The plan of the "Arcadia" of St. Pierre is simply this: A learned young Egyptian, educated at Thebes by the priests of Osiris, desirous of benefiting humanity, undertakes a voyage to Gaul for the purpose of carrying thither the arts and religion of Egypt. He is shipwrecked on his return in the Gulf of Messina, and lands upon the coast, where he is entertained by an Arcadian, to whom he relates his adventures, and from whom he receives in turn an account of the simple happiness and peace of Arcadia, the virtues and felicity of whose inhabitants are beautifully exemplified in the lives and conversation of the shepherd and his daughter. This pleasant little prose poem closes somewhat abruptly. Although inferior in artistic skill to "Paul and Virginia" or the "Indian Cottage", there is not a little to admire in the simple beauty of its pastoral descriptions. The closing paragraph reminds one of Bunyan's upper chamber, where the weary pilgrim's windows opened to the sunrising and the singing of birds:—
"Tyrteus conducted his guests to an adjoining chamber. It had a window shut by a curtain of rushes, through the crevices of which the islands of the Alpheus might be seen in the light of the moon. There were in this chamber two excellent beds, with coverlets of warm and light wool.
"Now, as soon as Amasis was left alone with Cephas, he spoke with joy of the delight and tranquillity of the valley, of the goodness of the shepherd, and the grace of his young daughter, to whom he had seen none worthy to be compared, and of the pleasure which he promised himself the next day, at the festival on Mount Lyceum, of beholding a whole people as happy as this sequestered family. Converse so delightful might have charmed away the night without the aid of sleep, had they not been invited to repose by the mild light of the moon shining through the window, the murmuring wind in the leaves of the poplars, and the distant noise of the Achelous, which falls roaring from the summit of Mount Lyceum."
The young patrician wits of Athens doubtless laughed over Plato's ideal republic. Campanella's "City of the Sun" was looked upon, no doubt, as the distempered vision of a crazy state prisoner. Bacon's college, in his "New Atlantis," moved the risibles of fat-witted Oxford. More's "Utopia," as we know, gave to our language a new word, expressive of the vagaries and dreams of fanatics and lunatics. The merciless wits, clerical and profane, of the court of Charles II. regarded Harrington's romance as a perfect godsend to their vocation of ridicule. The gay dames and carpet knights of Versailles made themselves merry with the prose pastoral of St. Pierre; and the poor old enthusiast went down to his grave without finding an auditory for his lectures upon natural society.
The world had its laugh over these romances. When unable to refute their theories, it could sneer at the authors, and answer them to the satisfaction of the generation in which they lived, at least by a general charge of lunacy. Some of their notions were no doubt as absurd as those of the astronomer in "Rasselas", who tells Imlac that he has for five years possessed the regulation of the weather, and has got the secret of making to the different nations an equal and impartial dividend of rain and sunshine. But truth, even when ushered into the world through the medium of a dull romance and in connection with a vast progeny of errors, however ridiculed and despised at first, never fails in the end of finding a lodging-place in the popular mind. The speculations of the political theorists whom we have noticed have not all proved to be of
"such stuff
As dreams are made of, and their little life
Rounded with sleep."
They have entered into and become parts of the social and political fabrics of Europe and America. The prophecies of imagination have been fulfilled; the dreams of romance have become familiar realities.
What is the moral suggested by this record? Is it not that we should look with charity and tolerance upon the schemes and speculations of the political and social theorists of our day; that, if unprepared to venture upon new experiments and radical changes, we should at least consider that what was folly to our ancestors is our wisdom, and that another generation may successfully put in practice the very theories which now seem to us absurd and impossible? Many of the evils of society have been measurably removed or ameliorated; yet now, as in the days of the Apostle, "the creation groaneth and travaileth in pain;" and although quackery and empiricism abound, is it not possible that a proper application of some of the remedies proposed might ameliorate the general suffering? Rejecting, as we must, whatever is inconsistent with or hostile to the doctrines of Christianity, on which alone rests our hope for humanity, it becomes us to look kindly upon all attempts to apply those doctrines to the details of human life, to the social, political, and industrial relations of the race. If it is not permitted us to believe all things, we can at least hope them. Despair is infidelity and death. Temporally and spiritually, the declaration of inspiration holds good, "We are saved by hope."
PECULIAR INSTITUTIONS OF MASSACHUSETTS.
[1851.]