press he stigmatized as a
blood-poisoner. When the imperial crown was offered to the King of
Prussia, Bismarck argued against accepting it; he would not see his
King degraded to the level of a mere “paper president.”

Such opposition would have made the speaker conspicuous, if only for
its audacity. His enemies had learned, however, that it required a
strong character to support that audacity continuously. They tried
to silence him with abuse; but their abuse, like tar, added fuel to
his fire. They tried ridicule; but their ridicule had too much of
the German dulness to wound him. They called him a bigoted Junker,
or squire. “Remember,” he retorted, “that the names Whig and Tory
were first used opprobriously, and be assured that we will yet bring
the name Junker into respect and honor.” Many anecdotes are told
illustrating his quick repulse of intended insult or his disregard of
formality. He was not unwilling that his enemies should remember that
he held his superior physical strength in reserve, if his arguments
failed. Yet on a hunting-party, or at a dinner, or in familiar
conversation, he was the best of companions. Germany has not produced
another, unless it were Goethe, so variedly entertaining; and Goethe
had no trace of one of Bismarck’s characteristics,--humor. He possessed
also tact and a sort of Homeric geniality which, coupled with unbending
tenacity, fitted him to succeed as a diplomatist.

In 1851 the King appointed him to represent Prussia at the German Diet,
which sat at Frankfort. The outlook was gloomy. Prussia had quelled
the revolution, but she had lost prestige. Unable to break asunder the
German Confederation or to dominate it, she had signed, at Olmütz, in
the previous autumn, a compact which acknowledged the supremacy of
her old rival, Austria. While the humiliation still rankled, Bismarck
entered upon his career. Hitherto not unfriendly to Austria, because
he had looked upon her as the extinguisher of the revolution, which he
hated most of all, he began, now that the danger was over, to give a
free rein to his jealousy of his country’s hereditary competitor. In
the Diet, the Austrian representative presided, the rulings were always
in Austria’s favor, the majority of the smaller states allowed Austria
to guide them. Bismarck at once showed his colleagues that humility
was not his rôle. Finding that the Austrian president alone smoked at
the sittings, he took out his own cigar and lighted it,--a trifle, but
significant. He resisted every encroachment, and demanded the strictest
observance of the letter of the law. Gradually he extended Prussia’s
influence among the confederates. He unmasked Austria’s insincerity; he
showed how honestly Prussia walked in the path of legality; until he
slowly created the impression that wickedness was to be expected from
one, and virtue from the other.

During seven years Bismarck held this outpost, winning no outward
victory, but storing a vast amount of knowledge about all the states of
the Confederation, their rulers and public men, which was subsequently
invaluable to him. His dispatches to the Prussian Secretary of State,
his reports to the King, form a body of diplomatic correspondence
unmatched in fulness, vigor, directness, and insight. With him, there
was no ambiguity, no diplomatic circumlocution, no German prolixity. He
sketched in indelible outlines the portraits, corporal or mental, of
his colleagues. He criticised the policy of Prussia with a brusqueness
which must have startled his superior. He reviewed at longer range the
political tendencies of Europe. Officially, he kept strictly within the
limits of his instructions; but his own personality represented more
than he could yet officially declare,--Prussia’s ambition to become
the leader of Germany. In all his dispatches, and in all places where
caution did not prescribe silence, he reiterated his Cato warning,
“Austria must be ousted from Germany.”

Do not suppose, however, that Bismarck’s political greatness was then
discerned. Probably, had you inquired of Germans forty years ago,
“Who among you is the coming statesman?” not one would have replied,
“Bismarck.” At the opera, we cannot mistake the hero, because the
moonlight obligingly follows him over the stage; in real life, the
hero passes for the most part unrecognized, until his appointed hour;
but the historian’s duty is to show how the heroic qualities were
indubitably latent in him long before the world perceived them.

In 1859 Bismarck was appointed ambassador at St. Petersburg, where he
stayed three years, when he was transferred to Paris. This completed
his apprenticeship, for in September, 1862, he was recalled to Berlin
to be minister-president.

His promotion had long been mooted. The new King William--a
practical, rigid monarch, with no Liberal visions, no desire to
please everybody--had been for eighteen months in conflict with
his Parliament. He had determined to reorganize the Prussian army;
the Liberals insisted that, as Parliament was expected to vote
appropriations, it should know how they were spent. William at last
turned to Bismarck to help him subjugate the unruly deputies, and
Bismarck, with a true vassal’s loyalty, declared his readiness to
serve as “lid to the saucepan.” Very soon the Liberals began to
compare him with Strafford, and the King with Charles I, but neither
of them quailed. “Death on the scaffold, under certain circumstances,
is as honorable,” Bismarck said, “as death on the battlefield. I can
imagine worse modes of death than the axe.” Hitherto he had strenuously
maintained the first article of his creed,--“I believe in the supremacy
of Prussia;” henceforth he upheld with equal vigor the second,--“I
believe in the autocracy of the King.”

The narrow Constitution limited the King’s authority, making it coequal
with that of the Upper and Lower Chambers, but Bismarck quickly taught
the deputies that he would not allow “a sheet of paper” to intervene
between the royal will and its fulfilment. Year after year the Lower
House refused to vote the army budget; year after year Bismarck and
his master pushed forward the military organization, in spite of the
deputies. Noah was not more unmoved by those who came and scoffed at
his huge, expensive, apparently useless ark than were the Prussian
minister and his King by their critics, who did not see the purpose of
the ark the two were building. Bismarck merely insisted that the army,
on which depended the integrity of the nation, could not be subjected
to the caprice of parties; it was an institution above parties, above
politics, he said, which the King alone must control.

At the same time, the Minister-President actively pursued his other
project,--the expulsion of Austria from Germany. When the King of
Denmark died, in December, 1863, the succession to the duchies of
Schleswig and Holstein was disputed. Bismarck seized the occasion for
occupying the disputed territory, in partnership with Austria. England
protested, France muttered, but neither cared to risk a war with the
allied robbers. When it came to dividing the spoils, Bismarck, who
had recently gauged Austria’s strength, struck for the lion’s share.
Austria resisted. Bismarck then approved himself a master of diplomacy.
Never was he more clever or more unscrupulous, shifting from argument
to argument, delaying the open rupture till Prussia was quite ready,
feigning willingness to submit the dispute to European arbitration
while secretly stipulating conditions which foredoomed arbitration to
failure, and invariably giving the impression that Austria refused to
be conciliated. As the juggler lets you see the card he wishes you to
see, and no other, so Bismarck always kept in full view, amid whatever
shuffling of the pack, the apparent legality of Prussia. In the end he
drove Austria to desperation.

In June, 1866, war came, with fury. One Prussian army crushed with a
single blow the German states which had promised to support Austria;
another marched into Bohemia, and, in seven days, confronted the
imperial forces at Sadowa. There was fought a great battle, in which
the Prussian crown prince repeated the master stroke of Blücher at
Waterloo, and then Austria, hopelessly beaten, sued for peace.

Bismarck now showed himself astute in victory. Having ousted Austria
from Germany, he had no wish to wreak a vengeance that she could
not forgive. Taking none of her provinces, he exacted only a small
indemnity. With the German states he was equally discriminating: those
which had been inveterately hostile he annexed to Prussia; the others
he let off with a fine. He set up the North German Confederation,
embracing all the states north of the river Main, in place of the old
German Confederation; and thus Prussia, which had now two thirds of the
population of Germany, was undisputed master. The four South German
states, Bavaria, Würtemberg, Hesse, and Baden, signed a secret treaty,
by which they gave the Prussian King the command of their troops in
case of war.

Europe, which had witnessed with astonishment these swift proceedings,
understood now that a great reality had arisen, and that Bismarck was
its heart. In France, surprise gave way to indignation. Were not the
French the arbiters of Europe? How had it happened that their Emperor
had permitted a first-rate power to organize without their consent?
Napoleon III, who knew that his sham empire could last only so long
as he furnished his restless subjects food for their vanity, strove
to convince them that he had not been outwitted; that he still could
dictate terms. He demanded a share of Rhineland to offset Prussia’s
aggrandizement; Bismarck refused to cede a single inch. Napoleon
bullied; Bismarck published the secret compact with the South Germans.
Napoleon forthwith decided that it was not worth while to go to war.

We have all heard of the sportsman who boasted of always catching
big strings of fish. But one day, after whipping every pool and
getting never a trout, he was fain, on his way home, to stop at the
fishmonger’s and buy a salt herring for supper. Not otherwise did
Napoleon, who had been very forward in announcing that he would
_take_ land wherever he chose, now stoop to offer to _buy_ enough to
appease his greedy countrymen. He would pay ninety million francs for
Luxemburg, and the King of Holland, to whom it belonged, was willing
to sell at that price; but Bismarck would consent only to withdraw
the Prussian garrison from the grand duchy, after destroying the
fortifications, and to its conversion into a neutral state. That was
the sum of the satisfaction Napoleon and his presumptuous Frenchmen got
from their first encounter. A few years before, Napoleon, who had had
frequent interviews with Bismarck and liked his joviality, set him down
as “a not serious man;” whence we infer that the Emperor was a dull
reader of character.

Although, by this arrangement, the Luxemburg affair blew over, neither
France nor Prussia believed that their quarrel was settled. Deep in the
heart of each, instinct whispered that a life-and-death struggle was
inevitable. Bismarck, amid vast labor on the internal organization of
the kingdom, held Prussia ready for war. He would not be the aggressor,
but he would decline no challenge.

In July, 1870, France threw down the glove. When the Spaniards elected
Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern to their vacant throne, France demanded
that King William should compel Leopold to resign. William replied
that, as he had not influenced his kinsman’s acceptance, he should
not interfere. The prince, who was not a Prussian, withdrew of his
own accord. But the French Secretary of State, the Duc de Gramont,
had blustered too loudly to let the matter end without achieving his
purpose of humbling the Prussian King. He therefore telegraphed
Benedetti, the French Ambassador, to force King William to promise that
at no future time should Leopold be a candidate for the Spanish crown.
Benedetti delivered his message to William in the public garden at Ems;
and William, naturally refusing to bind himself, announced that further
negotiations on the subject would be referred to the Foreign Minister.

The following morning Bismarck published a dispatch containing a brief
report of the interview; adding, however, that the King “declined to
receive the French Ambassador again, and had him told by the adjutant
in attendance that his Majesty had nothing further to communicate
to the Ambassador.” This deceitful addition produced exactly the
effect which Bismarck intended: every German, whether Prussian or
not, was incensed to learn that the representative German King had
been hectored by the French emissary, and every Frenchman was enraged
that the Prussian King had insulted the envoy of the “grand nation.”
Bismarck, who had feared that another favorable moment for war was
passing, now exulted, and Moltke, who had for years been carrying the
future campaign in his head, and whose face grew sombre when peace
seemed probable, now smiled a grim, contented smile. In Paris, the
ministers, the deputies, the newspapers, and the populace clamored for
war. Apparently, Napoleon alone felt a slight hesitation; but he could
hesitate no longer when the popular demand became overwhelming. On July
19 France made a formal declaration of war, and the Parisians laid bets
that their victorious troops would celebrate the Fête Napoléon--August
15--in Berlin. Had not their War Minister, Lebœuf, assured them that
everything was ready, down to the last button on the last gaiter of the
last soldier?

We cannot describe here the terrible campaign which followed. In
numbers, in equipment, in discipline, in generalship, in everything but
bravery, the French were quickly outmatched. When Napoleon groped madly
for some friendly hand to stay his fall, he found that Bismarck had
cut off succor from him. The South Germans, whom the French had hoped
to win over, fought loyally under the command of Prussia; Austria, who
might have been persuaded to strike back at her late conqueror, dared
not move for fear of Russia, whose friendship Bismarck had secured; and
Italy, instead of aiding France, lost no time in completing her own
unification by entering Rome when the French garrison was withdrawn.
Forsaken and outwitted, the French Empire sank without even an expiring
flash of that tinsel glory which had so long bedizened its corruption.
And when the French people, lashed to desperation, continued the war
which the Empire had brought upon them, they but suffered a long agony
of losses before accepting the inevitable defeat. They paid the penalty
of their former arrogance in every coin known to the vanquished,--in
military ruin, in an enormous indemnity, in the occupation of their
land by the victorious Prussians, and in the cession of two rich
provinces. Nor was that enough: they had to submit to a humiliation
which, to the imagination at least, seems the worst of all,--the
proclamation of the Prussian King William as German Emperor in their
palace at Versailles, the shrine of French pomp, where two centuries
before Louis XIV had embodied the ambition, the glory, and the pride of
France. The German cannon bombarding beleaguered Paris paused, while
the sovereigns of the German states hailed William as their Emperor.

This consummation of German unity was the logical outcome of an
international war, in which all the Germans had been impelled, by
mutual interests quite as much as by kinship, to join forces against
an alien foe. Twenty years before, Bismarck had opposed German
unity, because it would then have made Prussia the plaything of her
confederates; in this later scheme he was the chief agent, if not the
originator, for he knew that the primacy of Prussia ran no more risk.

Let us pause a moment and look back. Only a decade earlier, in 1861,
when Bismarck became minister, Prussia was but a second-rate power,
Germany was a medley of miscellaneous states, Austria still held her
traditional supremacy, the French Emperor seemed firmly established.
Now, in 1871, Austria has been humbled, France crushed, Napoleon
whiffed off into outer darkness, and Prussia stands unchallenged at
the head of United Germany. Many men--the narrow, patient King, the
taciturn Moltke, the energetic Von Roon--have contributed to this
result; but to Bismarck rightly belongs the highest credit. Slow to
prepare and swift to strike, he it was who measured the full capacity
of that great machine, the Prussian army, and let it do its work the
moment Fortune signaled; he it was who knew that needle guns and
discipline would overcome in the end the long prestige of Austria and
the wordy insolence of France. Looking back, we are amazed at his
achievements,--many a step seems audacious; but if we investigate,
we find that Bismarck had never threatened, never dared, more than
his strength at the time warranted. The gods love men of the positive
degree, and reward them by converting their words into facts.

Of the German Empire thus formed Bismarck was Chancellor for twenty
years. His foreign policy hinged on one necessity,--the isolation of
France. To that end he made a Triple Alliance, in which Russia and
Austria were his partners first, and afterward Italy took Russia’s
place. He prevented the Franco-Russian coalition, which would place
Germany between the hammer and the anvil. From 1871 to 1890 he was not
less the arbiter of Europe than the autocrat of Germany.

Nevertheless, although in the management of home affairs Bismarck
usually prevailed, he prevailed to the detriment of Germany’s progress
in self-government. The Empire, like Prussia herself, is based on
constitutionalism: what hope is there for constitutionalism, when at
any moment the vote of a majority of the people’s representatives can
be nullified by an arbitrary prime minister? Bismarck carried his
measures in one of two ways: he either formed a temporary combination
with mutually discordant parliamentary groups and thereby secured a
majority vote, or, when unable to do this, by threatening to resign he
gave the Emperor an excuse for vetoing an objectionable bill. Despising
representative government, with its interminable chatter, its red tape,
its indiscreet meddling, and its whimsical revulsions, Bismarck never
concealed his scorn. If he believed a measure to be needed, he went
down into the parliamentary market-place, and by inducements, not of
money, but of concessions, he won over votes. At one time or another,
every group has voted against him and every group has voted for him.
When he was fighting the Vatican, for instance, he conciliated the
Jews; when Jew-baiting was his purpose, he promised the Catholics favor
in return for their support. Being amenable to the Emperor alone, and
not, like the British premier, the head of a party, he dwelt above the
caprice of parties. Men thought, at first, to stagger him by charges
of inconsistency, and quoted his past utterances against his present
policy. He laughed at them. Consistency, he held, is the clog of men
who do not advance; for himself, he had no hesitation in altering
his policy as fast as circumstances required. With characteristic
bluntness, he did not disguise his intentions. “I need your support,”
he would say to a hostile group, “and I will stand by your bill if you
will vote for mine.” “_Do ut des_” was his motto; “an honest broker”
his self-given nickname.

Such a government cannot properly be called representative; it dangles
between the two incompatibles, constitutionalism and autocracy.
Doubtless Bismarck knew better than the herd of deputies what would
best serve at a given moment the interests of Germany; but his methods
were demoralizing, and so personal that they made no provision for the
future. His system could not be permanent unless in every generation an
autocrat as powerful and disinterested as himself should arise to wield
it; but nature does not repeat her Bismarcks and her Cromwells. At the
end of his career, Germany has still to undergo her apprenticeship in
self-government.

Two important struggles, in which he engaged with all his might, call
for especial mention.

The first is the _Culturkampf_, or contest with the Pope over the
appointment of Catholic bishops and clergy in Prussia. Bismarck
insisted that the Pope should submit his nominations to the approval
of the King; Pius IX maintained that in spiritual matters he could be
bound by no temporal lord. Bismarck passed stern laws; he withheld
the stipend paid to the Catholic clergy; he imprisoned some of them;
he broke up the parishes of others. It was the mediæval war of
investitures over again, and again the Pope won. Bismarck discovered
that against the intangible resistance of Rome his Krupp guns were
powerless. After fifteen years of ineffectual battling, the Chancellor
surrendered.

Similar discomfiture came to him from the Socialists. When he entered
upon his ministerial career, they were but a gang of noisy fanatics;
when he quitted it, they were a great political party, holding the
balance of power in the Reichstag, and infecting Germany with their
doctrines. At first he thought to extirpate them by violence, but
they throve under persecution; then he propitiated them, and even
strove to forestall them by adopting Socialistic measures in advance
of their demands. If the next epoch is to witness the triumph of
Socialism, as some predict, then Bismarck will surely merit a place in
the Socialists’ Saints’ Calendar; but if, as some of us hope, society
revolts from Socialism before experience teaches how much insanity
underlies this seductive theory, then Bismarck will scarcely be praised
for coquetting with it. For Socialism is but despotism turned upside
down; it would substitute the tyranny of an abstraction--the state--for
the tyranny of a personal autocrat. It rests on the fallacy that though
in every individual citizen there is more or less imperfection,--one
dishonest, another untruthful, another unjust, another greedy, another
licentious, another willing to grasp money or power at the expense
of his neighbor,--yet by adding up all these units, so imperfect,
so selfish, and calling the sum “the state,” you get a perfect and
unselfish organism, which will manage without flaw or favor the whole
business, public, private, and mixed, of mankind. By what miracle a
coil of links, separately weak, can be converted into an unbreakable
chain is a secret which the prophets of this Utopia have never
condescended to reveal. Not more state interference, but less, is the
warning of history.

The fact which is significant for us here is that Socialism has best
thriven in Germany, where, through the innate tendency of the Germans
to a rigid system, the machinery of despotism has been most carefully
elaborated, and where the interference of the state in the most trivial
affairs of life has bred in the masses the notion that the state can
do everything,--even make the poor rich, if they can only control the
lever of the huge machine.

Nevertheless, though Bismarck has been worsted in his contest with
religious and social ideas, his great achievement remains. He has
placed Germany at the head of Europe, and Prussia at the head of
Germany. Will the German Empire created by him last? Who can say? The
historian has no business with prophecy, but he may point out the
existence in the German Empire to-day of conditions that have hitherto
menaced the safety of nations. The common danger seems the strongest
bond of union among the German states. Defeat by Russia on the east
or by France on the west would mean disaster for the South Germans
not less than for the Prussians; and this peril is formidable enough
to cause the Bavarians, for instance, to fight side by side with the
Prussians. But there can be no homogeneous internal government, no
compact nation, so long as twenty or more dynasties, coequal in dignity
though not in power, flourish simultaneously. Historically speaking,
Germany has never passed through that stage of development in which one
dynasty swallows up its rivals,--the experience of England, France, and
Spain, and even of polyglot Austria.

Again, Germany embraces three unwilling members,--Alsace-Lorraine,
Schleswig, and Prussian Poland,--any of which may serve as a
provocation for war, and must remain a constant source of racial
antipathy. How grievous such political thorns may be, though small in
bulk compared to the body they worry, England has learned from Ireland.

Finally, if popular government--the ideal of our century--is to prevail
in Germany, the despotism extended and solidified by Bismarck will
be swept away. Possibly, Germany could not have been united, could
not have humbled Austria and crushed France, under a Liberal system;
but will the Germans forever submit to the direction of an iron
chancellor, or glow with exultation at the truculence of a strutting
autocrat who flourishes his sword and proclaims, “My will is law”? No
other modern despotism has been so patriotic, honest, and successful
as that of Bismarck; but will the Germans never awake to the truth
that even the best despotism convicts those who bow to it of a certain
ignoble servility? Or will they, as we have suggested, transform the
tyranny of an autocrat into the tyranny of Socialism? We will not
predict, but we can plainly see that Germany, whether in her national
or in her constitutional condition, has reached no stable plane of
development.

And now what shall we conclude as to Bismarck himself? The magnitude
of his work no man can dispute. For centuries Europe awaited the
unification of Germany, as a necessary step in the organic growth of
both. Feudalism was the principle which bound Christendom together
during the Middle Age; afterward, the dynastic principle operated to
blend peoples into nations; finally, in our time, the principle of
nationality has accomplished what neither feudalism nor dynasties could
accomplish, the attainment of German unity. In type, Bismarck belongs
with the Charlemagnes, the Cromwells, the Napoleons; but, unlike them,
he wrought to found no kingdom for himself; from first to last he was
content to be the servant of the monarch whom he ruled. As a statesman,
he possessed in equal mixture the qualities of lion and of fox, which
Machiavelli long ago declared indispensable to a prince. He had no
scruples. What benefited Prussia and his King was to him moral, lawful,
desirable; to them he was inflexibly loyal; for them he would suffer
popular odium or incur personal danger. But whoever opposed them was to
him an enemy, to be overcome by persuasion, craft, or force. We discern
in his conduct toward enemies no more regard for morality than in that
of a Mohawk sachem toward his Huron foe. He might spare them, but from
motives of policy; he might persecute them, not to gratify a thirst for
cruelty, but because he deemed persecution the proper instrument in
that case. His justification would be that it was right that Prussia
and Germany should hold the first rank in Europe. The world, as he saw
it, was a field in which nations maintained a pitiless struggle for
existence, and the strongest survived; to make his nation the strongest
was, he conceived, his highest duty. An army of puny-bodied saints
might be beautiful to a pious imagination, but they would fare ill in
an actual conflict with Pomeranian grenadiers.

_Dynamic_, therefore, and not _moral_, were Bismarck’s ideals and
methods. To make every citizen a soldier, and to make every soldier
a most effective fighting machine by the scientific application of
diet, drill, discipline, and leadership, was Prussia’s achievement,
whereby she prepared for Bismarck an irresistible weapon. In this
application of science to control with greater exactness than ever
before the movements of large masses of men in war, and to regulate
their actions in peace, consists Prussia’s contribution to government;
in knowing how to use the engine thus constructed lies Bismarck’s
fame. When Germans were building air-castles, and, conscious of their
irresolution, were asking themselves, “Is Germany Hamlet?” Bismarck saw
both a definite goal and the road that led to it. The sentimentalism
which has characterized so much of the action of our time never diluted
his tremendous will. He held that by blood and iron empires are welded,
and that this stern means causes in the end less suffering than the
indecisive compromises of the sentimentalists. Better, he would say,
for ninety-nine men to be directed by the hundredth man who knows
than for them to be left a prey to their own chaotic, ignorant, and
internecine passions. Thus he is the latest representative of a type
which flourished in the age when the modern ideal of popular government
had not yet risen. How much of his power was due to his unerring
perception of the defects in popular government as it has thus far been
exploited, we have already remarked.

The Germans have not yet perceived that one, perhaps the chief source
of his success was his un-German characteristics. He would have
all Germany bound by rigid laws, but he would not be bound by them
himself. He encouraged his countrymen’s passion for conventionality and
tradition, but remained the most unconventional of men. Whatever might
complete the conversion of Germany into a vast machine he fostered by
every art; but he, the engineer who held the throttle, was no machine.
In a land where everything was done by prescription, the spectacle of
one man doing whatever his will prompted produced an effect not easily
computed. Such characteristics are un-German, we repeat, and Bismarck
displayed them at all times and in all places. His smoking a cigar in
the Frankfort Diet; his opposition to democracy, when democracy was the
fashion; his resistance to the Prussian Landtag; his arbitrary methods
in the German Parliament,--these are but instances, great or small, of
his un-German nature. And his relations for thirty years with the King
and Emperor whom he seemed to serve show a similar masterfulness. A
single anecdote, told by himself, gives the key to that service.

At the battle of Sadowa King William persisted in exposing himself at
short range to the enemy’s fire. Bismarck urged him back, but William
was obstinate. “If not for yourself, at least for the sake of your
minister, whom the nation will hold responsible, retire,” pleaded
Bismarck. “Well, then, Bismarck, let us ride on a little,” the King
at last replied. But he rode very slowly. Edging his horse alongside
of the King’s mare, Bismarck gave her a stout kick in the haunch. She
bounded forward, and the King looked round in astonishment. “I think
he saw what I had done,” Bismarck added, in telling the story, “but he
said nothing.”

On Bismarck’s private character I find no imputed stain. He did not
enrich himself by his office, that hideous vice of our time. He did
not, like both Napoleons, convert his palace into a harem; neither
did he tolerate nepotism, nor the putting of incompetent parasites
into responsible positions as a reward for party service. That he
remorselessly crushed his rivals let his obliteration of Count von
Arnim witness. That he subsidized a “reptile press,” or employed spies,
or hounded his assailants, came from his belief that a statesman too
squeamish to fight fire with fire would deserve to be burnt. Many
orators have excelled him in grace, few in effectiveness. Regarding
public speaking as one of the chief perils of the modern state, because
it enables demagogues to dupe the easily swayed masses, he despised
rhetorical artifice. His own speech was un-German in its directness,
un-German in its humor, and it clove to the heart of a question with
the might of a battle-axe,--as, indeed, he would have used a battle-axe
itself to persuade his opponents, five hundred years ago. Since
Napoleon, no other European statesman has coined so many political
proverbs and apt phrases. His letters to his family are delightfully
natural, and reveal a man of keen observation, capable of enjoying the
wholesome pleasures of life, and brimful of common sense, which a rich
gift of humor keeps from the dulness of Philistines and the pedantry of
doctrinaires. His intercourse with friends seems to have been in a high
degree jovial.

Not least interesting to a biographer are those last years of
Bismarck’s life, between March, 1890, and his death, on July 30, 1898,
which he passed in eclipse. To be dismissed by a young sovereign who,
but for him, might have been merely a petty German prince,--to be
told that he, the master throne-maker, was unnecessary to the callow
apprentice,--galled the Titan’s heart. Eight years he was destined
to endure this mortification; and although his countrymen everywhere
hailed him as their hero, the fact of dismissal gave him no repose.
Europe has seen no similar spectacle since she bound Napoleon,
Prometheus-like, on St. Helena. But Napoleon, chafing his life away
there, had at least the satisfaction of reflecting that it took all
Europe, allied with Russia’s blizzards and Spain’s heats, to conquer
him. Bismarck, storming in his exile from power, felt now scorn, now
hate, for the “young fellow” (as he called him) who had turned him
out. Here, if ever, Nemesis showed her work. Bismarck’s whole energy
had been bent for fifty years on fortifying the autocracy of the
Prussian monarchs; and now a young autocrat run from this mould bade
him go--and he went. We may believe that it did not solace Bismarck to
find that the “young fellow” could get on without him; or to see that
in England Gladstone, six years his elder, led his nation till long
past eighty; Gladstone,--whom he had so often jeered at as an empty
rhetorician,--England, which he despised as the home of representative
government. Could it be that constitutionalism was kinder than
despotism to master statesmen?

A great man we may surely pronounce him, long to be the wonder of a
world in which greatness of any kind is rare. If you ask, “How does
he stand beside Washington and Lincoln?” it must be admitted that his
methods would have made them blush, but that his patriotism was not
less enduring than theirs. With the materials at hand he fashioned an
empire; it is futile to speculate whether another, by using different
tools, could have achieved the same result. Bismarck knew that though
his countrymen might talk eloquently about liberty, they loved to be
governed; he knew that their genius was mechanical, and he triumphed by
directing them along the line of their genius. He would have failed had
he appealed to the love of liberty, by appealing to which Cavour freed
Italy; or to the love of glory, by appealing to which Napoleon was able
to convert half of Europe into a French province. Bismarck knew that
his Prussians must be roused in a different way.

It may be that the empire he created will not last; it is certain that
it cannot escape modifications which will change the aspect he stamped
upon it; but we may be sure that, whatever happens, the recollection
of his Titanic personality will remain. He belongs among the giants,
among the few in whom has been stored for a lifetime a stupendous
energy,--kinsmen of the whirlwind and the volcano,--whose purpose seems
to be to amaze us that the limits of the human include such as they.
At the thought of him, there rises the vision of mythic Thor with his
hammer, and of Odin with his spear; the legend of Zeus, who at pleasure
held or hurled the thunderbolt, becomes credible.




NAPOLEON III


Madame de Staël said of Rienzi and his Romans: “They mistook
reminiscences for hopes;” of the second French Empire and the third
Napoleon we may say: “They staked their hopes on reminiscences.”

In our individual lives we realize the power of memory, suggestion,
association. If we have ever yielded to a vice, we have felt, it may
be years after, how the sight of the old conditions revives the old
temptation. A glance, a sound, a smell, may be enough to conjure up a
long series of events, whether to grieve or to tempt us, with more than
their original intensity. So we learn that the safest way to escape the
enticement is to avoid the conditions. Recent psychology has at last
begun to measure the subtle power of suggestion.

But now, suppose that instead of an individual a whole nation has had
a terrific experience of succumbing to temptation, and that a cunning,
unscrupulous man, aware of the force of association and reminiscence,
deliberately applies both to reproduce those conditions in which the
nation first abandoned itself to excess: the case we have supposed is
that of France and Louis Napoleon. Before the reality of their story
the romances of hypnotism pale.

After Sédan it was the fashion to regard Louis Napoleon as the only
culprit in the gilded shame of the Second Empire; we shall see,
however, that the great majority of Frenchmen longed for his coming,
applauded his victories, and by frequent vote sanctioned his deeds. A
free people keeps no worse ruler than it deserves.

The Napoleonic legend, by which Louis Napoleon rose to power, was not
his creation, but that of the French: he was simply shrewd, and used
it. What was this legend?

When allied Europe finally crushed the great Napoleon at Waterloo,
France breathed a sigh of relief. Twenty campaigns had left her
exhausted: she asked only for repose. This the Restoration gave her.
But the gratification of our transient cravings, however strong they
may be, cannot long satisfy; and when the French recovered from their
exhaustion, they felt their permanent cravings return. The Bourbons,
they soon realized, could not appease those dominant Gallic desires.
For the Bourbons had destroyed even that semblance of liberty Napoleon
took care to preserve; they persecuted democratic ideas; they
brought back the old aristocracy, with its mildewed haughtiness; they
babbled of divine right,--as if the worship of St. Guillotine had
not supervened. During twenty years France had been the arbitress of
Europe; now, under the narrow, forceless Bourbons, she was treated like
a second-rate power. Waterloo had meant not only the destruction of
Napoleon, from which France derived peace, but also humiliation, which
galled Frenchmen more and more as their normal sensitiveness returned.

The Bourbons, knowing that they might be tolerated so long as they
were not despised, got up a military promenade into Spain, to prove
that France could still meddle in her neighbors’ affairs, and that
the Bourbons were not less mighty men of war than the Bonapartes.
They captured the Trocadero, and restored vile King Ferdinand and
his twenty-six cooks to the throne of Spain; and they hoped that the
one-candle power of fame lighted by these exploits would outdazzle the
Sun of Austerlitz. But no, the dynasty of Bourbon, long since headless,
proved to be rootless too: one evening Charles X played his usual game
of whist at St. Cloud; the next, he was posting out of France with all
the speed and secrecy he could command.

Louis Philippe, who came next, might have been expected to please
everybody: Royalists, because he was himself royal; Republicans,
because he was Philippe Egalité’s son; constitutionalists, because he
hated autocratic methods; shopkeepers of all kinds, because he was
‘practical.’ And in truth his administration may be called the Golden
Age of the _bourgeoisie_,--the great middle class which, in France and
elsewhere, was superseding the old aristocracy. Napoleon had organized
a nobility of the sword; after him came the nobility of the purse.
Louis Philippe could say that under his rule France prospered: her
merchants grew rich; her factories, her railroads, all the organs of
commerce, were healthily active. And yet she was discontented. The
spectacle of her Citizen King walking unattended in the streets of
Paris, his plump thighs encased in democratic trousers, his plump and
ruddy face wearing a complacent smile, his whole air that of the senior
partner in some old, respectable, and rich firm,--even this failed to
satisfy Frenchmen. “He inspires no more enthusiasm than a fat grocer,”
was said of him. Frenchmen did not despise money-making, but they
wanted something more: they wanted _gloire_.

Let us use the French word, because the English _glory_ has another
meaning. _Glory_ implies something essentially noble,--nay, in
the Lord’s Prayer it is a quality attributed to God himself: but
_gloire_ suggests vanity; it is the food braggarts famish after. The
minute-men at Concord earned true glory; but when the United States,
listening to the seductions of evil politicians, attacked and blasted
a decrepit power,--fivefold smaller in population, twenty-fold weaker
in resources,--they might find _gloire_ among their booty, but glory,
never. As prosperity increased, the Gallic appetite for _gloire_
increased. Louis Philippe made several attempts to allay it, but he
dared not risk a foreign war, and the failure of his attempts made him
less and less respected.

And now arose the Napoleonic legend, at first no more than a bright
exhalation in the evening, but gradually taking on the sweep, the
definiteness, the fascination, of mirage at noonday. Time enough had
elapsed to dull or quite blot out the recollections of the hardships
and strains, the millions of soldiers killed and wounded, the taxes,
the grievous tyranny; men remembered only the victories, the rewards,
and the splendor. A new generation, unacquainted with the havoc of war,
had grown up, to listen with fervid envy to the reminiscences of some
gray-haired veteran, who had made the great charge at Wagram or ridden
behind Ney at Borodino. Those exploits were so stupendous as to seem
incredible, and yet they were vouched for by too many survivors to be
doubted. Was not Thiers setting forth the marvelous story in nineteen
volumes? Were not Béranger and even Victor Hugo singing of the departed
grandeur? Were not the booksellers’ shelves loaded with memoirs,
lives, historical statements, polemics? Paris, France, seemed to exist
merely to be the monument of one man. And wherever the young Frenchman
traveled--in Spain, in Italy, along the Rhine or the Danube, to Vienna,
or Cairo, or Moscow--he saw the footprints of French valor and French
audacity, reminders that Napoleon had made France the mistress of
Europe. No Frenchman, were he Bourbon or Republican, but felt proud to
think that his countrymen had humbled Prussia and Austria.

Confronted by such recollections, the France of Louis Philippe looked
degenerate. It offered nothing to thrill at, to brag over; it sinned in
having--what it could not help--a stupendous past just behind it. So
the Napoleonic legend grew. The body of the great Emperor was brought
home from St. Helena, to perform more miracles than the mummy of a
mediæval saint. Power and _gloire_ came to be regarded as the products
of a Napoleonic régime: to secure them it was only necessary to put a
Bonapartist on the throne.

Contemporaneous with the expansion of this spell, Socialism grew up,
and taught that, just as the _bourgeoisie_ had overthrown the old
privileged classes in the French Revolution, so now the working classes
must emancipate themselves from the tyranny of the _bourgeoisie_.
Political equality without industrial equality seemed a mockery. In
this wise the doctrines of a score of Utopians penetrated society
to loosen old bonds and embitter class with class. And besides all
this, there was the usual wrangle of political parties. The tide of
opposition rose, and on February 24, 1848, swept away Louis Philippe
and his minister Guizot. Among the many fortune-seekers whom that tide
brought to land was Louis Napoleon.

He was born in Paris, April 20, 1808, his mother being Hortense
Beauharnais, who had married Louis Bonaparte, King of Holland. The
younger Louis could just remember being petted in the Tuileries by the
great Emperor: then, like all the Bonapartes, he had been packed off
into exile. His youth was chiefly spent on Lake Constance, at Augsburg,
and at Thun. In 1831 he had joined the Carbonari plotters in Italy.
The next year, through the death of his elder brother and of the great
Napoleon’s son, he became the official Pretender to the Bonapartist
hopes. People knew him only as a visionary, who talked much about his
“star,” and by writings and deeds tried to persuade the world that he
too, like his uncle, was a man of destiny. A few adventurers gathered
round him, eager to take the one chance in a thousand of his success.
Accompanied by some of these, in 1836, he appeared before the French
troops at Strasburg, expecting to be acclaimed Emperor and to march
triumphantly to Paris. He did go to Paris, escorted by policemen; but
his attempt seemed so foolish that Louis Philippe merely paid his
passage to America to be rid of him.

The Prince soon returned to Europe and settled in London, where he
lived the fast life of the average nobleman. In 1840 he set out on
another expedition against France. Carrying a tame eagle with him,
he landed at Boulogne: but again neither the soldiers nor populace
welcomed him; the eagle seems to have been a spiritless fowl, likewise
incapable of arousing enthusiasm; and the Prince shortly after was
under imprisonment for life in the fortress of Ham. Nearly six years
later he bribed a jailer, escaped to London, and, like Micawber, waited
for something to turn up.

The fall of Louis Philippe gave Prince Louis his opportunity. He
hurried to Paris, but was considerate, or cunning, enough to hold aloof
for a while from disturbing public affairs. In those first months of
turmoil many aspirants were destroyed, by their own folly and by mutual
collision. Discreetly, therefore, he stood aside and watched them
disappear.

Of the several factions, the Socialists and Red Republicans first
profited by the Revolution. They organized that colossal folly, the
National Workshops, in which 120,000 loafers received from the state
good wages for pretending to do work which, had they done it, would
have benefited no one. When the state, realizing that it could not
continue this preposterous expense, proposed to close the workshops,
the loafers became sullen: when the wages were cut off, they throttled
Paris. For four days, in June, 1848, they made the streets of Paris
their battle-ground, and succumbed only after 30,000 of their number
had been killed, wounded, or captured by Cavaignac’s troops. The
terror inspired by those idlers of Louis Blanc’s workshops was the
corner-stone of the Second Empire.

A few weeks later, Louis Napoleon, elected by five constituencies, took
his seat in the Assembly. His uncle’s name was still his only political
capital. His own record--the Strasburg and Boulogne episodes--inspired
mirth. In person there was nothing commanding about him. An
“olive-swarthy paroquet” some one called him. “His gray eyes,” says De
Tocqueville, “were dull and opaque, like those thick bull’s-eyes which
light the stateroom of a ship, letting the light pass through, but out
of which we can see nothing.” In after years “inscrutable” was the word
commonly chosen to describe his cold, unblinking gaze. Reserve always
characterized his manners; for even when most affable, his intimates
felt that he concealed something or simulated something.

In the Assembly he strove for no sudden recognition; outside, however,
he and his emissaries busied themselves night and day fanning the
embers of Imperialism; and when, in December, 1848, the French people
voted for a president, Louis Napoleon received 5,434,000 votes, while
Cavaignac, his nearest competitor, had but 1,448,000. How had this
come about? Old soldiers and peasants composed the great bulk of his
supporters, every one of them glad to vote for “the nephew of the
Emperor.” Next, Socialists, blue blouses and others, voted for him
because they hated Cavaignac for repressing Red Republicanism in
June; and Monarchists of both stripes, believing that he would be an
easy tool for their plots, preferred him to the unyielding Cavaignac.
Mediocrity and other negative qualities thus availed to transform
Louis the Ridiculed into the first President of the Republic. “We made
two blunders in the case of Louis Napoleon,” said Thiers; “first in
deeming him a fool, and next in deeming him a genius.” Louis Napoleon
knew not only how to profit by both of these blunders, but also how to
superinduce either belief in the French mind.

Having sworn to uphold the Republic, he began his administration.
During several months he let no sign of his ambition flutter into view,
but seemed wholly bent on discharging the duties of president. In the
spring of 1849, however, he put forth a feeler by engineering the
expedition against the Roman Republic. Honest Frenchmen protested, but
a majority in the Assembly supported him; and presently the instinct
to be revenged on the Romans for defending themselves, and thereby
inflicting losses on the French, silenced many who had disapproved of
the expedition at the outset. Only the Radicals forcibly resisted, but
their revolt was quickly put down. Louis Napoleon gained the prestige
of having successfully reasserted French influence in Italy, where,
for a generation, it had been supplanted by the influence of Austria.
Furthermore, by becoming guardian of the Pope, he propitiated the
Clericals, who might some time be useful. That he also roused the wrath
of the Red Republicans did not spoil his prospects.

One year, two years passed. Faction discredited faction. Every one
looked on the Republic as but a preparation for either Anarchy or
the Empire. The Reds, irreconcilable and ferocious, terrorized the
imagination of every one else. No doubt the majority of honest
Frenchmen--if by honest we mean the really intelligent and patriotic
minority--wished a republic, but those Red Extremists had made all
Republicans indiscriminately odious; and as the Royalist plotters
showed neither courage nor ability, the great multitude of Frenchmen
came to regard the Empire or Anarchy as their only alternatives. Most
of them, having nothing to gain through disorder, leaned to the side
which promised to leash the bloodhounds of murder and pillage. Spasm
after spasm of terror swept over Paris, and when Paris shudders in the
evening the rest of France shudders by daybreak. Anything to prevent
the triumph of the Reds--with their guillotine and their abolition of
private ownership of property--became the ruling instinct of all other
Frenchmen.

Louis Napoleon, we may be sure, took care to encourage the belief
that he alone could save France from the abyss. In addition to
his recognized newspaper organs, he employed a literary bureau to
spread broadcast his portrait, his biography, and even songs with an
Imperialist refrain. He knew the political persuasiveness of cigars
and sausages distributed among the troops, and of wine dispensed to
their officers. He was by turns modest--declaring that his sole purpose
was to obey the Constitution--and bold, announcing that he would not
shrink from making France strong and prosperous, whenever Frenchmen
intrusted that task to him. In his capacity for waiting, he gave the
best proof of his ability; and we must add that the Assembly, by its
folly, gave him indispensable aid.

The Assembly, for instance, restricted the suffrage, in the hope that,
by preventing workmen from voting, the victory of the Reds might be
staved off. Again, the Constitution declared that no president was
eligible for reëlection until he had been four years out of office. As
the time for thinking of Louis Napoleon’s successor approached, the
moderates of all parties urged that the Constitution be amended, so
that he might be quietly reëlected,--there being no other candidate
who promised to preserve order. But the factious deputies, by a narrow
vote, rejected the amendment.

Napoleon now saw his chance, and openly assailed the Assembly. He
posed as the champion of universal suffrage, the true representative
of the people misrepresented by the factious deputies. They proposed
to subject France to the uncertainties of a political campaign: his
continuation in office would mean the certain maintenance of order. But
Napoleon did not rely on demagogy alone: in secret he plotted a _coup
d’état_.

The trade of house or bank burglar long ago fell into disrepute: not
so that of the state burglar, who, if he succeed, may wear ermine
jauntily,--for ermine, like charity, covers a multitude of sins. Louis
Napoleon, ready to risk everything, laid his plans for stealing the
government of France. The venture was less difficult than it seems,
for if he could win over four or five men the odds would be with him.
He must have the Prefect of Paris, the Commandant of the Garrison,
the Ministers of War and of the Interior: others might make assurance
double sure, but these were absolutely necessary.

Early in the spring of 1851 he set to work. Chief among his accomplices
was his half brother, Morny,--a facile, audacious man, whose
reputation, if he had ever had any, would have been lost long since in
stock-swindling schemes; after him, in importance, came Persigny, an
adventurer who had fastened on Louis Napoleon fifteen years before;
Fleury, a major most active and efficient, without qualm, for he
foresaw a marshal’s _bâton_; and Maupas, one of those easy villains
who, never having been suspected of honesty, are spared the fatigue
of pretending to be better than they are. If we assume that all these
gentlemen were Imperialists for revenue only, we shall do them no
injustice.

Their first move was to send Fleury to Algiers to secure a general to
act as minister of war. He had not to search long; for Saint Arnaud,
one of the Algerian officers, guessing Fleury’s purpose, offered his
services forthwith. But Saint Arnaud stood only fifty-third in the
line of promotion among French generals; some excuse must be found for
passing by his fifty-two seniors. In a few weeks the French press and
official gazette announced an outbreak of great violence among the
Kabyles in Algeria; a little later they reported that the insurrection
had been subdued by the energy of General Saint Arnaud; then, another
proper interval elapsing, Saint Arnaud had come to Paris as minister of
war.

It took less trouble to dismiss the Prefect of the Seine, and to
substitute Maupas for him. Magnan, who commanded the troops, had
already been corrupted. Half-brother Morny, at the critical moment,
would appear in the Ministry of the Interior. The National Guard and
the Public Printer could both be counted on,--the latter required
for the prompt issuing of manifestoes. Everything being ready, the
President, after some brief delays, set December 2--the anniversary of
Austerlitz, and of the coronation of the great Napoleon--for committing
the crime.

       *       *       *       *       *

On the evening of December 1, he held his weekly reception at the
Elysée; moved with his habitual courtesy among the guests; seemed
less stiff than usual,--as if relieved of a burden; then went to his
study for a last conference with his fellow-conspirators. The next
morning Paris learned that two hundred leading citizens, military
and political, including many deputies, had been arrested and taken
to Vincennes. Placards declared that the President, having had news
of a plot against the state, had stolen a march on the plotters,
dissolved the Assembly, proclaimed universal suffrage, and called for
a plebiscite to accept or reject the constitution he would frame. At
first, the stupefied Parisians knew not what to do. Then the deputies
who had escaped arrest met and voted to depose the President; but his
gendarmes quickly broke up the meeting, and lodged the deputies in
prison. Thanks to the system of centralization which France had long
boasted of, Morny, from the Ministry of the Interior, controlled every
prefect in France by telegraph. The provinces were informed that Paris
had accepted the _coup d’état_ almost before Paris had collected her
dazed senses on the morning of the 2d of December.

The chief politicians and other leaders being caged, there was no one
left, except among the workingmen, to direct a resistance. They did
revolt, and Napoleon and Saint Arnaud gave them free play to raise
barricades, to arm and gather. Then the eighty thousand soldiers in
Paris surrounded them, stormed their barricades, and made no prisoners.
Accompanying this suppression of the mob was the bloodthirsty
massacre of a multitude of defenseless men, women, and children who
had collected on the boulevards to see the troops move against the
barricaders. They were shot down in cold blood, the soldiers (according
to general report) having been rendered ferocious by drink. Thus was
achieved the crime of the _coup d’état_.

By this crime Napoleon had demonstrated that he had the necessary
force to put down the lawless, and that he did not hesitate to use it;
by massacring the innocent throng, he made the army his accomplices,
against any risk of their fraternizing with the populace. A fortnight
later, 7,439,000 Frenchmen ratified his crime and elected him president
for ten years: only 646,000 voted against him. Napoleon the Great, by
the _coup d’état_ of the 18th Brumaire, had suppressed the Directory;
his imitative nephew could now point to an equally successful 2d of
December.

France acquiesced all the more readily because she was put under
martial law. One hundred thousand suspects were arrested, and more
than ten thousand, were deported to Cayenne and Algeria. Police
inquisitions, military commissions, and the other usual devices of
tyranny quickly smothered resistance. Under the pretense of suppressing
anarchy,--an anarchist meaning any one who did not submit to Louis
Napoleon,--persecution supplanted law and justice. Had you asked to see
most of the Frenchmen whose names were the most widely known, you would
have been told that they were in exile.

Like his uncle, Louis Napoleon waited a little before putting on the
purple. Only on December 2, 1852, the anniversary of his crime, did
he have himself proclaimed emperor. The mockery of a plebiscite had
preceded, and he had assured France and Europe that the “Empire means
peace.”

Having reached the throne, he made the following arrangements for
staying on it. He organized a Senate and a Council of State, whose
members he appointed. The public were allowed to elect members to the
Corps Législatif, or Legislature; but as his minions controlled the
polls, only such candidates as he preferred were likely to be chosen.
He suffered a few opponents to be elected, in order to have it appear
that he encouraged discussion. Otherwise, he scarcely took pains to
varnish his autocracy. As a deft Chinese carver incloses a tiny figure
in a nest of ivory boxes, so did Bonaparte imprison the simulacrum of
Liberty in the innermost compartment of the political cage in which he
held France captive.

What must the condition of the French people have been that they
submitted! How much antecedent incapacity for government, how much
cherishing of unworthy ideals, were implied by the success of such an
adventurer! And what could patriotism mean, when the French fatherland
meant the land of Louis Napoleon, Morny, Maupas, Persigny, and their
unspeakable underlings? The new Empire gave France what is called a
strong government, by which commercially she throve. Tradesmen, seeing
business improve and their hoards grow, chafed less at the loss of
political freedom. The working classes were propitiated by public
works--the favorite nostrum of socialists and tyrants--organized on a
vast scale. Pensions were showered on old soldiers, or their widows.
Taxes ran high; the public debt had constantly to be increased: but an
air of opulence pervaded France.

Established at home, Napoleon now looked abroad for _gloire_. Before
his elevation, some one had warned him that he would find the French
a very hard people to govern. “Not at all,” he replied; “all that
they need is a war every four years.” Europe had formally recognized
him,--no country being more ready than England to condone his great
crime. Queen Victoria, the typical British matron, exchanging visits
with the Imperial adventurer made an edifying spectacle! Presently the
land-greed of England and the _gloire_-thirst of France brought the
sons of the Britons who had whipped the great Napoleon at Waterloo
into an alliance with the sons of the Frenchmen who had there been
whipped; and in the summer of 1854 British and French fleets swept
through the Bosphorus and across the Black Sea, and landed two armies
near Sebastopol. Of the Crimean war which ensued, we need say no more
than that it was immoral in conception, blundering in execution, and
ineffectual in results. Nevertheless, it supplied Napoleon III with
just what he had sought. He extracted from it large quantities of
_gloire_. Marshal’s _bâtons_ and military promotions, the parade of
returning troops, the assembling at Paris of the European envoys who
were to agree on a treaty of peace,--what did all this show but that
Europe had accepted Napoleon III at his own valuation? In Russia’s
wilderness of snow the great Napoleon had been ruined; now his nephew
posed as the humbler of Russia. The great Napoleon had been finally
crushed by England: now his nephew had enticed good, pious England into
an alliance, and thereby he had surely avenged his uncle. The last
European compact, humiliating to France, had been signed at Vienna: the
new compact, signed at Paris, bore witness to the supremacy of France.

That year 1856 marks the acme of Napoleon the Third’s career. It
saw him the recognized arbiter of Europe. The world, which worships
success, forgot that the suave, impassive master of the Tuileries had
been Louis the Ridiculed, a political vagabond and hapless pretender,
only ten years before. Now, as arbiter, he would meddle when he chose,
and the world should not gainsay him. Moreover, he believed his power
so secure that he was willing to forgive those whom he had injured. He
had gained what he wanted: why, therefore, should _they_ reject his
amnesty?

Unscrupulously selfish till he had attained his ends, Napoleon III had,
nevertheless, curious streaks of disinterestedness in his nature. What
but Quixotism impelled him to promise to free Italy from her bondage to
Austria? He might add thereby to his personal renown, but the French
people, who must pay the bills and furnish the soldiers, were offered
no adequate compensation. Whatever his motives, he crossed the Alps in
the spring of 1859, joined the Piedmontese, and defeated the Austrians
in two great battles. But after Solferino he paused, grew anxious,
and drew back. Many reasons were hinted at: he had been horrified at
the sight of twelve thousand corpses festering in the midsummer heat
on the battlefield; he perceived that the campaign must last many
months before the Austrians could be dislodged from the Quadrilateral;
he dreaded to create in Italy a kingdom strong enough to be a menace
to France; he was worried at the mobilization of the Prussian army,
foreboding a war on the Rhine. Motives are usually composite: perhaps,
therefore, all these, and others, made him resolve to quit Italy with
his mission only half achieved. But of all his schemes, that Italian
expedition has alone escaped the condemnation of posterity.

Possessing a great talent for scenic display, Napoleon dressed his
victories so as to get the fullest spectacular effect from them. He
could pose now as the conqueror of Austria, and offset the _gloire_ of
his uncle’s Marengo with that of his own Magenta. He had more _bâtons_
and dukedoms to bestow,--more trophies to deposit in the Invalides. The
gazettes, the official historians, the court writers, the spell-bound
populace, acclaimed the new triumphs. Europe became too small for
Imperial France to swagger in. Napoleon the First had meddled in Egypt,
and Palestine, and the West Indies; his nephew must do likewise, and
seek new worlds to conquer over sea.

Already, however, sober observers noted other symptoms, and soon the
list of Imperial reverses grew ominously long. Early in 1860, Central
Italy became a part of Victor Emanuel’s kingdom: Napoleon had insisted
that it should form a new state for his cousin Plon-Plon. That autumn,
Sicily and Naples united themselves to Italy: Napoleon had wished
and schemed otherwise. That same year, too, England compelled him to
renounce his protectorate over Syria. Then he planned a French empire
in Mexico; sent French troops over under Bazaine; set up Maximilian,
who appeared to have grafted Napoleonism on our continent. But in 1867
he recalled his army,--“spontaneously” as he said. The world smiled
when it reflected that the spontaneity of his withdrawal had been
superinduced by a curt message from the United States and the massing
of United States troops on the Rio Grande. In 1864 he would have kept
Prussia and Austria from robbing Denmark; but as he had only words to
risk, they heeded him not. In 1866, when Prussia and Austria went to
war, expecting that Austria would be the victor, he had arranged to
take a slice of Rhineland while Austria took Silesia. But Prussia was
victorious, and so quickly that Napoleon could not save his reputation
even as mediator.

At last Europe realized that his nod was not omnipotent,--that Prussia,
his enemy, could raise herself to a power of the first rank, not only
without but against his sanction. Napoleon also realized that his
prestige was tottering. He must have some compensation for Prussia’s
aggrandizement. But when he asked for a strip of Rhineland, Bismarck
replied: “I will never cede an inch of German soil.” Napoleon, not
ready for war, cast about for some other screen to his humiliation;
for even in his legislature men now dared to taunt him with allowing
Germany to grow perilously strong. To this taunt one of the Imperial
spokesmen retorted, “Germany is divided into three fragments, which
will never come together.” A day or two later Bismarck published the
secret treaties by which North and South Germany had bound themselves
to support each other in case of attack.

Thus thwarted, Napoleon schemed to buy the tiny grandduchy of
Luxemburg, which had long been garrisoned by Prussian troops. The
King of Holland, who owned it, agreed to sell it for ninety million
francs. Europe was willing, but Bismarck said _no_. He would consent
to withdraw his troops, to destroy the fortifications, and to convert
Luxemburg into a neutral state; more than that he would not allow.
And with that Napoleon had to content himself, and to persuade the
French--as best he could--that he had frightened the Prussians out of
the grandduchy.

In 1863 Bismarck said to a friend: “From a distance, the French Empire
seems to be something; near by, it is nothing.” About the same time
Napoleon, who had had much friendly intercourse with the Prussian
statesman, said: “M. de Bismarck is not a serious man.”

Just as the Luxemburg affair was concluded, all the world went to Paris
to attend the Exposition, which was intended to be, and seemed, a
symbol of the permanence of the Second Empire. The projectors knew that
the immense preparations would enable the government to employ many
workmen, who might otherwise be unruly, and that the vast concourse
of visitors would bring money to the tradespeople and keep them
from grumbling. The ostensible purpose, however, was to dazzle both
Frenchmen and strangers by a view of Imperial magnificence; and it was
fully achieved.

Paris herself, the Phryne among cities, astonished those who had
never seen her, or who had seen her in old days. Where, they asked,
were the narrow, crooked streets, in which barricaders once fortified
themselves? Were these boulevards, stretching broad and straight,--were
these they? And by what magic had the old, irregular dwellings been
transformed into miles of tall, stately blocks? New churches, new
quays, new parks, new palaces, bearing the impress of grace, symmetry,
and a unifying planner, excited the wonder of the cosmopolitan throng
of visitors. But the products of industry, the triumphs of the arts of
peace, were not allowed to obscure the military glories of the Second
Empire. A “Bridge of the Alma” and a “Boulevard of Sebastopol” kept
the Crimean prowess in memory; a “Solferino Bridge” and a “Magenta
Boulevard” bore witness to the Italian triumphs. And there were
pageants, military, courtly, artistic; balls, at which, among the
picked beauties of the world, the Empress Eugénie shone most beautiful;
banquets, at which Napoleon sat at the head of the table, with monarchs
at his right hand and his left deferentially listening. Little did the
on-lookers suppose that the master of those magnificent revels had been
lately frustrated by M. de Bismarck, who was merely one of the million
whose presence in Paris seemed a tribute to Napoleon’s supremacy.

History, it is said, never repeats: but is the saying true? Is there
not an old, old story of Belshazzar and the magnificent feast he gave
in ancient Babylon, and the mysterious writing on the wall? And was not
another Belshazzar repeating the episode in this modern Babylon less
than thirty years ago? However that may be, the Exhibition of 1867 was
the last triumph of Imperial France.

Imperialism had made a great show, reproducing, so far as it could, the
glamour of the First Empire. Judge how potent that First Empire must
have been, when mere imitation of it could thus hypnotize France and
delude Europe! But Imperialism, generated by a crime and vitalized by
corruption and deceit, was not _all_ France. Honest France, excluded in
the beginning, could not, would not, be lured in later. Napoleon would
have conciliated, but the men whom he needed to conciliate would not
even parley. To offset Victor Hugo and patriots of his rigid defiance,
the Emperor had the outward acquiescence of Prosper Mérimée, the
worldly courtier; of Alfred de Musset, the weak-willed, debauched poet;
and of such as they. But he had the conscience of France against him;
to offset _that_ he leagued himself with Jesuits and Clericals. Having
exhausted the expedients of force, he had tried the arts of flattery;
he had intimidated, he had blandished; he had made vice easy and
attractive, in order that, though he could not win over the stubborn to
his cause, their character might be softened through voluptuousness.
Whosoever could be corrupted--let us give him full credit--he did
corrupt in masterful fashion; but conscience, in France as elsewhere,
is incorruptible.

Despite his complicated machinery for gagging conscience, protests
began to be made boldly. One such protest, uttered towards the end
of 1868, rang throughout France; and well it might, so audacious
was the eloquence of the protester. Several newspapers had opened a
subscription for a monument to Baudin, a Republican killed in the _coup
d’état_. The proprietors of these newspapers were arrested. One of
them, Delescluze, had for his advocate Léon Gambetta, a vehement young
lawyer from the South. Before the judge, and the prosecuting attorneys,
and the police--all myrmidons of the Emperor--he arraigned the Empire,
closing with these words: “Here for seventeen years you have been
absolute masters--‘masters at discretion,’ it is your phrase--of
France. Well, you have never dared to say, ‘We will celebrate--we
will include among the solemn festivals of France--the Second of
December as a national anniversary!’ And yet all the governments which
have succeeded each other in the land have honored the day of their
birth; there are but two anniversaries--the 18th Brumaire and the
2d of December--which have never been put among the solemnities of
origin, because you know that, if you dared to put these, the universal
conscience would disavow them!” Gambetta’s invective did not save his
client from prison, but his arraignment of the Empire echoed throughout
France.

And all the next year, 1869, though Imperialism abated in language
none of its pretensions, it showed in deeds many signs of nervousness.
No longer did it think it prudent, for instance, to abet the enormous
extravagances of Hausmann, the remodeler of Paris. It even talked
Liberalism, and set up a seeming Liberal Cabinet, with Ollivier at
its head. “All the reform you may give us, we accept,” said Gambetta
bluntly; “and we may possibly force you to yield more than you intend;
but all you give, and all we take, we shall simply use as a bridge to
carry us over to another form of government.” Evidently the conscience
of France, expressing itself through the Republican spokesman, could
not be placated or seduced.

A still blacker omen ushered in 1870. Pierre Bonaparte, the Emperor’s
cousin, shot in cold blood a journalist, Victor Noir. Two hundred
thousand persons followed the victim’s hearse; two hundred thousand
voices shouted through the streets of Paris, “Vengeance! Down with
the Empire! Long live the Republic!” In April the ministers proposed
further reforms, and called for another plebiscite, that worn-out
Napoleonic device for deceiving public opinion. Seven and a third
million votes were dutifully registered for the Empire, and only a
million and a half against it; but the Imperialists did not exult,--a
majority of voters in Paris, and forty-six thousand soldiers, had voted
_no_.

To be deserted by the Parisians, on whom Napoleon had lavished so much
pomp,--that, indeed, was hard; but the disaffection in the army meant
danger. One desperate remedy remained,--a foreign war. Victory would
bring to Imperialism sufficient prestige to postpone for several years
the impending collapse; meanwhile, public attention would be diverted
from grievances at home.

Nemesis saw to it that rogues thus minded should not lack opportunity.
The Spaniards having elected an obscure German prince to be their
king, the French ministers announced that they would never suffer him
to reign. Of his own motion, the German prince declined the election,
but the French were not appeased. They would humble the King of
Prussia by forcing from him a meek promise. King William refused to
be bullied; the French ministers proclaimed that France had been
insulted. Not Imperialists only, but Frenchmen of all parties clamored
for satisfaction. That love of _gloire_, that mercurial vanity which,
twenty years before, had made them an easy prey to Louis Napoleon,
now made them abettors of his breakneck venture. He appealed to their
patriotism, the last refuge of a scoundrel, and they were beguiled.

War came, the Emperor being, by common report, most reluctant to
consent to its declaration. He was its first victim. Five weeks after
taking the field, he surrendered with nearly one hundred and ninety
thousand men at Sédan. The corruption which through twenty years he had
fostered, in all parts of the state where he expected to profit by it,
had gangrened the army also, that branch which a military tyrant needs
to have honestly administered. And now in his need the army failed him.
He had been caught, as every one is caught who imagines that he can be
wicked with impunity and still keep virtue for an ally when he needs
her. From top to bottom his war department was rotten. Conscripts had,
by bribe, evaded service; generals had sworn to false muster-rolls;
ministers had connived with dishonest contractors. At Sédan, Napoleon
paid the penalty of the corruption which he had erected into a
system; at Sédan, moreover, he completed that cycle of parallels and
imitations which he had made the business of his life. Just as Prussian
Blücher paralyzed the last rally of the great Napoleon at Waterloo, so
Prussian Moltke achieved the ignominy of Napoleon the Little at Sédan.

Men forget, even when they do not forgive. Frenchmen, furious at the
humiliation of Sédan, cursed Napoleon as the author of it. But after
a quarter of a century, although they have not forgiven him, they
have come to look on him as victim rather than as villain. Later
writers have held him up to be pitied. They describe his long years of
suffering from the stone; they paint him during that month of August,
1870, as a poor, abject creature of circumstances, driven to bay by an
irresistible foe, buffeted, scorned, despised by his own officers and
troops. They show him to us, speechless and in agony, lifted from his
horse at Saarbrücken; or huddled into a third-class railway carriage
with a crowd of common soldiers escaping from the oncoming Prussians;
or sitting, as cheerless as a death’s-head, at a council of war; now
lodged in mean quarters; now passing gloomily down regiments on their
way to defeat, and never a voice to cry _Vive l’Empereur_; ever growing
more and more haggard and nervous with worry, disaster, and endless
cigarettes; continually pelted with telegrams from Empress Eugénie at
Paris, “Do this--do that, or the Empire is lost;” until that final
early morning interview with Bismarck in the weaver’s cottage at
Donchéry. Latter-day Frenchmen, beholding such misery, have forgotten
that Napoleon himself was chiefly responsible for it, and have ceased
to execrate.

In closing, let us read, from a letter Bismarck wrote to his wife the
day after the surrender, a description of the meeting of Napoleon and
his conqueror:--

  “_Vendresse_, Sept. 3, 1870. Yesterday morning at five o’clock,
  after I had been negotiating until one o’clock, A. M.,
  with Moltke and the French generals about the capitulation to
  be concluded, I was awakened by General Reille, with whom I am
  acquainted, to tell me that Napoleon wished to speak with me.
  Unwashed and unbreakfasted, I rode towards Sedan, found the
  Emperor in an open carriage, with three aides-de-camp and three
  in attendance on horseback, halted on the road before Sédan. I
  dismounted, saluted him just as politely as at the Tuileries,
  and asked for his commands. He wished to see the King. I told
  him, as the truth was, that his Majesty had his quarters fifteen
  miles away, at the spot where I am now writing. In answer to
  Napoleon’s question where he should go, I offered him, as I was
  not acquainted with the country, my own quarters at Donchéry,
  a small place in the neighborhood, close by Sédan. He accepted
  and drove, accompanied by his six Frenchmen, by me and by Carl
  (who in the mean time had ridden after me), through the lonely
  morning, towards our lines. Before reaching the spot, he began
  to be troubled on account of the possible crowd, and he asked
  me if he could alight in a lonely cottage by the wayside. I had
  it inspected by Carl, who brought word it was mean and dirty.
  ‘_N’importe_’ (No matter), said N., and I ascended with him a
  rickety, narrow staircase. In an apartment ten feet square, with
  a deal-table and two rush-bottomed chairs, we sat for an hour;
  the others were below. A powerful contrast with our last meeting
  in the Tuileries in ’67. Our conversation was difficult, if I
  wanted to avoid touching on topics which could not but affect
  painfully the man whom God’s mighty hand had cast down. I had
  sent Carl to fetch officers from the town, and to beg Moltke to
  come.”

That morning the terms of capitulation were drawn up, and the next
day Napoleon went a prisoner to Wilhelmshöhe, whence, in due time,
he was allowed to depart for England. At Chislehurst, on January 9,
1873, he died, having lived to see not only the extinction of French
Imperialism and of the temporal Papacy, but also the creation of the
German Empire and the union of Italy. To prevent all of these things
had been his aim.

In a life like Garibaldi’s we see what a disinterested genius can do
by appealing to men’s noble motives: the career of Louis Napoleon
illustrates not less clearly what a man with talents and without
scruples can accomplish by appealing to the instincts of vainglory and
selfishness and terror; to the instinct which bullies weak nations and
hoists the flag where it does not belong; to the instinct which has not
the courage to acknowledge an error, but is quick to impute injuries,
and declares that there shall be one conscience for politicians and
another for citizens. Let us not flatter ourselves that only the French
have cherished these stupendous delusions; let us rather take warning
by the retribution exacted from them.

  “Forgetful is green earth: the Gods alone
   Remember everlastingly; they strike
   Remorselessly, and ever like for like.
   By their great memories the Gods are known.”




KOSSUTH


The history of Hungary is in this respect unique: it records the career
of an alien tribe which, cutting its way from Eastern Asia to the heart
of Europe, founded there a nation, and this nation, after the friction
of a thousand years, still preserves its racial characteristics. In
894 Duke Arpád led his horde of Magyars--whose earlier kinsmen were
Huns and Avars--up the valley of the Danube. Long were they a terror to
Europe; then, gradually, they had to content themselves with Hungary
as their home. They became Christians; they adopted a monarchical
government; alongside of their Aryan neighbors, they took on mediæval
civilization. Europe, unable to expel or to destroy, acknowledged them
as citizens. The time came when the Magyars, in a conflict lasting
fivescore years, defended Europe against the invasion of another
horde of Asiatic barbarians; till, unsupported by their neighbors,
the Magyars succumbed to the Turks in the battle of Mohács in 1526.
Afterwards, for one hundred and fifty years, Hungary herself writhed
in the hands of the Mussulman; when that bondage ceased, she had a
different oppressor,--Austria.

The Hungarian monarchy was elective, and after the battle of Mohács
the Magyars chose for their king the sovereign of the Austrian
states. The succession continued in the House of Hapsburg, becoming
in fact hereditary; but, before the Magyars accepted him as king,
each Hapsburg candidate must be ratified by the Hungarian Diet, and
must swear to uphold the Hungarian Constitution. When, however, the
expulsion of the Turks, at the end of the seventeenth century, left the
Austrian sovereigns free to exercise their authority, they set about
curtailing the ancient liberties of Hungary. Throughout the eighteenth
century that process went on: the Magyars protested; the Emperor-King
encroached, or, when the protests threatened to pass into insurrection,
he paused for a while and gave fair promises.

Such was the situation when the French Revolution, followed by
Napoleon’s colossal ambition, startled Europe. During the quarter
century of upheaval, the Magyars, still pouring their grievances into
Vienna, remained loyal to their King. After Napoleon’s downfall, the
Old Régime being firmly reëstablished, Emperor Francis not only failed
to keep his promises towards Hungary, but revived the old policy of
Austrianization, which meant the substitution of German for Magyar
officials, and the removal of the chief branches of government to
Vienna. Again the protests became angry, until Francis, baffled and
alarmed, convened the Diet. With the year 1825, when that Diet met,
began the modern struggle of Hungary to recover that home rule which
one after another of her Hapsburg kings had solemnly sworn to respect,
and had as perfidiously disregarded. Thus the seed of the Magyar
revolution was sown, like that of so many others, in a demand for the
restoration of acknowledged rights, and not in a demand for innovation.
Home rule,--Hungary to govern herself, instead of being bullied by
foreigners who happened to be also subjects of her Emperor-King,--that
seemed an object as simple and definite as it was just. Experience
soon showed, however, that this cause was not simple; that it no more
could be attained alone than gold can be taken from quartz without
crushing the quartz and separating the silver and lead, and the crushed
quartz itself, from the desired gold. For Hungary was imbedded in an
old civilization, which must be broken up before home rule, and many
another modern ideal, could be attained.

Imagine a country having an area about as large as the State of
Colorado, inhabited by people sprung from four different races,--the
Magyar, the Slav, the German, and the Italian: imagine, further, these
races subdivided into eight different peoples,--Magyars, having poor
kinsmen called Szeklers; Slavs, sending forth four different shoots,
Slovaks in the North, Croats in the Southwest, Serbs in the South, and
Wallachs in the East; imagine this motley population holding various
creeds,--Roman Catholic, Greek Catholic, Calvinist, Lutheran, and
Unitarian: imagine not merely each race, but each people, cherishing
its own language, its own customs, its own ambitions, which inevitably
clashed with those of its neighbors: and having imagined all this, you
have not yet come to the end of Hungary’s complex organism. Beside
the conflicts of race and creed, there were political and social
complications.

The dominant race was the Magyars, who numbered, however, only a third
of the total population; their prevailing system was the feudal. A
few hundred great nobles, or magnates, a considerable body of small
nobles and a multitude of artisans, tradesmen, and peasants made up
the social strata. Every Magyar who could trace descent to Arpád and
his followers--though he were but a peasant in condition--was a noble:
members of all the other races had no political rights. Hungary proper
comprised fifty-two counties, each of which had its local congregation
or assembly, which met four times a year, and sent suggestions or
bills of grievances to the Central Diet, composed of the Table of
Magnates and the Table of Deputies. A Palatine or Viceroy, representing
the Sovereign, was the actual head of the kingdom. Outside of Hungary
proper, the Croats had their local Diet at Agram, and Transylvania
had hers; both also chose representatives to the Hungarian Diet. In a
measure, therefore, we may call Hungary a federation, not forgetting,
however, that it was a federation in which one race, the Magyars,
domineered. The Latin language was the common medium of communication
between Hungary and Austria, and among the diverse peoples.

The most significant event of the Diet of 1825 was the use by Count
Stephen Széchenyi of the Magyar language instead of the Latin.
Széchenyi, having traveled in Western Europe, came back imbued with
large schemes of progress. He helped to introduce steamboats on the
Danube; he founded a Magyar Academy; he proposed to join Buda and Pesth
by a suspension bridge. By stimulating the material welfare of his
country, he hoped that many of the social abuses would vanish without
a struggle. And now his use of the Magyar language was a symptom of
the awakening of the spirit of nationality,--one of the controlling
motives in the history of Europe during the nineteenth century. In
Hungary, as elsewhere, the arousing of that spirit was evidenced not
only by an intenser political life, but also by a literary revival.

In direct reforms the Diet of 1825 accomplished little,--the Austrian
government being still adroit in postponing a settlement,--but it was
important in so far as it revealed the presence of new forces, whose
nature was as yet undetermined. By the time another Diet assembled,
in 1832, several questions had taken a definite shape. Foremost, of
course, was Hungary’s demand of home rule, in which all Magyars stood
side by side; but when it came to internal affairs, they inevitably
disagreed. The advanced Liberals proposed to emancipate the serfs,
to extend the suffrage, and to abolish many of the privileges of the
aristocracy. How grievous was the condition of the Hungarian serf may
be inferred from the fact that, in spite of an improvement decreed
by Maria Theresa, he was still bound to contribute to his landlord
the equivalent of more than one hundred days’ labor a year; he had no
civic rights, and no other chance of redress than in the manorial court
presided over by his master. The nobles, on the other hand, paid no
taxes, ruled the county assemblies, appointed magistrates, and, except
in case of a foreign invasion, rendered no military service, in return
for all their exorbitant immunities.

That Magyar aristocracy has played so prominent a part in the history
of Hungary that we may pause a moment to describe it. In 1830 the
Magyar magnate was still the most picturesque noble in Europe. Like
the Spanish grandee and the Venetian senator of an earlier time, he
represented one of the highest expressions of the privileged classes.
He was haughty, but warm-hearted; emotional, but brave: appeal to
his honor, to his magnanimity, and--as Maria Theresa found--he would
forget his grievances, disregard his interests, and devote himself
body and soul to your cause. He might be ignorant, a spendthrift, an
exacting master, but in his capacity for generosity he was--by whatever
standard--truly a noble. In old times his forefathers had assembled
every year, or when an emergency required, on the plain of Rákos,--a
host of gallant warriors, in brilliant armor and gorgeous cloaks and
trappings. There they deliberated--perhaps chose a king or deposed
one--and then each rode home with his retinue, to live in a splendor
half-barbaric for another year. In his dress the Magyar had an Oriental
love of color, and in his music there is a similar glow, a similar
charm.

As late as 1840 both the magnates and the lesser nobility clung to
their national costume as loyally as to their national constitution.
“It now consists of the _attilla_” writes Paget at that date, “a frock
coat, reaching nearly to the knee, with a military collar, and covered
in front with gold lace; over this is generally worn, hanging loosely
on one shoulder, the _mente_, a somewhat larger coat, lined with fur,
and with a fur cape. It is generally suspended by some massive jeweled
chain. The tight pantaloons and ankle-boots, with the never-failing
spurs, form the lower part. The _kalpak_, or fur cap, is of innumerable
forms, and ornamented by a feather fastened by a rich brooch. The white
heron’s plume, or aigrette, the rare product of the Southern Danube,
is the most esteemed. The neck is opened, except for a black ribbon
loosely passed round it, the ends of which are finished with gold
fringe. The sabre is in the shape of the Turkish scimitar; indeed,
richly ornamented Damascus blades, the spoils of some unsuccessful
Moslem invasion, are very often worn, and are highly prized.

“The sword-belt is frequently a heavy gold chain, such as our ancient
knights wore over their armor. The colors, as in many respects the
form, of the Hungarian uniform, depend entirely on the taste of the
individual, and vary from the simple blue dress of the hussar, with
white cotton lace, to the rich stuffs, covered with pearls and
diamonds, of the Prince Esterházy.

“On the whole, I know of no dress so handsome, so manly, and at
the same time so convenient. It is only on gala days that gay and
embroidered dresses are used; on ordinary occasions, as sittings of
the Diet, county meetings, and others in which it is customary to wear
uniform, dark colors with black silk lace, and trousers, or Hessian
boots, are commonly used.”[1]

[1] John Paget, _Hungary and Transylvania_ (new edition, New York,
1850), i, 249, 250.

Such, in its dress, was the Magyar aristocracy which the reformers
set themselves to overcome; and in their character those Magyar
nobles--were they magnates or simply gentlemen--cherished a tenacity
of class unsurpassed by any other aristocrats in Europe. Nevertheless,
the reformers boldly put forth a programme which involved the complete
social and political reorganization of the country,--even throwing
down a challenge to the aristocracy to surrender privileges in which
these deemed their very existence rooted. Parties had begun to array
themselves on these lines when Louis Kossuth entered public life.

Born at the village of Monok, Zemplen County, on April 27, 1802,
Kossuth had for his father a lesser noble, Slavic in origin, Lutheran
in faith, and lawyer by profession. The son received a good education,
and began to practice law, which led easily to politics. He sat in his
county assembly, was early conspicuous as an advocate of popular rights
and as an eloquent speaker. Thus equipped, he took his seat in the Diet
of 1832, where, as proxy to a magnate, he had a voice but no vote.
There seemed slight chance of his emerging from his proxy’s obscurity,
but to genius all conditions are fluid. Kossuth conceived the plan
of publishing the reports of the debates in the Diet. The government
permitted no newspapers, and trimmed all other publications to suit
its views; but the members of both Houses could speak freely, without
danger of arrest for any of their utterances in the Diet. To circulate
their speeches would, therefore, as Kossuth saw, put within reach of
the Hungarians a mass of political reading not otherwise obtainable.
Hardly had he begun to publish, ere government signified its desire of
buying his press. Deprived of this, he employed secretaries who wrote
out his abstracts of the proceedings and sent them through the mails
to their destination. Government ordered its postmen to confiscate
and destroy. Still unvanquished, Kossuth dispatched his budgets by
special messengers. Government was foiled. By these devices, before the
close of the Diet in 1836, Kossuth--the obscure magnate’s proxy--had
become one of the most widely known men in the kingdom. The reports
were literally _his_ reports, giving not only the tenor of the chief
debates, but also his comments thereon.

He now proposed to edit in similar fashion the proceedings of the
quarterly meetings of the fifty-two county assemblies; but Government,
no longer restrained by his inviolability as member of the Diet,
arrested him. He spent two years in prison, denied books and all
intercourse with his friends, before his case came to trial: then he
was sentenced to a further confinement of four years, during which his
great solace was the study of Shakespeare.

Meanwhile, political and social agitation was swelling. The King,
thinking a European war over the Eastern Question imminent, summoned
another Diet to vote him a fresh subsidy and more soldiers. But the
Diet, indignant and headstrong, refused all help till Kossuth and some
other political prisoners should be released. The King yielded. Kossuth
came forth a national hero.

After several months spent in recuperating his health, Kossuth, in
January, 1841, established the _Pesti Hirlap_, or _Pesth Gazette_.
That Government acquiesced in this project showed how far the tide
of Liberalism had risen. It showed, too, that Government was
astute,--hoping in this way to rob Kossuth of his martyr’s halo;
deeming it wiser to let him publish openly than surreptitiously;
trusting, above all, to the sharpness of its censors’ eyes and
scissors. Kossuth, on his side, was equally cunning, versed in the
art of dressing his opinions in such guise that the censor could not
object to them, though they carried a meaning which his readers knew
how to interpret according to his intention. He wrote on all topics
with a vehemence and an Oriental heat which won him tens of thousands
of admirers. Like any Magyar patriot, he could count on one of the most
powerful of allies,--the race hatred between his countrymen and the
Austrians. The very word “German” signified, in the Magyar language,
_vile_, _base_, _despicable_. There was a Magyar proverb to the effect
that “German is the only language God does not understand.” Innumerable
illustrations of this antipathy might be cited, but the following,
which Paget tells, will serve as well as another: The proprietor of a
theatre produced what he considered a fine piece of scenery, in which
was represented a full moon, with round, fat, clean-shaved face. When
it rose, the audience hissed, and shouted, “Down with the German moon!”
The manager took the hint; next night there rose a swarthy-cheeked,
black-moustachioed orb. Hurrahs burst from every mouth, and all cried,
“Long live our own true Magyar moon!”

Doubt not that Kossuth knew how to kindle the fuel which ages of hatred
had been storing. He had the gift peculiar to really great popular
leaders of appealing directly to racial pride and passion; so it
mattered little that he dealt in generalizations. Speaking broadly,
he preached the abolition of feudalism and the aggrandizement of the
Magyar nationality. The former purpose brought him and the Liberals
into conflict with the conservative aristocracy; the latter inflamed
against the Magyars the long-smouldering hatred of their subject
peoples.

For the spirit of nationality had awakened these also. The Slavs
of Croatia, Slavonia, and Dalmatia dreamed of establishing a great
Slavic kingdom in Southeastern Europe; they, too, were putting forth
a literature. Their Illyrism--to their prospective nation they gave
the name “Illyria”--clashed with the recrudescent Magyarism. When the
Hungarian Diet decreed that the Magyar language should be taught in
their schools, and that every official must use it, they protested
as strenuously as the Magyars themselves had protested when Austria
tried to impose the German language and German officials on them. “The
Magyars are an island in the Slavic ocean,” exclaimed Gaj, the poet
and spokesman of Illyrism, to the Hungarian Diet: “I did not make this
ocean, I did not stir up its waves; but take care that they do not go
over your heads and drown you.” Nevertheless, the law was passed. In
the Southland the Serbs along the Danube, in the East the Wallachs
of Transylvania, feeling the first tingle of national aspirations,
resented this encroachment. Austria--whose motto was, _Divide et
impera_--found her advantage in embittering tribe with tribe and class
with class.

For three years and a half Kossuth’s _Gazette_ had an unprecedented
influence in Hungary; but in the summer of 1844, disagreeing with
his publisher over a matter of salary, he resigned, and expected to
found another journal which should draw off the _Gazette’s_ patrons.
Government, however, refused to grant him a license. Accordingly,
he devoted himself to agitation in another form. In the assembly of
the County of Pesth, he discussed with matchless eloquence the great
political questions; outside, he organized an economical crusade.
Austria burdened Hungary with a tariff which stunted her industrial and
commercial development. Kossuth created a league whose members vowed
for five years to use only Hungarian products. He projected a railway
to Fiume, to secure an outlet for exporting Hungarian goods. He urged
the establishment of savings banks and of mercantile corporations. And
for a brief time, under this patriotic stimulus, trade flourished.

Thus through all the arteries of the body politic new blood was
throbbing. Give a people a great idea, and they will find how to
apply it to every concern of life. The Magyar Liberals were surely
undermining feudalism; their race was growing more and more restive
at Austria’s obstinate delays. When Austria removed the native county
sheriffs and put German administrators in their stead, all the Magyar
factions joined in denouncing such an assault on their national life.
The county system had been the safeguard of Hungary’s political
institutions for well-nigh eight hundred years; the sheriff was the
foremost official in the county, to whose guidance its interests and
civic activity were intrusted. To make an alien sheriff was therefore
to check national agitation at its source. Accordingly, the Diet which
met in the autumn of 1847 met full of defiance and resentment, though
the platform of the Liberals, drawn up by the judicial Deák, wore on
its surface a conciliatory aspect. After a hot canvass, Kossuth was
elected to represent Pesth in the Chamber of Deputies. A few sessions
sufficed to establish his preëminence as an orator, and his leadership
of the Liberal party.

During the winter months of 1847-48 but little was done, though
much was discussed. As usual, the Magnates resisted the reforms
aimed at their class; as usual, Government temporized and postponed.
Suddenly, at the beginning of March, 1848, news reached Presburg of
the revolution in Paris, and of the flight of Louis Philippe. That
news passed like a torch throughout Europe, kindling as it passed the
fires of revolt. At Presburg, on March 3, Kossuth rose in the Diet and
interrupted a debate on the financial difficulties with Austria. That
question of finance, he said, could never be settled separately; in it
was involved the whole question of Austria’s disregard of Hungary’s
rights. Hungary must have her own laws, her own ministry; taxation must
be equal; the franchise must be extended. More than that, he added,
Hungary could never prosper until every part of the Empire should be
governed by uniform constitutional methods.

Kossuth’s “baptismal speech of the revolution” took the Lower House
by storm. An address to the Throne was framed, which, after fruitless
reluctance on the part of the Magnates, a large committee, headed by
Kossuth and Count Louis Batthyányi,--the Liberal leader in the Upper
House,--carried twelve days later to Vienna. The delegates found the
Austrian capital in an uproar. On March 13 Metternich, deserted by
the aristocracy on whose behalf he had labored unscrupulously for
fifty years, had been hounded from office. The people, after a bloody
struggle, had possession of the city, and they welcomed Kossuth as a
deliverer; for his “baptismal speech” had made their aims articulate.

The next day, Emperor Ferdinand received the deputation very
graciously, and promised to grant their petition. Exulting, they
returned to Presburg. A Cabinet was formed in which Batthyányi held the
premiership, and Kossuth the portfolio of finance. Soon, very soon,
tremendous difficulties beset them: Radicals clamored for a republic;
the subject races revolted; the Imperial government proved perfidious.

The key to Austria’s subsequent conduct is this: Austria, at heart
a coward, had long been able to play the bully; now, however, her
outraged peoples had risen in wrath and held her at their mercy; the
bully cringed, promised, conceded; concession brought a temporary
respite from danger; thereupon she began to think she had been unduly
terrified and to regret her concessions; so she cautiously put out
feelers of arrogance, to resume her rôle of bully. When she met sharp
resistance, she quickly drew back again, to await a better opportunity.
Throughout this crisis, Emperor Ferdinand, at his best a man of
mediocre capacity, was becoming imbecile through epilepsy, and a Court
clique, or Camarilla, ruled him and the Empire.

All this was not yet clear to the Hungarians. Assuming the Imperial
assurances to be honest, they passed a reform bill abolishing the
privileges of the nobles, who were to be compensated by the state for
the loss they sustained in the emancipation of their serfs. Bills
authorizing equal taxation, trial by jury, freedom of speech, the
abolition of tithes, and the extension of the franchise to one million
two hundred thousand voters, were adopted with but little discussion.
Religious toleration--except for Jews--became the law of the land.

The Magnates having made this unparalleled sacrifice, King Ferdinand
came over to Presburg and dissolved the Diet in a speech approving its
action, and reiterating his pledge to uphold the Constitution. The
Cabinet proceeded to organize its administration,--a task which would
have been sufficient at any time to keep it busy, but now extraordinary
and urgent matters pressed upon it. The Wallachs, Serbs, and Croats
rose in rebellion. Most alarming was the situation in Croatia, where
the Slavs were agitating for separation from Hungary. Baron Jellachich,
who had just been appointed Ban or Viceroy of Croatia, abetting the
insurrection, strengthened the Croat army. In June the Magyar ministers
hurried to Innspruck--whither the Emperor and Camarilla had fled after
a second outbreak in Vienna--to protest against these rebellious acts.
The Emperor assured them that he had given the Ban no sanction; that
he had, indeed, dismissed him from the Imperial service. It happened
that Jellachich was at Innspruck at this very moment, carrying the
notification of dismissal in his pocket, and in his mind an unwritten
commission to serve Austria against Hungary.

The rebellion of the Serbs, accompanied by unspeakable atrocities,
was openly fomented by Austrian agents; likewise the outbreak in
Transylvania. Hungary’s embarrassments increased; she had still to
accept Ferdinand’s assurances of good faith, for he was her legal king;
but now she knew that the Camarilla, the actual Imperial government,
was instigating her enemies.

The newly elected National Assembly convened at Pesth, the ancient
capital, early in July. The royal address condemned by implication
Jellachich and all rebels, but the insurrection grew in violence from
day to day. On July 11 Kossuth made in the Assembly the most effective
speech of his life. Posterity stands incredulous before the record
of great orators who, Orpheus-like, are said to have moved stocks and
stones by their voice; yet not on this account must we disbelieve the
record. For posterity can never supply the one thing needful to the
consummate orator’s success,--it can never supply the state of mind of
his audience. We shall always find that the epoch-making speech was
addressed to listeners every one of whom had long been burning to hear
just those words. This is why so many of the orations that altered
history look faded on the printed page; this is why we must in many
cases judge the orator as we judge the singer or the actor,--by the
effect he produces on his contemporaries. Kossuth, by this standard,
ranks with the first orators of the century, though a later generation
is little thrilled by his printed speeches. Men who heard him, even
those who heard him speak in a language not his own, and who had
listened to Webster and Clay and Choate, declare that they never heard
his equal. Upon his own countrymen, to whom his words came charged with
the associations which belong to one’s mother-tongue, his eloquence was
irresistible.

In that 11th of July speech, at least, we, too, after long years, can
feel the glow. The occasion itself was dramatic. Every deputy realized
that the crisis of the revolution was at hand,--that Hungary must
either turn back, or dare to plunge into an unknown and perilous sea.
All were waiting for the decisive word.

Kossuth, just risen from a bed of sickness, with tottering steps
mounted the tribune. He was a man of medium height; his hair was brown,
his eyes blue; he wore a full mustache and cut his beard sailor-wise,
so that it formed a shaggy fringe beneath his smooth-shaven chin.
At first, as he spoke, his pallid face and feeble gestures, though
they enhanced the solemnity of his words, made his hearers dread a
collapse; but presently he seemed to be fired with the strength which
burned in his subject, and they listened for two hours, spell-bound and
electrified.

“I feel,” he said to them, “as if God had put in my hands the trumpet
to rouse the dead, that, if sinners and weak, they may sink back
into death, but that, if the vigor of life is still in them, they
may waken to eternity.” He then went on to review the quarrel with
Croatia, declaring that to that country Hungary had, from immemorial
time, accorded all the privileges which she herself enjoyed, and that
recently she had conceded to the Croats a wider use of their native
language. “I can understand a people,” he said ironically, “who,
deeming the freedom they possess too little, take up arms to acquire
more, though they play, indeed, a hazardous game, for such weapons
are two-edged; but I cannot understand a people who say, ‘The freedom
you offer us is too great,--we will not accept your offer, but will go
and submit ourselves to the yoke of Absolutism.’” Kossuth next touched
on the situation in the South, and showed wherein it differed from
that in the Southwest. He told how the Camarilla had sought to compel
the ministers to acknowledge the unlawful pretensions of Croatia, and
thereby to annul the pledges of the King. He pointed out, as an ominous
cloud on the eastern horizon, the recent appearance of a Russian army
along the Pruth. When, after this review, he solemnly announced, “The
fatherland is in danger,” not a deputy was surprised, not a head shook
incredulously. At last he asked for authority to levy two hundred
thousand soldiers, and to raise a loan of forty-two million florins,
setting forth the means by which he planned to meet this extraordinary
measure as eloquently as he had set forth its need.

He had held the Assembly captivated for two hours; now, as he was
closing, his strength failed, and he could not speak. The deputies,
too, were speechless. For a brief moment intense silence reigned
between him and them. Then Paul Nyáry, who only yesterday had attacked
the policy of the Cabinet, rose, lifted his right hand as if invoking
God to be his witness, and exclaimed, “We grant everything!” In a
flash four hundred hands were raised, and four hundred voices repeated
Nyáry’s covenant. When quiet came again, Kossuth had recovered strength
to say that his request should not be taken as a demand for a vote of
confidence. “We ask your vote for the preservation of the country;
and, sirs, if any breast sighs for freedom, if any desire waits for
fulfilment, let that breast suffer a little longer, let it have
patience until we have saved the fatherland. You have all risen to a
man, and I bow before the great-heartedness of the nation, while I ask
one thing more: let your energy equal your patriotism, and the gates of
hell itself shall not prevail against Hungary!”

In March, under the magic of Kossuth’s irresistible oratory, the
Magyars had boldly demanded their constitutional rights; now in July,
thrilled by the same magic, they pledged themselves to defend their
independence to the death.

The summer passed amid recruiting of Honvéds, volunteer “defenders of
the fatherland,” the attempt to quell the insurrection in Transylvania
and among the Serbs, and the renewed intrigues of the Imperial Court
to browbeat the Hungarian Cabinet. In September, Jellachich, at last
avowedly in the service of Austria, prepared to invade Hungary.

The Palatine, unable to bring about a reconciliation, quitted the
country. The Viennese Cabinet appointed Count Lamberg to assume
full control of the military affairs in the kingdom; the Hungarians
pronounced his appointment unconstitutional, and they were right. On
his arrival at Pesth, he was murdered by a mob. This rash crime caused
some of the Liberals to withdraw horrified. Batthyányi resigned the
premiership, and a Committee of National Defense, in which Kossuth
predominated, was chosen. On October 2, the Camarilla, grown truculent,
dispatched Recsey to dissolve the Hungarian Assembly, and bade Hungary
to submit to Jellachich. The Magyars heeded neither command. Having
equity and law on their side, they acted henceforth on the assumption
that the orders which emanated from Vienna could not be attributed to
Ferdinand without imputing perjury to him.

War could no longer be avoided. The Committee of National Defense
displayed great energy in organizing resistance. Kossuth’s eloquence
went over the land, and the cloddish peasant left the plough, the
well-to-do tradesman deserted his shop, the lawyer dropped his brief,
to become volunteers in the service of their country. A third outbreak
at Vienna sent the Camarilla hurrying off to Olmütz, and seemed for
a moment to assure the final triumph of the revolution. During
the three weeks which elapsed before an Austrian army under Prince
Windischgrätz--he who said that “human beings begin with barons”--could
be brought up, the Hungarians debated whether they should go to the
assistance of the Viennese, for they wished to be strictly legal. At
last they found justification in the plea that they had a right to
pursue Jellachich, who was marching to join Windischgrätz, across the
Austrian frontier. But they decided too late. Their troops were beaten
at Schwechat, on the outskirts of Vienna, just as Windischgrätz was
successfully storming the city (October 29).

For six weeks thereafter Windischgrätz devoted himself to stamping
out the rebellion in Vienna, and in preparing for a campaign against
Hungary. On December 2 poor, weak-witted Ferdinand abdicated, and his
nephew Francis Joseph succeeded him as emperor. This change betokened
the returning confidence of the Court party. They now felt sure of
crushing the revolution, and of restoring the Old Régime; but they had
no intention that, when the rest of Austria was re-subjected to their
despotism, Hungary alone should enjoy a constitutional government.
Yet this had been promised by Ferdinand, and he had scruples against
openly violating his oath. Therefore, by removing him and substituting
Francis Joseph, they had a sovereign unhampered by pledges. To this
scheme the Magyars naturally did not bend; their Constitution was their
life, and that Constitution recognized no king who had not been crowned
by the Magyars, and had not sworn to preserve their rights inviolate.

Ten days before Christmas, Windischgrätz opened his campaign. Five
armies besides his own invaded Hungary from five different directions.
The Magyars had employed the six weeks’ lull in defensive preparations.
They gave Arthur Görgei, an ex-officer thirty-one years old,--able,
stern, selfish, and inordinately ambitious,--the command of the Army
of the Upper Danube. He proposed to abandon the frontier and to mass
the Hungarian forces in the interior, where they could choose their
own ground; but the Committee of Defense insisted that every inch of
Hungarian soil should be contested. A fortnight’s operations proved the
wisdom of Görgei’s plan: the Magyars were easily driven back, and on
New Year’s eve the Austrians camped within gunshot of Buda-Pesth. The
following day, January 1, 1849, a melancholy procession of ministers,
deputies, state officials, fearful citizens, and stragglers, set out
from Pesth, carrying with them the precious crown of St. Stephen, the
public coffers and archives, and the printing-presses for bank-notes.
Debreczin, a town forty leagues inland, became the temporary capital.
At Buda-Pesth, Windischgrätz celebrated his triumph by holding a Bloody
Assize. To envoys from the fugitive government who asked him to state
his conditions, he only replied, “I do not treat with rebels.”

Among the Magyars, consternation was quickly succeeded by a mood of
desperation,--such a mood as made France invincible in 1792. Again did
Kossuth’s eloquence pass like the breath of life over the land; again
did his energy direct the equipment of new recruits and fill the gaps
of the regiments already in the field. Had the deputies at Debreczin
voted as they wished, they would have voted for peace; but they knew
that the majority of their countrymen would reject any peace which
Austria was likely to offer, and they were ashamed to appear less
daring than Kossuth.

The enthusiasm, we might call it the recklessness, with which the
Magyars rallied to repel invasion, became a people who counted John
Hunyádi and Francis Rakóczy among their national heroes. Thanks to
their patriotic fervor, the Hungarian cause, which seemed about to
collapse at the beginning of January, seemed about to prevail at
the end of March. Bern had worsted the Wallachs and Austrians in
Transylvania; Görgei had redeemed Northern Hungary; Klapka and
Damjanics had brought Windischgrätz to bay in the midlands.

Well had it been for Hungary if these astonishing successes had
prevented internal discord, for twofold dissensions now threatened
to sap the growing strength. From one side, the generals chafed at
being subordinate to the civilian Committee of Defense; on the other,
a large body of soldiers and of civilians were angry at the evident
drift of Kossuth and his friends towards a republic. Görgei, the
most conspicuous of the generals, led this opposition. He declared
in a manifesto that the army would fight to maintain against every
foreign enemy the Constitution granted by Ferdinand, but that they
would favor no attempt to convert the constitutional monarchy into a
republic. The Committee of Defense, most eager in their patriotism,
could not refrain from meddling; they suffered from the delusion
common to such committees, and believed that they knew better than the
trained men of war how war should be waged. They felt, too, political
responsibilities which made them all the more active; and they had, as
was natural, their favorites among the officers. Had the government
been strong, it would have cashiered Görgei; being weak, and solicitous
of conciliating so important a man, it tolerated him. But when a
government and its generals distrust each other,--as we learned in our
civil war,--conciliation can satisfy neither. If Görgei lost a battle,
his enemies charged him with lukewarmness or disobedience; he retorted
by blaming the committee for failing to support him or for breaking
in upon his plans. We need not sift the recriminations in detail: it
suffices for us to know that, from January on, Görgei and Kossuth, and
their respective partisans, worked thus at odds.

Nevertheless, among the masses these quarrels had but slight effect.
The average Magyar was simply bent on avenging his long score of
oppression against Austria. He realized that his own existence
depended on that of Hungary, and to him Kossuth’s eloquence was like
a trumpet-call of duty. That in performing his duty the Magyar might
lawfully wreak vengeance on his oppressors, made duty doubly attractive.

In the early spring, Austria closed the way to compromise by
proclaiming a new charter for the whole Empire. This charter declared
that all the provinces of the Empire were to be reduced to a common
equality, deprived of local rights, and governed by a central
administration at Vienna.

The Magyars, then, had nothing to hope. Whether they submitted to
Austria or were conquered by her, their ancient Constitution would be
blotted out. They would cease to be a nation. Accordingly, on April 14,
1849, they proclaimed the independence of Hungary, calling God and man
to witness the wrongs she had suffered from the House of Hapsburg, and
setting forth the illegality, truculence, and perfidy of Austria during
the past thirteen months. A diet was to be summoned, which should
determine the form of government that Hungary would permanently adopt;
meanwhile Kossuth was chosen president-governor, and by appointing
Görgei commander-in-chief he hoped to heal old wounds.

The moment was propitious. The Austrians had been beaten in a great
battle (at Isaszeg) on April 7; and most of the fortresses, except
Buda, had been recaptured. Görgei himself seemed satisfied. The
elated Magyars dreamed even of a swift campaign against Vienna, and
of bringing the Imperial tyrant to terms which should be acceptable
to all his subject races. But their dream, if ever attainable, was
spoiled by delay. Görgei insisted that Buda must be retaken before he
marched farther west, and only on May 21 did he succeed in storming its
citadel. By that time a new peril, more terrible than any previous,
loomed up. Austria, in despair of subjugating Hungary, had besought
Russia to help her, and the Czar, glad of an excuse for interfering,
was marshaling his troops on the Hungarian frontier.

No assistance could the Magyars secure to offset this threatened
intervention. France and England would not even recognize their
republic, although Frenchmen and Englishmen privately sympathized
with their cause. From Venice alone, the little republic round whose
neck the Austrian noose was already tightening, came a heartfelt
recognition, which, however, added not a soldier to their army nor a
florin to their purse. Desperate, but not yet willing to surrender,
the Magyars nerved themselves for a final effort. Kossuth proclaimed a
crusade, a levy in mass; every man to arm himself, were it only with
a scythe or a bludgeon; perpetual prayers to be offered up in the
churches; the enemy to be harassed at all places, to be hindered by
the destruction of bridges and stores, and, wherever possible, by open
fighting.

Posterity, calmly reviewing a death struggle like this, is amazed that
any people could be roused to make that last stand. Plainly enough,
the Magyars had three soldiers against them to every one of theirs;
ammunition and victuals were failing them; their treasury was empty;
their armies could expect no reinforcements: to what end, therefore,
protract a hopeless war? Reasoning thus, we miss the secret, not only
of the revolutionists of 1848-49, but of all who have ever been
kindled by patriotism to defend a cause they held dearer than life.
The Magyars would never have gone thus far,--never have felt during
that May-month the fleeting exhilaration of victory,--had they not been
fired by a passion which not disaster but death alone could quench.

The Russian invasion being assured, the Magyar government held a
council of war, at which it was proposed to consolidate the various
armies, and to defeat first the Austrians coming from the west and
then the Russians coming from the north and east,--a sensible plan,
frustrated, however, by delays, some of which were unavoidable. The
Austrian army, strengthened by reinforcements from Italy, and commanded
by Marshal Haynau, who came red-handed from Brescia, advanced into
Hungary, and defeated Görgei on the river Waag (June 20-21). The
Magyar government and Diet departed for the second time, in melancholy
procession, from their capital. By the middle of July one hundred
and fifty thousand Russians--eighty thousand of whom were led by the
wolfish Paskevitch--had penetrated into the heart of the country.
Inevitably, the Magyar forces would be driven in and caught between the
victorious enemies: nevertheless, they would not yet submit.

Internal discord alone tarnished the record of the last days of
the Hungarian Republic. On July 1, Kossuth removed Görgei for
insubordination, but Görgei’s officers and men protested so loudly that
Kossuth thought it discreet to reinstate him. Three weeks later, a
fraction of the Diet, assembled at Szegedin, declared the equality of
all the races in Hungary, emancipated the Jews, and then, warned by the
rumble of hostile cannon, it dissolved forever.

For yet a few weeks we have news of Kossuth hurrying hither and thither
to proclaim hope where no hope was; conferring with nonplussed but
still resolute generals; dragging after him, like his shadow, those
printing-presses for bank-notes, now worth no more than blank paper.
Finally, at Arád, he resigned the presidency, and appointed Görgei
dictator with full powers. At Világos, on August 13, Görgei surrendered
his exhausted army of twenty-three thousand men to Rüdiger, the Russian
general. Thus was consummated what the Magyars, frenzied by defeat,
branded as Görgei’s treason, but what, to an impartial observer,
appears an inevitable act. Görgei’s course throughout the war cannot be
commended: inordinate personal ambition, not treason, was its motive;
he may have thought to play the part of Monk, but more likely he had
taken Napoleon for his model; one thing alone is certain,--he did not
intend that Kossuth should reap the glory of victory, if victory came.
In surrendering at Világos he did what every commander is justified in
doing, when further resistance could only entail fresh losses without
any hope of altering the result.

Learning the capitulation of the main army, the other generals one by
one submitted. Klapka alone maintained an heroic defense at Comorn
until September 27, when hunger and an empty magazine forced him to
surrender. With the hauling down of the red-white-and-green flag from
the citadel of Comorn vanished the last symbol of that revolution
which, bursting forth at Palermo in January, 1848, had spread through
Europe, shaking the thrones of monarchs, and kindling in down-trodden
people the belief that a new epoch, a Golden Age of Liberty, had come.
Hopes as splendid as men ever cherished had now been shattered, and in
their stead only the bitterest memories remained; for as each people
pondered in sorrow and oppression the events of those twenty months, it
was tormented by the reflection that its own dissensions, not less than
the might of its enemies, had wrought its ruin.

Austria, careful by a deceitful silence to encourage the stray bodies
of Magyar troops to give themselves up, proceeded to punish Hungary
with a severity which matched the persecutions of the French Reign
of Terror. In every city Marshal Haynau set up his shambles; in every
parish he plied his scourge. Imprisonment, torture, confiscation,
overtook the lowly defenders of the Magyar cause; death awaited the
leaders. On October 6, at Arád, fourteen generals were hanged or shot,
and that same day Count Louis Batthyányi was shot at Pesth. Görgei was
spared, thanks to the personal intervention of Czar Nicholas.

Kossuth and several thousand Magyars took refuge in Turkey. The
Sultan protected him, in spite of the threats of Russia and
Austria,--protected him because the Turkish religion forbade the
betrayal of a refugee,--but kept him for nearly two years in half
bondage. Then the Magyar hero, at the instance of the American
Congress, was permitted to embark on an American man-of-war. He came
to the United States, where he was greeted with an enthusiasm which
no other foreigner except Lafayette had stirred. He got boundless
sympathy, and no inconsiderable sum of money for prosecuting the
emancipation of Hungary; but the times were unfavorable, and the lot
of the Magyars concerned very little the rulers of European diplomacy
after 1850. Returning to Europe, Kossuth made agitation his sole aim.
He strove to interest the great powers in Hungary’s fate; he strove,
through secret emissaries, to provoke the Magyars themselves to rebel.
The former were deaf; the latter, taught by terrible experience, deemed
it folly to attack Austria again in the field. Through the persistent
and judicious political agitation led by the sagacious Francis Deák,
they achieved, in 1867, a recognition of their constitutional rights,
and a full measure of home rule.

Kossuth, however, refused to the last to be reconciled. He lived in
exile at Turin, a forlorn old man, forlorn but inflexible, amid the
memories of exploits which once had amazed the world. There he died
on March 20, 1894, having survived all his contemporaries, friends
and foes alike, who had beheld the rise and splendor and eclipse
of his astonishing career. To be the mouthpiece of a haughty and
valiant people at one of the heroic crises of their history was his
mission. His genius, his defects, mirror the genius and defects of his
countrymen; his glory, being a part of the glory of a whole race, is
secure. That race, which Arpád led into the heart of Europe, showed,
at Kossuth’s summons, a thousand years later, that it had not lost the
traits which had once distinguished it on the shores of Lake Baikal and
along the upper waters of the Yenisei.




GARIBALDI


When men look back, two or three hundred years hence, upon the
nineteenth century, it may well be that they will discern its salient
characteristic to have been, not scientific, not inventive, as we
popularly suppose, but _romantic_. Science will soon bury our present
heaps of facts under larger accumulations, from the summit of which
broader theories may be scanned; to-morrow will make to-day’s wonderful
invention old-fashioned and insufficient: but the romance with
which this later time has been charged will exercise an increasing
fascination over poets and novelists and historians, as the years
roll on. Oblivion swallows up material achievements, but great deeds
never grow old. That many of our writers should not have heard this
note of the age argues that they, rather than the age, are prosaic and
commonplace. For to what other period shall we turn for a richer store
of those vicissitudes and contrasts in fortune which make up the real
romance, the profound tragedy, of life? Everywhere the dissolution of
a society rooted in mediæval traditions is accompanied by confusion
and struggle,--the birth-pangs of a new order. Classes whose separation
seemed permanent are thrown together, and antagonistic elements are
strangely mixed; there is strife, and doubt, and excess; sudden
combinations are suddenly rent by discords; anachronisms flourish side
by side with innovations; new institutions wear old names, and old
abuses mask in new disguises.

In such a crisis, two facts are prominent: the unusual range of
activity offered to the individual--may he not traverse the whole scale
of experience?--and the dependence of the individual upon himself. He
rises, or he falls, by his own motion. The privileges of caste avail
nothing; for the very confusion produces a certain wild equality,
whereby all start at the line, and the swiftest wins. Napoleon’s
maxim, _La carrière ouverte aux talents_, is the motto of the century.
Napoleon himself is an epochal illustration of the power of the
individual to make the momentum of circumstances work for him. The
Revolution, it is true, had harnessed the steeds; but Napoleon dared to
mount the chariot, grasped the reins, and drove over Europe, upsetting
thrones and princedoms and hierarchies. The haughty descendants
of immemorial lineage gave place to the brothers and comrades of
the “Corsican upstart.” Murat, the son of a tavern-keeper; Ney, a
briefless law-student; Lannes, a dyer; Soult, Masséna, Berthier,
Junot, soldiers of fortune; and how many other children of the Third
Estate,--laughed at the pretensions of humbled Bourbons, Hapsburgs, and
Hohenzollerns! Frequent reactions between revolution and restoration
serve to emphasize the stress of this crisis; and these contrasts
in the conditions of men, revealing human character under the most
diverse phases, show how inextricably the romantic and the tragic are
interwoven in the average lot.

Nor in Europe only has this spectacle been going forward. The United
States also have witnessed similarly rapid transmutations, partly due
to other causes. Within a generation we have seen a gigantic national
upheaval: three millions of artisans, clerks, merchants, and lawyers
were transformed by the magic of a drum-beat into soldiers; and then,
the conflict over, soldiers and uniforms vanished, and the labors of
peace were resumed.

Follow Abraham Lincoln from his Illinois log-cabin to the White House;
follow Grant from his tanyard to Appomattox,--and you can compute the
sweep of Fortune’s wheel. These careers were lived so near us that they
hardly astonish us; they seem as natural as daylight; and in truth they
are as natural as that or any other every-day miracle. As if forgetful
of these, we ransack the past, or fiction, or melodramas, for heroes to
admire. To weak imaginations, distance still lends enchantment.

Our age has produced one romantic man, however, who had not to wait for
the mellowing effects of time to be recognized as romantic. He enjoyed,
almost from the outset of his career, the fame of a legendary hero, and
he will, we cannot doubt, be a hero to posterity. Some future Tasso
will find in his life a theme nobler than Godfrey’s, too romantic in
fact for either invention or myth to enhance it. He lived dramas as
naturally as Shakespeare wrote them; the commonplace could not befall
him. Looking at him from one side we might say, “Here is a Homeric
hero, strangely transplanted from the _Iliad_ into an era of railroads
and telegraphs!” But if we fix our attention on other qualities, we
discover in him a typical democrat, fit product of a democratic age.
This man was Joseph Garibaldi, whose career alone would suffice to
redeem the nineteenth century from the stigma of egotism and the rebuke
of commonplaceness.

Among all the political achievements of our century, none has more
of noble charm than the redemption of Italy. Whether we look at the
difficulty of the undertaking, or at the careers of the leaders and
the temper of the people who engaged in it, we are alike allured
and amazed. After the fall of the Roman Empire, Italy had never been
united under one government; nevertheless, from the time of Dante
on, the aspiration towards national unity was kept burning in every
patriotic Italian heart. During the Middle Age, little republics won
independence by overthrowing their feudal lords; then they quarreled
among themselves; and then they became the prey and appanage of a
few strong families. The Bishop of Rome, forgetful of his spiritual
mission, lusted after worldly power, established himself as a temporal
sovereign, and elevated his cardinals into temporal princes. Foreign
invaders--Normans, Spaniards, Germans, French--swept over the peninsula
in successive waves; bloodshed and pillage signalized their coming,
corruption was the slime they left behind them. One by one, the
refugees of independence were submerged in the flood of servitude;
until at last Venice herself, become merely the mummy of a republic,
crumbled to dust at Napoleon’s touch. Napoleon promised, but did not
give, to Italy the unity or the freedom which she still dreamed of: he
parceled her anew into duchies and kingdoms. By that act he broke down
ancient barriers and opened a new prospect. Italians beheld the old
order, which had so long oppressed them that many believed it must
endure perpetually, suddenly dissolved, and in its stead a change,
although not the change they longed for. Still, any change, in such
circumstances, implies fresh possibilities; and the Italians passed
from a lethargy which had seemed hopelessly enthralling into a restless
wakefulness.

The twenty years of the reign of Force, of which Napoleon was the
embodiment, ended at Waterloo. Europe, exhausted, sank back into
conservatism, and was ruled for thirty years by Craft, of which
Metternich was the symbol.[2] The Congress of Vienna reimposed the
past upon Italy. Monarchs and bureaucrats, like children who amuse
themselves by “making believe” things are not as they are, would have
it appear that the deluge of revolution, with all its mighty wrecks and
subversions, had never been. The Pope was restored in the States of the
Church; the Bourbons ruled again in Naples and Sicily; an Austrian was
Archduke of Tuscany; Parma and Piacenza were assigned to Napoleon’s
wife, Maria Louisa; Venetia and Lombardy went as spoils to Austria;
an absolutist king reigned in Piedmont. Evidently the revolution
had been but a summer thunderstorm, for the sun of despotism was
shining once more. The sun shone; but what of the sultry air? What
of the threatening clouds along the horizon? Were these the fringe
of the dispersing storm, or the portents of another? Mutterings and
rumblings, too, Carbonari plottings, and quickly extinguished flashes
of insurrection,--did not these omens belie Diplomacy’s pretense that
the eighteenth century had been happily resuscitated to exist forever?

[2] After Metternich, we have the period of Sham-Force, under Louis
Napoleon; and finally of Force again, under Bismarck. These four stages
complete the cycle of European politics during the past century.

It was during this interval of reaction and relapse, when hope was
stifled and energy slept; when victorious despotism flattered itself
with the belief that the Napoleonic episode had demonstrated the
absurdity of Liberalism; when Metternich, the spider of Schönbrunn, was
spinning his cobwebs of chicane across the path to liberty,--then it
was that the generation which should live to see Italy free and united
was getting what learning it could in the Jesuit-ridden schools. Of
this generation the most romantic figure was Giuseppe Garibaldi.

Joseph Garibaldi was born at Nice, July 4, 1807. His father was a
fisherman, thrifty enough to have a small vessel of his own. Such
stories as have come down to us of the boy’s childhood show him to
have been plucky, adventurous, and tenderhearted. He cried bitterly
at having broken a grasshopper’s leg; he rescued, when only seven, a
laundress from drowning; he sailed off with some truant companions for
Genoa, and might have vanished forever, had he not been overtaken near
Monaco and brought home. His education was intrusted to two priests,
from whom, he says, he learned nothing; then to a layman, Arena, who
gave him a smattering of reading, arithmetic, and history. As he was
quick at learning, his parents wished to make a lawyer or a priest
of him; but he had the rover’s instinct and could not resist the
enticements of the sea. At length, when he was fourteen, his parents
yielded, and he became a sailor.

Of those early voyages, we need mention only one, which took him to
Rome. Immense the impression the Holy City made on his imagination!
He saw not the Rome of the Cæsars, nor the Rome of the Popes,--the
city whose monuments entomb twenty-five centuries of history; but,
he says, “the Rome of the future, that Rome of which I have never
despaired,--shipwrecked, at the point of death, buried in the depth of
American forests; the Rome of the regenerating idea of a great people;
the dominating idea of whatever Past or Present could inspire in me,
as it has been through all my life. Oh, Rome became then dear to me
above all earthly existences. I adored her with all the fervor of my
soul. In short, Rome for me is Italy, and I see no Italy possible
save in the union, compact or federate, of her scattered members. Rome
is the symbol of united Italy, under whatever form you will. And the
most infernal work of the Papacy was that of keeping her morally and
materially divided.”[3]

[3] This was written in 1849.

Thenceforth the young mariner, who rose rapidly to be mate and master,
could not rest for the thought of the Eternal City, and of the country
his patriotism craved. During these years, he learned to take Fortune’s
buffets: he was captured by pirates, he lay ill and penniless for
months at Constantinople,--adventures which in another career would
demand more than passing notice, but which he deemed unimportant in
comparison with a conversation he had with a young Ligurian, who
unfolded to him the dreams of the Mazzinians. “Columbus did not
experience so great a satisfaction at the discovery of America,” says
Garibaldi, “as I experienced at finding one who busied himself with the
redemption of our fatherland.”

Fatherland! the name seemed a mockery to the Italians of that time.
Italy, as Metternich phrased it, was only a geographical expression.
Seven or eight petty princes, including the Pope, ruled the little
patches into which the Peninsula was cut up. All the north, except
Piedmont, was directly subject to a foreign despot, Austria; while,
indirectly, Austria domineered over Tuscany, Rome, and Naples.
Piedmont had a native king, indeed, but Absolutism throve nowhere
more vigorously than there. The Jesuits controlled the worship and
education of the little kingdom; reactionaries filled the ministerial
offices, the army, and the government bureaux; the sovereign himself,
Charles Albert, believed devoutly in the divine right of kings, and
held that it would be criminal in him, by granting his people more
freedom, to lessen the responsibility imposed on him by God. Throughout
the Peninsula, no one might discuss politics, whether in speech or
writing. It was high treason to suggest representative government; the
sovereign’s will was the only constitution. In some parts of the land,
the very word _Italy_ could not be used by actors on the stage; and
everywhere censors kept watch to prevent the idea of a regenerate Italy
from slipping into print.

By foreigners, the Italians were more often despised than pitied; they
were believed to be pluckless, wordy, deceitful creatures, who at best
had their uses as singers, dancing-masters, and painters’ models. Among
themselves, discord (born of ancestral feuds), envy (born of local
ambitions, a love of haranguing, and a lack of leaders), had thrice
resulted in an abortive revolution. And now, just as the third attempt
had failed, and in its failure had discredited the great organizations
of conspiracy that had been for fifteen years the hope of Italian
patriotism, Joseph Mazzini, a Genoese a year younger than Garibaldi,
banished from Piedmont because he had a suspicious habit of walking
abroad after dark, formed the new secret society of Young Italy which
aimed at not only the political but the social and moral redemption
of his countrymen. Garibaldi, eager to hasten the emancipation of his
country, joined Young Italy; but in the first plot in which he was
engaged his confederates failed to appear at the appointed time, and
he was forced to fly from Genoa for his life. “Here begins my public
career,” he says in his memoirs.

After being twice captured and twice escaping, he made his way on foot,
disguised as a peasant, to Marseilles, where, on opening a newspaper,
the first thing he read was the sentence of death decreed against him
should he ever be caught in Piedmont. This was in February, 1834.
Proscribed but not disheartened, when chance offered he resumed his
seafaring. But mercantile voyages grew monotonous. Should he offer
his services to the Bey of Tunis, who was seeking a European to take
charge of his navy? After hesitation, Garibaldi decided “no.” During a
cholera epidemic, he volunteered as nurse in the Marseilles hospital.
Finally he shipped for South America. Landing at Rio de Janeiro, he
fell in with another exile, Rossetti, and for a while they kept a
shop. Soon, however, more congenial occupation presented itself.

Rio Grande do Sul, the southernmost province of Brazil, had revolted
from the Empire and set up a republic, which it was struggling to
maintain. Garibaldi, who could never resist aiding republicans,
equipped a small privateer, on which he and Rossetti, with twelve
companions, set sail for the south. This was the opening of a life
of adventure which lasted twelve years, and which, could we trace it
step by step, would be found a nonpareil of heroic deeds and startling
dangers. The political and social condition of South America then
resembled in lawlessness that period in European history when chivalry
had its rise; when, as a foil to the bullying and craft and greed of
the many, stood out the courage and honor and courtesy of the few.
Garibaldi, whether by sea or land, approved himself a peerless knight.
Following him, we should witness now a battle of gunboats far up the
river Parana, until, his ammunition having given out, he loaded the
cannon with the chain cables; or, again, we should undergo the horrors
of a shipwreck near the mouth of La Plata, or join in a desperate
battle against great odds at some lonely Paraguayan ranch; we should
traverse vast pampas, or thrid the solitude of trackless forests; we
should know hunger, thirst, and cold, and be incessantly attacking or
attacked; and we should realize that although these campaigns seem mere
border forays when compared with the wars of modern Europe and the
United States, yet they settled the fate of territories as large as
France, and required those martial qualities which beget heroism in any
crisis under any sky.

Although we must pass all this, one marking episode in Garibaldi’s
life at that time ought not to be forgotten. His ships had been cast
away in a storm. He succeeded in swimming to shore, but his dearest
comrades perished. He felt lonely, dispirited, and though he was soon
to command another cruiser, the excitements of war could no longer
dissipate his melancholy. “In short,” he says, in a characteristic
passage of his Autobiography, “I had need of a human being to love
me immediately,--to have one near without whom existence was growing
intolerable to me. Although not old, I understood men well enough to
know how hard it is to find a true friend. A woman? Yes, a woman; for I
always deemed her the most perfect of creatures, and--whatever may be
said--amongst women it is infinitely easier to find a loving heart. I
was pacing the quarter-deck, ruminating my dismal thoughts, and, after
reasonings of all kinds, I decided finally to seek a woman, to draw me
out of my tiresome and unbearable condition. I cast a casual glance
towards the Barra: that was the name of a rather high hill at the
entrance of the lagune, toward the south, on which were visible some
simple and picturesque habitations. There, with the aid of the glass,
I discovered a young woman. I had myself set ashore in her direction.
I disembarked, and, going towards the house where was the object of my
expedition, I had not reached her before I met a man of the place, whom
I had known at the beginning of our stay. He asked me to take coffee
in his house. We entered, and the first person who met my gaze was she
whose appearance had caused me to come ashore. It was Anita, the mother
of my sons, the companion of my life in good and evil fortune,--the
woman whose courage I have so often envied. We both remained rapt and
speechless, reciprocally looking at each other, like two persons who do
not meet for the first time, and who seek in the features one of the
other something to assist recollection. At last I greeted her and said,
‘Thou must be mine.’ I spoke but little Portuguese, and uttered these
hardy words in Italian. However, I was magnetic in my presumption. I
had drawn a knot, sealed a compact, which death alone could break.”

A few nights later Garibaldi carried Anita off to his ship,
clandestinely as it appears, and they were wedded when they reached
another port. She was a companion matching his ideal: she shared his
wild fortunes and hardships; she was an indefatigable horsewoman, a
dead-shot, and upon occasion she could touch off a cannon.

After years of fighting, Garibaldi obtained a furlough, gathered a
drove of cattle, and journeyed across Uruguay to Montevideo. There
he was reduced to teach the rudiments of arithmetic in a private
school, picking up whatever other precarious pennies he could, until
civil war broke out in Uruguay, and he enlisted on the side of the
people, struggling to free themselves from a blood-thirsty dictator.
Garibaldi’s exploits as a guerrilla and corsair had made him famous,
and now he repeated at Montevideo his amazing feats. From among his
countrymen he organized an “Italian Legion,” which proved throughout
a long service that Italians could and would fight,--two facts which
scornful Europe was loth then to believe. He also illustrated his
perfect disinterestedness by refusing all rewards beyond a bare means
of subsistence. At a time when he held the fate of Montevideo in his
hand, he had not money to buy candles to light the poor room where he
and his family were dwelling.

Thus, giving his utmost for liberty and the welfare of strangers, he
saw the years pass without bringing the one thing he desired most of
all,--the chance to consecrate himself to the redemption of Italy. That
desire, the ruling passion of his life, had followed him everywhere.
I marvel that any materialists exist; for where, in the material
world, shall we find anything comparable to the tenacity of ideas?
Think not to preserve them by locking them in an iron safe; write
them not on stone, which crumbles, but on the human soul, and they
shall be indestructible. Have we not daily proof that against remorse,
love, hate, ambition, all the powers of the material world--fire or
frost, hunger, disease, persecution--dash as harmless as vapor against
adamant? By the moral precepts, by which Moses awed his people three
thousand years ago, we are awed. They are permanent, being graven on
something more durable than tables of stone; and it matters not how
many times old Nile is renewed, or whether Sinai itself wear in dust
away.

On Garibaldi’s heart of hearts “Italy” was written,--an ideal which
nothing could cancel. At length, in the early autumn of 1846 news came
to Montevideo that a Liberal Pope had been elected at Rome, that the
word “amnesty” had been uttered, and that the Peninsula was throbbing
with splendid hopes. Each succeeding message confirmed the presentiment
that the longed-for day of action was nigh. Garibaldi, subordinating
his hatred of priestcraft to his patriotism, wrote to offer his sword
to the new Pope, to whom all Italians were looking as the leader of
their crusade for freedom, but Pius never acknowledged the offer.
Then Garibaldi and some threescore of the Legion hired a brigantine,
which they named _La Speranza_ (Hope), and on April 15, 1848, bade the
Montevideans farewell. They had to touch at Santa Pola, on the coast of
Spain, for water, where they learned that all Europe was in revolution,
and then they dropped anchor at Nice on June 23. Over Garibaldi’s
head the death-sentence still hung, but he had nothing to fear, as
the events of the past six months had wiped out old memories. Those
six months had had no parallel in modern European history. They had
witnessed the triumph of revolution from the Douro to the Don.

Not even during the Napoleonic upheaval had modern Europe felt a
convulsion like that of 1848: for government and order were as
necessary to Napoleon as to his victims, and his revolution was the
effort of one lion to devour foxes and wolves,--of one preponderant
tyranny to absorb many smaller tyrannies; but the catastrophe of 1848
seemed, to anxious observers, to endanger civilization itself. Society
was dissolving into its elements. The many-headed beast had risen,
ubiquitous, terrific. Lop off one head, and others grew from the trunk.
What substitute could possibly be found in that chaos for the tottering
system? Nothing seemed certain but anarchy.

That was the year when sovereigns were suddenly made acquainted with
their lackeys’ staircases and the back doors of their palaces. The Pope
escaped from Rome in the livery of a footman. Ferdinand, Emperor of
Austria, fled twice from Vienna. Louis Philippe, the “citizen king” of
the French, put on a disguise, and slipped away to England. Metternich,
rudely interrupted in his diplomatic game of chess, barely escaped with
his life to London. The Crown Prince of Prussia, subsequently Emperor
of Germany, eluded the angry Berliners, a trusty noble driving the
carriage in which he escaped. There was a scampering of petty German
princes, as of prairie-dogs at the sportsman’s approach. Nobility,
whose ambition hitherto had been to display itself, was now wondrously
fond of burrows. And just as the frightened upholders of absolutism
went into hiding, the apostles of democracy emerged from prisons and
exile.

Paper constitutions, grandiloquent manifestoes, patriotic resolutions,
doctrinaire pamphlets, were whirled hither and thither as thick as
autumn leaves. Every man who had a tongue spoke; speaking, so furious
was the din, soon loudened into shouting. But the Old Régime was
encamped in no Jericho whose walls would tumble at mere sound. There
must be deeds as well as words; in truth, more action and less Babel
had been wiser. Committees of national safety, workingmen’s unions,
civic guards, armies of the people, sprang into existence, and it is
wonderful to note with what quickness officers and leaders were found
to command them. Universities were turned into recruiting stations
and barracks; students and professors became soldiers. There were
heroic combats, excesses, reverses bravely borne. Gradually the fatal
lack of centre and organization could not be concealed. The leaders
disputed as to measures; then followed misunderstandings, jealousies,
desertions. Each doctrinaire cared that _his_ plan, rather than the
general cause, should prevail. Each sect, each race, feared that it
would lose should its rival take the lead. But the purpose of monarchy
was everywhere the same,--to recover its footing; and the agents of
monarchy, cautiously creeping out of their retreats, began to profit
by the divisions among their enemies. Within a year the European revolt
was crushed. Nevertheless its lessons abide. It taught that despots
cannot be permanently abolished so long as a large majority of a nation
require despotic government, and the proof that they require it is the
fact that they submit to it; whence it follows that real democracy
cannot conquer until a people be educated up to the capacity of
governing themselves. It taught that without unity among the heads and
obedience among the members no reform can succeed. It taught, finally,
that no society which has once attained a certain level of civilization
can exist in a state of anarchy; for when anarchy is reached, the
opportunity of the strongest man, the tyrant, offers, and the process
of reconstruction from the basis of absolutism begins.

To Liberals, in June, 1848, however, the days of tyranny seemed at
an end; the Golden Age of liberty, constitutional government, and
the brotherhood of nations seemed to have dawned. Garibaldi learned
that Lombardy had expelled the Austrians; that Charles Albert, the
Piedmontese King, had drawn his sword as the champion of Italian
independence; and that the Pope and the other princes, including
even Bomba of Naples, had espoused the national cause. The rapid
victories of the spring had been succeeded by military inertia; frantic
enthusiasm had given place to a chatter of criticism; but not even
those who grumbled loudest believed as yet that the cause was in danger.

Garibaldi hurried to the King’s headquarters, near Mantua. He was no
lover of royalty, but he would support any king honestly fighting in
behalf of Italy. Charles Albert granted him an audience, but avoided
accepting his offered services, telling him that he had better consult
the Minister of War, at Turin. To Turin, accordingly, Garibaldi posted
back, saw that official, received further evasive replies, and departed
angry. To have traveled seven thousand miles over sea to fight for his
country’s redemption, only to be treated in this fashion, might well
astound a blunt soldier who had supposed that every volunteer would be
welcomed. In his own case the rebuff was peculiarly astonishing, for he
was, presumably, an ally whom any commander would be glad to secure.
Europe had rung with the fame of his South American career, and already
regarded him as a legendary hero. Imagine Charlemagne refusing Roland’s
aid in his campaign against the Paynims, or the old Romans turning
coldly away from one of the great Twin Brethren!

Although Garibaldi would have despised reasons of state which deprived
him of the right of volunteering against Austria, yet the King had to
be governed by them. For his excuse in declaring war had been that,
unless he interfered, anarchy, followed by a republic, would prevail in
Lombardy. To be consistent, therefore, he had to keep clear of even an
apparent league with republicanism as embodied in Garibaldi.

Baffled and exasperated, but determined not to be cut off from all
activity, Garibaldi went to Milan, where a provisional government with
republican leanings still ruled. By it he and his legionaries were
hospitably received, and sent out, with a considerable body of raw
recruits, to harass the Austrians along the lakes. In a few weeks,
however, the main Austrian army had reconquered Lombardy, and the
Garibaldians were driven to take refuge across the Swiss frontier.

Garibaldi, like a true knight-errant, now went forth in search of
another chance to do battle for freedom. At Florence the republicans
did him honor, but were wary of asking him to command their troops,
the fact being that each district had leaders of its own, and a host
of zealous aspirants, who were patriotically disinclined to make way
for even the most distinguished knight-errant. At Rome, whence Pius IX
had fled, the revolutionists gave him a warmer greeting, and when, in
February, 1849, they set up a republic,--Garibaldi having made a motion
to that effect in the Roman Assembly,--they made him second in command
of their army. And now, properly speaking, the tale of Garibaldi’s
European exploits begins.

We cannot follow in detail the story of the defense of Rome against
the French troops sent thither by the perfidious Louis Napoleon, and
their allies from Spain and Naples; yet it were well worth our while to
give an hour to deeds so brilliant, so noble, so picturesque,--to pass
from the Assembly Hall, where Mazzini, the indomitable dreamer, was the
dictator, to the fortifications where band after band of volunteers,
speaking many dialects, clothed in many costumes, were resolved to give
their lives for freedom! We should see Lucian Manara, a modern knight,
captain of a legion of brave men; we should see Mameli, the blond
poet-soldier, a mere lad; and the brothers Dandolo, and Medici and Nino
Bixio, and many another doomed to win renown by an early death there,
or there to begin a career which became a necessary strand in Italy’s
regeneration. But, most conspicuous of all, we should see Garibaldi,
for whom the legionaries and their leaders had such a feeling as the
Knights of the Round Table for Arthur their King. Call it loyalty, ’tis
not enough; call it filial affection, something remains unexpressed;
call it fascination, enthusiasm, sorcery,--each term helps the
definition, though none singly suffices. His was, indeed, that eldest
sorcery which binds the hearts of men to their hero,--that power which
reveals itself as an ideal stronger than danger or hardship or disease,
something to worship, to love, to die for.

During her five-and-twenty centuries, Rome had seen many strange
captains, but none more original than this, her latest defender, from
the pampas of South America. In person he was of middle stature; his
hair and beard were of a brown inclining to red; his eyes blue, more
noteworthy for their expression than for their color; his mouth, so
far as it could be seen under the moustache, was firm, but capable of
an irresistible smile. His soldiers, remembering his aspect in battle,
spoke of his face as “leonine;” women, caught perhaps by the charm
rather than the cut of his features, thought him beautiful. And as if
Nature had not done enough to mark her hero, he adopted on his return
to Europe the dress which he had worn in South America,--a small,
plumed cap, the grayish-white cloak or _poncho_ lined with red, the red
flannel shirt, the trousers and boots of the Uruguayan herdsmen and
guerrillas.

During that siege of Rome, Europe came to know Garibaldi and his
red-shirted companions, who were equally bizarre in character and
in costume,--a troop of poets, students, dreamers, vagabonds, and
adventurers,--who, with the nucleus of the Legion from Montevideo, were
capable, under their chieftain’s guidance, of splendid achievements.
Their victories against the Neapolitans at Palestrina and Velletri;
their stubborn defense of Rome against the overwhelming armies of
France; their bravery at the Villa Pamfili; their desperate struggle
to hold the Vascello, where Manara was killed; their unwilling
but inevitable yielding of the outposts, and finally of the inner
breastworks,--made up a tale of heroism which could be matched only at
Venice in that year of waning revolution.

But Europe had declared that there should be no republic at Rome,
and after nine weeks’ gallantry the city capitulated to the French,
who represented the cause of reaction. Garibaldi, however, did not
surrender. On the day when the French made their entry by one gate,
he marched out of another, followed by nearly four thousand soldiers.
He wound across the Campagna, and then for twenty-nine days he led
his troop among the Apennines, evading now the French who pressed on
the rear, now the Austrians, who harassed both flanks and threatened
to bar the advance. The little army dwindled, but Garibaldi held his
purpose to reach Venice, where the Austrian tyrants had not yet forced
their return. At length, however, in the little republic of San Marino
he was surrounded. All but two hundred of his followers disbanded;
with the remainder he eluded the enemy’s cordon, reached the coast
at Cesenatico, seized some fishing-boats, and embarked for Venice.
Mid-voyage, a fleet of Austrian cruisers came upon them and opened
fire. As best they could the fugitives landed, with Austrian pursuers
at their heels. Garibaldi and one companion bore Anita in dying
condition--she had followed the retreat on horseback all the way from
Rome--to a wood-cutter’s hut, where she died. A moment later Garibaldi
had to fly.

Of that retreat, and his subsequent hair-breadth escapes in being
smuggled across Italy, he has left in his memoirs a thrilling account.
For a second time he tasted the bitterness of exile: his first refuge
was Genoa, but the Piedmontese government, timid after defeat, informed
him that he must depart; he was expelled from Turin at the instigation
of the French; England warned him that he must be gone from Gibraltar
within a week. Only in semi-savage Morocco did he at last find shelter;
thence, after a few months, he came to New York. Consider who it was
that Europe thus outlawed, and what was his crime. He was a man whose
life had been a long devotion to human liberty, and whose most recent
guilt was to have attempted to prevent foreign despots from reënslaving
his countrymen. A system is judged by the men it persecutes.

Wifeless, homeless, chagrined by the thought that Italy had waged
her war of independence only to be beaten, Garibaldi began his
second wanderings. A real _Odyssey_ we may call it, with its strange
happenings. For a year the hero of Rome earned a bare livelihood
making candles in Meucci’s factory on Staten Island; then he shipped
for Central and South America; captained a cargo of guano from Lima
to Canton, and a cargo of tea back to Lima; brought a ship laden with
copper, round Cape Horn to Boston; and finally, in May, 1854, he
dropped anchor at Genoa, where the government no longer feared his
presence. With the proceeds of his mercantile ventures, he bought
Caprera,--a mere rock, which juts out of the Tuscan Sea, near the
northern tip of Sardinia. There, “like some tired eagle on a crag
remote,” he dwelt five years, apparently oblivious to the passing
current of events, and wholly intent on coaxing a few vines and
vegetables to grow on his wind-swept rock.

Early in 1859 a messenger summoned Garibaldi from his hermitage to
Turin. This summons was not unexpected. For months the world had
regarded war in Italy as inevitable, and now war was on the point of
breaking out.

How had this come to pass? After her defeat in 1849, Piedmont, the
little northwestern kingdom of four million souls, had sturdily set
about reforming herself. She stood firmly by the constitutional
government adopted in 1848; she strengthened her army and her navy;
she took education out of the hands of the Jesuits; she encouraged
commerce, industry, and agriculture. Thus she proved to Europe that
Italians could govern themselves by as good a political system as
then existed; to all the other Italians, groaning under Austrian, or
Bourbon, or Papal tyranny, she proved that they might look to her to
lead the Italian cause.

This marvelous attainment was due primarily to Count Cavour, the
statesman who, since 1850, had been almost continuously prime minister
of Piedmont; and, in the second place, to Victor Emanuel, the shrewd,
honest, chivalrous King, worthy to be the visible symbol of Italy’s
patriotism. But Cavour had realized from the beginning that, however
strong he might make Piedmont, she would not be able singly to cope
with Austria: four millions against thirty-five millions--the odds were
too great! So he labored to bring Piedmont into the stream of European
life; he allied her to France and England in the Crimean War; and now,
at the beginning of 1859 he had persuaded Napoleon III to march the
armies of France into Italy to join Piedmont in expelling the Austrians.

All this had been brought about against great hindrances, not the least
of which was the keeping in check the Italian conspirators. Since
the days of the Carbonari, a certain number of Italians had hoped to
set up a republic. Mazzini, now the chief leader of conspiracy, was
uncompromisingly republican, holding so little faith in the methods
of Cavour and the Constitutional Monarchists that he never hesitated
to hatch plots against them as well as against the Austrians. Between
these two irreconcilable parties Garibaldi was the link. By preference
a republican, he yet recognized Victor Emanuel as the only practicable
standard-bearer, and he therefore fought loyally under him; but he
distrusted Cavour, scorned diplomacy, and abhorred Napoleon III. In his
exuberant way, he insisted that Italians could, if they would, recover
independence without begging the rogue, who had crushed Rome ten years
before, to succor them.

A volunteer corps, called the Hunters of the Alps, was accordingly
organized, with the double purpose of using Garibaldi’s skill as a
guerrilla chieftain against the Austrians, and his unique popularity
in drawing all sorts of partisans to support the national war. He
suspected that the government was not wholly ingenuous; he complained
that his volunteers had to swallow many snubs from the regulars; he
chafed at being responsible to any superior: but the fact that he
had at last a chance of striking the oppressors of Italy outweighed
everything else.

Despite the shortness of the war of 1859, Garibaldi and his Hunters
proved of real service in it. Varese, Como, remember their valor
still; and had not Napoleon III suspended hostilities after the
great victory of Solferino, the Garibaldians might have redeemed the
Tyrol. But Napoleon’s peace of Villafranca, while it gave Lombardy
to Piedmont, left Venetia in the hands of the Austrians, and stopped
further operations in the north at that time. During the autumn,
however, Garibaldi, with many of his volunteers, went to Tuscany,
where a provisional government was then awaiting the propitious moment
for annexation to Victor Emanuel’s kingdom. The situation was very
ticklish, requiring careful diplomacy: Garibaldi, who shared with
General Fanti the military command, wished to have done with diplomacy,
to call out one hundred thousand volunteers, and to rely on them to
disentangle all complications. Irritated at having his plan overruled,
he resigned his command and withdrew to Caprera.

Within three months, however, he was called from his retreat. Secret
agents brought word that “something could be done” in Sicily, where
for a long time Mazzinians had been preparing a revolt. It needed,
they said, but Garibaldi’s presence to redeem the island from Bourbon
misrule. He could not resist the temptation. Trusty lieutenants of his
had collected arms and ammunition, hired two steamers and enrolled
volunteers. At Genoa, where these preparations were making, nobody,
except the government officials, was ignorant of their purpose. The
government, however, pretended not to see. Cavour could not openly
abet an expedition against a power with which Piedmont was not at war;
neither did he wish to hinder an expedition for whose success he and
all Italian patriots prayed. So he discreetly closed his eyes.

On the night of May 5, 1860, Garibaldi and 1067 followers embarked
on their two steamers near Genoa and vanished into the darkness. For
a week thereafter Europe wondered whither they were bound,--whether
against the Papal States or Naples; then the telegraph reported that
they had landed at Marsala, on the morning of May 11, just in time
to escape two Neapolitan cruisers which had been watching for them.
From that moment, day by day, with increasing astonishment, the world
followed the progress of Garibaldi and his Thousand. No achievement
like theirs has been chronicled in many centuries. They set out, a
thousand filibusters, scantily equipped and undrilled, to free an
island of two and a half million inhabitants, an island guarded by
an army fifty thousand strong, with forts and garrisons in all its
ports, and having quick communication with Naples, where the Bourbon
King had six million more subjects from whom to recruit his forces.
Grant that the Sicilians fervently sympathized with Garibaldi, yet
they were too wary to commit themselves before they had indications
that he would win; grant that the Bourbon troops were half-hearted and
ludicrously superstitious,--many of them believed that the Garibaldians
were wizards, bullet-proof,--yet they had been trained to fight, they
were well-armed, and by their numbers alone were formidable. That they
would run away could not be assumed by the little band of liberators,
any more than Childe Roland could suppose that the grim monsters who
threatened his advance would vanish when he upon his slug-horn blew.

And in truth the Bourbon soldiers did not run. At Calatifimi the
Garibaldians beat them only after a fierce encounter; at Palermo there
was a desperate struggle; at Milazzo, a resistance which might, if
prolonged, have destroyed the expedition. In every instance it seemed
as if the Bourbons might have won had they but displayed a little
more nerve, another half hour’s persistence; but it was always the
Garibaldians who had the precious reserve of pluck and strength to draw
upon, and they always won. Their capture of Palermo, a walled city of
two hundred thousand inhabitants, defended by many regiments on land
and by men-of-war in the harbor, ranks highest among their exploits.
Less than a month after quitting Genoa, they had liberated more than
half the island and had set up a provisional government. By the first
of August only two or three fortresses had not surrendered to them.

And now questions of diplomacy came in to disturb the swift current of
conquest. Garibaldi determined to cross to the mainland, redeem Naples,
march on to Rome, and from the Capitol hail Victor Emanuel King of
Italy. Cavour saw great danger in this plan. At any moment, a defeat
would jeopard the positions already gained; an attack on the Pope’s
domain would bring Louis Napoleon and Austria to his rescue, and might
entail a war in which the just-formed Kingdom of Italy would be broken
up; furthermore, Cavour believed that assimilation ought to keep pace
with annexation. He knew that it would require long training to raise
the Italians of the south, corrupted by ages of hideous misrule, to the
level of their northern kinsmen.

Such considerations as these could not, however, deter Garibaldi. He
grew wroth at the thought that any foreigner--were he even the Emperor
of the French--should be consulted by Italians in the achievement of
their independence. Eluding both the Neapolitan and the Piedmontese
cruisers, he crossed to the mainland and took Reggio after a sharp
fight. From that moment his progress towards the capital resembled a
triumph. And when, on September 7, accompanied by only a few officers,
he entered Naples, though there were still a dozen or more Bourbon
regiments in garrison there, the soldiers joined with the civilians
and the loud-throathed _lazzaroni_ in acclaiming him their deliverer.
Yet only a few hours before their King had sneaked off, too craven to
defend himself, too much detested to be defended. Think what it meant
that this should happen,--that the sovereign, the source of honor, the
fountain of justice, the symbol of the life and integrity of the state,
should not find in his own palace one loyal sword unsheathed in his
defense, even though the loyalty were hired, like that of the eight
hundred Swiss who gave their lives for Louis XVI! By an inevitable
penalty, Bourbon misrule in Naples passed vilely away; it had been,
as Gladstone declared, the embodied “negation of God:” even in its
collapse and ruin there was nothing tragic, portending strength; there
was only the negative energy of putrefaction.

Having taken measures for temporarily governing Naples, Garibaldi
prepared for a last encounter with the Bourbons. King Francis still
commanded an army of forty thousand men along the Volturno, near Capua.
There Garibaldi, with hardly a third of that number, fought and won a
pitched battle on October 1. A month later he welcomed Victor Emanuel
as sovereign of the kingdom which he and his Thousand had liberated.
The republicans, instigated by Mazzini, had wished to postpone, if
they could not prevent, annexation; but Garibaldi, whose patriotic
instinct was truer than their partisanship, insisted that Naples and
Sicily should be united to the Kingdom of Italy under the House of
Savoy. In all modern history there is no parallel to his bestowal of
his conquests on the King, as there is nothing nobler than his complete
disinterestedness. He declined all honors, titles, stipends, and
offices for himself, and departed, almost secretly, from Naples for
Caprera the day after he had consigned the government to its new lord.

Fortune has one gift which she begrudges even to her darlings: she
does not allow them to die at the summit of their career. Either too
soon for their country’s good, or too late for their personal fame, she
sends death to dispatch them. Pericles, Cavour, Lincoln, were snatched
away prematurely; Themistocles and Grant should have prayed to be
released before they had slipped below their zenith. So, too, Garibaldi
lacked nothing but that, after having redeemed a kingdom by one of the
most splendid expeditions in history, and after having given it to the
unifier of his fatherland, he should have vanished from the earth.
Thanks to a kindlier fortune, the old Hebrew prophets were translated,
and the Homeric heroes were borne off invisible, at the perfect moment.
But while Garibaldi lacked this epic finale to his epic career, the
closing decades of his life were as characteristic as any.

In the spring of 1861 he reappeared on the scene at the opening of
the first parliament of the Kingdom of Italy, to which he had been
chosen deputy by many districts. He came, not jubilant but angry.
Nice, his home, had been ceded to France in payment for French aid in
the war of 1859: against Cavour, who had consented to this bargain,
Garibaldi conceived the most intense hatred, and on the floor of the
House he fulminated at the Prime Minister whose “treason had made
Garibaldi a foreigner in his native land.” He complained, further,
because the officers and soldiers of the Garibaldian army had not been
generously treated by the government. The outburst was most deplorable.
Many feared that the hero’s testiness might lead to civil war; and
though the King arranged a meeting, in the hope of bringing about a
reconciliation, Garibaldi went from it with bitterness in his heart.
Six weeks later, on June 6, Cavour, stricken by fever, died when his
country needed him most. Little did Garibaldi realize that in the great
statesman’s death he was losing the man who had been indispensable
to his success in Sicily, and whose judgment was needed to direct
Garibaldian impulses to a fruitful end.

Only Rome and Venetia now remained ununited to the Kingdom of Italy: in
Rome a French garrison propped the Pope’s despised temporal power; in
Venetia the Austrian regiments held fast. To rescue the Italians still
in bondage, and to complete the unification of Italy, were henceforth
Garibaldi’s aims. He paid no heed to the diplomatic embarrassments
which his schemes might create; for as usual he regarded diplomacy as a
device by which cowards, knaves, and traitors thwarted the desires of
patriots.

In the summer of 1862, therefore, he recruited three or four thousand
volunteers in Sicily, raised the war-cry, “Rome or death,” crossed
to the mainland, and had to be forcibly stopped by royal troops at
Aspromonte. In the brief skirmish he was wounded, and for many months
was confined at Varignano, whither flocked admirers--men, women, and
youths--from all parts of Europe. There is no doubt that Rattazzi, then
the premier, had connived at the expedition, hoping to repeat Cavour’s
master-stroke; but the conditions were different from those of 1860,
and the Premier but illustrated the truth that talent cannot even copy
genius judiciously. Moreover, by allowing Garibaldi to go so far and by
then arresting him, Rattazzi subjected the government to a dangerous
strain; for Garibaldi’s popularity was immense, and even those of his
countrymen who insisted that no citizen--however distinguished his
services--should be permitted to live above the law, and to wage war
when he pleased, were as eager as he that Rome should be emancipated.

Untaught by experience, Rattazzi connived at a similar expedition five
years later. For several weeks Garibaldi went about openly preaching
another crusade. When the French government asked for explanations,
Rattazzi had Garibaldi arrested and escorted to Caprera. A dozen
men-of-war sailed round and round the rock, forbidding any one to
approach or quit it. But one night Garibaldi escaped in a tiny
wherry, and a few days later he led a band of crusaders across the
Papal frontier. They met the French troops at Mentana, were worsted
and dispersed; and again Garibaldi was locked up in the fortress of
Varignano, while one party denounced the government for ingratitude
towards the beloved hero, and another denounced it for treating him as
a privileged person who might, when the impulse seized him, embroil
the country in war. If we regard the acquirement of the methods of
constitutional government and of respect for law and order as the chief
need of the Italians at that time, we can only regret the agitation
and expeditions which Garibaldi conducted, to the detriment of his
country’s progress.

Meanwhile, in 1866, Venetia had been restored to her kinsfolk, as
the result of the brief conflict in which Italy and Prussia allied
themselves against Austria. Garibaldi organized another corps of
Hunters of the Alps, but the shortness of the campaign prevented him,
as in 1859, from going far. In 1870 the war between France and Prussia
enabled the Italians to take possession of Rome as soon as the French
garrison was withdrawn; so that Italy owed the completion of her unity,
not to her own sword, but to a lucky turn in the quarrels of her
neighbors.

No sooner had the French Empire collapsed, and the French Republic
was seen to be terribly beset by the Germans, than Garibaldi offered
his services to her. He was assigned to the command of the Army of
the Vosges, a nondescript corps, which more than once gave proof
of bravery, although it could not match the superior numbers and
discipline of Moltke’s men. The French gave him scanty thanks for his
services, and at the end of the war he returned home.

During the next ten years he was either at Rome, arraigning the
government, the fallen Papacy, and the wastefulness of the monarchy; or
he was making triumphal progresses through the land, sure everywhere
of being treated as an idol; or he stayed in his Caprera hermitage,
inditing letters in behalf of political extremists, Nihilists,
fanatics. Yet his popularity did not wane; his countrymen regarded him
more than ever as a privileged person, whose senile extravagances were
not to be taken too seriously. They loved his intentions; they revered
him for the achievements of his prime; and when, on June 2, 1882, he
fell asleep in his Caprera home, all Italy put on mourning, and the
world, conscious that it had lost a hero, grieved.

On his sixty-fifth birthday (July 4, 1872) he drew his own portrait
thus: “A tempestuous life, composed of good and of evil, as I believe
of the large part of the world. A consciousness of having sought the
good always, for me and for my kind. If I have sometimes done wrong,
certainly I did it involuntarily. A hater of tyranny and falsehood,
with the profound conviction that in them is the principal origin of
the ills and of the corruption of the human race. Hence a republican,
this being the system of honest folk, the normal system, willed by
the majority, and consequently not imposed with violence and with
imposture. Tolerant and not exclusive, incapable of imposing my
republicanism by force, on the English, for instance, if they are
contented with the government of Queen Victoria. And, however contented
they may be, their government should be considered republican. A
republican, but evermore persuaded of the necessity of an honest and
temporary dictatorship at the head of those nations which, like France,
Spain, and Italy, are the victims of a most pernicious Byzantinism....
I was copious in praises of the dead, fallen on fields of battle for
liberty. I praised less the living, especially my comrades. When I felt
myself urged by just rancor against those who wronged me, I strove
to placate my resentment before speaking of the offense and of the
offender. In every writing of mine, I have always attacked clericalism,
more particularly because in it I have always believed that I found
the prop of every despotism, of every vice, of every corruption. The
priest is the personification of lies, the liar is a thief, the thief
is a murderer,--and I could find for the priest a series of infamous
corollaries.”

Thus he read his own character, and we need not subject it to a
searching analysis. In action lay his strength. He trusted instinct
against any argument. Hence the single-minded zeal with which he
plunged into every enterprise; hence, too, his inability to weigh
other policies than his own, and his distrust, often intensified into
unreasoning prejudice, of those who differed from him. If his kindly,
generous nature often made him the dupe of schemers, the wonder is
that they did not beguile him into irreparable excesses. He was
saved partly by a thread of common sense and partly by self-respect
akin to vanity, which kept him constantly on the alert against being
used as a tool. Although modest, he knew so well the grandeur of the
part he was playing that he took no pains to dissemble the childlike
delight he felt at demonstrations of his popularity. The lifelong
champion of democracy, he behaved, in practice, as autocratically as
Cromwell; a believer in dictatorships, never able to work successfully
as yoke-fellow or subordinate to any one else. Like the dreamers,
he could not comprehend that human society, being a growth and not
a manufacture, cannot be suddenly lifted by benevolent manifesto or
patriotic resolution. He scorned parliamentary debates, he reviled
diplomacy, he underrated counsel.

But what he had, he had superlatively: valor, presence of mind,
geniality, unselfishness, magnanimity,--he had all these, the qualities
of a popular soldier, to a degree which made whoever fought with
him worship him. No other man of his time, nor perhaps of any time,
inspired so many human beings with personal affection--as distinguished
from that devotion which other favorite captains have inspired--as he
did. Every one of his soldiers felt that in Garibaldi he had not merely
a commander but a brother; every person who approached him acknowledged
his fascination.

Strip off Garibaldi’s eccentricities, look into his heart, contemplate
his achievements,--we behold a hero of the Homeric brood. Again we
enter the presence of a man of a few elemental traits, whose habit it
was to exhibit his passions without that reserve which belongs to our
sophisticated age. Like Achilles, he wept when he was moved, he sulked
when he was angry. Equally simple was the mainspring of his action. He
obeyed two ideals, and those two of the noblest,--love of liberty and
love of his fellow-men: nay, more, he obeyed them as quickly when they
led into exile, poverty, and danger as when they led him to a conquest
unparalleled in modern history, and to fame in which the wonder and the
affection of the world blended in equal parts.

In the making of Italy it was his mission to rouse some of his
countrymen to a sense of their patriotic duty, and to lead others to
fight for a nation under Victor Emanuel instead of for a faction under
Mazzini. Through him, the forces of royalism and of revolution formed
an alliance which, although it was almost indispensable to the success
of the Italian cause, might never, but for him, have been formed.

Such was Garibaldi, his character, his exploits. Shall we not seek also
for the meaning of his career? Shall we not ask, “To what attributes
of general human nature had his individuality the key?” That conquest
of Sicily was but an episode; long anterior to it was built up the
temperament which might have liberated twenty Sicilies, and which found
a multitude ready to respond to its least signal.

More than half of our nature is emotion. Men may lie sluggish, they
may seem sodden in selfishness, or they may fritter their force away
on petty things. But let the hero come,--the Garibaldi, the embodied
emotion,--and they will know him as light knows light, or lover his
beloved. What just now seemed a dead, sordid mass is tinder, is flame.
The craven legions, bewitched and transformed by his example, will
follow him anywhere, were it to storm the gates of hell! The immense
scope of noble emotion,--is not that the significance, if we seek it,
of Garibaldi’s marvelous influence? And has it ever been more certainly
displayed than in our very century, miscalled prosaic?




PORTRAITS




CARLYLE


Dr. Samuel Johnson, during a long life, cherished an aversion, Platonic
rather than militant, for Scotland and the Scotch. Had any one told him
that out of the land where oats were fed to men there should issue,
soon after his death, a master of romance, an incomparable singer, and
a historian without rival, we can well imagine the emphasis with which
he would have said, “Tut! tut! sir, that is impossible!” Nevertheless,
for the best part of a century Scotland has shed her influence through
the world in the genius of Walter Scott, Robert Burns, and Thomas
Carlyle; and she has taken sweet vengeance on the burly Doctor himself
by creating in James Boswell not only the best of British biographers,
but one so far the best that no other can be named worthy to stand
second to him. We now celebrate the centenary of the last of these
great Scotchmen,--Thomas Carlyle,--and it is fitting that we should
survey his life and work.[4]

[4] First printed in _The Forum_, New York, December, 1895.

In a time like our own, when literature on either side of the
Atlantic lacks original energy; when the best minds are busy with
criticism rather than with creation; when ephemeral story-tellers
and spineless disciples of culture pass for masters, and sincere
but uninspired scholars have our respect but move us not,--we shall
do well to contemplate anew the man who by his personality and his
books has nobly swayed two generations of the English-speaking race,
and who, as the years recede, looms more and more certainly as the
foremost modern British man of letters. Men may look distorted to
their contemporaries, like the figures in a Chinese picture; but Time,
the wisest of painters, sets them in their true perspective, gives
them their just proportions, and reveals their permanent features
in light and shade. And sufficient time has now elapsed for us to
perceive that Carlyle belongs to that thrice-winnowed class of literary
primates whom posterity crowns. He holds in the nineteenth century a
position similar to Johnson’s in the eighteenth, and to Milton’s in the
seventeenth,--each masterful, but in a different way; each typifying
his age without losing his individuality; all brothers in preëminence.

When, for convenience’ sake, we classify Carlyle among men of letters,
we fail to describe him adequately. The phrase suggests too little.
Charles Lamb, the lovable, is the true type of men of letters, who
illuminate, sweeten, delight, and entertain us. Carlyle was far more:
he was a mighty moral force, using many forms of literature--criticism,
biography, history, pamphlets--as its organs of expression. He had,
as the discerning Goethe said of him, “unborrowed principles of
conviction,” by which he tested the world. He felt the compulsion of
a great message intrusted to him. There rings through most of his
utterances the uncompromising “Thus saith the Lord” of the Hebrew
prophets,--a tone which, if it do not persuade us, we call arrogant,
yet which speaks the voice of conscience to those who give it heed.
What, then, was his message?--what those “unborrowed principles of
conviction” by which he judged his time?

Born in the poor village of Ecclefechan on December 4, 1795, his
childhood and youth were spent amid those stern conditions by which,
rather than by affluence, brave, self-reliant, earnest characters are
moulded. His parents were Calvinists, to whom religion was the chief
concern, and who taught him by example the severe virtues of that
grim sect. Next to religion, and its active manifestation in a pious
life, they prized education, begrudging themselves no sacrifices by
which their son might attend the University of Edinburgh. They wished
him to be a minister, but when he came to maturity he recognized
his unfitness for that vocation and abandoned it. They acquiesced
regretfully, little dreaming that he who refused to be confined in some
Annandale pulpit should become the foremost preacher of his age.

Carlyle’s reluctance was rooted in conscientious scruples. He began
by questioning the authority of his Church; he went on to sift the
authority of the Bible. Little by little the whole wondrous fabric
of supernatural Christianity crumbled before him. He could not but
be honest with himself; he could not but see how Hebrew legend had
overgrown the stern ethical code attributed to Moses; how the glosses
of Paul and Augustine and a hundred later religionists had changed or
perverted the simple teaching of Christ. Awestruck, he beheld the God
of his youth vanish out of the world. He wandered in the wilderness of
doubt; he wrestled daily and nightly with despair. And then slowly,
painfully, after brooding through long years, he saw the outlines
of a larger faith emerge from the gloom. He fortified himself by
acknowledging that, since righteousness is eternal, it cannot perish
when we reject whatever opinions some Council of Westminster, of Trent,
or of Nice may have resolved about it.

Only earnest souls who have experienced the wrench which comes when
we first break away from the bondage of an artificial religion, and
perceive that the moral law may be something very different from
dogmas, know the pang it costs. The dread of losing the truth when
errors are thrown over--nay, the apparent hopelessness of being able
to decide what is truth--causes many to hesitate, and some to turn
back. Carlyle was not, of course, the first in Britain to tread the
desolate path from Superstition into Rationalism. In the eighteenth
century--to go no farther back--two very eminent minds had preceded
him; but in both Hume and Gibbon the intellectual predominated over
the moral nature, and to temperaments like theirs the pangs of new
birth are always less acute. It is because in Carlyle the moral nature
preponderated--intense, fiery, and enduring--that he became the
spokesman of myriads who since him have had a similar experience.

If we were to hazard a generalization which should sum up the
nineteenth century, might we not affirm that the chief business of
the century has been to establish a basis of conduct in harmony with
what we actually know of the laws governing the universe? Hitherto,
for ages together, men have not consciously done this, but they have
accepted standards handed down to them by earlier men, who compounded
these standards out of little knowledge, much ignorance, legend,
and hearsay. Skeptics there have always been, but usually, like the
skeptics who flourished in the last century, they have differed from
the doubters in ours by the degree of their moral intensity. Whether
we turn to Carlyle or to George Eliot, we find each tirelessly busy in
substituting for the worn-out tenets of the past, springs of belief and
conduct worthy to satisfy a more enlightened conscience.

Here, then, we have the corner-stone of Carlyle’s influence. Our world
is a moral world; conscience and righteousness are eternal realities,
independent of the vicissitudes of any church. If we seek for a
definite statement of Carlyle’s creed, we shall be disappointed; he
never formulated any. After breaking loose from one prison, he would
have scoffed at the idea of voluntarily locking himself up in another.
He held that to possess a moral sense is to possess its justification;
that conscience is a fact transcending logic just as consciousness or
life itself does. In the presence of this supreme fact he cared little
for its genealogy. The immanence of God was to him an ever-present,
awful verity.

Likewise, when we come to examine his philosophy, we discover that he
constructed no formal system. He absorbed the doctrine of Kant and
his followers, and may be classed, by those who insist that every
man shall have a label, among the transcendentalists: but his main
interest was the application of moral laws to life, the trial of men
and institutions in the court of conscience, rather than the exercise
of the intellect in metaphysical speculations. The mystery of evil
may not be explained for some ages, if ever; while we argue about it,
evil grows: the one indispensable duty for all of us, he would say, is
to combat evil in ourselves and in society now and here. The stanch
seaman, when his ship founders, does not waste time in meditating why
it should be that water will sink a ship, but he lashes together a
raft, if haply he may thereby come off safe.

In these respects we behold Carlyle a true representative of his time.
Before the vast bulk of sin and sorrow and pain he did not cower; he
would fight it manfully. But the smoke of battle darkened him. The
spectacle of mankind, dwelling in Eternity, yet ignorant of their
heritage, pursuing “desires whose purpose ends in Time;” of souls
engaged from dawn to dusk of their swift-fleeting existence, not on
soul’s business, but on body’s business, worshiping idols they know
to be false, deceiving, persecuting, slaying each other,--confirmed
a tendency to pessimism to which his early Calvinism had predisposed
him. But Carlyle’s pessimism must not be confounded with Swift’s
misanthropy, or with Leopardi’s blank despair, or with the despicable
Schopenhauer’s cosmic negation of good. Carlyle was neither cynic nor
misanthrope. He might exclaim with Ecclesiastes, “Vanity of vanities,
all is vanity!” but he would mean that the ways and works of man are
vain in comparison with his possibilities, and with the incalculable
worth of righteousness. “Man’s unhappiness, as I construe,” he says,
“comes of his greatness; it is because there is an Infinite in him
which, with all his cunning, he cannot quite bury under the Finite.
Always there is a black spot in our sunshine: it is even the _Shadow of
Ourselves_.”

These being the elements of Carlyle’s moral nature, let us look for a
moment at the world which he was to test by his “unborrowed principles
of conviction.” He came on the scene during the decade of reaction
which followed the battle of Waterloo. Official Europe, confounding
the ambition of Napoleon with the causes underlying the Revolution,
supposed that in crushing one it had destroyed the other. The motto of
the Old Régime had been _Privilege_, of the New it was _Merit_. The
revived political fashions of the eighteenth century, though cut by
such elegant tailors as Metternich, Castlereagh, and Polignac, chafed a
generation which had grown used to a freer costume. At any time there
yawns between the ideals and the practices of society a discrepancy
which provokes the censure of the philosopher and the sarcasm of the
cynic; but in a time like the Restoration, when some men consciously
repudiated and none sincerely believed the system thrust upon them,
the chasm between profession and performance must open wider still,
revealing not only the noble failures born of earnest but baffled
endeavor, but also all the hideous growths of hypocrisy, of deceptions,
insincerities, and intellectual fraud. And in very truth the Old Régime
resuscitated by Europe’s oligarchs was doubly condemned,--first, as
being unfitted to the new age; and, secondly, as having marked in the
eighteenth century, when it flourished, the logical conclusion of a
political and social epoch. In 1820 the trunk and main branches of the
tree of Feudalism were dead: he was not a wise man who imagined that
the still surviving upper branches would long keep green.

Not alone in the political constitution of society were momentous
changes operating. They but represented the attempt of man to work
out, in his civic and social relations, ideas which had already
penetrated his religion and his philosophy. Distil those ideas to
their inmost essence, its name is _Liberty_. The old Church, whether
Roman or Protestant, lay rotting at anchor in the land-locked bayou
of Authority; and the pioneers of the new convictions, abandoning her
and her cargo of antiquated dogmas, had pushed on across intervening
morasses to the shore of the illimitable sea; yea, they were launching
thereon their skiffs of modern pattern, and resolutely, hopefully
steering whither their consciences pointed. Better the storms of the
living ocean than the miasma of that stagnant, scum-breeding pool!
But a church is of all institutions that to which men cling most
stubbornly, paying it lip-service long after its doctrines have ceased
to shape their conduct or to lift their aspirations; trying to believe,
in spite of their unbelief, that it will continue to be to them a
source of strength as it once was to their fathers; preserving forms,
but veneering them with contradictory meanings; coming at last to
declare that an institution must be kept, if for no other reason than
because it once fulfilled the purposes for which it is now inadequate.
The aroma of association has for some minds the potency of original
inspiration. Who can ponder on life without perceiving that whereas
in their business, their possessions, their love, and their hate,
men resent dictation; in matters beyond the scope of experience, and
consequently beyond proof,--as the conditions of a future life,--men
credulously accept the guidance of others quite as ignorant as
themselves, from whom in their business or their passions they would
submit to no interference?

Needless to say the revived Old Régime intrenched itself behind
whatever church it found standing,--in Prussia the Lutheran, in England
the Anglican, in Scotland the Calvinist, in the Latin countries the
Roman. The ecclesiastical institution might not humanize the masses,
but at least it held them in check; it might not spiritualize the
classes, but it taught them that in rallying to its support they were
best guarding their own privileges. Metternich, whom we call the
representative of the Restoration, did not scruple to announce that,
as the dangers which threatened Church and State were identical, the
Church could be saved only by upholding the State. Not for the first
time in history was the priest a policeman in disguise.

Into this world of transition Thomas Carlyle strode with his store of
unborrowed principles. Right or wrong, his convictions were his own;
therefore they were realities that need not fear a conflict with ghosts
of dead convictions and insincerities.

Naturally, one of the first facts that amazed him was the monstrous
unreality in that transitional society. By the census the people of
Great Britain were rated as Christians; by their acts they seemed
little better than barbarians. What availed the Established Church, in
which livings were assigned at the pleasure of some dissolute noble,
fox-hunting parsons were given the cure of souls, and worldlings or
unbelievers rose to be bishops? Could the loudest protestations explain
the existence of great, gaunt, brutalized masses, beyond the pale of
human charity; every _horse_ sleek, well lodged, and well fed, but
innumerable _men_ dying of hunger or lodged in the almshouse? Can that
be true civilization in which the various constituents recognize no
interdependence, and only a few usurp benefits which are pernicious
unless they be free to all? Respectability, and not virtue,--that,
Carlyle declared, was John Bull’s ideal, and he opened fire upon its
chief allies, Sham and Cant. He spared no prejudices, he respected no
institutions. With sarcasm until then unknown in English, he unmasked
one artificiality after another, disclosing the cruelty or the
hypocrisy which lurked behind it, and setting over against it the true
nature of the thing it pretended to be. To interpret such conditions by
the criterion of conscience was to condemn them.

But Carlyle’s mission was not merely to destroy: he shattered error
in order that the clogged fountain of truth might once more gush
forth. Before eyes long dimmed with gazing on insincerity, he would
hold up shining patterns of sincerity; souls groping for guidance,
he would stay and comfort by precedents of strength; hearts pursuing
false idols, he would chasten by examples of truth. Men talked--and
nowhere more pragmatically than in the churches--as if God, after
having imparted his behests to a few Hebrews ages ago, had retired into
some remote empyrean, and busied himself no more with the affairs of
men. But to Carlyle the immanence of God was an ever-present reality,
manifesting itself throughout all history and in every individual
conscience, but nowise more clearly than in the careers of great men.

Thus he made it his business to set before his contemporaries models
worthy of veneration, for he recognized that worship is a primary
moral need. “Great men,” he says, “are the inspired (speaking and
acting) Texts of that divine _Book of Revelations_, whereof a Chapter
is completed from epoch to epoch, and by some named _History_.”
In this spirit he introduced Goethe, the latest of the heroes, to
English readers, as the man who, from amid chaos similar to that which
bewildered them, had climbed to a position where life could be lived
nobly, rationally, well. “Close your Byron, open your Goethe,” was his
advice to those in whom Byron’s mingled defiance and sentimentality
found an echo. He showed in Cromwell how religious zeal is something
very different from a phantom faith. He laid bare the truth in Mahomet.
He made Luther live again. And all to the end that he might convince
his dazed contemporaries that in no age, if we look deeply, shall we
look in vain for concrete, living examples of those qualities which
are indispensable to right action; that salvation--the purging of the
character--is won by exercising virtues, and not by conforming to a
stereotyped routine; that the authority of conscience is a present
fact, not a mere mechanism which God wound up and gave to the Hebrews,
and has been transmitted in poor repair by them to us. As an antidote
to sterilizing doubt, Carlyle prescribed the simple remedy which sums
up the wisdom of all the sages: “Do the Duty which lies nearest thee,
which thou knowest to be a Duty! Thy second Duty will already have
become clearer.” In this fashion did Carlyle discharge his mission as
a moral regenerator. We live as individuals, and to the individual
conscience he made his appeal, caring little for the organization of
principles into institutions. Rather, like every individualist, did
he incline to deprecate the numbing effect of institutions. Let each
unit be righteous, in order that whatever the collective units shall
establish may be righteous too.

Bearing this in mind, we shall understand Carlyle’s attitude toward
the great social and intellectual movements of his time. The watchword
which had inspired generous minds at the end of the last century
was _Liberty_, and after the thunders of the Napoleonic wars that
had drowned it died away, it rang out its summons more clearly than
before, never again to be quite deadened, despite all the efforts of
the Old Régime. The application of the theory of Liberty to government
resulted in setting up Democracy as the ideal political system.
Since every citizen in the State bears, directly or indirectly, his
fraction of the burden of taxation, and since he is affected by the
laws, and interested, even to the point of laying down his life, in
the preservation of his country, Democracy declares that he should
have an equal part with every other citizen in determining what the
taxes and policy of his State shall be; and it thrusts upon him the
responsibility of choosing his own governors and representatives. To
Carlyle this ideal seemed a chimera. Honest, just, and intelligent
government is of all social contrivances the most difficult: by
what miracle, therefore, shall the sum of the opinions of a million
voters, severally ignorant, be intelligent? As well blow a million
soap-bubbles, each thinner than gossamer, and expect that collectively
they will be hard as steel! Or, admitting that the representatives
Demos chooses be not so incompetent as itself, how shall they be kept
disinterested? Their very numbers not only make them unmanageable,
but so divide responsibility that any individual among them can
shift from his own shoulders the blame for corrupt or harmful laws.
Moreover, popular government means party government, and that means
compromise. To Carlyle, principles were either right or wrong, and
between right and wrong he saw no neutral ground for compromise. Party
government cleaves to expediency, which at best is only a half-truth;
but half-truth is also half-error, and any infinitesimal taint of error
vitiates the truth to which it clings. Finally, Democracy substitutes
a new, many-headed tyranny--more difficult to destroy because
many-headed--for the tyranny it would abolish.

Such objections Carlyle urged with consummate vigor. He foresaw, too,
many of the other evils which have accompanied the development of
this system to impair its efficacy, such as the rise of a class of
professional politicians, of political sophists, of corrupt “bosses,”
expert in the art of wheedling the ignorant many, and thereby of
frustrating the initial purpose of the system. His opposition did not
spring from desire to see the masses down-trodden, but from conviction
that they need guidance and enlightenment, and that they are therefore
no more competent to choose their own law-makers than children are to
choose their own teachers. In knowledge of public affairs Demos is
still a child, innocent, well-intentioned, if you will; but ignorant,
and by this system left to the mercy of the unscrupulous.

This brings us to consider the charge that Carlyle, in his exaltation
of the Strong Man, worshiped crude force. Let us grant that on the
surface the accusation seems plausible; but when we seek deeper, we
shall discover that he exalts Cromwell and Frederick, not because
they were despots, but because, in his judgment, they knew better
than any other man, or group of men, in their respective countries,
how to govern. Their ability was their justification; their force,
but the symbol of their ability. “Weakness”--Carlyle was fond of
quoting--“is the only misery.” What is ignorance but weakness (through
lack of training) of the intellect? In the incessant battle of
life,--and few men have been more constantly impressed than Carlyle
by the battle-aspect of life,--weakness of whatever kind succumbs to
strength. Evil perpetually marshals its forces against Good,--positive,
aggressive forces, to be overcome neither by inertia, nor indifference,
nor half-hearted compromise, but by hurling stronger forces of Good
against them. Interpreting Carlyle’s views thus, we perceive why he
extolled the Strong Man and distrusted the aggregate ignorance of
Democracy. Furthermore, we must not forget that he never considered
politics the prime business of life: first, make the masses righteous,
next, enlightened, and then they will naturally organize a righteous
and enlightened government. When Carlyle rejoined to the zealots of
Democracy or other panaceas, “Adopt your new system if you must, will
not the same old human units operate it? Were it not wiser to perfect
them first?”--he antagonized the spirit of the age: wisely or not,
only time can show. Those of us who would reject his arguments would
nevertheless admit that Democracy is still on trial.

With equal fearlessness he attacked the cheap optimism based on
material prosperity, which brags of the enormous commercial expansion
made possible by the invention of machinery; which boasts of the rapid
increase in population--so many more million mouths to feed and bodies
to clothe, and so much more food and raiment produced--from decade to
decade. These facts, he insisted, are not of themselves evidences of
progress. Your inventions procure greater comfort, a more exuberant
luxury; but do comfort and luxury necessarily build up character?--do
they not rather unbuild it? Are your newly bred millions of bodies
more than bodies? Take a census of souls, has _their_ number increased?
Though your steam-horse carries you fifty miles an hour, have you
thereby become more virtuous? Though the lightning bears your messages,
have you gained bravery? Of old, your aristocracy were soldiers: is
the brewer who rises from his vats to the House of Lords--is any
other man owing his promotion to the tradesman’s skill in heaping
wealth--more worshipful than they? Let us not say that this amazing
industrial expansion may not conduce to the uplifting of character; but
let us strenuously affirm that it is of itself no indication of moral
progress, and that, if it fail to be accompanied by a corresponding
spiritual growth, it will surely lead society by the Byzantine
high-road to effeminacy, exhaustion, and death.

A different gospel, this, from that which Carlyle’s great rival,
Macaulay, was preaching,--Macaulay, who lauded the inventor of a useful
machine above all philosophers! Different from the optimism--which
gauges by bulk--of the newspapers and the political haranguers!
Different, because true! Yet, though it sounded harsh, it stirred
consciences,--which smug flatterings and gratulations can never do;
and it gave a tremendous impetus to that movement which has come
to overshadow all others,--the movement to reconstruct society
on a basis, not of privilege, not of bare legality, but of mutual
obligations.

Any inventory, however brief, of Carlyle’s substance, would be
incomplete without some reference to his quarrel with Science. To
Science a large part of the best intelligence of our age has been
devoted,--a sign of the breaking away of the best minds from the
cretinizing quibbles of theology into fields where knowledge can
be ascertained. It is a truism that Science has advanced farther
in our century than in all preceding time. By what paradox, then,
should Carlyle slight its splendid achievements? Was it not because
he revolted from the materialistic tendency which he believed to be
inseparable from Science, a tendency which predominated a generation
ago more than it does to-day? Materialism Carlyle regarded as a
Gorgon’s head, the sight of which would inevitably petrify man’s moral
nature.

Moreover, Carlyle’s method differed radically from that of the
scientific man, who describes processes and investigates relations,
but does not explain causes. Pledged to his allegiance to tangible
facts, the man of science looks at things serially, pays heed to an
individual as a link in an endless chain rather than as an individual,
lays emphasis on averages rather than on particulars. To him this
method is alone honest, and, thanks to it, a single science to-day
commands more authenticated facts than all the sciences had fifty
years ago. But there are facts of supreme importance which, up to the
present at least, this method does not solve. The mystery of the origin
of life still confronts us. Consciousness, the Sphinx, still mutely
challenges the caravans which file before her. The revelations of
Science seem, under one aspect, but descriptions of the habitations of
life from the protoplasmic cell up to the human body. Immense though
the value of such a register be, we are, not deceived into imagining
that it explains ultimates. How came life into protoplasm at all?
Whence each infinitesimal increment of life, recognizable at last in
the budding of some new organ? And when we arrive at man, whence came
his personality? Each of us is not only one in a genealogical series
stretching back to the unreasoning, conscienceless _amœba_, but a
clearly defined individual, a little world in himself, to whom his
love, his sorrow, his pain and joy and terror, transcend in vividness
all the experiences of all previous men: a microcosm, having its own
immediate relations--absolute relations--with the infinite macrocosm.
Science, bent on establishing present laws, measures by æons, counts by
millions, and has warrant for ignoring your brief span or mine; but to
you and me these few decades are all in all. However it may fare with
the millions, you and I have vital, pressing needs, to supply which the
experience of the entire animal kingdom can give us no help. Upon these
most human needs Carlyle fastened, to the exclusion of what he held to
be unnecessary to the furtherance of our spiritual welfare. He busied
himself with ultimates and the Absolute. Not the stages of development,
but the development attained; not the pedigree of conscience, but
conscience as the supreme present reality; not the species, but the
individual,--were his absorbing interests.

Thus we see how Carlyle approached the great questions of life
invariably as a moralist. Mere erudition, which too often tends away
from the human, did not attract him. Science, which he beheld still
unspiritualized, he undervalued: what boots it to know the “mileage
and tonnage” of the universe, when our foremost need is to build up
character? In politics, in philosophy, in religion, likewise, he set
this consideration above all others: before its august presence outward
reforms dwindled into insignificance.

Such was the substance of Carlyle’s message. Remarkable as is its
range, profound as is its import, it required for its consummation the
unique powers of utterance which Carlyle possessed. Among the masters
of British prose he holds a position similar to that of Michael Angelo
among the masters of painting. Power, elemental, titanic, rushing
forth from an inexhaustible moral nature, yet guided by art, is the
quality in both which first startles our wonder. The great passages in
Carlyle’s works, like the Prophets and Sibyls of the Sixtine Chapel,
have no peers: they form a new species, of which they are the only
examples. They seem to defy the ordinary canons of criticism; but if
they break the rules it is because whoever made the rules did not
foresee the possibility of such works. Transcendent Power, let it
take whatever shape it will,--volcano, torrent, Cæsar, Buonarotti,
Carlyle,--proclaims: “Here I am,--a fact: make of me what you can! You
shall not ignore me!”

Of Carlyle’s style we may say that, whether one likes it or not, one
can as little ignore it as fail to perceive that he makes it serve,
with equal success, whatever purpose he requires. It can explain, it
can laugh, it can draw tears; it can inveigh, argue, exhort; it can
tell a story or preach a sermon. Carlyle has, it is computed, the
largest vocabulary in English prose. His endowment of imagination and
of humor beggars all his competitors. None of them has invented so
many new images, or given to old images such fresh pertinence. Your
first impression, on turning to other writings after his, is that they
are pale, and dim, and cold: such is the fascination inalienable from
power. Excess there may be in so vehement a genius; repetition there
must be in utterances poured out during sixty years; an individuality
so intense must have an equally individual manner; but there is,
rightly speaking, no mannerism, for mannerism implies affectation, and
Carlyle’s primal instinct was sincerity. His expression is an organic
part of himself, and shares his merits and defects.

Carlyle won his first reputation as a historian; singularly enough, his
achievements in history have temporarily suffered a partial eclipse.
Teachers in our colleges refer to them dubiously or not at all. Does
the fault lie with these same teachers, or with Carlyle? A glance at
the methods of the school of historical students which has sprung up
during the last generation will explain the disagreement.

History, like every other branch of intellectual activity, has
responded to the doctrines of Evolution. That most fertile working
hypothesis has proved, when applied here, not less fruitful than
in other fields. It has caused the annals of the past to be
reinvestigated, every document, record, and monument to be gathered
up, and the results have been set forth from the new point of view.
Evolutionary science, as we saw above, fixes its attention primarily
on the processes of development, and regards the individual, in
comparison with a species or the race, as a negligible quantity. A
similar spirit has guided historical students. They have turned away
from “great captains with their guns and drums,” away from figure-head
monarchs, away from the achievements of even the mightiest individuals,
to scrutinize human action in its collective forms, the rise and
supremacy and fall of institutions, the growth of parties, the waxing
and waning of organisms like Church or State, in whose many-centuried
existence individual careers are swallowed up. Using the methods of
Science, these students have persuaded themselves that history also is
a science, which, in truth, it can never be. Judicial temper, patience,
veracity,--the qualities which they rightly magnify,--were not invented
by them, nor are these the only qualities required in writing history.
Speaking broadly, facts lie within the reach of any diligent searcher.
But a fact is a mere pebble in a brook until some David comes to put
it in his sling. True history is the arrangement and interpretation of
facts, and--more difficult still--insight into motives: for this there
must be art, there must be imagination.

To the disciples of the “scientific school” it may be said that the
heaping up of great stores of facts--the collection of manuscripts,
the cataloguing of documents, the shoveling all together in thick
volumes prefaced by forty pages of bibliography, each paragraph
floating on a deep, viscous stream of notes, each volume bulging with a
score of appendices--is in no high sense history, but the accumulation
of material therefor. It bears the same relation to history as the
work of the quarryman to that of the architect; most worthy in itself,
and evidently indispensable, but not the same. Stand before some noble
edifice,--Lincoln Cathedral, for instance, with its incomparable site,
its symmetry and majestic proportions: scan it until you feel its
personality and realize that this is a living idea, the embodiment of
strength and beauty and aspiration and awe,--and you will not confound
the agency of the stone-cutters who quarried the blocks with that of
the architect in whose imagination the design first rose. Neither
should there be confusion between the historical hodman and the
historian.

Indubitably, history of the highest kind may be written from the
evolutionist’s standpoint, but as yet works of the lower variety
predominate. Therefore, in a time when the development of institutions
chiefly commands attention, Carlyle, who magnifies individuals, will
naturally be neglected. But in reality, histories of both kinds are
needed to supplement each other. All institutions originate and exist
in the activities of individuals. The hero, the great man, makes
concrete and human what would otherwise be abstract. Environment does
not wholly explain him. It is easy to show wherein he resembles his
fellows; that difference from them which constitutes his peculiar,
original gift is the real mystery, which the study of resemblances
cannot solve. Men will cease to be men when personality shall lose its
power over them.

Accepting, therefore, the inherent antagonism in the two points of
view,--antagonism which implies parity and not the necessary extinction
of one by the other,--we can judge Carlyle fairly. Among historians he
excels in vividness. Perhaps more than any other who has attempted to
chronicle the past, he has visualized the past. The men he describes
are not lay figures, with wooden frames and sawdust vitals, to be
called Frenchmen or Germans or Englishmen according as a different
costume is draped upon them; but human beings, each swayed by his
own passions, striving and sinning, and incessantly alive. They are
actors in a real drama: such as they are, Carlyle has seen them; such
as he has seen, he depicts them. To go back to Carlyle from one of
the “scientific historians” is like passing from a museum of mummies
out into the throng of living men. If his portraits differ from
those of another artist, it does not follow that they are false. In
ordinary affairs, two witnesses may give a different report of the same
event, yet each may, from his angle of observation, have given exact
testimony. Absolute truth, who shall utter it? Since history of the
highest, architectonic kind is interpretation, its value must depend
on the character of the interpreter. Not to be greatly esteemed, we
suspect, are those grubbers among the rubbish heaps who imagine that
Carlyle’s interpretation of the French Revolution, or of Cromwell, or
of Frederick, may be ignored. Character, insight, and imagination went
to the production of works like these: they require kindred gifts to be
appreciated.

Neither of Carlyle’s portrait gallery, unparalleled in range, in
which from each picture an authentic human face looks out at us; nor
of his masterpieces of narration, long since laureled even by the
unwilling,--is there space here to speak. In portraiture he used
Rembrandt’s methods: seizing on structural and characteristic traits,
he displays them in strong, full light, and heightens the effect by
surrounding them with shadows. As a biographer he succeeded equally
well in telling the story of Schiller and that of John Sterling: the
latter a most difficult task, as it must always be to make intelligible
to strangers a beautiful character whose charm and force are felt by
his friends, but have no proportionate expression in his writings. As
an essayist he has left models in many branches: “Mirabeau,” “Johnson,”
“Goethe,” “Characteristics,” “Burns,” “History,” stand as foothills
before his more massive works. His is creative criticism, never
restricted, like the criticism of the schools, to purely literary,
academic considerations, but penetrating to the inmost heart of a book
or a man, to discover what deepest human significance may there be
found. A later generation has, as we have noted, adopted a different
treatment in all these fields: bending itself to trace the ancestry and
to map out the environment of men of genius; concentrating attention on
the chain rather than its links; necessarily belittling the individual
to aggrandize the mass. It behooves us, while we recognize the value of
this treatment as a new means to truth, not to forget that it is not
the only one. By and by--perhaps the time is already at hand--we shall
recognize that the other method, which deals with the individual as an
ultimate rather than in relation to a series, which is human rather
than abstract, cannot be neglected without injury to truth. Either
alone is partial; each corrects and enlightens the other.

Meanwhile we will indulge in no vain prophecies as to Carlyle’s
probable rank with posterity. That a man’s influence shall be permanent
depends first on his having grasped elemental facts in human nature,
and next on his having given them an enduring form. Systems struggle
into existence, mature, and pass away, but the needs of the individual
remain. Though we were to wake up to-morrow in Utopia, the next day
Utopia would have vanished, unless we ourselves had been miraculously
transformed. To teach the individual soul the way of purification;
to make it a worthy citizen of Eternity which laps it around; to
kindle its conscience; to fortify it with courage; to humanize it with
sympathy; to make it true,--this has been Carlyle’s mission, performed
with all the vigor of a spirit “in earnest with the universe,” and
with intellectual gifts most various, most powerful, most rare. It
will be strange if, in time to come, souls with these needs, which
are perpetual, lose contact with him. But, whatever befall in the
future, Carlyle’s past is secure. He has influenced the _élite_ of
two generations: men as different as Tyndall and Ruskin, as Mill and
Tennyson, as Browning and Arnold and Meredith, have felt the infusion
of his moral force. And to the new generation we would say: “Open your
‘Sartor;’ there you shall hear the deepest utterances of Britain in our
century on matters which concern you most; there, peradventure, you
shall discover yourselves.”




TINTORET.[5]

[5] First printed in _The Atlantic Monthly_, June, 1891.


I. HIS LIFE.

We have no authentic biography of Tintoret. The men of his epoch
hungered for fame, but it was by the splendor of their genius, and not
by the details of their personal lives, that they hoped to be known to
posterity. The days of judicious Boswells and injudicious Froudes had
not then come to pass; so that we are now as ignorant of the lives of
the painters of the great school which flourished at Venice during the
sixteenth century as of the lives of that group of poets who flourished
in England during the reigns of Elizabeth and James I. Nevertheless,
Providence sees to it that nothing essential be lost; and, in the
absence of memoirs, the masterpiece itself becomes a memoir for those
who have insight. In art, works which proceed from the soul, and not
from the skill, are truthful witnesses to the character of the artist.
“For by the greatness and beauty of the creatures proportionably the
maker of them is seen.” It is not wholly to be regretted, therefore,
that the meagreness of our information concerning Tintoret compels us
to study his paintings the more earnestly. The lives of artists are
generally scanty in those adventures and dramatic incidents which make
entertaining biographies. Men of action express their character in
deeds: poems, statues, paintings, are the deeds of artists. Blot out a
few pages of history, and what remains of Hannibal or Scipio? But we
should know much about Michael Angelo or Raphael from their paintings,
had no written word about either come down to us.

The year of Tintoret’s birth is variously stated as 1512 and 1518.
Even his name has been a cause of dispute to antiquaries; but since he
was content to call and sign himself Jacopo (or Giacomo) Robusti, we
may accept this as correct. His father was a dyer of silk (_tintore_),
and as the boy early helped at that trade he got the nickname _il
tintoretto_, “the little dyer.” Vasari, also born in 1512, is the only
contemporary who furnishes an account of Tintoret. Unsatisfactory
and well-nigh ridiculous it is, if we remember that by 1574, when
Vasari died, Tintoret had already produced many of his masterpieces.
Yet the Florentine painter-historian did not accord to him so much
as a separate chapter in his “Lives of the Most Excellent Painters,”
but inserted his few pages of criticism and gossip, as if by an
afterthought, in the sketch of the forgotten Battista Franco. Since
much that has been subsequently written about Tintoret is merely a
repetition of Vasari’s shallow opinions, which created a mythical
Tintoret, just as English reviewers created a mythical “Johnny Keats,”
long believed to be the real Keats, I quote a few sentences from Vasari.

“There still lives in Venice,” he says, “a painter called Jacopo
Tintoretto, who has amused himself with all accomplishments, and
particularly with playing music and several instruments, and is,
besides, pleasing in all his actions; but in matters of painting he
is extravagant, full of caprice, dashing, and resolute, the most
terrible brain that painting ever had, as you may see in all his works,
and in his compositions of fantastic subjects, done by him diversely
and contrary to the custom of other painters. Nay, he has capped
extravagance with the novel and whimsical inventions and odd devices of
his intellect, which he has used haphazard and without design, as if to
show that this art is a trifle.... And because in his youth he showed
himself in many fair works of great judgment, if he had recognized the
great endowment which he received from nature, and had fortified it
with study and judgment, as those have done who have followed the fine
manner of his elders, and if he had not (as he has done) cut loose
from practiced rules, he would have been one of the greatest painters
that ever Venice had; yet, for all this, we would not deny that he
is a proud and good painter, with an alert, capricious, and refined
spirit.”[6]

[6] Vasari’s condescending estimate of Tintoret may remind some readers
of Voltaire’s patronizing estimate of Shakespeare: “It seems as though
nature had mingled in the brain of Shakespeare the greatest conceivable
strength and grandeur with whatever witless vulgarity can devise
that is lowest and most detestable;” and much more of the same kind
about the “intoxicated barbarian,” which will seem pitiful or amusing
according to the humor of the reader.

Evidently, the originality of this “terrible” Tintoret could not be
understood by Vasari, who imagined that he followed successfully the
fine manner of his elders in the academic proprieties. But there is no
hint that Tintoret heeded this generous advice. Perhaps it came too
late,--at threescore years one’s character and methods are no longer
plastic; perhaps it had been too often reiterated, for Tintoret had
been assured from his youth up that, if he would only be instructed
by his fellow-artists, he might hope to become a great painter like
them. But, from the first glimpse we get of this perverse Tintoret
to the last, one characteristic dominates all,--obedience to his own
genius. Censure, coaxing, fashion, envy, popularity, seem never to
have swerved him. Like every consummate genius, he drew his inspiration
directly from within. “Conform! conform! or be written down a fool!”
has always been the greeting of the world to the self-centred,
spirit-guided few. “Right or wrong, I cannot otherwise,” has been their
invariable reply.

By the time that Tintoret made his first essays in painting, the
Venetian school was the foremost in the world. The great Leonardo had
died in France, leaving behind him in Lombardy a company of pupils who
were rapidly enslaved by a graceless mannerism. Even earlier than this,
the best talents of Umbria had wandered into feeble eccentricities,
or had been absorbed by Raphael’s large humanism. Raphael himself was
dead, at the height of his popularity and in the prime of his powers,
and his disciples were hurrying along the road of imitation into the
desert of formalism. Michael Angelo alone survived in central Italy,
a Titan too colossal, too individual, to be a schoolmaster, although
there were many of the younger brood (Vasari among them) who called
him _Maestro_, and fancied that the grimaces and contortions they drew
sprang from force and grandeur such as his. But in Venice painting
was flourishing; there it had the exuberance and the strength, the
joyousness and the splendor, of an art approaching its meridian. John
Bellini, the eldest of the great Venetians, had died; but not before
there had issued from his studio a wonderful band of disciples, some of
whom were destined to surpass him. Giorgione, one of these, had been
cut off in his thirty-fourth year, having barely had time to give to
the world a few handsels of his genius. The fame of Titian had risen
to that height where it has ever since held its station. A troop of
lesser men--lesser in comparison with him--were embellishing Venice, or
carrying the magic of her art to other parts of Italy.

The tradition runs that the boy Tintoret amused himself by drawing
charcoal figures on the wall, then coloring them with his father’s
dyes: whence his parents were persuaded that he was born to be a
painter. Accordingly, his father got permission for him to work in
Titian’s studio, the privilege most coveted by every apprentice of the
time. His stay there was brief, however; hardly above ten days, if the
legend be true which tells how Titian returned one day and saw some
strange sketches, and how, learning that Tintoret had made them, he
bade another pupil send him away. Some say that Titian already foresaw
a rival in the youthful draughtsman; others, that the figures were
in a style so contrary to the master’s that he discerned no good in
them, and judged that it would be useless for Tintoret to pursue an
art in which he could never excel. Let the dyer’s son go back to his
vats: there he could at least earn a livelihood. We are loth to believe
that Titian, whose reputation was established, could have been moved
by jealousy of a mere novice: we must remember, nevertheless, that
even when Tintoret had come to maturity, and was reckoned among the
leading painters of Venice, Titian treated him coldly, and apparently
thwarted and disparaged him. Few artists, indeed, have risen quite
above the marsh-mists of jealousy. Their ambition regards fame as
a fixed quantity, and, like Goldsmith, they look upon any one who
acquires a part of this treasure as having diminished the amount they
can appropriate for themselves. But in Tintoret’s great soul envy could
find no place. “Enmities he has none,” as Emerson says of Goethe.
“Enemy of him you may be: if so, you shall teach him aught which your
good-will cannot, were it only what experience will accrue from your
ruin. Enemy and welcome, but enemy on high terms. He cannot hate
anybody; his time is worth too much.”

Under whom Tintoret studied, after being thrust off by Titian, we are
not told. Probably he had no acknowledged preceptor except himself.
Already his aim was at the highest. On the wall of his studio he
blazoned the motto, “_The drawing of Michael Angelo and the coloring
of Titian_.” To blend the excellence of each in a supreme unity,--that
was his ambition. Titian might shut him out from personal instruction,
but Titian’s works in the churches and palaces were within reach.
Tintoret studied them, copied them, and conjured from them the secret
their master wished to hide. Having procured casts of Michael Angelo’s
statues in the Medicean Chapel at Florence, he made drawings of them
in every position. Far into the night he worked by lamplight, watching
the play of light and shade, the outlines and the relief. He drew also
from living models, and learned anatomy by dissecting corpses. He
invented “little figures of wax and of clay, clothing them with bits of
cloth, examining accurately, by the folds of the dresses, the position
of the limbs; and these models he distributed among little houses and
perspectives composed of planks and cardboard, and he put lights in the
windows.” From the rafters he suspended other manikins, and thereby
learned the foreshortening proper to figures painted on ceilings and
on high places. So indefatigable, so careful, was this man, who is
known to posterity as “the thunderbolt of painters”! In his prime, he
astonished all by his power of elaborating his ideas at a speed at
which few masters can even sketch; but that power was nourished by his
infinite painstaking in those years of obscurity.

Wherever Tintoret might learn, thither he went. Now we hear of him
working with the masons at Cittadella; now taking his seat on the bench
of the journeymen painters in St. Mark’s Place; now watching some
illustrious master decorating the façade of a palace. No commission was
too humble for him: who knows how many signboards he may have furnished
in his ’prentice days? His first recorded works were two portraits,--of
himself holding a bas-relief in his hand, and of his brother playing a
cithern. As the custom then was, he exhibited these in the Merceria,
that narrow lane of shops which leads from St. Mark’s to the Rialto.
What the latest novel or yesterday’s political speech is to us, that
was a new picture to the Venetians. Their innate sense of color and
beauty and their familiarity with the best works of art made them ready
critics. They knew whether the colors on a canvas were in harmony, as
the average Italian of to-day can tell whether a singer keeps the key,
and doubtless they were vivacious in their discussions. Tintoret’s
portraits attracted attention. They were painted with nocturnal lights
and shadows, “in so terrible a manner that they amazed every one,” even
to the degree of suggesting to one beholder the following epigram:

  “Si Tinctorectus noctis sic lucet in umbris,
   Exorto faciet quid radiante die?”[7]

[7] If Tintoret shines thus in the shades of night, what will he do
when radiant day has risen?

Soon after, he displayed on the Rialto bridge another picture, by
which the surprise already excited was increased, and he began
thenceforward to get employment in the smaller churches and convents.
Important commissions which brought wealth and honors were reserved
for Titian and a few favorites; but Tintoret rejected no offer. Only
let him express those ideas swarming in his imagination: he asked no
further recompense. He seems to have been early noted for the practice
of taking no pay at all, or only enough to provide his paints and
canvas,--a practice which brought upon him the abuse of his fellows,
who cried out that he would ruin their profession. But there was then
no law to prohibit artist or artisan from working for any price he
chose, and Tintoret, as usual, took his own course.

At last a great opportunity offered. On each side of the high altar of
the Church of Sta. Maria dell’ Orto was a bare space, nearly fifty feet
high and fifteen or twenty feet broad. “Let me paint you two pictures,”
said Tintoret to the friars, who laughed at the extravagant proposal.
“A whole year’s income would not suffice for such an undertaking,”
they replied. “You shall have no expense but for the canvas and
colors,” said Tintoret. “I shall charge nothing for my work.” And on
these terms he executed “The Last Judgment” and “The Worship of the
Golden Calf.” The creator of those masterpieces could no longer be
ignored. Here was a power, a variety, which hostility and envy could
not gainsay: they must note, though they refused to admire. It was in
1546, or thereabouts, that Tintoret uttered this challenge. In a little
while he had orders for four pictures for the School of St. Mark; one
of which, “St. Mark Freeing a Fugitive Slave,” soon became popular, and
has continued so. “Here is coloring as rich as Titian’s, and energy as
daring as Michael Angelo’s!” visitors still exclaim. Other commissions
followed, until there came that which the Venetian prized above all
others,--an order to paint for the Ducal Palace.

As the patriotic Briton aspires to a monument in Westminster Abbey, as
the Florentine covets a memorial in Santa Croce, so the Venetian artist
coveted for his works a place in the Palace of the Doges. That was his
Temple of Fame. His dream, however, soared beyond the gratification of
personal ambition: he desired that through him the glory and beauty of
Venice might be enhanced and immortalized. This devotion to the ideal
of a city, this true patriotism, has unfortunately almost disappeared
from the earth. The very conception of it is now unintelligible to
most persons. The city where you live--New York, Boston, London--you
value in proportion as it affords advantages for your business, objects
for your comfort and amusement; but you quit it without compunction
if taxes be lower and trade brisker elsewhere. You are interested in
its affairs just in so far as they affect your own. When you build
a dwelling or a factory, you do not inquire whether it will improve
or injure your neighbor’s property, much less whether it will be
an ornament to the city; you need not even abate a nuisance until
compelled to do so by the law.

But to the noble-minded Venetian, his city was not merely a
convenience: it was a personality. Venezia was a spiritual patroness,
a goddess who presided over the destiny of the State; he and every one
of his fellow-citizens shared the honor and blessing of her protection.
She had crowned with prosperity the energy and piety, the rectitude
and justice, of his ancestors through many centuries. Every act of his
had more than a personal, more even than a human, bearing. _How would
it affect her?_--that was his test. He could do nothing unto himself
alone; for good or for ill, what he did reacted upon the community,
upon the ideal Venezia. The outward city--the churches, palaces, and
dwellings--was but the garment and visible expression of that ideal
city. Venezia had blessed him, and he was grateful; she was beautiful,
and he loved her. His gratitude impelled him to deeds worthy of her
protection; his love blossomed in gifts that should increase her beauty.

This reverence and devotion have, as I remarked, vanished from among
men; yet in this ideal beams the conception of the true commonwealth.
Observe that those three cities which held such an ideal before them
have bequeathed to us the most precious works of beauty. Athens,
Florence, Venice,--these are the Graces among the cities. At Karnak,
at Constantinople, at Rome, at Paris, you will behold stupendous ruins
or imposing monuments commemorating the pride and power of individual
Pharaohs, Sultans, Cæsars, Popes, and Napoleons, but you will not find
the spirit which was worshiped by the beautifying of the Acropolis, and
of republican Florence, and of Venice. In which modern city will the
most diligent search discover it?

Tintoret, then, had at last earned the privilege of consecrating
his genius to Venezia. His first work for her seems to have been a
portrait of the reigning Doge.[8] Then he painted two historical
subjects,--“Frederick Barbarossa being crowned by Pope Adrian,” and
“Pope Alexander III excommunicating Frederick Barbarossa;” and “The
Last Judgment,” destroyed by the fire of 1557. Not long thereafter
began his employment by the brothers of the confraternity of San Rocco.
For their church, about 1560, he painted two scenes in the life of St.
Roch, and then he joined in competition for a ceiling painting for
the Salla dell’ Albergo in the School itself. The brothers called for
designs, and upon the appointed day Paul Veronese, Andrea Schiavone,
Giuseppe Salviati, and Federigo Zuccaro submitted theirs. But Tintoret
had outsped them, and when his design was asked for he caused a screen
to be removed from the ceiling, and lo! there was a finished picture
of the specified subject. Brothers and competitors were astonished,
and not greatly pleased. “We asked for sketches,” said the former.
“That is the way I make my sketches,” replied Tintoret. They demurred;
but Tintoret presented the picture to the School, one of whose rules
made it obligatory that all gifts should be accepted. The displeasure
of the confraternity soon passed away, and Tintoret was commissioned
to furnish whatever paintings should be required in future. An annual
salary of one hundred ducats was bestowed upon him, in return for which
he was to give at least one painting a year. Generously did he fulfil
the contract; for at his death the School possessed more than sixty
of his works, for which he had been paid but twenty-four hundred and
forty-seven ducats.

[8] It is interesting to know that the price regularly paid to Titian
and Tintoret for state portraits was twenty-five ducats (about
thirty-one dollars). Painters who have not a hundredth part of the
genius of either Titian or Tintoret now receive one hundred times that
sum.

In 1577 a fire in the Ducal Palace destroyed many of the paintings,
and when the edifice was restored the government looked for artists to
replace them. Titian being dead, his opposition had no longer to be
overcome; yet even now Tintoret had to compete with men of inferior
powers, but of stronger influence. Nevertheless, to him and Paul
Veronese was assigned the lion’s share of the undertaking, and for ten
years those two men labored side by side, in noble rivalry, to eternize
the beauty and the glory of Venice. In 1588, owing to the death of Paul
Veronese, who with Francesco Bassano had been commissioned to paint a
“Paradise” in the Hall of the Grand Council, the work was transferred
to Tintoret, who devoted to it the last six years of his life, and left
in it the highest expression not only of his genius, but of Italian
painting.[9] Old age robbed him of none of his energy, but added
sublimity to his imagination, and interfused serenity and mellowness
throughout his work. Still teeming with plans, he died of a gastric
trouble, after a fortnight’s illness, on the 31st of May, 1594.[10]

[9] Has any one remarked that when Tintoret was painting the
“Paradise,” Cervantes, Spain’s spokesman before the nations, Montaigne,
the largest figure in French literature, and Shakespeare, paragon not
of England only, but of the world, were his contemporaries? Those four
might have met in his studio; and Science might have furnished three
peerless representatives,--Bacon, Galileo, and Kepler.

[10] Tintoret is buried in the church of Santa Maria dell’ Orto.

With this clue, spun from the discursive records of Ridolfi (whose
_Meraviglie dell’ Arte_ was first published in 1648), we can pass
through the labyrinth of Tintoret’s career. There are, besides, several
anecdotes which help us to know the man’s personality better: if all
be not authentic, at least all agree in attributing to him certain
well-defined traits.

As a workman, as we have seen, Tintoret was indefatigable. His lifelong
yearning was not for praise, but for opportunity to work. Modesty he
had to a degree unrecorded of any other painter, although none seems
to have been more confident of his own powers.[11] Like Shakespeare,
he wrought his masterpieces swiftly, and left them to their fate,
because his imagination, like Shakespeare’s, was already on the
wing for higher quarry. There was in the man an inflexible dignity,
born of self-respect, which neither the allurements of popularity
nor the flattery of the great could bend. When invited by the Duke
of Mantua to go to that city and execute some paintings, Tintoret
replied that wherever he went his wife wished to accompany him; at
which the Duke bade him bring his wife and family, had them conveyed
to Mantua in a state barge, and entertained them at his palace “at
magnificent expense for many days.” He urged Tintoret to settle there;
but the Venetian could not be persuaded to renounce his allegiance
to Venice. He saw that titles would add nothing to his fame, and
refused an offer of knighthood from Henry III of France. Princes and
grandees and illustrious visitors to Venice went to his house; but
though he received them courteously, he sought no intimacy with them.
His time was too precious, his projects were too earnest, to allow
of aristocratic dissipation. He had a keen sense of humor, which
displayed itself now in some ready reply, now in genial conversation
with his familiars. Ridolfi relates that certain prelates and senators
who visited him whilst he was making sketches for the “Paradise” asked
him why he worked so hurriedly, whereas John Bellini and Titian had
been deliberate and painstaking. “The old masters,” said Tintoret, “had
not so many to bother them as I have.” At another time, at a gathering
of amateurs, a woman’s portrait by Titian was lauded. “That’s the way
to paint,” said one of the critics. Tintoret went home, took a sketch
by Titian and covered it with lampblack, painted a head in Titian’s
manner on the same canvas, and showed it at the next meeting of these
amateurs. “Ah, there’s a real Titian!” they all agreed. Tintoret rubbed
off the lampblack from the original sketch and said: “This, gentlemen,
is indeed by Titian; that which you have admired is mine. You see now
how authority and opinion prevail in criticism, and how few there are
who really understand painting.”

Pietro Aretino, that depraved adventurer and most successful
blackmailer in literature, was one of Titian’s intimates and partisans.
He wished, nevertheless, to have his portrait painted by Tintoret, who
was in no wise afraid of the scoundrel’s enmity, although most of the
prominent personages of the time quailed before it. Aretino being
posed, Tintoret furiously drew a hanger from under his coat. Aretino
was terrified lest he should be punished for his malicious tongue, and
cried out, “Jacopo, what are you about?” “I am only going to take your
measure,” said Tintoret complacently; and, measuring him from head to
foot, he added, “your height is just two and a half hangers.” Aretino’s
impudence returned. “You’re a great madman,” he said, “and always up to
your pranks.” But this grim hint sufficed; the rascal never after dared
to slander Tintoret, but, on the contrary, tried to ingratiate himself
into his friendship.

[11] Two instances are worthy of record. Having agreed to paint a large
historical picture for the Doges’ Palace, he said to the procurators,
“If any other shall, within the space of two years, paint a better
picture of this subject, you shall take his and reject Footnote: mine.”
At first his enemies spoke so censuringly of his “St. Mark Freeing
the Fugitive Slave” that the brethren hesitated whether to accept it;
whereupon Tintoret had it brought back to his studio. Afterwards the
brethren repented, begged for its return, and ordered three other
pictures.

In his home Tintoret enjoyed tranquillity. His wife, Faustina de’
Vescovi, was thrifty and dignified, and perhaps she was not a
little annoyed by the “unpracticalness” of her husband. According
to tradition, when he went out she tied up money for him in his
handkerchief, and bade him give an exact account of it on his return.
Having spent his afternoon and money with congenial spirits at some
rendezvous whose name, unlike that of the Mermaid, where Elizabethan
wits caroused, has been lost, he playfully assured Madonna Faustina
that her allowance had gone to help the poor. She was particular that
he should wear the dress of a Venetian citizen; but if he happened
to go abroad in rainy weather, she called out to him from an upper
window to come back and put on his old clothes. We have glimpses of him
passing to and fro in Venice with Marietta, his favorite daughter, a
painter of merit, whose early death saddened his later years.[12] Of
his other children, two daughters entered a nunnery; a third married
Casser, a German; his eldest son, Domenico, adopted his father’s
profession, and assisted him in his work; another son went to the bad,
and was cut off from an inheritance by his father’s will. In spite of
his habit of giving away pictures, or of charging a small price for
them, Tintoret bequeathed a comfortable fortune to his heirs.

[12] Marietta was born in 1560, and died in 1590.

A few of his precepts and suggestions concerning art have come down to
us through Ridolfi, who had them from Aliense, one of Tintoret’s pupils.

“The study of painting is arduous,” he used to say; “and to him who
advances farthest in it more difficulties appear, the sea grows ever
larger.”

“Students must never fail to profit by the example of the great
masters, Michael Angelo and Titian.”

“Nature is always the same; in painting, therefore, muscles must not be
varied by caprice.”

“In judging a picture, observe if, at the first examination, the eye
is satisfied, and if the author has obeyed the great principles of art;
as to the details, each will fall into error. Do not go immediately to
look at a new work, but wait till the darts of criticism have all been
shot, and men are accustomed to the sight.”

Being asked which are the most beautiful colors, he answered, “Black
and white; because the former gives force to figures by deepening the
shadows, the latter gives the relief.”

He insisted that only the experienced artist should draw from living
models, which lack, for the most part, grace and symmetrical forms.

“Fine colors,” he said, “are sold in the Rialto shops; but design is
got from the casket of genius, by hard study and long vigils, and is
therefore understood and practiced by but few.”

Odoardo Fialeti asked him what to study. “Drawing,” replied Tintoret.
Somewhat later, Fialeti sought further advice. “Drawing, and again
drawing,” Tintoret reiterated.

“Art must perfect nature,” was his guiding rule; and he instanced that
Greek artist who modeled an Aphrodite by selecting the best features of
the five most beautiful women he could find.

His studio was in the most retired part of his house. Few were admitted
to it, and they had to find their way thither up a dark staircase
and along dark passages, by the light of a candle. There he spent
most of his time,--a grave man ordinarily, as must ever be the case
with genius which ranges the utmost abysses and sublimities; at heart
a solitary man, so far as the absence of flesh-and-blood companions
constitutes solitude, but forever attended by the great associates of
his imagination. Laconic, too, in speech as with his brush; as when, in
reply to a long letter from his brother, he wrote simply, “Sir: no.”
But upon occasion--as that anecdote of Madonna Faustina’s allowance
shows--he indulged in conviviality; and he had the gift, peculiar to
a gentleman, of “being easy with persons of all ranks, and of putting
them at ease.” “With his friends he preserved great affability. He was
copious in fine sayings and witty hits, putting them forth with much
grace, but without sign of laughter; and when he deemed it opportune,
he knew also how to joke with the great.”

Tintoret’s genius was only partially acknowledged during his lifetime,
and his fame has suffered strange vicissitudes since his death. At
times he has been extolled with meaningless extravagance; oftener
condemned, after Vasari’s lukewarm fashion, or passed over without
mention. Not until Mr. Ruskin came and opened the eyes of the world
had Tintoret been adequately appreciated for those points of excellence
wherein he has neither rival nor second. He has suffered for the same
reasons that Shakespeare was long unesteemed in France: his works are
bold, very rapid, often unequal, not in the least to be measured by the
yardstick of conventionalism; he treats many new subjects, and the old
subjects he always treats in new fashion, thereby provoking formalists
to accuse him of wilful oddity or caprice; his reputation for swiftness
of execution was deemed by many presumptive evidence that he was
superficial; above all, his imagination was so rich and so powerful
that it required a cognate imagination to follow it.

Moreover, Tintoret was the last master of the great era of Italian
painting. After him came schools which did not rely upon originality,
but upon the inspiration of former masters. Pictures were but specimens
of technique, and the models chosen for imitation were naturally those
in which technique could be most easily reduced to rules. The public,
as well as the painters themselves, gradually lost the power of valuing
art as a _spiritual expression_. Word by word, sentence by sentence,
the great language of painting was forgotten, until at last it became
as a dead language. It was inevitable that Tintoret’s works, which had
not always been understood by his contemporaries, should baffle the
interpreters of art grammars and the pedagogues of technique.

Again, Tintoret’s pigments have suffered more than those of any other
master. The darker colors, in many cases, have become almost black; the
lighter have faded, and sometimes completely changed.[13] How far this
is due to an original defect in the paints, how far to exposure and
neglect, I cannot say. It must always be remembered that, as popular
canvases have been frequently varnished and restored, many Titians
and Raphaels are as fresh to-day as they were when they left the
easel. How much remains of the original painting is another question.
Directors of galleries aim at pleasing the public, not at respecting
the preferences of connoisseurs, and the public craves lively colors.
It would feel itself imposed upon if it traveled to Dresden only to
find the “Sixtine Madonna” as dark as would probably be the case if the
restorer had not interfered. In every gallery you will observe that the
crowds flock to the brightest pictures, irrespective of their merits.
The fact that they have been kept bright is an advertisement that they
are deemed precious; and besides, it requires less time to glance at a
clean canvas and pass on than to recover, after patient scrutiny and
an effort of the imagination, some of the beauty which time and dust
conceal. It is significant that the one painting by Tintoret which is
most commonly mentioned by all classes of tourists--“St. Mark Freeing
a Fugitive Slave”--is precisely that one which the directors of the
Venice Academy keep polished as good as new.

[13] In some of the paintings at San Giorgio the blues are now milky
splotches.

I cannot dismiss this subject without alluding to another cause for the
slight attention given to Tintoret: his pictures are almost invariably
condemned to oblivion by the position in which they have been hung. You
must look for them in dark corners near the ceiling, or in cross-lights
which render an examination impossible. Of those which still exist in
the churches for which they were painted, some have been injured by the
drippings from candles; others have been partly hidden by tabernacles,
reliquaries, and other objects of church ceremonial. Travelers in
Venice a generation ago record that rain leaked through the roof of the
School of San Rocco, and soaked some of the canvases; others, hung near
windows, have had to suffer from the strong sunlight for centuries.
In the Ducal Palace, one series of ceiling paintings have succumbed
to the daubing of restorers, and are now hardly recognizable as being
Tintoret’s; while the matchless “Paradise,” when I recently saw
it,[14] was falling rapidly to decay. The seams where the vast canvas
was originally joined had rotted in many places; the canvas itself was
warped and rumpled, forming little shelves and unevennesses on which
the dust had collected so as to hide the colors; and from the ceiling
dangled a ragged fringe of cobwebs, in some places two or three feet
long.

[14] In August, 1889.

A few generations hence, when these incomparable works have been
irretrievably damaged, posterity will wonder--with a wonder intensified
by indignation--that we allowed them to perish. Early Christians,
who mutilated pagan works of art because they believed them to be
pernicious, may be excused; but what excuse has our age to offer? We
pretend to cherish all manifestations of culture, and we have ample
means to preserve them; yet whilst our museums are daily adding to
their collections of half-barbarous antiquities, dug up in Arizona,
in Mexico, in Yucatan, in Peru, in Asia Minor, in Mesopotamia, there
are surely hastening to destruction scores of the works of the
mightiest genius who ever honored painting. During the past twenty
years, New York millionaires have paid more for the immoralities and
inanities of modern French painters than would be necessary to erect a
separate gallery in Venice for the proper preservation of Tintoret’s
masterpieces. If there were but a single manuscript of _Hamlet_ in
the world, and no printing-presses, what should we say to those who
allowed it to perish through neglect? Yet there are many of Tintoret’s
pictures, each of them as precious in its way as a page of _Hamlet_,
which we raise no voice to save. In our selfishness, we forget that
the treasures which we have inherited from the past are not ours to
dissipate and destroy; we hold them in trust for the future, and
woe unto us if, unmindful of our responsibility, we prove careless
stewards.[15]

[15] So long as the originals exist, copies of great paintings are as
unsatisfactory as a Beethoven symphony or a Wagner opera on the piano;
but when the originals have perished, copies may serve a worthy purpose
in perpetuating at least the concept and general treatment of the
painter. It is greatly to be desired that some capable student should
do for Tintoret what Toschi has done for Correggio at Parma. A series
of faithfully executed sketches would enable posterity to judge of
Tintoret’s range of imagination and inexhaustible powers of treatment,
although his coloring and drawing could not be reproduced. Many of his
paintings have never been engraved, and not one has been well engraved.


II. HIS WORKS.

What, then, are some of the qualities of Tintoret’s genius? First of
all, he had vast scope: Christian and classic lore, the legend and
story of Venice, contemporary scenes, and portraiture,--all these lay
within his province. But scope alone, unguided by rarer powers, does
not suffice for the equipment of the supreme master. Rubens had scope,
even Doré had it, and neither ranks among the foremost. In Tintoret it
was accompanied by a most intense imagination, which penetrated to the
elemental reality and understood the intertangled relations of life.
Imagination operated through him with a vigor more like Nature’s own
than that of any other man except Shakespeare; a vigor which seems at
once inexhaustible and effortless, which never wastes and never scants.
In creating a beggar or a seraph he expended just as much energy as
was necessary for each; you do not feel that one was harder for him
than the other. Tintoret’s creations have this further resemblance
to Shakespeare’s: _they live!_ You do not exclaim, “This is a great
picture!” but, “This is a great scene!” He is like a traveler who
brings back views from a strange country: albeit you have never been
there, yet the views are so real, the figures are painted so freely
and lifelike, and not in conscious or conventional attitudes, that you
cannot doubt their faithfulness, and are absorbed by the wonders and
beauties they present.

Tintoret never conspires to startle you by sensational devices. Even
in those works where he is most daring he is really painting what his
imagination saw naturally, and is no more bent on inventing oddities
and marvels than was John in the _Apocalypse_. Before beginning a
Biblical or an historical subject, he seems to have asked himself,
“How did this look to a bystander?” and he relies upon the actuality
of the scene to produce the desired impression. He has been charged,
sometimes, with making Christ and his disciples too vulgar. Other
painters have so accustomed you to look for a kingly personage in
Christ, and for princely garments on his followers, that when you
first see a “Last Supper”: by Tintoret you miss the habitual elegance;
for he shows you simple and earnest but not ignoble fishermen and
artisans of Judea. If you contemplate them wisely, your astonishment
will deepen as you reflect that it was through and by such lowly and
zealous men as these, and not by philosophers and prelates and princes,
that the gospel of brotherly love was disseminated among mankind. It is
legitimate for an artist to invest an historic character with emblems
which bespeak the significance posterity has attached to him; but it
is wholesome to see him as he probably appeared to his contemporaries,
before subsequent generations have discovered a retroactive importance
in his career. Tintoret employed now one method and now the other,
and whosoever has been moved by the “Christ before Pilate” and “The
Crucifixion” of the School of San Rocco needs not to be told that
pathos and sublimity belong only to the former method.

Tintoret’s versatility would have made a lesser man renowned. He
counted it but an amusement, when the learned critics chided him for
not obeying academic rules, to imitate the style of Titian, or Paul
Veronese, or Schiavone, so that the critics themselves were deceived
and confounded. He invariably adapted his treatment to the requirements
of each work: if it was to be viewed from a considerable distance,
he painted broadly; if it was to be seen near, no one surpassed him
in the delicacy and carefulness of his finish. This sense of fitness
governed his composition as well as his drawing. In a picture intended
for a refectory, for instance, he introduced proportions in harmony
with the dimensions of that refectory, causing it to appear more
spacious and imposing. Where Tintoret’s figures are not correctly
drawn, the apparent fault was often intentional: restore the picture
to the position for which he designed it, and the drawing will no
longer offend; for he always took into account the distance and angle
from which the spectator would look, and he is not responsible for
the changes in location. In studying any picture, remember that there
is one, and only one, point of view where it can be seen as the
artist wished it to be seen. If you stand too far or too near, you
will miss his purpose. In a portrait by Titian or Tintoret, no line,
no dot of color is superfluous: you must adjust your vision until the
tiniest flake of white on the tip of the chin or on the pupils of the
eyes shows you its reason for being there. Try to imagine that last
perfecting touch away, and you will learn its value. For these men
did nothing haphazard: they would as soon have wasted diamonds and
rubies as their precious colors; every hair of their pencil was a nerve
through which their imagination transmitted itself to the canvas.

Although it be well-nigh impossible to describe a painting so that one
who has not seen it can derive profit from the description, I shall
attempt to point out a few of the characteristics of some of Tintoret’s
other works, in the hope of refreshing the memory of readers who are
already familiar with them, and of stimulating the interest of those
who may see them hereafter. It is the thought Tintoret has expressed,
and not the technique of his manner, to which I would call attention,
believing that this can be in some measure made real even to those who
cannot refer to the paintings themselves.

One fact impresses us immediately,--Tintoret’s originality. Previous
painters had used all the familiar Christian themes so often, that
there had grown up a conventional form of representing each; but,
although Tintoret used these themes, his treatment of them rarely
recalls that of any other painters, and always demands fresh study.
Giotto may be said to have fixed the norm which his successors
generally followed, diverging from it only in details. Tintoret
established a new norm. Moreover, he never copied himself; his
inexhaustible imagination refused to repeat. It represented the same
subject under different aspects, never twice alike. We have many
replicas of Raphael’s and Titian’s works, but none, so far as I know,
of Tintoret’s. In rare cases where two copies of a painting by him
exist, one is the sketch.

In one famous instance he is brought into direct comparison with his
rival, Titian. They both painted “The Presentation of the Virgin,”
in somewhat similar manner. Titian conceives the scene as follows:
In front of a stately pile of buildings, two flights of steps lead
up to the threshold of the Temple, where stands a venerable high
priest; near him are two other ecclesiastics and a youth. Spectators
look out from the windows and balconies of the adjoining edifice
upon Mary, a pretty little maiden, who has reached the first step of
the second staircase, and, looking up at the high priest, prepares
to finish the ascent. Immediately back of her figure is an ornate
Corinthian column. Her mother and a friend wait at the foot of the
staircase, and a goodly company of Venetian nobles is gathered near
them,--like pleasure-seekers taking a stroll, who stop for a moment to
witness a chance episode. An old woman with a basket of eggs sits in
the foreground. A colonnade and pyramid close in the picture on the
left,[16] and a pleasing view of mountains stretches out behind.

[16] I use _left_ and _right_ to denote the positions as the spectator
faces the picture.

This is Tintoret’s conception: A high priest, patriarchal in dignity,
stands at the top of a flight of steps leading to the door of the
Temple. Just below him Mary is mounting, her slight form and dress
being beautifully contrasted with the sky beyond. Behind her is a young
woman (probably her mother, Anne) carrying a young child. At the foot
of the steps, in the centre of the painting, another mother (one of
Tintoret’s matchless creations) is pointing toward Mary, and telling
her little daughter that she, too, will erelong be presented at the
Temple. Two girls recline on the steps near by. On the left, seven or
eight old men and idlers (such as one still sees at the approach to
churches in Italy, and to mosques and synagogues in the Orient) are
ranged along the stairs, indolently watching the scene. The shadow of
the building falls upon them, and prevents their figures from being too
prominent. There is no suggestion of Venice or Venetian nobles. The
attention is not distracted by costly apparel or imposing architecture,
but is fixed upon the chief actors,--upon the venerableness of the high
priest, the simplicity and confidingness of the little maiden, and the
magnificent forms and naturalness of the women.

Critics have disputed whether Titian’s picture or Tintoret’s be the
earlier. The presumption is in favor of the former,[17] but there is
no reason to cry plagiarism against either, because each master has
worked out a similar conception with characteristic independence. The
central idea--the youthful Virgin ascending the steps of the Temple
to be received by the high priest--may be seen in one of Giotto’s
frescoes.[18] What we admire is the originality of treatment in
both pictures. To me, Tintoret’s conception seems the more nobly
appropriate; and I know not in which of Titian’s works to look for a
counterpart of that woman in Tintoret’s foreground, so easy, so living,
so superb.

[17] Crowe and Cavalcaselle give 1539 as the date of Titian’s
“Presentation;” 1545-46 is usually assigned as the date of Tintoret’s.

[18] At the Arena, Padua.

As an example of Tintoret’s insight into the spiritual world, turn
to his picture of Lucifer.[19] From early Christian times, the Evil
One has been represented by very crude and vulgar symbols. A hideous
face, horns, a tail, and cloven hoofs have come to be his accepted
signs. Such a monster could never tempt even the frailest striver after
righteousness; for this conception illustrates the loathsomeness of
the _results_ of sin, and not the allurements by which sin entraps
us. It would be equally appropriate to show to a lover a crumbling
skeleton as the effigy of the woman whom he loves. The Devil would
make no converts if he announced himself to be the Devil, and dangled
before men’s eyes the despair, the degradation, the infinite remorse,
which are his actual merchandise, instead of the fleeting pleasures
and deceitful promises under which he masks them. He is no bungler or
fool, but supremely skilful in proportioning his enticement to the
strength of his victim, and very alert in choosing the moment most
favorable for attack. Goethe, in his Mephistopheles, has portrayed the
enemy of good under one of his aspects, emphasizing the cynical and
wicked rather than the seductive and plausible qualities. Tintoret has
depicted the latter. His Lucifer is still an angel, though fallen. He
has a commanding and beautiful form, and a countenance which at first
fascinates, until, on searching it more deeply, you fancy you discern a
suggestion of duplicity, a hint of sensuality, in it. Bright-hued and
strong are the plumes of his wings, and a circlet of jewels sparkles on
his left arm, the sole emblem of the wearer’s wealth. Here is indeed a
being whose beauty might seduce, whose guile might deceive,--one whose
presence dazzles and attracts, for it has majesty and grace and charm.
Here is a fit embodiment of that ambition which shrinks not from crime
in order to possess power; or of that false pleasure which decoys men
from duty, and, still flying beyond reach, leads its prisoner deeper
and deeper into the abominations of the abyss.

[19] At the School of San Rocco, Venice.

With equal originality and truth, Tintoret has illustrated the allegory
of the temptation of St. Anthony.[20] This subject is usually treated
either absurdly or grotesquely; as when the saint is discovered in a
grotto through which bats, mice, witches, and imps flit and gambol. Not
one of these ridiculous creatures, we may safely say, would frighten
or tempt anybody. But who are the enemies that a man whose life is
dedicated to holiness, and who has taken the three vows of poverty,
chastity, and obedience, must resist? Tintoret’s picture gives the
answer. In it one of the figures, typifying Riches, offers gold and
precious gems. “Why live a beggar?” she pleads softly; “take these and
have power.” A second figure, Voluptuousness, is that of a woman fair
in body. “Come with me,” she urges; “let us taste of joy together while
there is still time.” A third, who (I think) represents Unbelief or
Heresy, has already dashed the saint’s missal and rosary to the ground,
has snatched up his scourge, and, endeavoring to drag him away, has
plucked off his mantle. “Come with me,” this tempter seems to say;
“there will be no more scourging, and fasting, and mortification; with
me your life shall be without care and unrestrained.” Nevertheless,
Anthony, thus hard beset, looks heavenward, uttering a prayer for
succor. Are not these apt personifications of those lower impulses to
which even men of high resolve have succumbed? All the witches of the
Brocken and all the bats in a Pharaoh’s tomb have nothing alluring
about them.

[20] In the church of San Trovaso, Venice.

There are few of Tintoret’s paintings which will not make similar
revelations, if you look attentively. Often what appears to be only
a casual accessory is the key to the whole composition. Let me cite
two instances of his imaginative use of color. The first occurs in
“The Martyrdom of St. Stephen.”[21] The saint has fallen on his knees
beneath the stoning of his persecutors, but there is no melodramatic
spurting of blood or sign of physical pain. His face betokens
fortitude, resignation, and forgiveness of his tormentors. He gazes up
steadfastly into heaven, and sees the glory of God, and Jesus standing
on the right hand of God. The Almighty is clothed in a robe of red and
a black mantle. In the background on earth, behind the martyr, a crowd
watch the persecution; they are too far away for us to distinguish
faces, but one of them, who is seated, is clothed in black and red.
It is Paul, soon to acknowledge Christ and put on the livery of God.
Again, in the “Paradise,” Tintoret gives profound significance to color
as a symbol: Moses, the witness to the Old Covenant, and Christ, the
witness to the New Covenant, have robes of similar colors.

[21] In the church of San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice. Mr. Ruskin was the
first to point out this stroke of genius.

The Doges’ Palace contains a score of Tintoret’s imaginative paintings
and many of his portraits, and there are few churches in Venice
which have not at least one altar-piece by him. His best portraits,
as I think, outrank even Titian’s best: they have a vital quality,
an _inevitableness_, which can be felt, but not described. What a
concourse of doges, senators, procurators, nobles, and soldiers he
has portrayed! Their grave, refined faces, their stately carriage, the
sobriety as often as the sumptuousness of their dress, bear witness to
the glory and power of Venice; that glory and power which had begun to
decline in the sixteenth century, though the Venetians perceived it
not. They misread the signs. They could not believe that Venice, which
had continually grown in wealth during ten centuries, could decline or
perish. _Esto perpetua!_--may she live forever!--was the last prayer of
her historian, Sarpi, the abiding dream of all her citizens.

It was Tintoret’s pride to immortalize on canvas her legends and her
history, and to illustrate her grandeur by means of allegory. He
painted the popular stories of the recovery of St. Mark’s body from
Alexandria, and of the miracles performed by that holy patron. He
painted the siege of Zara, the battle of Lepanto, and the ambassadors
of Venice holding head before the haughtiness of Frederick Babarossa.
He painted Venice enthroned among the gods, and Venice as mistress of
the sea.

But his genius was not confined to the expression of pomp and
patriotism. It delighted not only in majestic flights of imagination,
but also in contemplating and in setting forth pure beauty. In one of
the smaller rooms of the Ducal Palace are two classic subjects by
him,--“Mercury and the Graces,” “Ariadne and Bacchus,”--which, whether
we regard their perfect symmetry, or the grace of their forms, or
the delicious poetic spirit that emanates from them like fragrance
from a bed of lilies, have few rivals in loveliness. They arouse in
some beholders a mood akin to that which a joyous theme in one of
Beethoven’s symphonies can arouse,--a mood sweeter than hope itself, or
the brightest afterglow of memory; for, while it lasts, the present,
flooded with peace and beauty and a nameless ecstacy, satisfies the
soul.

The School of San Rocco possesses sixty-four pictures by Tintoret.
This series, illustrating the principal events in the Old and New
Testaments, is quite without parallel, not only in extent, but in
the excellence of a large number of the separate paintings. You pass
from one to another as from scene to scene in Shakespeare; and it is
only when you return to the works of lesser men that you realize the
richness and strength of the master, who has lifted you to his level so
easily that you were conscious of no effort. The halls in which these
paintings are kept are utterly inadequate for their proper examination:
not one can be seen in a favorable light; many are almost buried in
gloom, or hidden in the equally impenetrable glare that falls on their
surface from the cross-lights of conflicting windows. Some of the
canvases have been injured by water; the colors have grown dim or dingy
with age; and in some cases “restorers”[22] have blurred the outlines
and brought discord among the tones. Nevertheless, who that has once
seen can ever forget many of those paintings? The original conception
looms up beautiful and grand from amid the wreck of time and neglect,
like a mutilated, earth-stained Greek statue, and your imagination
exerts itself to see the work as it must have appeared when the colors
were fresh. Who can forget that flock of angels in “The Annunciation;”
or “The Visit of the Magi;” or “The Flight into Egypt;” or the terrible
“Slaughter of the Innocents,” which seems to have been painted in
blood, though there is hardly any blood to be seen; or “The Adoration
of the Shepherds;” or “Christ’s Agony in Gethsemane;” or “Christ before
Pilate;” or “Christ being led to Calvary”?

[22] One painting bears the inscription, REST. ANTONIVS FLORIAN, 1834.
“Exactly in proportion to a man’s idiocy,” Mr. Ruskin remarks, “is
always the size of the letters in which he writes his name on the
picture that he spoils.”

The series concludes with “The Crucifixion,” a masterpiece before
which artists and amateurs, and even academic critics, have stood
in mute wonder. It is a panoramic summary of the last acts in the
persecution of Christ. No detail which the Evangelists furnish has been
omitted, but all details have been subordinated to a unity so vast and
impressive that it eludes analysis. Primarily, this is a pictorial
representation of an historical event; but for the Christian believer
it is an image of the profoundest religious meaning. There are many
groups, but if you study each group you will discover that without it
something would have been wanting to the whole. Here are Romans, to
whom the spectacle has no moral interest; they are soldiers and judges,
executing unperturbed the Roman law upon the person of a Jew who has
stirred up the wrath of his fellows and caused a popular tumult. Here
are Jews, mocking and full of hate. Here, too, is the little remnant
of Jews who, believing in the victim as their master, are faithful to
him unto death. Is not the indifference or the idle curiosity of some
of the spectators as significant as the cruelty of his enemies and
the devotion and anguish of his friends? For consider well what it
implies that any human being should gaze unmoved, or moved only as by
an every-day occurrence, at a fellow creature suffering the penalty of
death. Is life, then, so cheap? Is a human soul of so slight account
that men can cast lots or jeer while it passes in agony from earth
forever? Who can estimate the cruelty which delights in the torments
of that struggle? And if this sacrifice be viewed with the eyes of a
Christian, and not of an impassive observer, if the victim be esteemed
not merely a man, but the Son of God, what words shall describe its
solemnity?

Tintoret has painted all this into his picture, in which the central
object is the cross with Christ upon it. His head has sunk upon his
bosom, and we imagine that with his downcast eyes he beholds the group
of holy women at the foot of the cross, and says to Mary, “Woman,
behold thy son.” That group is the most pathetic that painter ever
drew. Some of the women, overwhelmed by grief, have fainted. Not
by their faces, but by their drooping, motionless bodies, can you
infer the unspeakable burden which is crushing them. One kneels;
another--Magdalen, it may be--has risen, and looks up at the expiring
Saviour. A venerable disciple gazes tenderly at the face of the Virgin,
who has swooned. A younger disciple lifts his eyes toward Christ. They
cannot help; they cannot speak; they can only wait and sorrow. Who
shall utter the agony that love feels when it is powerless to relieve
the suffering of its beloved!

Behind this group stands a man holding a bowl, into which another man,
who has climbed a ladder resting against the back of the cross, dips a
sponge stuck on a spear. At the left, other executioners are raising
the cross on which one of the malefactors has been bound. Some men in
front are tugging at ropes; others behind are pushing or steadying it.
Hammers, adzes, a saw, and other tools bestrew the ground. Farther on
are many spectators,--a Roman officer in armor, elders, dignitaries,
and a soldier bearing the Roman standard. Some point toward Christ, and
evidently say to one another: “That is the impostor who calls himself
the Son of God and the King of the Jews. Where is his pretended might?”
A little in the background, a mounted spearman has thrown the reins
on the neck of his ass, which complacently feeds on withered palm
leaves,--an imaginative touch characteristic of Tintoret, which will
not be lost on those who recall Christ’s entry into Jerusalem a few
days before.

In the foreground, to the right, a man is digging a hole for the cross
of the second malefactor, while soldiers are drawing lots for Christ’s
garments, and other mounted soldiers are watching the proceedings near
by. A little beyond, another group is busy attaching that malefactor to
his cross; one boring a hole for the spike to pierce his hand, another
holding down his legs so that they can be bound, while a third has a
rope. In the distance, men hurry toward the scene, lest they be too
late to enjoy it; and the foremost camels of a caravan on its way into
the city appear just at a turn in the road. For traffic and the daily
toil of men are not interrupted by the crucifixion of Christ, though
soldiers and idlers have come out to witness it. On the left there is a
palace, and then hills succeeded by craggy mountains. The clouds have
deepened almost into darkness along the horizon. The sun, as it sinks
into this gloom, appears as a huge disk of ghastly light, and this disk
forms a dim halo behind Christ’s head. Yet a little while and the earth
shall be wholly darkened, and these curious, careless spectators shall
flee away in terror.[23]

[23] In a great picture, now ruined, at the abandoned Bavarian palace
of Schleissheim, near Munich, Tintoret has represented the Crucifixion
in its later aspect.

Such, told briefly and inadequately,--for language can only hint at the
effects of painting,--is this solemn event as conceived by Tintoret’s
imagination.[24]

[24] This is one of the four or five paintings which Tintoret signed.
It was finished in 1565. His receipt for its payment still exists. It
is dated March 9, 1566. The sum received was two hundred and fifty
ducats.

We have no evidence that Tintoret visited Rome, nor any record of
his journeys, except that to Mantua, yet we may be sure that he was
familiar with the scenery of the mainland. The woods and foliage,
the streams, valleys, and meadows, the little hills and picturesque
mountains, which abound in his paintings, he did not see at Venice. Our
lack of information leaves us in doubt, therefore, whether he studied
Michael Angelo’s “Last Judgment” in the Sixtine Chapel. If he never
went to Rome, he probably was acquainted, from engravings or copies,
with the composition of that extraordinary work; yet his own painting
of that subject bears so little resemblance to Michael Angelo’s that it
seems to have been produced independently.

The masterpiece of the Sixtine Chapel is so complicated that it
bewilders the student, until he observes that the principal groups
are roughly arranged in an immense irregular horseshoe, the points of
which are near the bottom of the lower wall, while Christ, the chief
figure, is inclosed in the upper oval. Four fifths of the action takes
place in the air, the lower portion alone of the fresco being occupied
by the river Styx and its adjacent bank. In its present nearly ruined
condition we cannot guess the original effect of this work; but I doubt
whether it could ever have satisfied the beholder’s instinctive demand
for harmony. The groups, even the individuals, seem isolated, not only
in space but in spirit. There is not, nor could there be, a single
prevailing passion. The only characteristic which applies to the whole
work is tremendous energy. Whatever of agony, of fury, of stubbornness,
of determination, can be expressed by the human body, is expressed
here. There is no muscle or tendon which is not exhibited in various
positions; no posture of limbs or trunk which is not represented. The
resurrection of the _body_ is illustrated in a hundred ways, and the
expression of the faces is of secondary importance. Here, patriarchs
have the vigor of Titans; saints are as robust as athletes; Christ
himself might be a majestically stern Apollo. Not without reason may
we call these effigies of restless, writhing human beings wonderful
diagrams of anatomy and concrete illustrations of dynamics. Even the
saved, who occupy the higher regions, are not tranquil. In striving to
comprehend these whirlwinds of action, the mind is wearied and baffled.
Unit by unit you examine this multitude, and you are amazed in turn by
sublimity, or horror, or power.

The space[25] to which Tintoret had to adapt his picture of “The Last
Judgment” is oblong, about fifty feet high and twenty feet broad.
In the upper part of the heavens Christ is represented, not in the
character of the inexorable Judge, but in that of the Shepherd who
welcomes his faithful flock to Paradise; for the resurrection and
judgment are coincident. On one side, near Christ, John the Baptist
is kneeling, and Mary and the repentant sinner, who bears a cross, are
near; on the other side are personifications of the cardinal virtues.
Extremely lovely is Charity, carrying in her arms two young children
to present to the Saviour. Zones of fleecy clouds separate the upper
part of the painting into sections, in which the saints are ranked;
but the distribution seems natural, not arbitrary, and serves to
prevent confusion among so many figures. Midway in the scene, angels
plunge earthward to rouse the dead. Michael, with his terrible sword
unsheathed, pursues the wicked toward a mighty river, which sweeps
irresistibly into the abyss. In the distance, on a low shelf of sand
amid the waters, is huddled a crowd of sinners, too indolent or too
terrified to struggle against the flood which must soon engulf them.
Crouching, they await their doom. In them Tintoret has perhaps typified
those miserable creatures whom Dante describes as “_a Dio spiacenti ed
a’ nemici sui_,”--hateful to God and to his enemies. Demons convoy a
bark-load of the damned through the hellish torrent. And on the shore
what a spectacle! Bodies starting from their graves, some not yet
clothed with flesh, some with leafy branches growing from their arms,
some striving to free themselves from the earth into which corruption
resolved them; everywhere signs of the suddenness and awfulness of that
supreme moment when the dead shall rise again in the forms they bore
when alive, and go to the eternal abode, of bliss or punishment, for
which each has fitted himself by his career on earth.

[25] In the church of Santa Maria dell’ Orto, Venice.

A parallel has frequently been drawn between the genius of Michael
Angelo and that of Dante, and many have deplored the loss of that
portfolio in which Michael Angelo is known to have made a series of
illustrations to _The Divine Comedy_. The resemblance between the
supreme Tuscan poet and the supreme Tuscan artist seems to me, however,
to hold only when we limit our view to Dante as the author of the
_Inferno_. In energy, in intense perception of evil, in unswerving
condemnation of sin, in austerity, in appreciation of the terror
of life, the poet and the painter were indeed akin. These are the
characteristics which most readers associate with Dante’s genius, for
the reason that most readers go no farther than the _Inferno_, or are
unable to comprehend the more spiritual sublimity of the _Purgatorio_
and the _Paradiso_. The _Inferno_ describes torments which the most
sluggish person can understand, and the contrasts of lurid flames and
impenetrable gloom by which the scenes in hell are diversified are so
vivid as to require no commentary. We marvel at the imagination that
could traverse unparalyzed these horrors and dare to report them. But
Dante’s genius stopped not here: it passed in review all human nature,
from its lowest sinful condition to that highest excellence when it
merges with God. Though Evil be a terrible reality, Dante saw that
Love is even more real, the source and the goal of all things, and he
proved his universality by his power to describe it. And they whose
imagination is strong enough to follow him through the regions of the
blessed incline to rank the third canticle of his “sacred poem” even
higher than the first.

Among painters, Tintoret only has, like Dante, swept through the full
circuit of human experience and aspiration. He has shown us the anguish
of the damned in his “Last Judgment,” and the peace and bliss of the
blessed in his “Paradise.” That “The Last Judgment” should be Michael
Angelo’s masterpiece, and that he should have painted it on the altar
wall of the Pope’s favorite chapel, are fatally appropriate. In that
terrific scene, the judge is not Christ, but Michael Angelo himself; a
righteous man, who looked out upon the iniquities of his time and dared
to condemn them; a religious man, who, coming to Rome, the religious
centre of Christendom, discovered there a second Sodom, in which pope,
cardinals, and bishops were the most shameless offenders; a patriotic
man, who had fought for the liberty of his beloved Florence, and had
beheld her, through the treachery of some and the apathy of others,
become the slave of a corrupt master. No wonder that the terror and
anguish, the depravity and hopelessness, of life should have eaten
into Michael Angelo’s soul. As he worked solitarily in the Sixtine
Chapel, no wonder that a vision of the retribution which shall overtake
the wicked should have possessed his imagination, and transformed
the artist into the judge. Day by day, a spirit mightier than theirs
painted the protest which Savonarola, Zwingli, Luther, and Calvin had
preached,--the spirit of a Job united to that of an Isaiah.

Not less appropriate was it that the genius of Tintoret and of
Venetian art should culminate in the representation of Paradise. Of
all commonwealths, Venice had enjoyed the longest prosperity; of all
peoples, hers had been the most sensitive to the joy of life. Even
at the end of the sixteenth century, when her power abroad had been
curtailed, and when luxury at home was slowly enervating the integrity
of her citizens, she was still outwardly imposing, magnificent. No
pope had ever succeeded, either by guile or by force, in ravishing
her independence. Her immemorial glory blazed across the past and
irradiated the present, as the setting sun spreads an avenue of
splendor upon the ocean and fills the heavens with golden and purple
light. Venice was indeed the abode of Joy; and Tintoret, at the close
of a long career, in which he had witnessed all the aspects and
pondered all the possibilities of human life, was filled, like Dante,
with hope, and felt Joy and Love to be the supreme realities, the
everlasting fulfilments, of mankind’s desires.

If the Last Judgment is an “unimaginable” theme, as Mr. Ruskin remarks,
how much more so is Paradise! Men have always found it easier to
represent grief than happiness, villainy than virtue, shadows than
sunshine; for the former are by their nature limited, and draw their
own outlines, while the latter have a quality of boundlessness which
to define abridges it. Moreover, pleasure is oftenest unconscious, and
always individual; pain, on the contrary, is too conscious of self, and
is manifest in attributes common to many. Nevertheless, Tintoret has
achieved the seeming impossibility of representing, so far as painting
may, the happiness, unmixed and eternal, of the celestial host.

His painting is known to most visitors at Venice as being the largest
in the world. The ordinary traveler, after reading the dimensions in
his guidebook, looks up at the canvas, and sees crowds of figures and
colors grown dark; wonders what it all means, and why the janitor does
not sweep down the dust and cobwebs; and then turns away to devote
equal attention to the black panel where Marino Faliero’s portrait
would be had he not died a traitor’s death. In like manner, I have
seen intelligent strangers exhaust the treasures of the Acropolis of
Athens in a quarter of an hour, and return to their hotel to read the
last English newspaper. But let him who would commune with one of the
few supreme masterpieces of art sit down patiently and reverently
before Tintoret’s “Paradise,” and he will be rewarded by revelations
proportioned to his study. As soon as his eyes grow used to the dimness
of the hall, the tones of the canvas begin to be intelligible to
him: it is as if he heard a symphony played in a lower key than the
composer intended; many of the original effects are lost, but harmony
interpenetrates and unifies all the parts. When he has adjusted his
eyes to this pitch, he can examine the figures separately; until,
little by little, in what seemed a vast confused multitude, he will be
aware of the presence of an all-controlling order; and he will gaze at
last understandingly, as in a vision, upon the congregations of heaven
as they are unfolded in Tintoret’s design.

Christ is seated in the central upper part of the painting: his left
hand rests on a crystal globe; innumerable rays of light illumine his
head and dart in all directions. Opposite to him is the Madonna, above
whom sparkles a circlet of stars. At Christ’s left soars the archangel
Michael bearing the heavenly scales; at Mary’s right is Gabriel with
a spray of lilies. A cloud of countless cherubs hovers at the feet of
the Divine Personage; while on each side of the archangels, curving
toward the upper extremities of the canvas, sweep companies of seraphim
and cherubim, and the thrones, principalities, and powers, and angels
with swords, sceptres, and globes. These form the first circle of the
angelic host, who from eternity have held their station nearest to
their Lord. Below them is a larger circle, composed of those spirits
who, by prophecy or preaching, established and extended the kingdom
of God on earth. On the left we see the forerunners of Christ,--David
playing the cithern, Moses holding up the tables of the law, Noah with
his ark, Solomon, Abraham, and the other patriarchs; and near these
we distinguish John the Baptist, who displays a scroll on which is
written _Ecce Agnus_. Midway in this circle are the Evangelists, the
four corners of the Christian temple, and the intermediaries between
the old and new dispensations. Here is Mark accompanied by his lion,
Luke and his ox, Matthew with pen in hand, and John with his book
resting on an eagle. As the line sweeps on, we see the early fathers,
doctors, and great popes,--Peter and Gregory; Paul, the apostle
militant, recognizable by his sword; Jerome, Ambrose, and Augustine. In
the centre, between Luke and Matthew, is the third archangel, Raphael,
whose clasped hands and upturned face betoken a soul rapt in adoration.
The third and lowest circle is made up of many groups of martyrs and
holy men and women, the great body of the Church of Christ. Among the
throng on the left are Barbara; Catherine with her wheel; Francis
of Assisi and Dominick, the founders of the great religious orders;
Giustina bearing a palm branch; St. George (with banner), Lawrence,
Sebastian, Agnes, and Stephen, each recognizable by a familiar emblem.
In the centre, along the bottom of the painting, hover clusters of
worshiping angels; beyond them, more saints, Monica, and Magdalen; then
Rachel and a troop of lovely children, and Christopher, who carried
the boy Christ on his shoulder here below, and now carries a globe.
At last, on the extreme right, we reach the assembly of prelates and
theologians.

With this key to the general distribution, the student who has
Tintoret’s “Paradise” before him can recognize scores of other
figures. He will compare Tintoret’s portrayal of each saint, or
prophet, or martyr with conceptions other painters have drawn; and if
he reflect that any one of these groups, and many of these figures
singly, would have sufficed to establish the renown of an artist less
masterly than Tintoret, his astonishment will swell into admiration,
and this into awe, when he surveys the work as a whole. Who can
describe the effect of the innumerable multitude? Cast your eyes almost
anywhere upon the canvas, and lo! out of the deeper, distant spaces
angelic countenances loom up. Forms, though distinctly outlined, by
some magic seem diaphanous; and the farther your gaze penetrates, the
brighter is the light which radiates throughout heaven from the throne
of Christ. Still more marvelous is the sense of infinite tranquillity,
even in those figures which are moving. These are veritable spirits,
though they have human bodies, and they move or rest with equal ease.
In this heavenly ether there is no effort. Even those rushing seraphim,
whose majestic pinions seem to beat melody from air in their rhythmic
flight, suggest a certain grand repose begotten of motion itself,--a
repose akin to that produced by the sight of the sea, whose myriad
little waves dance and glisten, or of Niagara, whose falling flood
seems stationary. The spectator who has risen to this conception will
not fail to note the light of a joy, not vehement but profound, which
bathes every face; and how the action of every individual and of every
group is in some manner addressed to Christ, and would be incomplete
but for that divine centre. Christ and the Madonna, and the dove of
the Holy Spirit floating between them, he will look at first and turn
from last,--the noblest personification of ideal manhood and ideal
womanhood that ever painter expressed. The embodiment and essence of
_Love_, which is the author of all good, they are enthroned amid the
serenity of the highest heaven. Round them wheels the inner circle of
the archangels and the angels, the symbols of divine _Power_. Then,
in ever-widening circles, the saints and apostles and prophets, and
the elect of every clime and condition, all children of _Faith_ and
exemplars of _Charity_, float and revolve in bliss forevermore. And
it needs no strain of the imagination to hear the hosannas which the
morning stars sing together, and all the sons of God shout for joy.[26]

[26] In the execution of the “Paradise” he was assisted by his son
Domenico. If Tintoret was born in 1512, most of the work was done
after his eightieth year, an indication of physical vigor almost
unparalleled. A rapid study for another “Paradise,” in which the groups
are arranged on a different plan, reminding one of Dante’s description
of the Celestial Rose, is now in the Louvre.

       *       *       *       *       *

The dark chapel of the Rucellai, in the church of Santa Maria Novella
in Florence, has a dingy altar-piece representing the Virgin and
the infant Christ. Cimabue painted it; and when it was finished the
Florentines made a holiday, and bore the picture through the streets,
amid great rejoicing, to the chapel where it now hangs. That stiff
and awkward Madonna, that doll-like Child, were hailed by them as the
highest achievement of painting. For us Cimabue’s masterpiece has only
an historic interest,--we find no charm in its Byzantine rigidness.
Yet that crude work was the seed of Italian painting, and if we follow
its growth during three centuries we shall be led to the “Paradise”
of Tintoret, in which are embodied all the excellences and advances
of the painter’s art. Between that humble beginning and that glorious
culmination an army of artists and myriads of paintings intervene. If
we look deep enough, we shall be conscious that they were all agents
whereby a mighty spirit was seeking to express itself to man,--a spirit
which first appealed to human piety through the symbols of religion,
and which, as its agents acquired skill and reach, bodied itself forth
in higher images and in conscious forms. The name of that spirit is
Beauty, never to be found perfect in the outer world, but known as
it communicates through the senses portents of itself which the soul
sublimes into that ideal unity by which the laws of nature and the
destiny of man are beheld in their highest aspect. True Worship, as in
the sweet piety of Fra Angelico, led to Beauty; to Beauty also, along
an inevitable path, led the pursuit of Truth by the sixteenth century
masters, latest among whom was Tintoret: for Beauty is the final seal
and test of both Holiness and Truth.




GIORDANO BRUNO: HIS TRIAL, OPINIONS, AND DEATH[27]

[27] First printed in _The Atlantic Monthly_, March, 1890.


I

On Saturday, the 23d of May, 1592, Giovanni Mocenigo, son of the late
excellent Marcantonio Mocenigo, addressed to the Father Inquisitor of
Venice a letter containing charges of heresy against Giordano Bruno,
the Nolan. Among other things, he alleged that Bruno had said “that it
is a great blasphemy to say, as Catholics do, that bread is changed
to flesh; that he is hostile to the mass; that no religion satisfies
him; that Christ was a good-for-nothing, and did wretched tricks to
seduce the people, and ought to have been hanged; that there is no
separating God into persons; that the world is eternal; that worlds
are infinite, and God makes an infinite number of them continually;
that Christ wrought apparent miracles and was a magician, and so were
the Apostles; that Christ showed that he died unwillingly, and evaded
death as long as he could; that there is no punishment of sins; and
that souls created by the agency of nature pass from one animal into
another; and that as the brutes are begotten of corruption, so also are
men. Further, he has denied that the Virgin could have borne a child;
he asserted that our Catholic faith is full of blasphemies against
the majesty of God; that he wished to give himself to the diviner’s
art, and draw the whole world after him; that St. Thomas and all the
doctors were blockheads compared with himself. Therefore, urged by my
conscience and by command of my confessor, I have denounced this Bruno
to the Holy Office. Suspecting that he might depart, I have locked him
up in one of my rooms, at your requisition; and because I believe him
possessed of a demon, I pray you to take speedy resolution concerning
him.”

Two days later, this Mocenigo, of whom we know no more than that
he belonged to one of the illustrious families of Venice, and was
thirty-four years of age, added to his accusations: “On that day when
I had Giordano Bruno locked up, on my asking him if he would teach me
what he had promised, in view of the many courtesies and gifts he had
had from me, so that I might not accuse him of the many wicked words
which he had said to me, both against our Lord and against the Holy
Catholic Church, he replied that he was not afraid of the Inquisition,
because he offended nobody in living as he chose; and then that he
did not remember to have said anything bad to me, and that even if he
had said it he had said it to me alone, and that he did not fear that
I could harm him in this way, and that, even should he come under the
hand of the Inquisition, it could at the most force him to wear his
friar’s gown again.”

On May 29, Mocenigo, who had in the mean time, at the suggestion of
the Inquisition, dredged in the slimy depths of his memory for other
charges, informed the Father Inquisitor that he had heard Bruno say
“that the forms which the Church now uses are not those which the
Apostles used, because the Apostles, by preaching and by example
of a good life, converted the people, but that now he who will not
be a Catholic must suffer the rod and punishment, because force is
used, and not love; that the world could not go on thus, because
now only ignorance, and not religion, is good; that the Catholic
religion pleased him more than the others, but that it had need of
great formalities, which was not right, but very soon the world would
see itself reformed, because it was impossible that such corruption
should endure. He told me, too, that now, when the greatest ignorance
flourishes which the world ever had, some glory in having the greatest
knowledge there ever was, because they say they know what they do not
understand,--which is, that God can be one and three,--and that these
are impossibilities, ignorances, and most shocking blasphemies against
the majesty of God. Besides this, he said that he liked women hugely,
and that the Church committed a great sin in calling sin that which is
according to nature.”

After these charges, we hear no more of this latter-day Judas, Giovanni
Mocenigo. Honest we can hardly deem him, for he confesses that he
intended to betray Bruno long before he did betray him, and only
delayed till he should gather sufficient damning evidence against him.
And so we dismiss him to join the despicable crew of those who were
traitors to their lords and benefactors.

The Inquisition examined four other witnesses. Two booksellers,
Ciotto and Bertano, deposed that they had known Bruno at
Frankfort-on-the-Main, whither they went to attend the famous
book-fairs; that they had not heard him say aught which caused them to
believe he was not a Catholic and a good Christian; but that he had
the reputation of being a philosopher, who spent his time in writing
and “in meditating new things.” Andrea Morosini, a gentleman of noble
birth, testified that during the recent months Bruno had been at his
house, whither divers gentlemen and also prelates were wont to meet to
discuss letters, and principally philosophy; but that he had never
inferred from Bruno’s remarks that he held opinions contrary to the
faith. Finally, Fra Domenico da Nocera, of the Order of Preachers,
deposed that “one day, near the feast of Pentecost, as I was coming
out of the sacristy of the church of John and Paul, a layman, whom I
did not know, bowed to me, and presently engaged in conversation. He
said he was a friar of our province of Naples, a man of letters; Fra
Giordano of Nola, his name. So we sought out a retired part of the
aforesaid church. Then he told me how he had renounced the gown; of
the many kingdoms he had traversed, and the royal courts, with his
important exercises in letters; but that he had always lived as a
Catholic. And I asking him what he was doing in Venice, and how he was
living, he said that he had been in Venice but very few days, and was
living comfortably; that he proposed to get tranquillity and write a
book he had in his head, and to present it to his Holiness, for the
quiet of his conscience and in order to be allowed to remain in Rome,
and there devote himself to literary work, to show his ability, and
perhaps to obtain a lectureship.”

So far as we know, the Holy Office examined no other witnesses. That
tribunal of the Inquisition at Venice was composed, in 1592, of the
Apostolic Nuncio, Monsignor Taberna; of the Patriarch, Monsignor
Lorenzo Priuli; of the Father Inquisitor, Giovanni Gabriele da Saluzzo,
a Dominican; and of three nobles appointed by the State, and called
the _savii all’ eresia_ (sages or experts in heresy), who reported all
proceedings to the Doge and Senate, and stopped the deliberations when
they deemed them contrary to the laws and customs of the State, or to
the secret instructions they had received. These three sages were, in
that year, Luigi Foscari, Sebastian Barbarigo, and Tomaso Morosini.

Before this tribunal, which sat at the prison of the Inquisition,
appeared the prisoner, Giordano Bruno, on Tuesday, May 26, 1592. He
was a small, lean man, in aspect about forty years old, with a slight
chestnut beard. On being bidden to speak, he began:--

“I will speak the truth. Several times I have been threatened with
being brought to this Holy Office, and I have always held it as a jest,
because I am ready to give an account of myself. While at Frankfort
last year, I had two letters from Signor Giovanni Mocenigo, in which he
invited me to come to Venice, as he wished me to teach him the art of
memory and invention, promising to treat me well, and that I should be
satisfied with him. And so I came, seven or eight months ago. I have
taught him various terms pertaining to these two sciences; living at
first outside of his house, and latterly in his own house. And, as it
seemed to me that I had done and taught him as much as was necessary,
and as was my duty in respect to the things he had sought me for, and
deliberating, therefore, to return to Frankfort to publish certain
of my works, I took leave of him last Thursday, so as to depart. He,
hearing this, and doubting lest I wished to leave his house to teach
other persons the very sciences I had taught him and others, rather
than to go to Frankfort, as I announced, was most urgent to detain me;
but I none the less insisting on going, he began at first to complain
that I had not taught him all I had agreed, and then to threaten me
by saying that, if I would not remain of my own accord, he would find
means to compel me. And the following night, which was Friday, seeing
me firm in my resolution of going, and that I had put my things in
order, and arranged to send them to Frankfort, he came, when I was
in bed, with the pretext of wishing to speak to me; and after he had
entered, there followed his servant Bortolo, with five or six others,
who were, as I believed, gondoliers of the sort near by. And they made
me get out of bed, and conducted me up to an attic, and locked me in
there, Master Giovanni saying that, if I would remain and instruct him
in the terms of memory and of geometry, as he had wished hitherto, he
would set me at liberty; otherwise, something disagreeable would happen
to me. And I replying all along that I thought I had taught him enough,
and more than I was bound, and that I did not deserve to be treated in
that fashion, he left me till the next day, when there came a captain,
accompanied by certain men whom I did not know, and had them lead
me down to a storeroom on the ground-floor of the house, where they
left me till night. Then came another captain, with his assistants,
and conducted me to the prison of this Holy Office, whither I believe
I have been brought by the work of the aforesaid Ser Giovanni, who,
indignant for the reason I have given, has, I think, made some
accusation against me.

“My name is Giordano, of the Bruno family, of the city of Nola,
twelve miles from Naples. I was born and brought up in that town; my
profession has been, and is, that of letters and every science. My
father’s name was Giovanni, my mother’s Fraulissa Savolina; he being
a soldier by profession, who died at the same time with my mother. I
am about forty-four years old, being born, according to what my people
told me, in the year 1548. From my fourteenth year I was at Naples,
to learn humanity, logic, and dialectics, and I used to attend the
public lectures of a certain Sarnese; I heard logic privately from an
Augustinian father, called Fra Theofilo da Vairano, who subsequently
lectured on metaphysics at Rome. When I was fourteen or fifteen, I
put on the habit of St. Dominick at the convent of St. Dominick at
Naples. After the year of probation I was admitted to the profession,
and then I was promoted to holy orders and to the priesthood in due
time, and sang my first mass at Campagna, a town in the same kingdom.
I lived there in a convent of the same order, called St. Bartholomew,
and continued in this garb of St. Dominick, celebrating mass and the
divine offices, and obedience to the superiors of the said order and
of the priors of monasteries, till 1576, the year after the Jubilee.
I was then at Rome, in the convent of the Minerva, under Master Sisto
de Luca, procurator of the order, whither I had come because at Naples
I had been brought to trial twice: the first time for having given
away certain representations and images of the saints, and kept only
a crucifix, wherefore I was charged with spurning the images of the
saints; and, again, for saying to a novice, who was reading _The
History of the Seven Joys_ in verse, what business he had with such a
book,--to throw it aside, and to read sooner some other work, like _The
Lives of the Holy Fathers_; and this case was renewed against me at
the time I went to Rome, together with other charges, which I do not
know. On this account I left the order, and put off the gown.

“I went to Noli, in Genoese territory, and stayed there about four
months, teaching small boys grammar, and reading lectures on the sphere
[astronomy] to certain gentlemen; then I went away, first to Savona,
where I tarried about a fortnight, and thence to Turin. Not finding
entertainment there to my taste, I came to Venice by the Po, and lived
a month and a half in the Frezzaria, in the lodging of a man employed
at the Arsenal, whose name I do not know. Whilst I was here, I had
printed this work [_On the Signs of the Times_], to make a little
money for my support; I showed it first to Father Remigio de Fiorenza.
Departing hence, I went to Padua, where I found some Dominican fathers,
acquaintances of mine, who persuaded me to wear the habit again, even
if I should not choose to return to the order; for it seemed to them
more proper to wear that habit than not. With this view I went to
Bergamo, and had made a garment of cheap white cloth, and over it I
put the scapular, which I had kept when I left Rome. Thus attired I
set out for Lyons; and at Chambèry, going to lodge with the order,
and being very decently entertained, and talking about this with an
Italian father who was there, he said to me, ‘Be warned, for you will
not meet with any sort of friendliness in these parts; and you will
find less the farther you go.’ So I set out for Geneva. There I lodged
at the hostelry; and, a little after my arrival, the Marquis de Vico,
a Neapolitan who was in that city, asked me who I was, and whether I
had gone there to settle and to profess the religion of that place. I
replied to him, after giving an account of myself and the reason why
I had left the order, that I did not intend to profess that religion,
because I did not know what it was; and that therefore I wished to
abide there to live in liberty and to be safe, rather than for any
other purpose. Being persuaded to put off that habit in any case, I
took these clothes, and had a pair of hose made, and other things; and
the marquis, with some other Italians, gave me a sword, hat, cloak, and
other necessary articles, and, in order that I might support myself,
they procured proof-reading for me. I kept to that work about two
months, going, however, sometimes to preaching and sermons, whether of
the Italians or of the French who lectured and preached there: among
others, I heard more than once Nicolo Balbani, of Lucca, who read
the Epistles of St. Paul, and preached on the Evangelists. But when
I was told that I could not stay long in that place unless I should
accept its religion, because I would have no employment from them, and
finding, too, that I could not earn enough to live on, I went thence to
Toulouse, where there is a famous university. Having become acquainted
with some intelligent persons, I was asked to lecture on the sphere to
divers students, which I did--with other lectures on philosophy--for
perhaps six months. At this point, the post of ‘ordinary’ lecturer in
philosophy, which is filled by competition, falling vacant, I took
my doctor’s degree, presented myself for the said competition, was
admitted and approved, and lectured in that city two years continuously
on the text of Aristotle’s _De Anima_ and other philosophical works.
Then, on account of the Civil Wars, I quitted and went to Paris, where,
in order to make myself known, and to give proof of myself, I undertook
an ‘extraordinary’ lectureship, and read thirty lectures, choosing for
subject Thirty Divine Attributes, taken from the first part of St.
Thomas. Later, being requested to accept an ‘ordinary’ lectureship,
I would not, because public lecturers in that city go generally to
mass and the other divine offices, and I have always avoided this,
knowing that I was excommunicated because I had quitted my order and
habit; and although I had that ‘ordinary’ lectureship at Toulouse, I
was not forced to go to mass, as I should have been at Paris. But
conducting the ‘extraordinary’ there, I acquired such a name that the
king, Henry III, sent for me, and wished to know whether my memory was
natural or due to magic art. I satisfied him, both by what I said, and
proved to him, that it was not by magic art, but by science. After
this I published a work on the memory, under the title _De Umbris
Idearum_, which I dedicated to his Majesty,--on which occasion he made
me ‘lecturer extraordinary,’ with a pension; and I continued to read
in that city perhaps five years, when, on account of the tumults which
arose, I took my leave, and with letters from the king himself I went
into England to reside with his ambassador, Michael de Castelnau.
In his house I lived as a gentleman. I stayed in England two years
and a half, and when the ambassador returned to France I accompanied
him to Paris, where I remained another year. Having quitted Paris on
account of the tumults, I betook myself to Germany, stopping first
at Mayence, an archiepiscopal city, for twelve days. Finding neither
here nor at Würzburg, a town a little way off, any entertainment, I
went to Wittenberg, in Saxony, where I found two factions,--one of
philosophers, who were Calvinists, the other of theologians, who were
Lutherans. Among the latter was Alberigo Gentile, whom I had known
in England, a law-professor, who befriended me and introduced me to
read lectures on the _Organon_ of Aristotle; which I did, with other
lectures in philosophy, for two years. At that time, the son of the
old Duke having succeeded his father, who was a Lutheran, and the son
being a Calvinist, he began to favor the party opposed to those who
favored me; so I departed, and went to Prague, and stayed six months.
Whilst there, I published a book on geometry, which I presented to the
Emperor, from whom I had a gift of three hundred thalers. With this
money, having quitted Prague, I spent a year at the Julian Academy in
Brunswick; and the death of the Duke[28] happening at that time, I
delivered an oration at his funeral, in competition with many others
from the university, on which account his son and successor bestowed
eighty crowns of those parts upon me; and I went away to Frankfort to
publish two books,--one _De Minimo_, and the other _De Numero, Monade,
et Figura_, etc. I stayed about six months at Frankfort, lodging in the
convent of the Carmelites,--a place assigned to me by the publisher,
who was obliged to provide me a lodging. And from Frankfort, having
been invited, as I have said, by Ser Giovanni Mocenigo, I came to
Venice seven or eight months ago, where what has since happened I have
already related. I was going anew to Frankfort to print other works
of mine, and one in particular on _The Seven Liberal Arts_, with the
intention of taking these and some other of my published works which I
approve--for some I do not approve--and of going to Rome to lay them at
the feet of his Holiness, who, I have understood, loves the virtuous,
and to put my case before him, with a view to obtain absolution from
excesses, and permission to live in the clerical garb outside of the
order.... I said I wish to present myself at the feet of his Holiness
with some of my approved works, as I have some I do not approve,
meaning by that that some of the works written by me and sent to the
press I do not approve, because in them I have spoken and discussed too
philosophically, unbecomingly, and not enough like a good Christian;
and in particular I know that in some of these works I have taught and
maintained philosophically things which ought to be attributed to the
power, wisdom, and goodness of God according to the Christian faith;
founding my doctrine on sense and reason, and not on faith. So much for
them in general; concerning particulars, I refer to the writings, for I
do not now recall a single article or particular doctrine I may have
taught, but I will reply according as I shall be questioned and as I
shall remember....

[28] “Who was a heretic” is written on the margin of the original
_procès-verbal_.

“The subject of all my books, speaking broadly, is philosophy. In all
of them I have always defined in the manner of philosophy and according
to principles and natural light, not having most concern as to what,
according to faith, ought to be believed; and I think there is nothing
in them from which it can be judged that I professedly wish to impugn
religion rather than to exalt philosophy, although I may have set forth
many impious matters based on my natural light.

“I have taught nothing directly against Catholic Christian religion,
although [I may have done so] indirectly; as was judged at Paris,
where, however, I was allowed to hold certain disputes under the title
of _One Hundred and Twenty Articles against the Peripatetics and Other
Vulgar Philosophers_ (printed with permission of the superiors); as it
was permitted to treat them by the way of natural principles, without
prejudice to the truth according to the light of faith, in which manner
the books of Aristotle and Plato may be read and taught, which are in
similar fashion, indirectly contrary to faith,--nay, much more so than
the articles propounded and defended by me in the manner of philosophy:
all these can be known from what is printed in my last Latin books
from Frankfort, entitled _De Minimo_, _De Monade, de Immenso et
Innumerabilibus_, and in part in _De Compositione Imaginum_. In these
particularly you can see my intention and what I have held, which is,
in a word, I believe in an infinite universe,--that is, the effect of
infinite divine power; because I esteemed it unworthy of the divine
goodness and power that, when it could produce besides this world
another, and infinite others, it should produce a single finite world:
so I have declared that there is an infinite number of particular
worlds similar to this of the earth, which, with Pythagoras, I consider
a star, like which is the moon, other planets, and other stars, which
are infinite; and that all these bodies are worlds, without number,
which make up the infinite university in infinite space, and we call
this the infinite universe, in which are numberless worlds: so that
there is a double infinitude, that of the greatness of the universe,
and that of the multitude of the worlds,--by which indirectly it is
meant to assail the truth according to faith.

“Moreover, in this universe I place a universal Providence, in
virtue of which everything lives, vegetates, moves, and reaches its
perfection; and I understand Providence in two ways: one in which it is
present as the soul in all matter, and all in any part whatsoever, and
this I call Nature, the shadow and footprint of the Deity; the other
in the ineffable way with which God, by essence, presence, and power,
is in all things and over all things, not as a part, but as Soul, in a
manner indescribable. In the Deity I understand all the attributes to
be one and the same substance,--just as theologians and the greatest
philosophers hold; I perceive these attributes, power, wisdom, and
goodness, or will, intelligence, and love, by means of which things
have, first, being (by reason of the will), then, orderly and distinct
being (by reason of the intelligence), and third, concord and symmetry
(by reason of love); this I believe is in all and above all, as nothing
is without participation in being, and being is not without its
essence, just as nothing is beautiful without the presence of beauty;
so nothing can be exempt from the divine presence. In this manner, by
use of reason, and not by use of substantial [theological] truth, I
discern distinctions in the Deity.

“Regarding the world as caused and produced, I meant that, as all being
depends on the First Cause, I did not shrink from the term ‘creation;’
which I believe even Aristotle expressed, saying that God is, on
whom the world and Nature are dependent; so that, according to the
explanation of St. Thomas, be the world either eternal or temporal
according to its nature, it is dependent on the First Cause, and
nothing exists in it independently.

“Next, concerning that which belongs to faith--not speaking in the
manner of philosophy--about the divine persons, that wisdom and that
son of the mind, called by philosophers _intellect_ and by theologians
the _Word_, which we are to believe took upon itself human flesh, I,
standing within the bounds of philosophy, have not understood it; but I
have doubted, and with inconstant faith maintained,--not that I recall
having shown a sign of it in writing or in speech, excepting as in
other things indirectly one might gather from my belief and profession
concerning those things which can be proved by the reason and deduced
from natural light. And then concerning the divine spirit in a third
person, I have been able to comprehend nothing in the way in which one
ought to believe; but in the Pythagorean way, conformable to that way
which Solomon points out, I have understood it to be the soul of the
universe, or assistant in the universe, according to that saying in the
_Wisdom of Solomon_, ‘The Spirit of the Lord filleth the world; and
that which containeth all things hath knowledge of the voice.’[29] This
seems to me to agree to the Pythagorean doctrine explained by Vergil
in this passage of the _Æneid_:--

  ‘Principio coelum ac terras camposque liquentes,
   Lucentemque globum Lunae Titaniaque astra,
   Spiritus intus alit, totamque infusa per artus
   Mens agitat molem.’[30]

[29] Chap. I, v, 7.

[30] Book VI, 724-27.

“I teach in my philosophy that from this spirit, which is called the
Life of the Universe, the life and soul of everything which has life
and soul springs; that it is immortal, just as bodies, so far as
concerns their substance, are all immortal, death being nothing else
than division and coming together; this doctrine seems to be expressed
in _Ecclesiastes_, where it says, ‘There is no new thing under the sun.
Is there anything whereof it may be said, See, this is new?’ and so on.”

_Inquisitor._ “Have you held, do you hold and believe, the Trinity,
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, one in essence, but distinct in person, as
is taught and believed by the Catholic Church?”

_Bruno._ “Speaking as a Christian, and according to theology, and as
every faithful Christian and Catholic ought to believe, I have indeed
had doubts about the name ‘person’ as applied to the Son and the
Holy Spirit; not understanding these two persons to be distinct from
the Father, except as I have said above, speaking in the manner of
philosophy, and assigning the intelligence of the Father to the Son,
and his love to the Holy Spirit, but without comprehending this word
‘persons,’ which in St. Augustine is declared to be not an ancient
but a new word, and of his time: and I have held this opinion since I
was eighteen years old till now, but in fact I have never denied, nor
taught, nor written, but only doubted in my own mind, as I have said.”

_Inquisitor._ “Have you believed, and do you believe, all that the Holy
Mother Catholic Church teaches, believes, and holds about the First
Person, and have you ever in any wise doubted concerning the First
Person?”

_Bruno._ “I have believed and held undoubtingly all that every faithful
Christian ought to believe and hold concerning the First Person.
Regarding the Second Person, I declare that I have held it to be
really one in essence with the First, and so the Third; because, being
indivisible in essence, they cannot suffer inequality, for all the
attributes which belong to the Father belong also to the Son and Holy
Spirit: only I have doubted, as I said above, how this Second Person
could become incarnate and could have suffered: nevertheless I have
never denied nor taught that, and if I have said anything about this
Second Person, I have said it in quoting the opinions of others, like
Arius and Sabellius and other followers of theirs. I will tell what I
must have said, and which may have caused scandal and suspicion, as was
set down in the first charges against me at Naples, to wit: I declared
that the opinion of Arius seemed less pernicious than it was commonly
esteemed and understood, because it is commonly understood that Arius
meant to say that the Word is the first thing created by the Father;
whereas I declared that Arius said that the Word was neither creator
nor creature, but midway between creator and creature,--as the word
is midway between the speaker and the thing spoken,--and therefore
that the Word was the first-born before all creatures, not _by_ which,
but _through_ which everything has been created, not _to_ which but
_through_ which everything is referred and returns to the ultimate end,
which is the Father. I exaggerated on this theme so that I was regarded
with suspicion. I recall further to have said here in Venice that Arius
did not intend to say that Christ, that is the Word, is a creature, but
a mediator in the sense I have stated. I do not remember the precise
place, whether at a druggist’s or bookseller’s, but I know I said this
in one of these shops, arguing with certain priests who made a show of
theology: I know not who they were, nor should I recognize them if I
saw them. To make my statement more clear, I repeat that I have held
there is one God, distinguished as Father, as Word, and as Love, which
is the Divine Spirit, and that all these three are one God in essence;
but I have not understood, and have doubted, how these three can get
the name of persons, for it did not seem to me that this name of person
was applicable to the Deity; and I supported myself in this by the
words of St. Augustine, who says, ‘_Cum formidine proferimus hoc nomen
personae, quando loquimur de divinis, et necessitate coacti utimur_;’
besides which, in the Old and New Testaments I have not found nor read
this expression nor this form of speech.”

_Inquisitor._ “Having doubted the Incarnation of the Word, what has
been your opinion about Christ?”

_Bruno._ “I have thought that the divinity of the Word was present
in the humanity of Christ individually, and I have not been able
to understand that it was a union like that of soul and body, but
a presence of such a kind that we could truly say of this man that
he was God, and of this divinity that it was man; because between
substance infinite and divine and substance finite and human there is
no proportion as between soul and body, or any other two things which
can make up one existence; and I believe, therefore, that St. Augustine
shrank from applying that word ‘person’ to this case: so that, in
conclusion, I think, as regards my doubt of the Incarnation, I have
wavered concerning its ineffable meaning, but not against the Holy
Scripture, which says ‘the Word is made flesh.’”

_Inquisitor._ “What opinion have you had concerning the miracles, acts,
and death of Christ?”

_Bruno._ “I have held what the Holy Catholic Church holds, although
I have said of the miracles that, while they are testimony of the
divinity [of Christ], the evangelical law is, in my opinion, a stronger
testimony, because the Lord said ‘he shall do greater than these’
miracles; and it occurred to me that whilst others, like the Apostles,
wrought miracles, so that, in their external effect, they seemed like
those wrought by him, Christ worked by his own virtue, and the Apostles
by virtue of another’s power. Therefore I have maintained that the
miracles of Christ were divine, true, real, and not apparent; nor have
I ever thought, said, nor believed the contrary.

“I have never spoken of the sacrifice of the mass, nor of
transubstantiation, except in the way the Holy Church holds. I have
believed, and do believe, that the transubstantiation of the bread
and wine into the body and blood of Christ takes place really and in
substance.”

_Inquisitor._ “Did you ever say that Christ was not God, but a
good-for-nothing, and that, doing wretched works, he ought to
have expected to be put to death, although he showed that he died
unwillingly?”

_Bruno._ “I am astonished that this question is put to me, for I have
never had such opinions, nor said such a thing, nor thought aught
contrary to what I said just now about the person of Christ, which is
that I believe what the Holy Mother Church believes. I know not how
these things are imputed to me.” At this he seemed much grieved.

_Inquisitor._ “In reasoning about the Incarnation of the Word, what
have you held concerning the delivery of the said Word by the Virgin
Mary?”

_Bruno._ “That it was conceived of the Holy Ghost, born of Mary as
Virgin; and when any one shall find that I have said or maintained the
contrary, I will submit myself to any punishment.”

_Inquisitor._ “Do you know the import and effect of the sacrament of
penance?”

_Bruno._ “I know that it is ordained to purge our sins; and never,
never have I talked on this subject, but have always held that
whosoever dies in mortal sin will be damned. It is about sixteen years
since I presented myself to a confessor, except on two occasions:
once at Toulouse, to a Jesuit, and another time in Paris, to another
Jesuit, whilst I was treating, through the Bishop of Bergamo, then
nuncio at Paris, and through Don Bernardin de Mendoza, to reënter
my order, with a view to confessing; and they said that, being an
apostate, they could not absolve me, and that I could not go to the
holy offices, wherefore I have abstained from the confessional and
from going to mass. I have intended, however, to emerge some time from
these censures, and to live like a Christian and a priest; and when
I have sinned I have always asked pardon of God, and I would also
willingly have confessed if I could, because I have firmly believed
that impenitent sinners are damned.”

_Inquisitor._ “You hold, therefore, that souls are immortal, and that
they do not pass from one body into another, as we have information you
have said?”

_Bruno._ “I have held, and hold, that souls are immortal, and that they
are subsisting substances, that is rational souls, and that, speaking
as a Catholic, they do not pass from one body into another, but go
either to paradise or to purgatory, or to hell; but I have, to be sure,
argued, following philosophical reasons, that as the soul subsists in
the body, and is non-existent in the body [that is, not an integral
part of it], it may, in the same way that it exists in one, exist in
another, and pass from one to another; and if this be not true, it at
least seems like the opinion of Pythagoras.”

_Inquisitor._ “Have you busied yourself much in theological studies,
and are you instructed in the Catholic resolutions?”

_Bruno._ “Not a great deal, having devoted myself to philosophy, which
has been my profession.”

_Inquisitor._ “Have you ever vituperated the theologians and their
decisions, calling their doctrine vanity and other similar opprobrious
names?”

_Bruno._ “Speaking of the theologians who interpret Holy Scripture, I
have never spoken otherwise than well. I may have said something about
some one in particular, and blamed him,--some Lutheran theologian, for
instance, or other heretics,--but I have always esteemed the Catholic
theologians, especially St. Thomas, whose works I have ever kept by me,
read, and studied, and honored them, and I have them at present, and
hold them very dear.”

_Inquisitor._ “Which have you reckoned heretical theologians?”

_Bruno._ “All those who profess theology, but who do not agree
with the Roman Church, I have esteemed heretics. I have read books
by Melanchthon, Luther, Calvin, and by other heretics beyond the
mountains, not to learn their doctrine nor to avail myself of it,
for I deemed them more ignorant than myself, but I read them out of
curiosity. I despise these heretics and their doctrines, because they
do not merit the name of theologians, but of pedants; for the Catholic
ecclesiastical doctors, on the contrary, I have the esteem I should.”

_Inquisitor._ “How, then, have you dared to say that the Catholic faith
is full of blasphemies, and without merit in God’s sight?”

_Bruno._ “Never have I said such a thing, neither in writing, nor in
word, nor in thought.”

_Inquisitor._ “What things are needful for salvation?”

_Bruno._ “Faith, hope, and charity. Good works are also necessary; or
it will suffice not to do to others that which we do not wish to have
done to us, and to live morally.”

_Inquisitor._ “Have you ever denounced the Catholic religious orders,
especially for having revenues?”

_Bruno._ “I have never denounced one of them for any cause; on the
contrary, I have found fault when the clergy, lacking income, are
forced to beg; and I was surprised, in France, when I saw certain
priests going about the streets to beg, with open missals.”

_Inquisitor._ “Did you ever say that the life of the clergy does not
conform to that of the Apostles?”

_Bruno._ “I have never said nor held such a thing!” And as he said this
he raised his hands, and looked about astonished. In answer to another
question, he continued: “I have said that the Apostles achieved more
by their preaching, good life, examples, and miracles than force can
accomplish, which is used against those who refuse to be Catholics;
without condemning this method, I approve the other.”

_Inquisitor._ “Have you ever said that the miracles wrought by Christ
and the Apostles were apparent miracles, done by magic art, and not
real; and that you have enough spirit to work the same or greater, and
wished finally to make the whole world run after you?”

_Bruno_ (_lifting up both his hands_). “What is this? What man has
invented this devilishness? I have never said such a thing, nor has it
entered my imagination. O God, what is this? I had rather be dead than
that this should be proposed to me!”

_Inquisitor._ “What opinion have you of the sin of the flesh, outside
of the sacrament of matrimony?”

_Bruno._ “I have spoken of this sometimes, saying, in general, that
it was a lesser sin than the others, but that adultery was the chief
of carnal sins, whereas the other was lighter, and almost venial.
This, indeed, I have said, but I know and acknowledge to have spoken
in error, because I remember what St. Paul says. However, I spoke thus
through levity, being with others and discussing worldly topics. I have
never said that the Church made a great mistake in constituting this a
sin....

“I hold it a pious and holy thing, as the Church ordains, to observe
fasts and abstain from meat and prohibited food on the days she
appoints, and that every faithful Catholic is bound to observe them;
which I too would have done except for the reason given above; and God
help me if I have ever eaten meat out of contempt [for the Church]. As
for having listened to heretics preach, or lecture, or dispute, I did
so several times from curiosity and to see their methods and eloquence,
rather than from delight or enjoyment; indeed, after the reading or
sermon, at the time when they distributed bread according to their form
of communion, I went away about my business, and never partook of their
bread nor observed their rites.”

_Inquisitor._ “From your explanation of the Incarnation there follows
another grave error, namely, that in Christ there was a human
personality.”

_Bruno._ “I recognize and concede that these and other improprieties
may follow, and I have stated this opinion, not to defend, but only to
explain it; and I confess my error such and so great as it is; and had
I applied my mind to this adduced impropriety and to others deducible
from it, I should not have reached these conclusions, because I may
have erred in the premises, but certainly not in the conclusions.”

_Inquisitor._ “Do you remember to have said that men are begotten of
corruption, like the other animals, and that this has been since the
Deluge down to the present?”

_Bruno._ “I believe this is the opinion of Lucretius. I have read it
and heard it talked about, but I do not recall having referred to it as
my opinion; nor have I ever believed it. When I reasoned about it, I
did so referring it to Lucretius, Epicurus, and their similars, and it
is not possible to deduce it from my philosophy, as will readily appear
to any one who reads that.”

_Inquisitor._ “Have you ever had any book of conjurations or of similar
superstitious arts, or have you said you wished to devote yourself to
the art of divination?”

_Bruno._ “As for books of conjurations, I have always despised them,
never had them by me, nor attributed any efficacy to them. As for
divination, particularly that relating to judicial astrology, I have
said, and even proposed, to study it to see if there is any truth or
conformity in it. I have communicated my purpose to several persons,
remarking that, as I have examined all parts of philosophy, and
inquired into all science except the judicial, when I had convenience
and leisure I wish to have a look at that, which I have not done yet.”

_Inquisitor._ “Have you said that the operations of the world are
guided by Fate, denying the providence of God?”

_Bruno._ “This cannot be found either in my words or in my writings; on
the contrary, you will find, in my books, that I set forth providence
and free will.... I have praised many heretics and also heretic
princes, but not as heretics, but only for the moral virtues they
possessed. In particular, in my book _De la Causa, Principio et Uno_, I
praise the Queen of England, and call her ‘divine;’ not as an attribute
of religion, but as a certain epithet which the ancients used also to
bestow on princes; and in England, where I then was and wrote that
book, it is customary to give this title ‘divine’ to the Queen; and I
was all the more persuaded to name her thus because she knew me, for I
often went with the ambassador to court. I acknowledge to have erred in
praising this lady, who is a heretic, and especially in attributing to
her the epithet ‘divine.’”...

_Inquisitor._ “Are the errors and heresies committed and confessed by
you still embraced, or do you detest them?”

_Bruno._ “All the errors I have committed, down to this very day,
pertaining to Catholic life and regular profession, and all the
heresies I have held and the doubts I have had concerning the Catholic
faith and the questions determined by the Holy Church, I now detest;
and I abhor, and repent me of having done, held, said, believed,
or doubted of anything that was not Catholic; and I pray this holy
tribunal that, knowing my infirmities, it will please to accept me into
the bosom of the Holy Church, providing me with remedies opportune for
my safety and using me with mercy.”

Bruno was then re-questioned concerning the reason why he broke away
from his order. He repeated, in substance, the testimony already given,
adding that his baptismal name was Philip.

_Inquisitor._ “Have you, in these parts, any enemy or other malevolent
person, and who is he, and for what cause?”

_Bruno._ “I have no enemy in these parts, unless it be Ser Giovanni
Mocenigo and his followers and servants, by whom I have been more
grievously offended than by any other man living, because he has
assassinated me in my life, in my honor, and in my goods,--having
imprisoned me in his own house, confiscating all my writings, books,
and other property; and he has done this, not only because he wished
me to teach him all I knew, but also because he wished that I should
not teach it to any one else; and he has always threatened my life and
honor if I did not teach him what I knew.”

_Inquisitor._ “Your apostacy of so many years renders you very
suspicious to the Holy Faith, since you have so long spurned her
censures, whence it may happen that you have held sinister opinions
in other matters than those you have deposed; you may, therefore, and
ought now to purify your conscience.”

_Bruno._ “It seems to me that the articles I have confessed, and all
that which I have expressed in my writings, show sufficiently the
importance of my excess, and therefore I confess it, whatsoever may
be its extent, and I acknowledge to have given grave cause for the
suspicion of heresy. And I add to this that I have always had remorse
in my conscience, and the purpose of reforming, although I was seeking
to effect this in the easiest and surest way, still shrinking from
going back to the straitness of regular obedience.... And I was at this
very time putting in order certain writings to propitiate his Holiness,
so that I might be allowed to live more independently than is possible
as an ecclesiastic....

“Beginning with my accuser, who I believe is Signor Giovanni Mocenigo,
I think no one will be found who can say that I have taught false and
heretical doctrine; and I have no suspicion that any one else can
accuse me in matters of holy faith. It may be that I, during so long
a course of time, may have erred and strayed from the Church in other
matters than those I have exposed, and that I may be ensnared in other
censures, but, though I have reflected much upon it, I have discovered
nothing; and I now promptly confess my errors, and am here in the hands
of your Excellencies to receive remedy, for my salvation. My force does
not suffice to tell how great is my repentance for my misdeeds, nor to
express it as I should wish.” Having knelt down, he said: “I humbly
ask pardon of God and your Excellencies for all the errors committed
by me; and I am ready to suffer whatsoever by your prudence shall be
determined and adjudged expedient for my soul. And I further supplicate
that you rather give me a punishment which is excessive in gravity than
make such a public demonstration as might bring some dishonor upon the
holy habit of the order which I have worn; and if, through the mercy of
God and of your Excellencies, my life shall be granted to me, I promise
to make a notable reform in my life, and that I will atone for the
scandal by other and as great edification.”

_Inquisitor._ “Have you anything else to say for the present?”

_Bruno._ “I have nothing more to say.”


II

This is the confession and apology of Giordano Bruno, taken from the
minutes of the Inquisition of Venice, so far as I have been able to
interpret the ungrammatical, ill-punctuated report of the secretary.
The examinations were held on May 26 and 30, June 2, 3, 4, and July 30,
1592; and as there were, consequently, many repetitions of statement,
I have condensed where it seemed advisable. From Bruno’s lips we hear
the explanation of his philosophical system, his doubts, his belief,
and his recantation of any opinions which clashed with the dogmas
of Catholicism. Was his recantation sincere? Before answering this
question, let us glance at his opinions as he expressed them freely in
his works; for upon Bruno’s value as a thinker must finally rest the
justification of our interest in him. True, the romance of his strange
vagabond career and the pathos of his noble death will always excite
interest in his personality; but the final question which mankind asks
of prophet, philosopher, poet, preacher, or man of science is, “What
can you tell us concerning our origin and our destiny?”

Be warned at the outset that Bruno furnished no complete, systematic
reply to this question. He did not, like Spinoza, reduce his system to
the precision of a geometrical text-book, all theorems and corollaries;
nor, like Herbert Spencer, did he stow the universe away in a cabinet
of pigeonholes. He is often inconsistent, often contradicts himself.
Perhaps his chief merit is that he stimulated thought on every subject
he touched, and that he made sublime guesses which experiment, toiling
patiently after him, has established as truths. Like all searchers
for truth, his purpose was to discover the all-embracing Unity. Our
reason shows us an unbridgeable chasm between matter and mind; the
world of ideas and the outward world are in perpetual flux; nature is
composed of innumerable separate objects, yet a superior unity pervades
them. Life and death subsist antagonistically side by side: what is
that, greater than both, which includes both? What is the permanence
underlying this shifting, evanescent world? Conscience likewise reports
the conflict between good and evil: what is the cause anterior to both?
Many solutions have been offered; perhaps the commonest is that which,
taught by the Manicheans and adopted by early Christians, announces
that there are two principles in the universe,--one good, God, the
other evil, Satan. But insuperable difficulties accompany this view.
If God be, as assumed, all-powerful, why does he not exterminate Satan;
if he be just, why does he permit evil to exist at all?

Bruno, as we have seen in his deposition, proclaims that God is one and
indivisible, the Soul of the universe; that his attributes are power,
wisdom, and love; that he is in all things, yet above all things,
not to be understood, ineffable, and whether personal or impersonal,
man cannot say; that Nature is his footprint, God being the nature
of Nature; that since every material atom is part of him, by virtue
of his immanence in Nature, it is eternal, and so are human souls
immortal, being emanations from his immortal spirit; but whether souls
preserve their identity, or whether, like the atoms, they are forever
re-composed into new forms, Bruno does not decide. This, speaking
broadly, is pantheism; and pantheism is a system from which we are
taught to recoil with almost as much horror as from atheism. “That is
mere pantheism!” exclaimed John Sterling, aghast, at one of Carlyle’s
conclusions. “And suppose it were _pot_-theism? If the thing is true!”
replied Carlyle,--a reply not to be taken for valid argument, perhaps,
yet worthy of being pondered. As a pantheist, then, we must classify
Bruno,--in that wide class which includes Spinoza, Goethe, Shelley,
and Emerson. “Within man is the soul of the whole,” says Emerson; “the
wise silence, the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is
equally related, the eternal ONE. And this deep power in which
we exist, and whose beatitude is all accessible to us, is not only
self-sufficing and perfect in every hour, but the act of seeing and the
thing seen, the seer and the spectacle, the subject and the object, are
one.” The Inquisition in 1600 would have burned Emerson for those two
sentences.

Coming to details, we find that Bruno shakes himself free from the
tyranny of Aristotle,--a mighty audacity, to measure which we must
remember that upon Aristotle’s arbitrary dicta the fathers and doctors
of the Catholic Church had based their dogmas. Though a pagan, he had
been for fifteen hundred years the logical pillar of Christendom,
uncanonized, yet deserving canonization along with St. Thomas and
St. Augustine. Bruno dared to attack the mighty despot in his very
strongholds, the Sorbonne and Oxford, and, by so doing, helped to clear
the road for subsequent explorers of philosophy and science. Equally
courageous was his championship of the discoveries and theories of
Copernicus. Bruno, we may safely say, was the first man who realized
the full meaning of the Copernican system,--a meaning which even
to-day the majority have not grasped. He saw that it was not merely
a question as to whether the earth moves round the sun, or the sun
moves round the earth; but that when Copernicus traced the courses
of our solar system, and saw other and yet other systems beyond, he
invalidated the strong presumption upon which dogmatic Christianity
was reared. According to the old view, the earth was the centre of
the universe, the especial gem of God’s creation; as a final mark of
his favor, God created man to rule the earth, and from among men he
designated a few--his “chosen people”--who should enjoy everlasting
bliss in heaven. But it follows from Copernicus’s discoveries, that
the earth is but one of a company of satellites which circle round the
sun; that the sun itself is but one of innumerable other suns, each
with its satellites; that there are probably countless inhabited orbs;
that the scheme of salvation taught by the old theology is inadequate
to the new conceptions we are bound to form of the majesty, justice,
and omnipotence of the Supreme Ruler of an infinite universe. The God
whom Bruno apprehended was not one who narrowed his interests to the
concerns of a Syrian tribe, and of a sect of Christians on this little
ball of earth, but one whose power is commensurate with infinitude, and
who cherishes all creatures and all things in all worlds. Copernicus
himself did not foresee the full significance of the discovery which
dethroned the earth and man from their supposed preeminence in the
universe; but Bruno caught its mighty import, and the labors of Kepler,
Galileo, Newton, Herschel, and Darwin have corroborated him.

Inspired by this revelation, Bruno was the first to envisage religions
as human growths, just as laws and customs are human growths,
expressing the higher or lower needs and aspirations of the people and
age in which they exist. His famous satire, _The Expulsion of the Beast
Triumphant_,[31] has a far deeper purpose than to travesty classic
mythology, or to ridicule the abuses of Romanists and Protestants, or
to scoff at the exaggerated pretensions of the Pope. Under the form
of an allegory, it is a prophecy of the ultimate passing away of all
anthropomorphic religion. It shows how the god whom men have worshiped
hitherto has been endowed by them with human passions and attributes,
“writ large,” to be sure, but still unworthy of being associated with
that Soul of the World which is in all things, yet above all things.
Everywhere he assails the doctrine that faith, without good works, can
lead to salvation. He denounces celibacy, and other unnatural rules of
the Catholic Church. He denounces still more vigorously the monstrous
theory of original sin, according to which an assumedly just God
punishes myriads of millions of human beings for the alleged trespass
of two of their ancestors. Bruno also cites the discovery of new races
in America as evidence that mankind are not all descended from Adam and
Eve; whence he infers that, since the Mosaic cosmogony is too narrow
to explain the creation and growth of mankind, the Hebrew scheme of
vicarious punishment and vicarious redemption must be inadequate. He
laughs at the idea of a “chosen people.” Over and over again Bruno
derides the assertion that, in order to be saved, we must despise our
divinest guide, Reason, and be led blindly by Faith, reducing ourselves
so far as we can to the level of donkeys. His satire, _La Cabala del
Cavallo Pegaseo_, which supplements _The Beast Triumphant_, is a mock
eulogy of this “holy asininity, holy ignorance, holy stupidity, and
pious devotion, which alone can make souls so good that human genius
and study cannot surpass them.” “What avails, O truth-seeker,” he
exclaims in one of his finest sonnets, “your studying and wishing to
know how Nature works, and whether the stars also are earth, fire, and
sea? Holy donkeydom cares not for that, but with clasped hands wills to
remain on its knees, awaiting from God its doom.”

[31] This, the most famous of Bruno’s works, was until recently so rare
that only two or three copies of it were known to exist. Hence numerous
blunders and misconceptions by critics who wrote about it from hearsay.
For a detailed analysis of “The Beast Triumphant” I may refer the
reader to _The New World_ for September, 1894. Lucian’s satire, “Zeus
in Heroics,” may have given the hint to Bruno.

In a striking passage, Bruno explains that evil is relative. “Nothing
is absolutely bad,” he says; “because the viper is not deadly and
poisonous to the viper, nor the lion to the lion, nor dragon to dragon,
nor bear to bear; but each thing is bad in respect to some other,
just as you, virtuous gods, are evil towards the vicious.” Again he
says, “Nobody is to-day the same as yesterday.” The immanence of the
universal soul in the animal world he illustrated thus: “With what
understanding the ant gnaws her grain of wheat, lest it should sprout
in her underground habitation! The fool says this is instinct, but we
say it is a species of understanding.”

These are some of Bruno’s characteristic opinions. Their influence
upon subsequent philosophers has been much discussed. His conception
of the universe as an “animal” corresponds with Kepler’s well-known
view. Spinoza, the great pantheist of the following century, took from
him the idea of an immanent God, and the distinction between _natura
naturans_ and _natura naturata_. Schelling, who acknowledged Bruno
as his master, found in him the principle of the indifference of
contraries; Hegel, that of the absolute identity of subject and object,
of the real and the ideal, of thought and things. La Croze discovers
in Bruno the germs of most of Leibnitz’s theories, beginning with the
monad. Symonds declares that “he anticipated Descartes’s position of
the identity of mind and being. The modern theory of evolution was
enunciated by him in pretty plain terms. He had grasped the physical
law of the conservation of energy. He solved the problem of evil by
defining it to be a relative condition of imperfect energy.... We have
indeed reason to marvel how many of Bruno’s intuitions have formed
the stuff of later, more elaborated systems, and still remain the
best which these contain. We have reason to wonder how many of his
divinations have worked themselves into the common fund of modern
beliefs, and have become philosophical truisms.”[32] Hallam, who
strangely undervalued Bruno, states that he understood the principle of
compound forces. After making due allowance for the common tendency to
read back into men’s opinions interpretations they never dreamed of, we
shall find that much solid substance still remains to Bruno’s credit.
He is, above all, suggestive.

[32] From J. A. Symonds’s _Renaissance in Italy: The Catholic
Reaction_, chap. ix.


III

We come now to that perplexing question, “Why did he recant? How could
he, who was so evidently a freethinker and a rationalist, honestly
affirm his belief in the Roman Catholic dogmas?” His confession seems
to be straightforward and candid: had he wished to propitiate the
Inquisitors, he needed only not to mention his philosophical doubts
about the Incarnation and the Trinity; he needed only to admit that
there were in his writings errors which he no longer approved, and to
throw himself on the mercy of his tribunal. What, then, was the motive?
Was it physical fear? Did life and liberty seem too tempting to him who
loved both so intensely; preferable to death, no matter how great the
sacrifice of honor? Did he simply perjure himself? Or was he suddenly
overcome by a doubt that his opinions might be, after all, wrong, and
that the Church might be right? He testified, and others testified,
that before he had any thought of being brought to trial he had
determined to make his peace with the Pope, and to obtain leave, if he
could, to pass the remainder of his life in philosophical tranquillity.
Did the early religious associations and prejudices, which he supposed
had long ago ceased to influence him, unexpectedly spring up, to
reassert a temporary tyranny over his reason? Many men not in jeopardy
of their lives have had this experience of the tenacious vitality of
the doctrines taught to them before they could reason. Did it seem to
him a huge Aristophanic joke that a church which then had but little
real faith and less true religion in it should call any one to account
for any opinions, and that therefore the lips might well enough accept
her dogmas without binding the heart to them? Many men, who believed
themselves sincere, have subscribed in a “non-natural sense” to the
Thirty-nine Articles of Anglicanism; did Bruno subscribe to the
Catholic Articles under a similar mental reservation? Or, believing,
as he did, that every religion contains fragments of the truth, could
he not honestly say he believed in Catholicism, at the same time
holding that her symbols had a deeper significance than her theologians
perceived, and that the truth he apprehended was immeasurably
wider?--just as a mathematician might subscribe to the multiplication
table, knowing that it is not the final bound of mathematical truth,
but only the first step towards higher and unlimited investigations.

Throughout his examination Bruno was careful to make the distinction
between the province of faith and the province of speculation.
“Speaking after the manner of philosophy,” he confessed that he had
reached conclusions which, “speaking as a Catholic,” he ought not to
believe. This distinction, which we now think uncandid and casuistical,
was nevertheless admitted in his time. All through that century, men
had argued “philosophically” about the immortality of the soul; but
“theologically” such an argument was impossible, because the Church
pronounced the immortality of the soul to be an indisputable fact. But,
we ask, can a man honestly hold two antagonistic, mutually destroying
beliefs; saying, for instance, that his reason has disproved the
Incarnation, but that his faith accepts that doctrine? Or was Bruno
unaware of his contradictions? Of how many of your opinions concerning
the ultimate mysteries of life do you, reader, feel so sure that,
were you suddenly seized, imprisoned, brought face to face with a
pitiless tribunal, and confronted by torture and burning, you--one
man against the world--would boldly, without hesitation, publish and
maintain them? Galileo, one of mankind’s noblest, could not endure this
ordeal, although the evidence of his senses and the testimony of his
reason contradicted the denial which pain and dread wrung from him.
Savonarola, another great spirit, flinched likewise. These are points
we are bound to consider before we pronounce Bruno a hypocrite or a
coward.

The last news we have of him in Venice is when, “having been bidden
several times,” he rose from his knees, after confessing his penitence,
on that 30th of July, 1592. The authorities of the Inquisition at
Rome immediately opened negotiations for his extradition. The Doge
and Senate demurred; they hesitated before establishing the precedent
whereby Rome could reach over and punish Venetian culprits. Time was,
indeed, when Venice allowed no one, though he were the Pope, to meddle
in her administration; but, alas! the lion had died out in Venetian
souls. Finally, “wishing to give satisfaction to his Holiness,” Doge
and Senators consented to deliver Bruno up; the Pope expressed his
gratification, and said that he would never force upon the Republic
“bones hard to gnaw.” So Bruno was taken to Rome. In the “list of the
prisoners of the Holy Office, made Monday, April 5, 1599,” we find
that he was imprisoned on February 27, 1593. What happened during
almost seven years we can only surmise. We may be sure the Inquisitors
searched his books for further heretical doctrine. We hear that they
visited him in his cell from time to time, and exhorted him to recant,
but that he replied that he had nothing to abjure, and that they had
misinterpreted him. A memorial which he addressed to them they did
not read. Growing weary of their efforts to save his soul, they would
temporize no more; on a given day he must retract, or be handed over to
the secular arm. That day came: Giordano Bruno stood firm, though he
knew the penalty was death.

We cannot tell when he first resolved to dare and suffer all. Some time
during those seven years of solitude and torment, he awoke to the great
fact that

  “’Tis man’s perdition to be safe,
   When for the truth he ought to die.”

Mere existence he could purchase with the base coin of cowardice or
casuistry; but that would be, not life, but a living shame, and he
refused. Who can tell how hard instinct pleaded,--how the thoughts of
freedom, how the longings for companions, how the recollections of that
beautiful Neapolitan home which he loved and wished to revisit, how
the desire to explore yet more freely the beauties and the mysteries
of the divine universe, came to him with reasons and excuses to tempt
him from his resolution? But conscience supported him. He took Truth
by the hand, turned his back on the world and its joy and sunshine,
and followed whither she led into the silent, sunless unknown. Let us
dismiss the theory that he was impelled by the desire to escape in
this way from an imprisonment which threatened to be perpetual; let
us dismiss, and contemptuously dismiss, the insinuation of an English
writer, that Bruno’s purpose was, by a theatrical death, to startle the
world which had begun to forget him in his confinement. To impute a low
motive to a noble deed is surely as base as to extenuate a crime. Bruno
had no sentimental respect for martyrs; but on the day when he resolved
to die for his convictions, he proved his kinship with the noblest
martyrs and heroes of the race.

On February 8, 1600, he was brought before Cardinal Mandruzzi, the
Supreme Inquisitor. He was formally degraded from his order, sentence
of death was pronounced against him, and he was given up to the secular
authorities. During the reading, he remained tranquil, thoughtful. When
the Inquisitor ceased, he uttered those memorable words, which still,
judging from the recent alarm in the Vatican, resound ominously in the
ears of the Romish hierarchy: “Peradventure you pronounce this sentence
against me with greater fear than I receive it.” After nine days had
been allowed for his recantation, he was led forth, on February 17, to
the Campo di Fiora,--once an amphitheatre, built by Pompey, and now a
vegetable market. When he had been bound to the stake, he protested,
according to one witness, that he died willingly, and that his soul
would mount with the smoke into paradise. Another account says that he
was gagged, to prevent his uttering blasphemies. As the flames leaped
up, a crucifix was held before him, but he turned his head away. He
uttered no scream, nor sigh, nor murmur, as Hus and Servetus had done;
even that last mortal agony of the flesh could not overcome his spirit.
And when nothing remained of his body but ashes, these were gathered up
and tossed to the winds.

Berti, to whose indefatigable and enlightened researches, extending
over forty years, we owe our knowledge of Bruno’s career,[33] says
justly that Bruno bequeathed to his countrymen the example of an
Italian dying for an ideal,--a rare example in the sixteenth century,
but emulated by thousands of Italians in the nineteenth. To us and to
all men his death brings not only that lesson, but it also teaches
that no tribunal, whether religious or political, has a right to
coerce the conscience and inmost thoughts of any human being. Let a
man’s deeds, so far as they affect the community, be amenable to its
laws, but his opinions should be free and inviolable. We can grant
that the Torquemadas and Calvins and Loyolas were sincere, and that,
from their point of view, they were justified in persecuting men who
differed from them in religion; for the heretic, they believed, was
Satan’s emissary, and deserved no more mercy than a fever-infected rag;
but history admonishes us that their point of view was not only cruel,
but wrong. No man, no church, is infallible: therefore it may turn out
that the opinions which the orthodoxy of yesterday deemed pernicious
have infused new blood into the orthodoxy of to-day. Bruno declared
that the universe is infinite and its worlds are innumerable; the Roman
Inquisition, in its ignorance, knew better. Galileo declared that the
earth moves round the sun; the Inquisition, in its ignorance, said,
No. It burned Bruno, it harried Galileo; yet, after three centuries,
which do we believe? And if the Roman Church was fallible in matters
susceptible of easy proof, shall we believe that it, or any other
church, is infallible in matters immeasurably deeper and beyond the
scope of finite demonstration? Cardinal Bellarmine, an upright man, and
perhaps the ablest Jesuit of any age, was the foremost Inquisitor in
bringing Bruno to the stake, and in menacing Galileo with the rack; but
should a schoolboy of ten now uphold Bellarmine’s theory of the solar
system, he would be sent into the corner with a fool’s-cap on his head.

[33] See Berti’s work, _Giordano Bruno da Nola; Sua Vita e Sua
Dottrina_, 1889. This excellent biography deserves to be translated
into English.

Strange is it that mankind, who have the most urgent need for truth,
should have been in all ages so hostile to receiving it. Starving men
do not kill their rescuers who bring them bread; whereas history is
little more than the chronicle of the persecution and slaughter of
those who have brought food for the soul. Doubtless the first savage
who suggested that reindeer-meat would taste better cooked than raw was
slain by his companions as a dangerous innovator. Ever since that time,
the messengers of truth have been stoned, and burned, and ganched,
and crucified; yet their message has been delivered, and has at last
prevailed. This is, indeed, the best encouragement we derive from
history, and the fairest presage of the perfectibility of mankind.

The study of the works of Giordano Bruno, which has been revived
and extended during this century, is one evidence of a more general
toleration, and of a healthy desire to know the opinions of all kinds
of thinkers. One reason why Bruno has attracted modern investigators is
because so many of his doctrines are in tune with recent metaphysical
and scientific theories; and it seems probable that, for a while
at least, the interest awakened in him will increase rather than
diminish, until, after the republication and examination of all his
writings, a just estimate of his speculations shall have been made.
Much will undoubtedly have to be thrown out as obsolete or fanciful;
much as flippant and inconsistent; much as vitiated by the cumbrous
methods of scholasticism, and the tedious fashion of expounding
philosophy by means of allegory and satire. But, after all the chaff
has been sifted and all the excrescences have been lopped off,
something precious will remain.

The very diversity of opinions about the upshot and value of
his teaching insures for him the attention of scholars for some
time to come. Those thinkers who can be quickly classified and
easily understood are as quickly forgotten; only those who elude
classification, and constantly surprise us by turning a new facet
towards us, and provoke debate, are sure of a longer consideration.
And see how conflicting are the verdicts passed upon Bruno. Sir Philip
Sidney and that fine group of men who just preceded the Shakespearean
company were his friends, and listened eagerly to his speculations.
Hegel says: “His inconstancy has no other motive than his great-hearted
enthusiasm. The vulgar, the little, the finite, satisfied him not; he
soared to the sublime idea of the Universal Substance.” The French
_philosophes_ of the eighteenth century debated whether he were an
atheist; the critics of the nineteenth century declare him to be a
pantheist. Hallam thought that, at the most, he was but a “meteor of
philosophy.” Berti ranks him above all the Italian philosophers of his
epoch, and above all who have since lived in Italy except Rosmini, and
perhaps Gioberti. Some have called him a charlatan; some, a prophet.
Finally, Leo XIII, in an allocution which was read from every Romish
pulpit in Christendom, asserted that “his writings prove him an
adept in pantheism and in shameful materialism, imbued with coarse
errors, and often inconsistent with himself;” and that “his talents
were to feign, to lie, to be devoted wholly to himself, not to bear
contradiction, to be of a base mind and wicked heart.” As we read these
sentences of Leo XIII, and his further denunciation of those who, like
Bruno, ally themselves to the Devil by using their reason, we reflect
that, were popes as powerful now as they were three centuries ago,
they would have found reason enough to burn Mill and Darwin, and many
another modern benefactor.

Bruno’s character, like his philosophy, offers so many points
for dispute that it cannot soon cease to interest men. He is so
human--neither demigod nor demon, but a creature of perplexities and
contradictions--that he is far more fascinating than those men of a
single faculty, those monotones whom we soon estimate and tire of. His
vitality, his daring, his surprises, stimulate us. In an age when the
growing bulk of rationalism casts a pessimistic shadow over so many
hopes, it is encouraging to know that the rationalist Bruno saw no
reason for despair; and when some persons are seriously asking whether
life be worth living, it is inspiring to point to a man to whom the
boon of life was so precious and its delights seemed so inexhaustible.
At any period, when many minds, after exploring all the avenues of
science, report that they perceive only dead matter everywhere, it
must help some of them to learn that Bruno beheld throughout the whole
creation and in every creature the presence of an infinite Unity, of
a Soul of the World, whose attributes are power, wisdom, and love. He
was indeed “a God-intoxicated man.” Aristotle, Ptolemy, and Aquinas
spun their cobwebs round the border of the narrow circle in which, they
asserted, all truth, mundane and celestial, was comprehended; Bruno’s
restless spirit broke through the cobwebs, and discovered limitless
spaces, innumerable worlds, beyond. To his enraptured eyes, all things
were parts of the One, the Ineffable. “The Inquisition and the stake,”
says Mr. Symonds, “put an end abruptly to his dream. But the dream was
so golden, so divine, that it was worth the pangs of martyrdom. Can
we say the same for Hegel’s system, or for Schopenhauer’s, or for the
encyclopædic ingenuity of Herbert Spencer?” By his death Bruno did not
prove that his convictions are true, but he proved beyond peradventure
that he was a true man; and by such from the beginning has human nature
been raised towards that ideal nature which we believe divine.




BRYANT


There are many good reasons why we should celebrate the one hundredth
birthday of William Cullen Bryant.[34] Not the least of them is this,
that in bringing him our tribute we also commemorate the birthday
of American poetry. He was our earliest poet, and “Thanatopsis” our
earliest poem. Through him, therefore, we make festival to the Muse who
has taught many since him to sing.

[34] First printed in _The Review of Reviews_, New York, October, 1894.

Older than Bryant were three single-poem men,--Francis Scott Key,
Joseph Hopkinson, and John Howard Payne; yet, so far as I can learn,
their three poems were written later than “Thanatopsis,” and, after
all, neither “The Star Spangled Banner,” nor “Hail Columbia,” nor
“Home, Sweet Home,” would rank high as poetry. Likewise, though
Fitz-Greene Halleck was older than Bryant by four years, and once
enjoyed a considerable vogue, his verse is now obsolescent, if
not obsolete. In the anthologies--those presses of faded poetical
flowers--you will still find some of his pieces; but which of us now
regards “Marco Bozzaris” as the “finest martial poem in the language”?

Bryant’s priority among his immediate contemporaries is thus clearly
established; furthermore, a considerable interval separated him from
that group of American poets who rose to eminence in the two decades
before the civil war. Bryant was born in 1794, Emerson in 1803,
Longfellow and Whittier in 1807, Holmes and Poe in 1809, Lowell and
Whitman in 1819. An almost unexampled precocity also set Bryant’s
pioneership beyond dispute.

But when we call Bryant the earliest American poet, and “Thanatopsis”
the earliest American poem, we must not suppose that both had not had
many ineffectual predecessors. Versifiers, like milliners, flourish
from age to age, and their works are forgotten in favor of a later
fashion. Who the forgotten predecessors of Bryant were, he himself will
tell us. Being asked in February, 1818, to write an article on American
poetry for the _North American Review_ he replied:--

“Most of the American poets of much note, I believe, I have
read,--Dwight, Barlow, Trumbull, Humphreys, Honeywood, Clifton,
Paine. The works of Hopkins I have never met with. I have seen Philip
Freneau’s writings, and some things by Francis Hopkinson. There was a
Dr. Ladd, if I am not mistaken in the name, of Rhode Island, who, it
seems, was much celebrated in his time for his poetical talent, of whom
I have seen hardly anything; and another, Dr. Church, a Tory at the
beginning of the Revolution, who was compelled to leave the country,
and some of whose satirical verses which I have heard recited possess
considerable merit as specimens of forcible and glowing invective. I
have read most of Mrs. Morton’s poems, and turned over a volume of
stale and senseless rhymes by Mrs. Warren. Before the time of these
writers, some of whom are still alive, and the rest belong to the
generation which has just passed away, I imagine that we could hardly
be said to have any poetry of our own; and indeed it seems to me that
American poetry, such as it is, may justly enough be said to have had
its rise with that knot of Connecticut poets, Trumbull and others, most
of whose works appeared about the time of the Revolution.”[35]

[35] _A Biography of William Cullen Bryant_, by Parke Godwin, i, 154.

Bryant’s list contains the name of not one poet whose works are read
to-day. All these volumes belong to _fossil literature_,--literature,
that is, which may be dug up and studied for the light it may throw
on the customs of a time, or its intellectual development, but
which, so far as its own vitality is concerned, has passed away
beyond hope of resuscitation. The historical student of American
poetry may read Barlow’s “Columbiad” as a matter of duty; but those
of us to whom poetry is the breath of life will not seek it in that
literary graveyard. Reverently, rather, will we read the titles on the
tombstones and pass on.

Almost coeval with American independence itself was the notion that
there ought to be an independent American literature. The Revolution
had resulted in the formation of a republic new in pattern, in
opportunities, in ideals; a republic which, having broken forever with
the political system of Britain, would gladly have been freed from
all obligations--including intellectual and æsthetic obligations--to
her. We hardly realize how acute was the sensitiveness of our
great-grandfathers on this point. The satisfaction they took in
recalling the victories of Bennington and Yorktown vanished when they
were reminded--and there was always some candid foreigner at hand to
remind them--that a nation’s real greatness is measured, not by the
size of its crops, nor by its millions of square miles of surface,
nor by the rapidity with which its population doubles, nor even
by its ability to whip King George the Third’s armies, but by its
contributions to philosophy, to literature, to art, to religion. “What
have you to show in _these_ lines?” we imagine the candid foreigner
to have been perpetually asking; and the patriotic American to have
winced, as he had to reply, “Nothing;” unless, indeed, he happened
to have Thomas Jefferson’s philosophical poise. To the slur of Abbé
Raynal, that “America had not produced a single man of genius,”
Jefferson replied: “When we shall have existed as a people as long
as the Greeks did before they produced a Homer, the Romans a Virgil,
the French a Racine and Voltaire, the English a Shakespeare and
Milton, should this reproach be still true, we will inquire from what
unfriendly causes it has proceeded that the other countries of Europe
and other quarters of the earth shall not have inscribed any name of
ours on the roll of poets.”

Very few Americans, however, could bear with Jeffersonian equanimity
the imputation of inferiority. All were well aware that they had
just achieved a revolution without parallel in history; they were
honestly proud of it; and they could not help feeling touchy when
their critics, ignoring this stupendous achievement, censured them
for failure in fields they had never entered. A few, like Jefferson,
would respond, “Give us time;” the majority either masked their
irritation under pretended contempt for the opinion of foreigners,
or silently admitted the impeachment. There grew up, on the one hand,
“spread-eagleism,”--brag over our material and political bigness,--and,
on the other, an impatient desire to produce masterpieces which should
not fear comparison with the best the world could show. The Hebrew
patriarchs, whose faith Jehovah tested by denying them children till
the old age of their wives, were not less troubled at the postponement
of their dearest wishes than were those eager watchers for the advent
of American genius. Long before Bryant’s little volume was published,
in 1821, those watchers had begun to speculate as to the sort of work
in which that genius would manifest itself, and then was conjured up
that bogy, “The American Spirit,” which has flitted up and down through
our college lecture-rooms and fluttered the minds of immature critics
ever since. It was generally agreed that the question to be asked about
each new book should be, “Has it The American Spirit?” and not, “Is it
excellent?” Nobody knew how to define that spirit, but everybody had
a teasing conviction that, unless it were conspicuous, the offspring
of American genius could not prove their legitimacy. Foreigners,
especially the English, encouraged this conviction. They expected
something strange and uncouth; they would accept nothing else as
genuine. Hence, years afterward, when Whitman, with cowboy gait, came
swaggering up Parnassus, shouting nicknames at the Muses and ready to
slap Apollo on the back, our perspicacious English cousins exclaimed,
“There! there! that’s American! At last we’ve found a poet with The
American Spirit!” For quite other reasons Whitman deserves serious
attention; not for those extravagances which he deluded himself and his
unrestrained admirers into thinking were most precious manifestations
of The American Spirit. This bogy has now been pretty thoroughly
exorcised, its followers being chiefly the writers of bad grammar,
bad spelling, and slang,--which pass for dialect stories,--and an
occasional student of literature, who finds very little of the American
product that could not have been produced elsewhere. We may dismiss
The American Spirit, bidding it seek its spectral companion, The Great
American Novel, but we must remember that, even before Bryant began to
write, it was worrying the minds of our literary folk.

Bryant himself must have been subjected, consciously or unconsciously,
to the influences we have surveyed,--for who can escape breathing the
common atmosphere? But he had within him that which is more potent
than any external mould, and is the one trait hereditary in genius of
every kind,--he had sincerity. What he saw, he saw with his own eyes;
what he spake, he spake with his own lips; and inevitably it followed
that men proclaimed him original. His secret, his method, were no more
than this. “I saw some lines by you to the skylark,” he writes to his
brother in 1838. “Did you ever see such a bird? Let me counsel you to
draw your images, in describing Nature, from what you observe around
you, unless you are professedly composing a description of some foreign
country, when, of course, you will learn what you can from books. The
skylark is an English bird, and an American who has never visited
Europe has no right to be in raptures about it.” That last sentence
explains Bryant; it is worth a hundred essays on The American Spirit;
it should be the warning of every writer. The raptures of Americans
over English skylarks they had never seen were then, and have always
been, the bane of our literature. Eighty years ago the lowlands at
the foot of our Helicon had been turned into a slough by the tears of
rhymesters who did not feel the griefs they sang of, and the woods
howled with sighs which caused no pang to the sighers. Bryant, by
merely being natural and sincere, was instantly recognized as belonging
to that lineage every one of whose children is a king.

The story of his entry into literature, though well known, cannot
be too often told. Born at Cummington, a little village on the
Hampshire hills, Massachusetts, November 3, 1794, his father was a
genial, fairly cultivated country doctor; his mother, Sarah Snell, an
indefatigable housewife, with Yankee common-sense and deep-grained
Puritan principles. William Cullen, the second of several children,
was precocious; both parents encouraged his aptitude for verse-making,
and a satire which he wrote in 1807 on Jefferson and the Embargo his
father was proud to have printed in Boston. In 1810 young Bryant
entered the sophomore class of Williams College, and spent a year
there. He hoped to pass from Williams to Yale, where he looked for more
advanced instruction, but his father’s means did not permit, and the
son, instead of finishing his course at Williams, went into a country
lawyer’s office and fitted himself for the bar. Just at the moment
of indecision, in the autumn of 1811, Bryant wrote “Thanatopsis.”
Contrary to his custom, he did not show it to his father, but laid it
away with other papers in a drawer. Six years later Dr. Bryant, whose
duties as a member of the Massachusetts legislature took him often
to Boston, and whose bright parts and liberal views made him welcome
in the foremost circles there, was asked by his friends, who edited
the _North American Review_, for some contribution. On returning to
Cummington, he happened to find his son’s sequestered papers, and,
choosing “Thanatopsis”--of which, the original being covered with
many corrections, he made a copy--and “The Waterfowl,” he sent them
off to Boston, and they appeared in the _Review_ for September, 1817.
The young poet, having meanwhile completed his legal studies, was
practicing law at Great Barrington, unconscious of the fame about to
descend upon him. Owing to the handwriting of the copy of the poems
sent to the _Review_, however, Dr. Bryant had for a moment the credit
of being the author of “Thanatopsis.”

After duly allowing for the common tendency to make fame retroactive,
we cannot doubt that “Thanatopsis” secured immediate and, relatively,
immense recognition. The best judges agreed that at last a bit of
genuine American literature was before them; the uncritical but
appreciative, from ministers to school children, read, learned,
admired, and quoted the grave, sonorous lines.

Thanatopsis,--a Vision of Death! A strange corner-stone for the poetic
literature of the nation which had only recently sprung into life,--a
nation conscious as no other had been of its exuberant vitality, of
its boundless material resources, of its expansiveness and invincible
will. Yet neither the glory achieved nor the ambition cherished fired
the imagination of the youthful poet. He looked upon the earth, and
saw it but a vast grave; he looked upon men and beheld, not their high
ambitions nor the great deeds which blazon human story, but their
transience, their mortality. Nothing in life could so awe him as the
majestic mystery of death.

The mood, I believe, is not rare among sensitive and thoughtful youths,
who, just as their faculties have ripened sufficiently to enable them
to feel a little of the unspeakable delight of living, are staggered
at realizing for the first time that death is inevitable, and that the
days of the longest life are few. That this terrific discovery should
kindle thoughts full of sublimity need not surprise us; but we may well
be astonished that Bryant at seventeen should have had power to express
them in a poem which is neither morbid nor religiously commonplace.

In 1821 Bryant received what was then the blue ribbon of recognition
in being asked to deliver a poem before the Harvard Chapter of the
Phi Beta Kappa Society. He wrote “The Ages,” read it in Cambridge
and printed it, together with “Thanatopsis” and a few other pieces,
in a little volume. The previous conviction was confirmed; every
one spoke of Bryant as _the_ American poet. Even the professional
critics--those sapient fellows whose obtuseness is the wonder of
posterity, the clique which pooh-poohed Keats, and ha-hahed Wordsworth,
and bear-baited Carlyle--made in Bryant’s case no mistake. Although one
of them, indeed, declared that there was “no more poetry in Bryant’s
poems than in the Sermon on the Mount,” yet the opinions were generally
laudatory, and the critics were quick in defining the qualities of
the new poet. They found in him something of Cowper and something
of Wordsworth, but the resemblances did not imply imitation; Bryant
might speak their language, but it was his also. No one questioned the
genuineness of his inspiration, and not for a quarter of a century
after the publication of “Thanatopsis,” that is, not until the early
forties,--when Longfellow, Whittier, Poe, and Emerson began to have a
public for their poetry,--did any one question Bryant’s primacy. He had
been so long the _only_ American poet that it was naturally assumed
that he would always be the _best_. He had redeemed America from the
reproach of barrenness in poetry, as Irving and Cooper redeemed its
prose, and Americans could feel toward no others as they felt toward
him.

A hundred years have elapsed since his birth; three generations have
known his works: what is Bryant to us, who are posterity to him? Is
he, like Cimabue in painting, a mere name to date from,--a pioneer
whom we respect,--and nothing more? Far from it. Bryant’s poetry is not
only chronologically but absolutely interesting: it lives to-day, and
the qualities which have vitalized it for three quarters of a century
show no signs of decay. It would be incorrect, of course, to assert
that Bryant holds relatively so high a place in our literature as he
held fifty years ago; his estate then was the first poetic clearing
in the wilderness; its boundaries are still the same; but subsequent
poets have made other clearings all round his, and brought different
prospects into view and different talents under cultivation.

Let us look briefly at Bryant’s domain. Intimate and faithful portrayal
of Nature is the product which first draws our attention; next we
perceive that the observer who makes the picture is a sober moralist.
He delights in Nature for her own sake, for her beauty and variety; and
then she suggests to him some rule of conduct, some parallel between
her laws and the laws of human life, by which he is comforted and
uplifted. Bryant, I have said elsewhere, interprets Nature morally,
Emerson spiritually, and Shelley emotionally. We need not stop to
inquire which of these methods of interpretation is the highest.
Suffice it for us to realize that all of them are valuable, and that
the poet who succeeds in identifying himself in a marked degree with
any one of them will not soon be forgotten.

That Wordsworth preceded Bryant in the moral interpretation of Nature
detracts nothing from Bryant’s merit. The latest prophet is no less
original than the earliest; for originality lies in being a prophet at
all. Young Bryant, wandering over the bleak Hampshire hills or in the
woods or along the brawling streams, had original impressions, which
he trustingly recorded; and to-day, if you go to Cummington, you will
marvel at the fidelity of his record. But his poetry is true not only
there; it is true in every region where Nature has similar aspects;
symbolically, it is true everywhere.

There being no doubt as to the veracity of his pictures, what shall we
say of that other quality, the moral tone which pervades them? That,
too, is of a kind men will not soon outgrow. It inculcates courage,
patience, fortitude, trust; it springs from the optimism of one who
believes in the ultimate triumph of good, not because he can prove it,
but because his whole being revolts at the thought of evil triumphant.
He has the stoic’s dread of flinching before any shock of misfortune,
the Christian’s dread of the taint of sin. Here are two ideals, each
the complement of the other, which the world cannot outgrow, and the
poet who--pondering on a fringed gentian or the flight of a waterfowl,
or on a rivulet bickering among its grasses--found new incitements to
courage and virtue, thereby associated himself with the eternal. To
interpret nature morally in this fashion, which is Bryant’s fashion, is
to rise far above the level of the common didacticism of our pulpits.
Professional moralists go to nature for figures of speech to furnish
forth their sermons and religious verse, as they go to their kitchen
garden for vegetables; but they do not enter Bryant’s world.

Moreover, in painting the scenery of the Hampshire hills, and in
saturating his descriptions with the moral tonic I have spoken of,
Bryant became the representative of a phase of New England life which
has had an incalculable influence on the development of this nation.
The mitigated Spartanism amid which his youth was passed bred those
colonists who carried New England standards with them to the shores of
the Pacific. A Puritan by derivation and environment, Bryant was by
training and conviction a Unitarian,--a combination which made him in
a sense the exemplar both of the austerity which had characterized New
England ideals in the past, and of the liberalism which during this
century has nowhere found more strenuous supporters than in New England.

On many positive grounds, therefore, Bryant’s title to fame rests; he
was one of Nature’s men, he shed moral health, he uttered the ideals of
a great race in a transitional epoch. His temperament, in making his
poetic product small, gave him yet another hostage against oblivion.
The poet who, having so many claims to the consideration of posterity,
can also plead brevity, need not worry himself about what is called
literary immortality. Bryant’s typical and best work is comprised in a
dozen poems, the longest not exceeding 140 lines. Read “Thanatopsis,”
“The Yellow Violet,” “Inscription for the Entrance to a Wood,” “To a
Waterfowl,” “Green River,” “A Winter Piece,” “The Rivulet,” “A Forest
Hymn,” “The Past,” “To a Fringed Gentian,” “The Death of the Flowers,”
and “The Battlefield,” and you have Bryant’s message; the rest of his
work either echoes the notes already sounded in these, or represents
uncharacteristic, and therefore transitory, moods.

Not less conspicuous than his excellences are Bryant’s limitations.
We may say of him that, like Wordsworth, he did not always overcome
a tendency to emphasize the obvious, and that, like almost all
contemplative poets, he sometimes made the didactic unnecessarily
obtrusive. We have all heard parsons who, after finishing their
sermon, sum it up in a valedictory prayer, with a hint as to its
application, for the benefit of the Lord; equally superfluous, even
for mortal readers, is the moral too often appended to a poem which
is well able to convey its meaning without it. In this respect Bryant
resembles most of our American poets, in whom didacticism has prevailed
to an extent that will lessen their repute with posterity; for each
generation manufactures more than enough of this commodity for its own
consumption, and cannot be induced to try stale moralities left over
from the fathers.

Bryant’s self-control, the backbone of a character of high integrity,
prevented him from indulging in emotions which, if they be not the
substance of great poetry, are the color, the glow, which give great
poetry its charm. He addresses the intellect; he has, if not heat,
light; and he does not, as emotional poets sometimes do, play the
intellect false or lead it astray.

In his versification he is compact and stately, though occasionally
stiff. He came at the end of that metrical drought which lasted from
Milton’s death to Burns, when the instinct for writing musical iambics
was lost, and, instead, men wrote in measured thuds, by rule. That
phenomenon the psychologist should explain. How was it that a people
lost, during a century and a half, its ear for metrical music, as if
a violinist should suddenly prefer a tom-tom to a violin? Probably
the exorbitant use of hymn and psalm singing, that came in with the
Puritans, helped to degrade English poetry. The spirit which expelled
emotion from worship, and destroyed whatever it could of the beauty of
England’s churches, had no understanding for metrical harmony. Any poor
shred of morality, the tritest dogmatic platitude, if stretched thin,
chopped into the required number of feet, rhymed, and packed into six
or eight stanzas, with clumsy variations on the doxology at the end,
made a hymn, for the edification of persons whose object was worship
and not beauty. As a means to unction, mere doggerel, sung out of tune,
would serve as well as anything.

At any rate, the taste for rigid iambics would naturally be acquired
by Bryant at his church-going in childhood, and from the eighteenth
century poets whom he read earliest. The beautiful variety of
modulations which Coleridge, Shelley, Keats, and Tennyson have shown
this verse--the historic metre of our race--to be susceptible of, lay
beyond Bryant’s range. His verse is either simple, almost colloquial,
or dignified, as befits his theme; even in ornament he is sober. As
he never surpassed the grandeur of conception of “Thanatopsis,” so,
I think, he did not afterward equal the splendid metrical sweep of
certain passages in that wonderful poem.

And this fact points to another: Bryant is one of the few poets of
genuine power whose poetic career shows no advance. The first arrow
he drew from his quiver was the best, and with it he made his longest
shot; many others he sent in the same direction, but they all fell
behind the first. This accounts for the singleness and depth of the
impression he has left; he stands for two or three elementals, and
thereby keeps his force unscattered. He was not, indeed, wholly
insensible to the romanticist stirrings of his time, as such effusions
as “The Damsel of Peru,” “The Arctic Lover,” and “The Hunter’s
Serenade,” bear witness. He wrote several pieces about Indians,--not
the real red men, but those imaginary noble savages, possessors of
all the primitive virtues, with whom our grandfathers peopled the
American forests. He wrote strenuously in behalf of Greek emancipation
and against slavery; but even here, though the subject lay very near
his heart, he could not match the righteous vehemence of Whittier, or
Lowell’s alternate volleys of sarcasm and rebuke. Like Antaeus, Bryant
ceased to be powerful when he did not tread his native earth.

We have thus surveyed his poetical product and genius, for to these
first of all is due the celebration of his centennial, and we conclude
that his contemporaries were right and that we are right in holding
his work precious. But while it is through his poetry that Bryant
survives, let us not forget the worth of his personality. For sixty
years he was the dean of American letters. By his example he swept away
the old foolish idea that unwillingness to pay bills, addiction to the
bottle and women, and a preference for frowsy hair and dirty linen
are necessary attributes of genius, especially of poetic genius. He
disdained the proverbial backbiting and envy of authors. As the editor
of a newspaper which for half a century had no superior in the country,
he exercised an influence which cannot be computed. We who live under
the _régime_ of journalists who conceive it to be the mission of
newspapers to deposit at every doorstep from eight to eighty pages of
the moral and political garbage of the world every morning,--we may
well magnify Bryant, whose long editorial career bore witness that
being a journalist should not absolve a man from the common obligations
of moral cleanliness, of veracity, of scandal-hating, of delicacy, of
honor.

Finally, Bryant was a great citizen,--that last product which it is the
business of our education and our political and social life to bring
forth. In a monarchy the soldier is the type most highly prized; but
in a democracy, if democratic forms shall long endure, citizens of the
Bryant pattern, whose chief concern in public not less than in private
life is to “make reason and the will of God prevail,” must abound in
constantly increasing numbers. Happy and grateful should we be that, in
commemorating our earliest poet, we can discern no line of his which
has not an upward tendency, no trait of his character unfit to be used
in building a noble, strong, and righteous State.




  ELECTROTYPED AND PRINTED
  BY H. O. HOUGHTON AND CO.

  The Riverside Press
  CAMBRIDGE, MASS., U. S. A.




Transcriber’s Note

The only known changes to the original publication are as follows:

  Page 60
    Acompanying this suppression of _changed to_
    Accompanying this suppression of

  Page 71
    as a national anniversary! _changed to_
    as a national anniversary!’

  Page 80
    when the French Revotion _changed to_
    when the French Revolution

  Page 110
    The Magyar Government and _changed to_
    The Magyar government and

  Page 110
    Rio Janeiro _changed to_
    Rio de Janeiro

  Page 267
    One Hundred and Twenty Artiticles _changed to_
    One Hundred and Twenty Articles

  Page 316
    by the tears of rhymsters _changed to_
    by the tears of rhymesters

  Page 319
    but their transcience _changed to_
    but their transience





End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Throne-Makers, by William Roscoe Thayer

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