When I heard Webster in Faneuil Hall, where he was perhaps at his best and most at home, it seemed to me it mattered little what he said. The authority of the man was what told. Before he had uttered a word he had possession of the minds of the three thousand people who stood—for we were all standing—waiting for the words we knew would be words of wisdom.
Twice I have seen a similar effect by very different artists. Once by Rachel at the Boston Theatre, as Camille in Corneille's Horace, when the mere apparition of that white-robed figure and the first rays from those deep-burning eyes laid a spell on the audience. Not once, but many times, by Aimée Declée, at the Princess's Theatre in London and at the Gymnase in Paris. Of her I shall have something to say by and by, but I name her now because she had that rarest of gifts, the power of gathering an audience into her two small hands while still, silent and motionless; and thereafter never letting them go. In her it was perhaps a magnetic force of emotion, for she was the greatest of emotional actresses. In Webster it was the domination of an irresistible personality, with an unmatched intellectual supremacy, and the prestige of an unequalled career.
Whatever it was, we all bowed to it. We were there to take orders from him, to think his thoughts, to do as he would have us. He might have talked nonsense. We should not have thought it was nonsense. He might have reversed his policy. We should have held him consistent. We should have followed him, believing the road was the same we had always travelled together. He was still the man whom Massachusetts delighted to honour. The forces of the whole State were at his disposal, as they had been for thirty years.
He stood upon the platform an august, a majestic figure, from which the blue coat and buff trousers and the glitter of gilt buttons did not detract. Once, and only once, have I found myself under the sway of an individuality more masterful than Webster's, much later in life, so that the test was more decisive; but it was not Mr. Gladstone's.
CHAPTER II
MASSACHUSETTS PURITANISM—THE YALE CLASS OF 1853
Massachusetts was in those days, that is, in the middle of the last century, in the bonds of that inherited and unrelaxing Puritanism which was her strength and her weakness. Darwin had not spoken. The effort to reconcile science and theology—not religion—had only begun. Agassiz's was still the voice most trusted, and he, with all his scientific genius and knowledge, was on the side of the angels. The demand for evidence had not yet overcome the assertion of ecclesiastical authority in matters of belief. The spiritual ascendancy of the New England minister was little, if at all, impaired, and his political ascendancy had still to be reckoned with. There were, I suppose, no two places in the world so much under the dominion of one form or another of priestly rule as the six New England States and Scotland; and therefore no two between which spiritual and political resemblances were so close.
There were, however, influences which while less visible were sometimes more potent. The pastor was the figurehead of a Congregational Church; or, to use Phillips's simile, he was the walking-beam which the observer might think the propelling force of the steamboat. "But," said Phillips, "there's always a fanatic down in the hold, feeding the fires." The fanatics were the deacons. They often had in them the spirit of persecution. They encroached upon, and sometimes usurped, the rightful authority of the true head of the Church, the pastor, in matters of faith and matters of conduct alike. They constituted themselves the guardians of the morals of the flock, the pastor and his family included. My father was a man whose mind ran strongly toward Liberalism. He had nothing of the inquisitor about him. But his deacons were possessed with a school-mastering demon. They had the vigilance of the detective policeman and a deep sense of responsibility to their Creator for the behaviour of their fellow-men. Good and conscientious citizens all of them, but indisposed to believe that men who held other opinions than theirs might also be good. Their individual consciences were to be the guide of life to the rest of the world. If they had not the ferocity of Mucklewraith they had his intolerance. They would have made absence from divine service a statutory offence, as the earlier Puritans did. Two services each Sunday, a Sunday-school in between, and prayer-meetings on Wednesdays—all these must be punctually attended by us children, and were.
When a decision had to be taken about my going to college, I wished to be sent to Harvard, as every Massachusetts boy naturally would. But Harvard was a Unitarian college, and the deacons persuaded my father that the welfare of my immortal soul would be imperilled if I was taught Greek and Latin by professors who did not believe in a Trinitarian God. This spirit of theological partisanship prevailed and I was sent to Yale. At that admirable seat of learning there was no danger of laxity or heresy. The strictest Presbyterianism was taught relentlessly and the strictest discipline enforced. Chapel morning and evening, three or perhaps four services on Sunday—in all let us say some eighteen separate compulsory attendances on religious exercises each week. Would it be wonderful if a boy who had undergone all this for four years should consider that he had earned the right to relaxation in after days?