"A man may steal the livery of Heaven to serve the devil in." It has always been a favorite device of Napoleonism to dress itself up in the garb of popular government, and to appropriate the peculiar phrases of democracy, with a view to confound the distinction between the sovereign will of one and the sovereign will of the many. Napoleon III. enjoyed proclaiming himself the great champion of universal suffrage, although what his plébiscites really were the caustic pen of Kinglake has told us. The other day the French imperialists celebrated at Chiselhurst the fête of the late emperor; and there Prince Louis had the audacity to say: "Planting myself as an exile near the tomb of the emperor, I represent his teachings, which may be summarized in the motto, 'Govern for the people, by the people.'" The motto was a double plagiarism—a plagiarism in idea from the republican theory, and a plagiarism in expression from the immortal phrase, "government of the people, by the people, and for the people," pronounced by Lincoln at Gettysburg.
The most sensible, manly and independent address made to the shah during his European tour was, we think, the speech of welcome delivered by the president of the Swiss Confederation. We may premise that the shah is the first sovereign who, as such, has become the guest of Switzerland since the meeting of the Council of Constance in the fifteenth century. Still, the Swiss people did not show themselves overcome, but received their guest with a sober and dignified cordiality—a sail, a dinner without speeches, and a magnificent illumination of Geneva and the lake providing the entertainment. On arriving at the railroad station the shah was greeted by the Swiss president in words which we render literally as follows: "Royal Majesty: I welcome you in the name of the authorities of the Swiss Confederation. You do not expect to find here the sumptuous greeting of the great nations which surround us. We have to show you neither a standing army nor the splendors of a fleet. You come into the midst of a people that owes to liberty and to labor the place that it has made for itself in Europe, and it is in the name of this free people that the Federal Council offers you hospitality." The severe simplicity of this address is the more tasteful since its strength and manliness do not rob it of a tithe of its courtesy, which last quality becomes indeed all the more striking from the absence of that Oriental profusion of epithets and compliments which the shah had received at every previous step in his European travels.
LITERATURE OF THE DAY.
The Intellectual Life. By Philip Gilbert Hamerton. Boston: Roberts Brothers.
A man of fair culture and a frequenter of cultured society pleads in these pages the attractions of an intellectual bias or life-training: he pleads to all accessible classes—to the curate and to the nobleman, "to a country gentleman who regretted that his son had the tendencies of a dilettante," "to a lady of high culture who found it difficult to associate with persons of her own sex," and so on. Over seventy different addresses are included, each in the form of a letter, which, though not necessarily ever posted, is really aimed at a specific person known to the author and distinctively spoken to. The effort is to reconcile culture with the world of practice and morals, and answer or forestall the objections of religion or utilitarianism. Mr. Hamerton talks with great self-possession to the highest class within ear-shot, and matches a late stricture of Mr. Ruskin's—that English noblemen exist to shoot little birds—with another on the influence of railways in sending back the upper ranks to a state of nomadic barbarism. "Their life," he says, "may be quite accurately described as a return, on a scale of unprecedented splendor and comfort, to the life of tribes in that stage of human development which is known as the period of the chase: they migrate from one hunting-ground to another as the diminution of the game impels them." He points out a curious reaction in the spirit of this class: formerly they loved to lard their speech with Latin and Greek to keep the ignorant in their places; but now, that cheap education has endowed the tradesman with Latin and Greek, there is a tendency to feel toward intellectual culture much as the barons did away back in the Dark Ages, and to outdazzle by mere show of costly pleasure the class they can no longer excel in learned polish. After all, the great question in recommending culture is the question of its effect on morals: if the effect of poetry and art is weakening to the moral sense, as many have claimed from Socrates to Augustine, then letters have no ethical reason for existence. Our author, who has a habit of continually turning his tapestry to see the aspect of the other side, is very sensible of a characteristic in people of extreme culture to allow Nature her most contradictory reactions. This tendency, opposed as it is to all our ideal conceptions of the intellectual life, is the merest commonplace of biography. "The most exquisitely delicate artists in literature and painting have frequently had reactions of incredible coarseness. Within the Chateaubriand of Atala there existed an obscene Chateaubriand that would burst forth in talk that no biographer would repeat. I have heard the same thing of the sentimental Lamartine. We know that Turner, dreamer of enchanted landscapes, took the pleasures of a sailor on the spree. A friend said to me of one of the most exquisite living geniuses, 'You can have no conception of the coarseness of his tastes: he associates with the very lowest women, and enjoys their rough brutality.'" To this specious and damaging objection our author makes the excellent reply, that in observing whole classes we generally see an advance in morals go along with an advance in culture. The gentleman of the present day is superior to his forefather whom Fielding described: he is better read and better educated, and at the same time more sober and more chaste. The man of genius does not, then, by his oscillations of temperament, retard or misdirect the company whose course he points. It is an interesting question, nevertheless, what are the moral standards of our apologist for the intellectual life, and what degree of ethical perfection would satisfy him in a world of various spheres all regenerated by culture. There is one letter in which he undertakes to pick out the special virtue which most helps his ideal way of life, and here, in chanting the praises of disinterestedness, he takes rather a superior tone toward so homespun a grace as honesty: "The truth is, that mere honesty, though a most respectable and necessary virtue, goes a very little way toward the forming of an effective intellectual character." This refinement of ethics, which leaves the humdrum commandments away out of sight, is doubtless very fine, but we cannot be sure that Mr. Hamerton has the same standard for all the different strata of people whom he addresses. Pretty soon we find him addressing a young clergyman, who appears to have apprehensions lest intellectual doubts may come to disturb his satisfaction in Bible-teaching. To this the author replies with the following odd encouragement: "It may be observed, however, that the regular performance of priestly functions is in itself a great help to permanence in belief by connecting it closely with practical habit, so that the clergy do really and honestly often retain through life their hold on early beliefs which as laymen they might have lost." This hint on the efficacy of continued rowing for stopping a leak in the bottom, if it be really meant for encouragement, shows an odd principle of honor, if not of "honesty." When it comes to the large and attractive class which some persons call "females," Mr. Hamerton abandons with ready grace his moral colors, and falls at once into the easiest tones proper to a man of the world. "You must not be didactic with ladies," he says; and in the capital story about the mother-in-law he appears to side with the polite French gendre who said to every proposition, "Yes, mother dear, you are quite right," and to have much sympathy with the learned Scotch lawyer who observed that there was not whisky enough in all Scotland to make him frank with his wife. Mr. Hamerton, in fact, spoiled son of fortune that he is, cannot keep for a long time the austerity of tone which belongs to a deliberate apology for culture: he therefore does what is better in taking the desirableness of his ideal for granted, and in lifting it out of the sloughs into which it has fallen in the muddy minds of many sorts of people, by pleasantly talking and chatting, en attendant that Hercules shall come down and shoulder on the car of progress.
Books Received.
The City of Mocross, and its Famous Physician. By the author of "Morcroft Hatch," etc. Boston: Henry Hoyt.