What a contrast with all these ailing souls was the magnificent Christopher North! You remember the scene of his triumph on the occasion of his first lecture to the moral philosophy class in the University of Edinburgh. It deserves to be thought of along with the "trial scenes" we have been reviewing. The contest for the professorship had been bitterly fought over a period of four months, with Sir William Hamilton for competitor,—Sir James Mackintosh and Mr. Malthus being only possible candidates. Austerity and prejudice—essential and saintly elements in all good Scotsmen—instinctively combined against him, and inveterately pursued him. "When it was found useless to gainsay his mental qualifications for the office, or to excite odium on the ground of his literary offenses, the attack was directed against his moral character, and it was broadly insinuated that this candidate for the chair of ethics was himself a man of more than doubtful morality; that he was, in fact, not merely a 'reveler,' and a 'blasphemer,' but a bad husband, a bad father, a person not fit to be trusted as a teacher of youth." A "bad husband" to the good woman he thus memorably characterized in a letter to one of his friends: "I was this morning married to Jane Penney, and doubt not of receiving your blessing, which, from your brotherly heart, will delight me, and doubtless not be unheard by the Almighty. She is gentleness, innocence, sense, and feeling, surpassed by no woman, and has remained pure, as from her Maker's hands;" the mother of all those children he loved so,—the death of whom, in his ripe manhood and in the bloom of his fame, nearly broke his heart! Sir Walter and other powerful friends repelled the slanders. Wilson triumphed. Still he was pursued; his enemies determined he should be put down, humiliated, even in his own class-room. An eye-witness thus describes the scene on the occasion of the delivery of the professor's first lecture: "There was a furious bitterness of feeling against him among the classes of which probably most of his pupils would consist, and although I had no prospect of being among them, I went to his first lecture, prepared to join in a cabal, which I understood was formed to put him down. The lecture-room was crowded to the ceiling. Such a collection of hard-browed, scowling Scotsmen, muttering over their knobsticks, I never saw. The professor entered with a bold step, amid profound silence. Every one expected some deprecatory or propitiatory introduction of himself and his subject, upon which the mass was to decide against him, reason or no reason; but he began in a voice of thunder right into the matter of his lecture, kept up unflinchingly and unhesitatingly, without a pause, a flow of rhetoric such as Dugald Stewart or Thomas Brown, his predecessors, never delivered in the same place. Not a word, not a murmur escaped his captivated, I ought to say his conquered audience, and at the end they gave him a downright unanimous burst of applause. Those who came to scoff remained to praise." The ruling classes in educational matters could not conceive of the fitness of a man like Wilson for the moral philosophy chair in a university. The giant he was physically, with appetites and passions to match, he was a reproach to the feeble, a terror to the timid, and a horror to the "unco guid, or the rigidly righteous." The truth of him was such an exaggeration of the average man that the scholars and pedagogues and parsons could only look upon him as a monster, with a character as monstrous as his nature. He is described as "long-maned and mighty, whose eyes were 'as the lightnings of fiery flame,' and his voice like an organ bass; who laid about him, when the fit was on, like a Titan, breaking small men's bones; who was loose and careless in his apparel, even as in all things he seemed too strong and primitive to heed much the niceties of custom." In his youth, he "ran three miles for a wager against a chaise," and came out ahead. Somewhat later he "gained a bet by walking, toe and heel, six miles in two minutes within the hour." When he was twenty-one, height five feet eleven inches, weight eleven stone, he leaped, with a run, twenty-three feet "on a slightly inclined plane, perhaps an inch to a yard," and "was admitted to be (Ireland excepted) the best far leaper of his day in England." He could jump twelve yards in three jumps, with a great stone in each hand. "With him the angler's silent trade was a ruling passion. He did not exaggerate to the Shepherd in the Noctes, when he said that he had taken 'a hundred and thirty in one day out of Loch Aire,' as we see by his letters that even larger numbers were taken by him." Of his pugilistic skill, it is said by De Quincey that "there was no man who had any talents, real or fancied, for thumping or being thumped, but he had experienced some preening of his merits from Mr. Wilson." "Meeting one day with a rough and unruly wayfarer, who showed inclination to pick a quarrel concerning right of passage across a certain bridge, the fellow obstructed the way, and making himself decidedly obnoxious, Wilson lost all patience, and offered to fight him. The man made no objection to the proposal, but replied that he had better not fight with him, as he was so and so, mentioning the name of a (then not unknown) pugilist. This statement had, as may be supposed, no effect in dampening the belligerent intentions of the Oxonian; he knew his own strength, and his skill too. In one moment off went his coat, and he set to upon his antagonist in splendid style. The astonished and punished rival, on recovering from his blows and surprise, accosted him thus: 'You can only be one of the two: you are either Jack Wilson or the devil.'" His pedestrian feats were marvelous. "On one occasion," writes an old classmate of Wilson's at Oxford, "having been absent a day or two, we asked him, on his return to the common room, where he had been. He said, In London. When did you return? This morning. How did you come? On foot. As we all expressed surprise, he said, 'Why, the fact is, I dined yesterday with a friend in Grosvenor (I think it was) Square, and as I quitted the house, a fellow who was passing was impertinent and insulted me, upon which I knocked him down; and as I did not choose to have myself called in question for a street row, I at once started, as I was, in my dinner dress, and never stopped until I got to the college gate this morning, as it was being opened.' Now this was a walk of fifty-eight miles at least, which he must have got over in eight or nine hours at most, supposing him to have left the dinner-party at nine in the evening." Some years later, he walked—his wife accompanying him—"three hundred and fifty miles in the Highlands, between the 5th of July and the 26th of August, sojourning in divers glens from Sabbath unto Sabbath, fishing, eating, and staring." Mrs. Wilson returned from this wonderful tour "bonnier than ever," and Wilson himself, to use his own phrase, "strong as an eagle." One of their resting-places was at the school-master's house in Glenorchy. While there "his time was much occupied by fishing, and distance was not considered an obstacle. He started one morning at an early hour to fish in a loch which at that time abounded in trout, in the Braes of Glenorchy, called Loch Toilà. Its nearest point was thirteen miles distant from his lodgings at the school-house. On reaching it, and unscrewing the butt-end of his fishing-rod to get the top, he found he had it not. Nothing daunted, he walked back, breakfasted, got his fishing-rod, made all complete, and off again to Loch Toilà. He could not resist fishing on the river when a pool looked inviting, but he went always onward, reaching the loch a second time, fished round it, and found that the long summer day had come to an end. He set off for his home again with his fishing-basket full, and confessing somewhat to weariness. Passing near a farm-house whose inmates he knew (for he had formed acquaintance with all), he went to get some food. They were in bed, for it was eleven o'clock at night, and after rousing them, the hostess hastened to supply him; but he requested her to get him some whisky and milk. She came with a bottle full, and a can of milk, with a tumbler. Instead of a tumbler, he requested a bowl, and poured the half of the whisky in, along with half the milk. He drank the mixture at a draught, and while his kind hostess was looking on with amazement, he poured the remainder of the whisky and milk into the bowl, and drank that also. He then proceeded homeward, performing a journey of not less than seventy miles." Prodigious! It beat the achievement of Phidippides, who, according to tradition, ran from Athens to Sparta, one hundred and twenty miles, in two days. But here is a street scene, related to his daughter by a lady who saw it, which illustrates the tremendous professor of moral philosophy still further. "One summer afternoon, as she was about to sit down to dinner, her servant requested her to look out of the window, to see a man cruelly beating his horse. The sight not being a very gratifying one, she declined, and proceeded to take her seat at table. It was quite evident that the servant had discovered something more than the ill-usage of the horse to divert his attention, for he kept his eyes fixed on the window, again suggesting to his mistress that she ought to look out. Her interest was at length excited, and she rose to see what was going on. In front of her house (Moray Place) stood a cart of coals, which the poor victim of the carter was unable to drag along. He had been beating the beast most unmercifully, when at that moment Professor Wilson, walking past, had seen the outrage and immediately interfered. The lady said that from the expression of his face, and vehemence of his manner, the man was evidently 'getting it,' though she was unable to hear what was said. The carter, exasperated at this interference, took up his whip in a threatening way, as if with the intent to strike the professor. In an instant that well-nerved hand twisted it from the coarse fist of the man as if it had been a straw, and walking quietly up to the cart he unfastened its trams, and hurled the whole weight of coals into the street. The rapidity with which this was done left the driver of the cart speechless. Meanwhile, poor Rosinante, freed from his burden, crept slowly away, and the professor, still clutching the whip in one hand, and leading the horse in the other, proceeded through Moray Place to deposit the wretched animal in better keeping than that of his driver." Another of his "interferences" occurred during vacation time, in the south of Scotland, when the professor had exchanged the gown for the old "sporting jacket." "On his return to Edinburgh, he was obliged to pass through Hawick, where, on his arrival, finding it to be fair-day, he readily availed himself of the opportunity to witness the amusements going on. These happened to include a 'little mill' between two members of the local 'fancy.' His interest in pugilism attracted him to the spot, where he soon discovered something very wrong, and a degree of injustice being perpetrated which he could not stand. It was the work of a moment to espouse the weaker side, a proceeding which naturally drew down upon him the hostility of the opposite party. This result was to him, however, of little consequence. There was nothing for it but to beat or be beaten. He was soon 'in position;' and, before his unknown adversary well knew what was coming, the skilled fist of the professor had planted such a 'facer' as did not require repetition. Another 'round' was not called for; and leaving the discomfited champion to recover at his leisure, the professor walked coolly away to take his seat in the stage-coach, about to start for Edinburgh." Is it any wonder that such a gigantic specimen of human nature was thought by the steady-going and saintly Edinburghers, who tried men by mathematics and the catechism, to be preposterously unfit for the chair of ethics in their hallowed university? They did not know then that the monster they hunted was capable of producing a description of a fairy's funeral—one of the most exquisite bits of prose composition in literature, which is said to have so impressed Lord Jeffrey's mind that he never was tired of repeating it. Read it, and say you if anybody but Christopher North could have written it: "There it was, on a little river island, that once, whether sleeping or waking we know not, we saw celebrated a fairy's funeral. First we heard small pipes playing, as if no bigger than hollow rushes that whisper to the night winds; and more piteous than aught that trills from earthly instrument was the scarce audible dirge! It seemed to float over the stream, every foam-bell emitting a plaintive note, till the fairy anthem came floating over our couch, and then alighting without footsteps among the heather. The pattering of little feet was then heard, as if living creatures were arranging themselves in order, and then there was nothing but a more ordered hymn. The harmony was like the melting of musical dew-drops, and sang, without words, of sorrow and death. We opened our eyes, or rather sight came to them when closed, and dream was vision. Hundreds of creatures, no taller than the crest of the lapwing, and all hanging down their veiled heads, stood in a circle on a green plat among the rocks; and in the midst was a bier, framed as it seemed of flowers unknown to the Highland hills; and on the bier a fairy lying with uncovered face, pale as a lily, and motionless as the snow. The dirge grew fainter and fainter, and then died quite away; when two of the creatures came from the circle, and took their station, one at the head, the other at the foot of the bier. They sang alternate measures, not louder than the twitter of the awakened woodlark before it goes up the dewy air, but dolorous and full of the desolation of death. The flower-bier stirred; for the spot on which it lay sank slowly down, and in a few moments the greensward was smooth as ever, the very dews glittering above the buried fairy. A cloud passed over the moon; and, with a choral lament, the funeral troop sailed duskily away, heard afar off, so still was the midnight solitude of the glen. Then the disenthralled Orchy began to rejoice as before, through all her streams and falls; and at the sudden leaping of the waters and outbursting of the moon, we awoke."
XI.
TYPES.
"It never rains but it pours," is the pat proverb of all the world to express its belief in the inevitableness and omnipotence of extremes. Carlyle has enlarged upon it significantly, in that famous passage in which he likens men collectively to sheep. Like sheep, he says, are we seen ever running in torrents and mobs, if we ever run at all. "Neither know we, except by blind habit, where the good pastures lie: solely when the sweet grass is between our teeth, we know it, and chew it; also when the grass is bitter and scant, we know it,—and bleat and butt: these last two facts we know of a truth, and in very deed. Thus do men and sheep play their parts on this nether earth; wandering restlessly in large masses, they know not whither; for most part, each following his neighbor, and his own nose. Nevertheless, not always; look better, you shall find certain that do, in some small degree, know whither. Sheep have their bell-wether, some ram of the folds, endued with more valor, with clearer vision than other sheep; he leads them through the wolds, by height and hollow, to the woods and water-courses, for covert or for pleasant provender; courageously marching, and if need be leaping, and with hoof and horn doing battle, in the van: him they courageously, and with assured heart, follow. Touching it is, as every herdsman will inform you, with what chivalrous devotedness these woolly hosts adhere to their wether; and rush after him, through good report and through bad report, were it into safe shelters and green thymy nooks, or into asphaltic lakes and the jaws of devouring lions. Even also must we recall that fact which we owe Jean Paul's quick eye: 'If you hold a stick before the wether, so that he, by necessity, leaps in passing you, and then withdraw your stick, the flock will nevertheless all leap as he did; and the thousandth sheep shall be found impetuously vaulting over air, as the first did over an otherwise impassable barrier.'"
Society is always swaying backward and forward—vibrating, like the pendulum, from one extreme to another; for a moment only, now and then, is it upright, and governed by reason. Moderation is hateful to it. There is a pretty passage in one of Lucian's dialogues, where Jupiter complains to Cupid that, though he has had so many intrigues, he was never sincerely beloved. In order to be loved, says Cupid, you must lay aside your ægis and your thunder-bolts, and you must curl and perfume your hair, and place a garland on your head, and walk with a soft step, and assume a winning, obsequious deportment. But, replied Jupiter, I am not willing to resign so much of my dignity. Then, replied Cupid, leave off desiring to be loved. He wanted to be Jupiter and Adonis at the same time. "It is natural," says Brackenridge, in Modern Chivalry, "to distrust him who proposes to stop short of what seems a complete reform. We are right, say the people. You are right, says the man of prudence. We were wrong, say the people. You were wrong, says the same man." The majority rules. In the grove of Gotama lived a Brahman, who, having bought a sheep in another village, and carrying it home on his shoulder to sacrifice, was seen by three rogues, who resolved to take the animal from him by the following stratagem: Having separated, they agreed to encounter the Brahman on his road as if coming from different parts. One of them cried out, "O Brahman! why dost thou carry that dog on thy shoulder?" "It is not a dog," replied the Brahman; "it is a sheep for sacrifice." As he went on, the second knave met him, and put the same question; whereupon the Brahman, throwing the sheep on the ground, looked at it again and again. Having replaced it on his shoulder, the good man went with mind wavering like a string. But when the third rogue met him and said, "Father, where art thou taking that dog?" the Brahman, believing his eyes bewitched, threw down the sheep and hurried home, leaving the thieves to feast on that which he had provided for the gods.
The world grows tired of admiring, and delights to limit its admiration. "Garrick," said Hazlitt, "kept up the fever of public admiration as long as anybody, but when he returned to the stage after a short absence no one went to see him." "The old Earl of Norwich, who," said Sir William Temple, "was esteemed the greatest wit in Charles the First's reign, when Charles the Second came to the throne was thought nothing of." Happy if the world's favorite to-day be not its victim to-morrow. Traveling through Switzerland, Napoleon was greeted with such enthusiasm that Bourrienne said to him, "It must be delightful to be greeted with such demonstrations of enthusiastic admiration." "Bah!" replied Napoleon, "this same unthinking crowd, under a slight change of circumstances, would follow me just as eagerly to the scaffold." "I have," said an eminent American general to Baron de Hübner, "the greatest horror of popular demonstrations. These very men who deafen you with their cheers to-day are capable of throwing stones and mud at you to-morrow." Mirabeau, on a famous occasion, amid the threatening clamors of an angry crowd, said, "A few days ago I too was to be carried in triumph, and now they are bawling through the streets, 'the great treason of the Count of Mirabeau.' This lesson was not necessary to remind me that the distance is short between the Capitol and the Tarpeian Rock." "What throngs! what acclamations," exclaimed the flatterers of Cromwell, when he was proclaimed Protector of the Commonwealth of England. Cromwell replied, "There would be still more, if they were going to hang me." The multitudes that went before and that followed Christ into Jerusalem, crying, "Hosanna to the Son of David: Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord: Hosanna in the highest," "cried out again, Crucify him. Then Pilate said unto them, Why, what evil hath he done? and they cried out the more exceedingly, Crucify him." Madame Roland wrote from her prison-cell to Robespierre, "It is not, Robespierre, to excite your compassion, that I present you with a picture less melancholy than the truth. I am above asking your pity; and were it offered, I should perhaps deem it an insult. I write for your instruction. Fortune is fickle; and popular power is liable to change." "Society," said Macaulay, writing of Byron, "capricious in its indignation, as it had been capricious in its fondness, flew into a rage with its froward and petted darling. He had been worshiped with an irrational idolatry. He was persecuted with an irrational fury." Junius, in the celebrated letter, warns the king that "while he plumes himself upon the security of his title to the crown, he should remember that, as it was acquired by one revolution, it may be lost by another." The Jews, said Luther, have a story of a king of Bashan, whom they call Og; they say he had lifted a great rock to throw at his enemies, but God made a hole in the middle, so that it slipped down upon the giant's neck, and he could never rid himself of it.
Causes of good or evil seem to accumulate, when a very slight thing is the beginning of a succession of blessings or curses. All things conspire, till the recipients of blessings are smothered, or the victims of curses are crushed. Till the cup is full, overflowing; till the burden is unbearable, merciless; till good becomes satiety, or evil cruelty, all the world seems to delight in contributing or robbing, deifying or anathematizing.