FOOTNOTES:
[B] Extract from a lecture delivered at Pacific Grove Assembly, July, 1883, Monterey, California.
[C] Ralston, “Songs of the Russian People,” from whom much information contained in this sketch is gained.
[FROM THE BALTIC TO THE ADRIATIC.]
By the Author of “German-American Housekeeping,” etc.
We hesitated quite awhile before deciding to expend fifty thalers for a trip from Berlin to Danzig, finally concluding that the historical interest of Marienburg, through which we would pass on our return, and the reputed picturesqueness of Danzig would compensate us for the time and money. At an early hour one September morning we drove across the busiest portion of Berlin (and most unknown to the traveler), to take our train at the ost bahn. I had seen this portion of the large city once before, when we started to visit the country of the Wends, the original people in all the region by the Baltic.
The tedious stretch of sand (broken here and there by a peasant’s house with red tile roof), was the same we had traversed so often in leaving Berlin for a neighboring town or city, the inevitable “plains of Moab” which discouraged Frederick the Great’s French gardeners. How such a thriving, populous city as Berlin has ever asserted itself in the sand, is a curious study. We passed Bismarck’s estate in Pomerania, “Schönhausen,” and one of the party reflected upon the great statesman, the largest factor in German political life; while the other remembered the sad and dejected royal pair which was driven by Napoleon’s fury to take this same route to Memel. The lovely Queen Louise and Frederick William III. were there with their royal children, praying that the tyrant’s hand might be stayed, and they brought back to their rightful kingdom. Alas! death claimed the beautiful queen before the peace for which she prayed was restored to Prussia. But in her son, the present emperor, there has been perpetuated the spirit of his mother. Prussia’s high position to-day has been secured not altogether by the might of her great army, nor the tremendous genius of her great statesmen, nor the ambition of her king, but by the growth of sentiment during the reigns of Frederick William III. and IV., and by the precept Queen Louise instilled into her sons during those dark and sorrowful days of exile in Memel: “My sons, let the spirit of Frederick the Great animate you,” etc.
Memel, Tilsit, and Königsberg were passed, and finally the blue Baltic and Danzig were in sight. We had almost looked for amber-colored water, so long had we associated the beautiful display of amber jewels in the Berlin shop windows with the Baltic, from which it is taken. Even Homer refers to the Baltic as the resting place of amber, its bed being laid with the sunny stone.
A multitude of ship-masts rose from the coast, and from beyond the pointed gables of the old city, lessening in altitude as the vista lengthened. This first glimpse was a more fascinating picture than we were afterward able to find. Yet the hotel helped the preconceived idea that Danzig was really a second Nuremberg.
The broad stone steps, or stairway, which started from the portecochère, were whitened by ashes, as one so often sees them in Germany—a pretty state of things for a lady descending in a black dress. The room we were to occupy was an immense ball-room, utilized in quiet times for a bed-room. Two candles burned in their tall candlesticks on the center-table, and by the light of the twilight we could see across the street some beautiful and curious carvings in the opposite gabled houses. The price paid for accommodations was large enough to have enabled us to see castles in the air, and to have our ball-room illuminated with gas until morning. We concluded they seldom had guests in this hotel, and therefore made heavy profits when some did come along.
That evening we wandered around the old crooked streets—paved in cobble-stones, which wore our shoes almost in pieces—until we were glad to pause in front of the great old red-brick cathedral. Its towers cut the big yellow moon in two at every angle we could see them. We stretched our heads to take in the tremendous dimensions of the cathedral, and the ornamentations of some of the best houses, until we suddenly remembered that it was nearing midnight, and that we had been in actual service at sight-seeing and traveling since an early hour that morning, so we returned to our ball-room and two candles. The next morning, we imagined, we would have a great treat in hunting up old carved furniture, for which Danzig, we had been told by our German friends, was equal to Augsburg; but the antiquarians had left no place unexplored. No trace of massive-legged table or curiously-carved chairs was to be found, save in the Museum and the Rathhaus (Council Hall). The stairway of the Council Hall remains indeed a monument to the ingenious designer and skillful carver, and the judge’s chair is most curious.
A fine old convent has been turned into a museum. Its kreuz gänge, or cross-passages, give the place a most mysterious, sequestered air, and they are gradually collecting some great pictures and treasures within its walls. But the Rathhaus, in its architecture, surpasses everything in Danzig, excepting, perhaps, its fine old gateways.
The most distinguished houses in Danzig have on either side of the entrance, at a distance of five feet, immense stones hewn out of solid rock. They are nine feet, probably, in circumference. A chain is attached, which is given a graceful swing before being fastened again to either side of the front door, about as high up as the brass knocker. As these big round stones grow smaller in perspective, they give a peculiar air to a street. They seem to be peculiar to Danzig, unless one or two dwellings in Edinburgh have them. The big stones, the large chains, the tremendous brass knockers, and the innumerable windows in the six stories of the pointed gables, suggest aristocratic dwellings, and surpass the houses in Nuremberg.
An important political meeting at Stettin defeated our intention of seeing Marienburg on our return to Berlin. Marienburg is a place few foreigners find out, but Lübke, in his “History of Art,” represents the architecture of the palace occupied by the knights, or crusaders, for two centuries, as one of the most exquisite ruins in all Germany. Thorn and Königsburg were also homes for this order of knights.
The following day at noon it was rather refreshing to drive into so modern and gay a place as Berlin, and forget that so many people must exist in places like Danzig. Mediæval life seems still to enwrap them there as in a garment. Their eyes are closed to any modern idea or project.
Berlin contains all that is new and progressive in Germany. That day as we sat in the garden of the “Thiergarten Hotel,” eating delicious salmon, the old emperor drove by in his open carriage, with his faithful jäger. He was still a subject for curiosity, as it was so soon after the attempt had been made to assassinate him, June 7, 1878. He was fired on as he drove by in this same open carriage with this same faithful jäger. The sight of the old emperor recalled the previous months which had been so full of political stir in Europe. The session of the Berlin Congress, and the occupation of Bosnia by the Austrians had taken place.
To describe Berlin to those who have not visited it, is simply telling, generally, the size of palaces, the number of art collections, the width of streets, the squares occupied by statues, the places of amusement, etc., but even when these objects and interests are put in writing they leave little impression until the place is seen. But there is another aspect of the great Prussian capital. It is a wonderful place just now, attracting so many foreign students to its university, the best musical talent to its conservatories, and the first military genius within its walls. No matter what branch of study one may choose, the instruction and illustration is right at hand. To the student of politics it is a most fruitful field, not only because distinguished statesmen frequent its streets every day, but because grave problems in political science are discussed in the Reichstag or taught in the University. The student of physics or of natural science can work under Helmholz and others; the student of music can secure Joachim or Clara Schumann, or the student of art, Knaus, or Richter. Berlin has no pulpit orator. The Dom is more frequented because of its tombs than for any living influence it extends. It contains the coffins of Frederick William the great elector, and Frederick I., king of Prussia. The Mendelssohn choir chants its anthems, and the emperor and empress bow at its communion table; but St. Hedwig’s Church is better attended. The American Chapel, built by the efforts of Mr. Whright, our American minister to the Prussian court, a devout Methodist, is still occupied and attended by travelers of the American-English type.
The annual exhibition of pictures in the academy, the many fine concerts, the treasures in the old museum, the Royal Library, the palaces, and the lovely drives along “Unter den Linden,” are only mentioned to show what Berlin does contain in the way of sights and pleasures. This Unter den Linden, the street so well known, was planned by Frederick William, in the seventeenth century, and is now worn by many royal carriages and busy hurrying mortals. The street about the opera house is crowded every morning by the eager buyers of tickets, which must be secured in the morning.
Surely life in Berlin can be made very attractive, but after a long residence there I am convinced that it has little religious life. The climate is depressing, the expense of living great, two other detractions. Potsdam, Sans Souci, Charlottenburg Tegel, and many other places in the suburbs, are, historically and naturally, charming resorts.
It is more compensating in Europe to go from place to place with some special work or subject in view than to go for mere sight-seeing. Your special work brings you nearer the people. If your landlady asks you what it is, and you take the trouble to tell her, she or some of her friends will at once see that you know all their acquaintances who are engaged in the same line of inquiry, and while the new acquaintances may not be socially or intellectually your ideals, yet their conversation will help you in the language and give you many opportunities.
Dresden I only know through hard work in the galleries, as though all its sights are familiar—the Schloss, Green Vaults with their immense treasures, the Military Museum, Museum of Natural History, the Grand Opera House, the Frauenkirche, Japanese Palace, cafés, coinages and statues; yet the picture gallery, with its priceless “Madonna di San Sisto” of Raphael is to me the starting point of interest and the essence of Dresden life.
From eight o’clock in the morning until four o’clock in the afternoon faithful copyists labor in the gallery. The price received for their work scarcely keeps them from starving. To go in among them for a time and work and feel as they do, enlarges one’s sympathies, and teaches one to love the masterpieces of the great artists. To the uninitiated in such matters it may be well to explain that before the permission is given to copy a picture in any of the European galleries, a good deal of red tape must be looked after, especially in Germany. The director demands a specimen of the applicant’s work, which must be a study from nature, either figure or landscape or still life. It is with considerable trepidation that the office of the “Herr Director” is entered. If the applicant is successful, he or she comes out with an elaborate paper containing the agreement, the name of picture to be copied, the number, room, etc., with the director’s name and the seal attached. One of the gallerie diener, as they are called in Germany, takes you under his care, arranges an easel, a piece of carpet, a rest-stick and table. You are recognized among the copyists, and the hat of every gallerie diener is raised at your approach or departure. When you have finished, the inspector is allowed to criticise your work. You must pay the diener who has waited upon you some trink geld, or a fee, as we would express it. At noon you can eat your cold lunch, in company with the other copyists, in front of a Raphael or a Correggio, a Titian or a Rubens, scrutinize its merits or laugh at its blunders, or speculate on the old master’s methods of using their pigments, without being amenable to any court. An artist’s life is a life of liberty—of thought, at least. Many of these copyists spend their afternoons in sketching, thus establishing their originality and emancipating themselves from servile observance of other men’s methods. In company with these plodding, intelligent artists, I have spent many delightful hours sketching in the “Alt Markt,” or the Zwinger, or at Sans Souci or Charlottenburg.
I have often wondered if the little Greek church in the suburbs of Dresden was as attractive to all travelers as to me. It is surrounded on one side by golden wheat fields, with red poppies and dark blue corn flowers growing among it. Its gilded dome, semi-domes, and minarets, shine like blazing lights against the dark blue sky. The style is such pure Byzantine and the inside so perfect in its appointments, and yet so simple; the service conducted in so solemn and devout a spirit, there seems to be much to impress the looker-on. There are no seats. On one side stand the women and on the other side the men, and before the altar the patriarch, or priest. The service is short, consisting almost entirely of singing by the men and boys, without the aid of an instrument. When the plate is passed for the collection it contains a roll of bread, the meaning of which I have never discovered, although James Freeman Clark may give it in the account of the Greek church in his “Ten Great Religions.” Their belief that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father, and not from the Father and Son, seems to be the most essential difference in prayer between the English Church and the Greek.
A summer in the Harz Mountains, taking in Weimar and Eisenach, and the “Wartburg,” is a charming experience. To find out that one can live in this age in so interesting a retreat as Weimar, for twenty dollars a month, gives back some of the simplicity to German life.
To a student of Goethe, Schiller, Wieland and Herder, no spot offers more pleasure than the quiet, old streets and groves and houses of Weimar. A mere drive through the park, passing Goethe’s summer house and on out to “Tiefert,” where the Grand Duchess Amelia held her little court, and the open air theater attracted a charming coterie to listen to Goethe or Schiller in some representation, re-awakens the genius of the times and arouses the appetite of the traveler for more acquaintance with the place. The next drive or stroll through the park will prove that every stone contains some rhyme, and every bench some association with those great men. There is a line to Frau Von Stein in the garden of Goethe’s country house, an elegy engraved on the stone as one ascends to the Roman house in the park. The front approach to this house is not so attractive, but the back is a fascinating place. It contains on the first floor an open room with round table and benches, where the Duke and his poets sat for hours, looking over the old stone steps into the park. A short stroll from there brings one to the large open space, in the middle of the park, which was laid out by Goethe, and represents precisely the dimensions of St. Peter’s in Rome. The immense ground plot of that church is here to be recognized more definitely than when one stands under its dome.
The grand ducal palace at Weimar contains one unique room, while all the others are handsome. The one which differs from similar palatial apartments is frescoed with scenes from the works of Weimar’s great poets. The halls are silent and one longs to see little fat Karl August step out of a saal or the Duchess Amelia greet Goethe or Schiller on the stairway as in days of yore. Mr. Lewis, in his life of Goethe, portrays such scenes with a graphic pen.
In 1832 the house in the Goethe-platz was left vacant by its great occupant. Its art treasures, its library, its various collections, showing how comprehensive Goethe’s mind was, and how many things he had investigated, were abandoned, as all human efforts must be abandoned, when the silent messenger calls the soul into the presence of its Great Creator. If self-denial is required of those on earth who hope to enter into his rest, then who can answer for Goethe? But surely the choir of angels in “Faust” sing beautifully of it:
“Christ is arisen,
Praised be his name;
His love shared our prison
Of guilt and of shame;
He hath borne the hard trial of self-denial,
And triumphant ascends
To the hills whence he came.”
This house still stands as he left it, and is shown every Friday afternoon to visitors. It has been occupied by his grandson for years.
The church in which Lucas Cranach’s great picture is to be seen, and in which Herder preached, is a cold, heartless structure to a stranger, but its very stones and walls must respond to the prayers of the old inhabitants. The brunnen, or town well, in front of Lucas Cranach’s house, when surrounded by a crowd of peasants offers a genre picture for an artist. The picture gallery is new and good. A large fresco representing Weimar celebrities is in the front entrance. Bettina Von Arnim is the only woman in the group. Perhaps her correspondence, which is by many considered spurious, will make the artist regret that he has given her so important a position in this fresco. To take an early breakfast in some lovely arbor, overlooking some historic grounds, then spend the morning in the gallery and the afternoon in the park, and the evening at the concert, is about the happiest program one can follow in a small German town.
Eisenach, the capital of Saxe-Weimar, a town of 10,000 inhabitants, will always remain associated with Martin Luther. It is the principal town in the Thuringian forest. The old “Wartburg,” one and a half miles south of the town, is famous for its architecture and history. Martin Luther, the Elector of Saxony, who rescued him, and earlier the saintly Elizabeth and her cruel husband, are only a few names which are associated with it. Of course the story of the Elector of Saxony rescuing Luther, after the Diet of Worms, is well known. Yet who can resist dwelling upon this bold character at this period. After the Pope’s excommunication Luther defies all threats and starts out on his return journey, with the emperor’s promise of a safe-conduct; the decree for arrest follows closely every step. What a picture! to have these armed knights attack him and carry him prisoner to the old Wartburg. Then to discover afterward that a friend’s hand, and not an enemy’s, had done this thing. There he remained ten months, and there still remain the traces on the wall of the ink he threw at the devil. Perhaps the chapel, where he preached on Sundays, is a more becoming and decorous place to associate him with than this little room, always pointed out first.
The Wartburg has been so beautifully renovated of late at the expense of the government, it is really worth a second visit to those who may have seen it years ago. The banquet hall is certainly superb, and the St. Elizabethangeng, with its beautiful frescoes and long narrow proportions, almost enables one to see the good woman walking up and down with her prayer-book, in deep meditation, before starting out through the forest with her attendants, and her apron full of provisions for the poor. It is told that once, when her liege-lord met her, and inquired what she had in her apron (he had strictly forbidden her taking things to the poor), she, with legendary faith, opened her apron and forthwith the bread became roses.
Taking your faithful donkey which has brought you up the hill, and your Wartburg album collection of photographs, you find yourself soon wandering through the lovely and fantastic Annenthal, and finally resting near the depot at Eisenach. There the untiring finger of your old guide points to Fritz Reuter’s house, and at last to his own little bill, which he has carefully prepared and which he expects you as carefully to pay. Never goes money from your pocket more liberally!
The Harz Mountains, their legends and songs, have been so often written of there is danger of stupid repetition if one goes over the ground.
A novel experience for an American is to have an attack of rheumatism in the house of an old Polish major in midsummer, in Wernigerode, and be attended by the physician of Count Von Stolberg. To inform those who may be so unfortunate as to meet with a similar fate what will become of them, I would simply remark that the subterfuge of every German doctor, when he finds a case getting beyond his control, is to recommend a water-cure. The one at Magdeburg being the nearest to Wernigerode, is the one which Count Von Stolburg’s physician would be best acquainted with, so off to the old city and farewell to the Harz! What rheumatic patient cares for a view of a fine old cathedral from a window, or to be informed that the city has existed since the eighth century? Do these facts lessen the pain or quiet the nerves? After the bath has restored the patient, and he or she can walk out and examine the cathedral, and read of the sufferings of the people in the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries, and again how the Austrian army was resisted by Wallenstein for seven months, and how the French besieged and took it in 1806, and again in 1813—thus there is diversion in finding oneself on such historic grounds and picturesque surroundings.
[To be continued.]
[IN FLOWERY FIELDS.]
By MARY HARRISON.
Ye flowers in your wonderful silence,
Ye birds with your wonderful sound,
The love of my God are declaring;
For ye are the language he found.
Ye smile to the eye of my spirit,
Ye sing to the ear of my soul;
Ye waken soft echoes of anthems
Which over God’s Paradise roll.
Ye bloom as ye bloomed once in Eden,
Make holy and sacred the sod;
Ye sing as you sang when in rapture
Man counted you angels of God.
By you—common things of the desert—
God’s love has this miracle wrought:
Ye fill me with exquisite gladness,
With worship which silences thought.
—London Sunday Magazine.
Republics where high birth gives no right to the government of the state, are in that respect the most happy; for the people have less reason to envy an authority which they confer on whom they will, and which they can again take away when they choose.—Montesquieu.
[FAILINGS.]
By J. MORTIMER GRANVILLE.
We all have our failings, and for the most part we regard them tenderly. They do not count as offences; scarcely are they held to be faults. It is always a probable conjecture that an error of omission has been unintentional; not unfrequently it seems possible it was unavoidable. A sentiment of pity for, and even sympathy with, weakness overpowers the sense of grievance; the voice of the inward monitor is silenced, and the self-excused conscience sleeps. Meanwhile failings are the worst and most mischievous, the deadliest and least curable, of the ills to which the moral nature of man is heir. They are the sources of evil whence spring the blackest vices of human character, the false roots that nourish and sustain its parasites, and steal the sap of its inner life. A failing is not merely negative; its sinister aspect is one of positive wrong-doing, wherein some behest of the will is disobeyed, a measure of moral power wasted, a rebel habit formed or fostered. To compassionate failings in others is to beg the question of fact for the sake of politeness; to look with leniency on the errors which self would fain palliate, by assuming that they are unavoidable, is to play the traitor to Truth, and let the enemy into the citadel; whereas conscience is set to guard the nature of man from treachery not less carefully than to protect it against assault.
Failings may be moral, mental, or physical, as they show themselves in the character, the intellect, or the bodily habit and powers. It generally happens that what strikes the observer as a failing is compounded of errors in feeling, thought, and action combined. The practical question is how the overt evil came into existence; or, if happily the failing should be detected in an earlier stage of growth, before it has betrayed its presence by ugly consequences, we may ask: what are the mischievous forces, where are they at work, how can they be counteracted? Why has this person the “failing” of a tendency to excessive indulgence in drink or the gratification of some unbridled passion; and that individual a seeming inability to recognize and pursue the right and honest course of conduct in the presence of any so-called “temptation” or difficulty?
Some of the most regrettable and injurious failings which disfigure and defame the character run through families, appearing in successive generations and seeming to be inherited. This theory of their perpetuation is well founded; and it has been adduced as conclusive evidence of the truth of the hypothesis that mind, and, of course, character, is the mere outcome of matter. The force of the argument obviously rests on the assumption that nothing more than, or outside, matter can be transmitted from parent to child; that a particular constitution of brain and nerve centres, a special arrangement or combination of the elements which compose the mind-organ, may be reproduced, and, if it is, a similarity of character will be entailed; but as for the independent existence of mind, or spirit, that is a pure figment of the imagination, which science will sooner or later drive beyond the pale of credulity, and to which, even now, only a few thinkers avowedly cling!
Let us examine this proposition at close quarters. It may be stated thus. All we know of mind is expressed, and understood, by physical agencies and in the formulæ of material force. Speech communicates thought, and we think in words. The faculty of forming and employing words is a brain function. If a particular region of the brain be injured or diseased, the power of using language, at least in speech, is generally lost. The materialist argues from this and many similar facts that mind is the product of matter. He fails to perceive that the only warrantable deduction from his own data is that mind or spirit, call it what we will, can only express itself through the brain as an instrument. As well deny the skill or independent existence of a musician because he can not play the full score of an opera on a flute, as infer the non-existence of a soul from the fact that man cannot perform intellectual work without the organ of thought—the brain!
The capacity of the instrument doubtless limits the expression, but it supplies no measure of the power or skill of the performer, except in so far as the use he makes of the instrument may be a bad one. This exception is of great significance, and there will be something more to say about it presently. Meantime it is evident that, while the range of brain-power determines the manifestation of mind, it neither measures, nor affirms, nor disproves the independent existence of mind. The anatomist, the physiologist, and the chemist declare their inability to discover the traces of a soul in the physical organism. That no more proves the non-existence of a soul than the failure to recognize more than a certain number of planets at any stage in the history of astronomy demonstrated that there was nothing further to find.
The appeal against materialism lies to the instinct of common sense. If mind were the mere outcome of matter, science would long since have discovered some tolerably constant relation between peculiarities of physical development and manifestations of character; whereas every step onward in the progress of research tends to disprove the existence of any certain dependency or connection between morals and matter. Even such links as compose the stock-in-trade of the physiognomist and phrenologist are shown to be illusory, except in so far as they may be the effects, rather than the causes, of character, and are produced by culture—witness the effects of education on facial expression in the case of criminals. The theory of a criminal conformation of cranium has been abandoned like the silly affectation of being able to detect an offender by his “hang-dog” or “murderous” look.
“Failings” must be studied in the light of the lessons these facts and considerations combine to teach. The moral question involved is one of responsibility for the use each individual may make of the brain-power allotted to him. The neglect to employ gifts and capacities is as grave an error, from an ethical point of view, as their application to a bad purpose. The servant who buried his talent in the earth was held accountable for the failure to use it, and thereby increase its value. The parable sets forth a truth of the highest practical interest. We are responsible for the development, by use, of the faculties vouchsafed to us. If they are allowed to remain in abeyance, or a rudimentary state, we are to blame for the deficiencies and the failings to which this neglect gives rise, and are without excuse. The obligation to act up to the level of known duty cannot be avoided. A “failing” is an act of contempt for the law of development by use. It is disobedience to an understood command. The fact that it is recognized makes a failing an offence. There may be short-coming in the performance of a good resolve. Few, if any, merely human efforts are entirely successful; but the failure which occurs when an endeavor is made in the energy of a resolute and well-aimed purpose is not so much a fault as insufficiency. The rising tide reaches its highest level by successive efforts. Self-improvement is effected in the same fashion. The motive power of persistent good endeavor is accumulative—ever advancing like the great tidal wave of the ocean—though the ground is conquered by short and seemingly only half-successful advances.
Failings, however, as we are now regarding them, are excused faults in the character which the individual makes no serious effort to repair. Some defects, as we have seen, are inherited, and upon them it is the custom to bestow great commiseration and little blame. Now, in truth, these are the least pardonable, because, if they are known to have been transmitted from parent to child, the latter has, generally, the advantage of an example, ever present to memory, by which to correct his personal deficiencies. If the “failing” be a vicious propensity, he can recall its hideousness, and thus stimulate will and conscience to aid him in eradicating the fault. If it be some form of deficiency, as indolence, lack of perseverance, want of principle, or the like, he can study, as in the pages of history, the evil consequences entailed by the defect, and with diligence order his own conduct in better courses. Inherited failings are the least excusable. Even the materialist, who claims them as the fruit of physical peculiarities, must concede that by special culture they can be remedied, the healthy organism being susceptible of increased development in any particular direction when the proper stimuli are intelligently applied with a view to its improvement. The apologist for failings which have been inherited can find no comfort in the philosophy of materialism.
Failings which are peculiar to the individual may be less easy to detect, and the subject of these defects is, in a measure, dependent upon experience and the monitions of those around him for the information needed to correct them. This should keep the wise teachable and apt to profit by the lessons life is ever reading for their instruction. A self-reliant spirit is manly, and therefore commendable; a self-sufficient spirit is unreasonable, and therefore despicable. It is strange how few of us grow really wiser as we grow older. The work of self-improvement is seldom commenced until forced upon the judgment by some awakening experience, and this is rarely vouchsafed until the ductile period of youth has gone by. Early in the adult age of man his habits become rigidly formulated, and failings are then hard to mend. A world of unhappiness and disappointment might be spared the later years of life if the young would be warned to begin the business of training the character before it is firmly set in the mould of circumstances, with all the coarse elements—inherited and contracted—uneliminated, and the errors of inconsistency and imperfect development uncorrected.
It is in the period of youth and adolescence that the mind may be most hopefully cultivated and the moral character intelligently formed. No greater mistake can be made by a young and vigorous mind than to treat the faculty of reason and the instinct of moral judgment as parts of the being which may be left to their own devices. The young man bestows some thought on his muscular system—he trains his eye, cultivates his ear, and takes credit for prudence when he strives to develop the vigor and to foster the healthy growth of his body. Is it wise—nay, is it not rather the worst of folly and shortsightedness—to neglect the ordinary development of those higher powers which man possesses in a more exalted degree than any of the lower animals? Taking care for the body while the mind is neglected is the worst of failings—the most calamitous and the least excusable.
[GONE!]
By E. G. CHARLESWORTH.
Alas! and have I lost thy voice,
Lost the sweet face that in my youth
Shone from my breast on things to be—
Hope-making, changing hope to truth,
Thy face, sweet love,
That madest beautiful the plainest thing
Below, above?
No; like the priest in times of old,
Who drew the temple’s sacred veil,
Thou art gone into an inner fold;
And now, thy face turned heaven’s way,
A paler face, and yet not pale,
Looks for the sunset in the west;
Thy form appears with outspread wings,
I hear thee from thine altar say,
With angel-breath o’er former things,
How beautiful is rest!
—London Sunday Magazine.
[SOCIAL WRECKAGE.]
By ELLICE HOPKINS.
Mr. Francis Peek has recently published a useful but saddening little book, whose title I have attached to this article. Not that it tells anything new to one who has studied deeply the pages of that terrible book of modern life, with its gilded leaves, but its unutterably dark contents; it only focuses the scattered knowledge into alarmingly clear vision. Indeed, in reading it, it is difficult to resist the old nightmare feeling, that after all this little planet may be the small rotary Vaudeville theater of the universe, where we poor actors in life’s scene are playing out a series of farces for the amusement of the angels, or more probably of darker and more distant visitants. The admirably logical social life that religiously shuts all the museums and picture-galleries on the Lord’s Day, and opens all the gin-shops; that is never tired of iterating that the proper sphere of woman is home, and brings up its 20,000 female orphans in large pauper barracks, from which the last touch of home-life has disappeared; that goes to meetings and loudly preaches thrift to the people, and then gruffly whispers in their ear by guardians of the poor, “Only be drunk and spendthrift enough, and we will house you and provide for your old age;” that goes to church and preaches that the body is the temple of the Holy Ghost, and leaves the people to litter down like pigs at night—men and women, girls and boys, together in tenements where no rich man would think of stabling his horses; that goes to school and teaches its children the three R’s, and leaves them in dens of infamy to learn a fourth R, by every sight and sound of the day and night, ruin of body and soul; that virtuously declaims against the harlot, yet leaves its little girls to be brought up in brothels; that believes a fatal disorder is undermining the national health, and shuts the doors of its hospitals against it, and denies it the public means of cure; that legally protects the heiress up to twenty-one, and refuses to protect the poor man’s daughter, even at sixteen, from the trade of vice; that holds that the man is the responsible head of the woman, and throws the blame and disgrace on the woman—alas! alas! what a heap of anomalies is here—what real cause to complain of the methods of our moral life! No wonder that the poor Dissenting minister, much entangled in our social difficulties, and led on all sides to contradictory conclusions, threw in a deprecatory clause in his prayer, “Paradoxical as it may seem to thee, O Lord, it is nevertheless true.”
And what are the results of such methods as these? What must be the results?
That we read that in the wealthiest nation in the world, one in every thirty-one of our countrymen is a pauper; this, moreover, without including any of that vast number of destitute persons who are maintained in charitable institutions or by private benevolence.
That in the richest city in the world there were in one year 101 deaths from actual starvation, in full sight of well-stocked shops.
That there are about 180,000 apprehensions each year for drunkenness, and over 15,000 persons yearly charged with indictable crimes, and over half a million convicted summarily before the magistrates, of which latter nearly 100,000 are guilty of personal assaults, about 2,500 being aggravated assaults upon women and children.
That there are extensive districts in London, Liverpool, and all our large towns, where our people are living in little more than half the area of ground required for a corpse, and which they could claim if they were dead, in tenements which are the graves of all decency and chastity.
That “in Liverpool alone, by a rough estimate, there are some 10,000 or more children who are neither properly fed, clothed nor housed, and surrounded by such evil associations at home, or in the low lodging-houses where they herd, that there is small chance of their leading afterwards a useful life, and we can predict with certainty that many of them will enter our prisons, penitentiaries and workhouses.”
Surely it must create an uneasy feeling in the most careless to realize this mass of misery and sin on which the life of the well-to-do classes in England is based—
“This deep dark underworld of woe,
That underlies life’s shining surfaces,
Dim populous pain and multitudinous toil,
Unheeded of the heedless world that treads
Its piteous upturned faces underfoot,
In the gay rout that rushes to its ends.”
It is impossible for me to deal adequately with the subject in the narrow space of a short article, but let me touch on three of our greatest problems—overcrowding, pauperism, and the care of the young.
First, as to overcrowding. This is a question that distinctly affects the state, and with regard to which we have to “live in the whole,” and to see that the welfare of the community is at stake, and that the state must have an authoritative voice in it. Virtue, sobriety, decency, are physically impossible in the conditions under which a vast number of its citizens are living. The national health and morals are in danger. All the arguments that justified the interference of the state with the rights of the Irish landlord, apply equally to the London landlords, and the artificial forcing up of rents, which has resulted from the necessity many workmen are under of living near their work. Yet this question has been the subject of permissive legislation! The Artisans’ Dwellings Improvement Act, an honest attempt on the part of Sir Richard Cross to deal with the problem, was rendered applicable to all towns of 28,000 inhabitants or upward—that is to say, about eighty towns—but it was entrusted to the municipalities to carry it out, the town councils which we have left to be composed chiefly of men of narrow education, largely swayed by self-interest, and probably extensive owners of the very property to be demolished! It is exactly as if the Irish Land Bill had been permissive, and entrusted to the Irish landlords to put it into execution! Can we wonder that in about sixty out of the eighty towns, it remains a dead letter? In eleven it has led to discussion; in two or three it has led to the demolition of buildings, but not to their erection. Is there not a want of ordinary seeing in our moral life? Could we hope to solve a single scientific problem on the methods on which we are content to live?
“The commercial success,” as Mr. Peek observes, “that has been achieved by several of the Artisans’ Dwellings Companies which, while providing good houses, yet pay fair dividends, shows that the poorest pay rents which give a fair interest on capital, so that the municipality will not be compelled to embark in a ruinous undertaking, or one that will not pay in the long run, to say nothing of the gain to the health and morals of the nation.”
Secondly, let us take pauperism. First of all let us clearly recognize that no system of paid officials, no mechanical workhouse will take the place of human thought and human care. Nothing will do instead of love. Indeed, there are already signs that we are working out a reductio ad absurdum with these portentous and ever-increasing warehouses of the destitute and the vicious that are springing up, throwing the winter support of whole dissolute families on hard-working rate-payers, and systematically discouraging thrift. But the problem has been solved satisfactorily on a small scale, and can be on a larger. The Elberfield experiment, which in twelve years reduced the number of paupers from 4,800 to 1,800, notwithstanding that the population had increased from 50,000 to 64,000, and that great commercial depression existed, has been too often described not to be familiar to all. But a remarkable parallel movement among the Jews is scarcely so well known as it deserves to be. When “Oliver Twist” was published, the leading Jews were so mortally ashamed of the picture drawn by the popular novelist of Fagan and the low Jewish quarters in London, that they formed themselves at once into an organization to remedy so disgraceful a state of things. The numbers to be dealt with amounted to those of a populous town, with the additional difficulty afforded by immigrant Jews arriving in large numbers from the Continent in a state of the greatest destitution. The investigation of every case requiring relief was undertaken by volunteer workers, assisted by skilled officers, and was not in the steam pig-killing style, but patient and exhaustive with true human brotherhood; in deserving cases the relief given was sufficient to make a guardian’s hair stand on end, but was given with the view to helping the man to a means of livelihood. Especially this wise liberality was shown in the treatment of their widows. Whilst Mr. Peek has no better suggestion to offer than that the widows’ children should be removed to the pauper barrack-schools to herd with the lowest children of casuals, a system which Mr. Peek himself strongly condemns, the Jews recognized that the mother, if well conducted, was the proper person to have the care of them, and that her place was at home. They therefore either provided their widows with indoor work, or, when that was impossible, relieved them on a sufficient scale to enable them to look after their children at home; the consequence being that instead of feeding the outcast class, as the neglected children of our widows too often do, they grew up productive and well-conducted members of the community. If, however, a family was found overcrowding, all relief was steadily refused till they consented to live a human life, assistance being given to move into a larger tenement. By these wise and thoughtful methods in the course of a single generation the Jews have worked up the people from a considerably lower level to one decidedly above our own. To be sure the Jew does not drink. Give the most destitute Jew five pounds down, and at the end of the year you will find him a small capitalist, having considerably despoiled the Egyptians meanwhile. But the intemperance of our people is largely caused by overcrowding, and by their amusements and recreation-rooms being in the hands of those who make their profit not by the entertainment but by the drink traffic, and indefinite improvement may be brought about by wiser regulations that have the good of the people, and not the fattening of publicans and brewers at heart. Surely the success of the Jewish and Elberfeld efforts prove that the problem of the reduction of pauperism and the inducing of healthy habits of thrift and self-helping in the people is soluble, and with that army of devoted Christian workers in our midst, to whose untiring efforts we owe it that social disaster has not already overtaken us, it must be possible for us to carry on the same movement, if Birmingham or one of our public-spirited towns would lead the way.
Lastly, we come to the vast, hopeful field, presented by greater care for the young, and better methods of embodying it.
First, let the law protect the young of both sexes up to the legal age of majority from all attempts to lead them into a dissolute life. In most continental countries the corruption of minors is an indictable offense. The English penal code recognizes this principle in property; it is felony to abduct an heiress up to twenty-one, and a young man’s debts, except for bare necessaries, are null and void till he is of age; but, as usual, our English law leaves the infinitely more precious moral personality unprotected. There is no practical protection at any age for an English child from the trade of vice. An unruly child of fifteen or sixteen, or even younger, quarrels with her mother or with her employer, and runs off in a fit of temper. Even if she leaves her parents’ roof, it can not be brought under the law against abduction. No one abducts her; the child abducts herself. Yet the keeper of the lowest den of infamy can harbor that child for an infamous purpose, and he or she commits no indictable offence. It is no wonder, therefore, that the open profligacy of the young forms the very gravest feature of our large towns. Thankful as we are for the honest effort to deal with this monstrous anomaly in English law, shown by Lord Rosebery’s bill, we can not but regret the extreme inadequacy of its provisions, or that the legislature should refuse to extend legal protection from even the trade of vice, to the most dangerous age of a girl’s life, the age of sixteen—the age when, as the medical faculty are agreed, a girl is least morally responsible, and most liable to sexual extravagances, and when we can statistically prove that the greatest number of those who go wrong are led astray. The country will not rest till the legal protection from the trade of vice is extended to twenty-one.
Secondly, let us recognize it as an axiom that parental rights do not exist when wholly severed from parental duties; or, in other words, that the child has its rights as well as the parent, and that its indefeasible right is, in South’s strong words, “to be born and not damned into the world.” Let it be recognized, then, that no child of either sex is to be brought up in a den of infamy, and to attend school from thence to the contamination of the children of the respectable poor, the magistrates being no longer allowed to defeat this beneficent provision of the Industrial Schools Act, and parental responsibility being recognized by the parent being compelled to pay toward the Christian and industrial training of the child; all children living in, or frequenting, thieves’ dens and disorderly houses to be at once removed. Let day industrial schools be formed for the lowest class of children, so as to introduce some classification in our board schools, the want of which is one of their gravest defects. Let us adopt emigration to our colonies for our pauper and destitute children, whenever possible. Any one who has gone into the question can corroborate Mr. Samuel Smith’s statement in his able article in the May number of the Nineteenth Century, that “£15 per head covers all expenses, including a few months’ preparatory training, outfit, passage, etc.” The average cost of each child in the metropolitan district schools is nearly £25 per annum. About 11,000 pauper children are brought up in these large establishments at a cost to the ratepayers of London of £250,000 per annum. Probably each child is kept, on the average, five years, costing, say, £120 in all. Truly Mr. Smith may well add, “with a blindness that is incomprehensible, the guardians have preferred herding them together at a vast expense, and refused till quite lately to allow emigration to be tried.” And for those children who through bad health, or any other disability, are unable to emigrate, and can not be boarded out, as well as children whose drunken and dissolute parents are bringing them up to crime, let there be an order of teaching deaconesses instituted, and a state-aided training college, where educated ladies may receive training in the management of an industrial school, and from which the guardians can supply themselves with mothers for cottage homes on the plan of the Village Homes of Ilford, where the cost of a child is £14, instead of £25. By this arrangement the children would come under higher influence than the uneducated workhouse officials. Hundreds of ladies are wanting remunerative employment, and would gladly undertake this, if they could be put in the way of the work by a little preliminary training, and freed from the necessity of “doing the washing” in the cottage home. And, lastly, let it be a recognized theory that every Christian household has one respectable but rough little girl to train under its own upper class servants, to give her a good start in life, that our houses, with all their culture and refinement, may no longer be strongholds of l’egoisme à plusieurs, but centers for teaching good work, high character, and fine manners—organs for the public good.
And those social atomists who raise their vehement cry about personal rights and the liberty of the subject over all compulsory measures for saving children, I would remind that the question is not of compulsion or non-compulsion; but whether the natural guardians of a child shall be compelled to pay toward its Christian and industrial training, or whether they and I, as ratepayers, shall be compelled to pay for its degradation in prisons, in infirmary beds, and workhouses. Compulsion there is anyhow: but surely no reasonable mind can doubt which compulsion is most in accordance with the true right and true liberty.
And how can I better close than with the impassioned words of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, apostrophizing our material splendor, as shown in the great Exhibition of 1851, by the side of our moral squalor:
“O Magi of the East and of the West,
Your incense, gold and myrrh are excellent!
What gifts for Christ, then, bring ye with the rest?
Your hands have worked well: is your courage spent
In handiwork only? Have you nothing best
Which generous souls may perfect and present
And He shall thank the givers for? No light
Of teaching, liberal nations, for the poor
Who sit in darkness when it is not night?
No cure for wicked children? Christ—no cure!
No help for women sobbing out of sight
Because men made the laws? No brothel lure
Burnt out by popular lightnings? Hast thou found
No remedy, my England, for such woes?
*****
Alas! great nations have great shames, I say.
*****
O gracious nations, give some ear to me!
You all go to your fair, and I am one
Who at the roadside of humanity
Beseech your alms,—God’s justice to be done!”
—The Contemporary Review.
[AT REST.]
By SARAH DOUDNEY.
Ah, silent wheel, the noisy brook is dry,
And quiet hours glide by
In this deep vale, where once the merry stream
Sang on through gloom and gleam;
Only the dove in some leaf-shaded nest
Murmurs of rest.
Ah, weary voyager, the closing day
Shines on that tranquil bay,
Where thy storm-beaten soul has longed to be;
Wild blast and angry sea
Touch not this favored shore, by summer blest,
A home of rest.
Ah, fevered heart, the grass is green and deep
Where thou art laid asleep;
Kissed by soft winds, and washed by gentle showers,
Thou hast thy crown of flowers;
Poor heart, too long in this mad world oppressed,
Take now thy rest.
I, too, perplex’d with strife of good and ill,
Long to be safe and still;
Evil is present with me while I pray
That good may win the day;
Great Giver, grant me thy last gift and best,
The gift of rest!
—Good Words.
Business requires earnestness and strength of character, life must be allowed more freedom; business calls for the strictest sequence, whereas in the conduct of life inconsecutiveness is often necessary—nay, is charming and graceful. If thou art strict in the first, thou mayest allow thyself more freedom in the second; while if thou mix them up, thou wilt find the free interfering and breaking in upon the fixed.—Goethe.
[ECCENTRIC AMERICANS.]
By COLEMAN E. BISHOP.