Surely, many a boy younger than Walter Aimwell was at this time, can write a more noticeable composition than this. The only thing about it that is particularly promising is its unaffected common-sense, giving a kind of rough strength to the phrasing. Upon the whole, it is not equal to what might have been expected of him in a year and a half after the date of the Lynn letter. Let us see if he did any better at the end of another year and a half.
His last entry in the note-book for the year 1838 was “The Last War; Recollections of a Lecture by A. H. Everett;” an interesting and well-written article of six pages, of the usual letter-paper size. It bears testimony to his strict attention to the lecture and full comprehension of what was said, as well as to a very retentive memory. And here let me intimate to the youthful reader that Walter Aimwell’s complete attention to whatever he turned his mind at all, was one great secret of his power and constant progress.
In the spring of 1839, he read, in his careful way, the Life of Alexander the Great, and wrote in his note-book an abridgment of what he had perused, dated March 13th. On the 15th of April, he enters some original reflections upon the character of Alexander. I copy, as before, without alteration:—
“After perusing the life of Alexander, one is struck at the uninterrupted success of his arms, in subduing cities and countries, suppressing and punishing revolts, and maintaining a government over those cities which he had conquered. The principal events of his life were foretold and described long before he opened his eyes on this world.... This is more strongly confirmed (if stronger confirmation is necessary) by the appearance of Jaddus, the high priest of the Jews, to Alexander, bidding him to march on boldly, and assuring him that the Almighty would follow him. By this, we see that God sometimes makes use of the ambition, power, or vices of one man to punish nations that deserve the divine wrath.
“Undoubtedly, Alexander had in his youth many qualities and virtues which exalt as well as adorn a prince. But these virtues gave way to those vices which afterwards so strongly marked his character.... It is true that he possessed an ardor and a fortitude that surmounted every obstacle; but his cause was not a good cause; it was not the cause of a patriot; he fought not for liberty, but for plunder.... But what is most striking in his history, is the manner of his death. We see the conqueror of Asia—the self-styled son of Jupiter Ammon, ‘The Great’—fall by his own vices!... Alexander had accomplished all that was intended for him to do; and he was left to his own depraved appetites and passions.... Strange to relate, after the death of Alexander, every one of his family connections perished by violence. Thus, in some measure, were his iniquities visited upon his family. His kingdom, also, as was foretold by Daniel, was divided into several factions.”
The whole article is interesting as the exercise of a lonely boy’s mind; but limited space compels me to make selections.
In May, he writes a very readable article upon France. It occupies several pages. I extract only one passage:
“I recently heard a gentleman remark, who had resided several years in Paris, that while there he saw a painting representing Jesus Christ seated upon a throne writing on a scroll the words ‘Liberty,’ ‘Equal Rights,’ etc. They say, themselves, they cannot preserve their liberty without religion. ‘And,’ say they, ‘we want a new religion; we have got tired of Christianity. First, the world had the Patriarchal religion, then the Jewish religion, and next the Christian religion. Now it is time for another. We want one as superior to the Christian religion as the Christian is to the Jewish.’ But pure Christianity is to them a new religion.”
Behold how the common-sense of an honest boy pushes out the corner-stone of a pretty pile of sophistries in many a mind assuming to be in advance of its age, in longitudes west from Paris.
It seems that he thought some apprentice-boy, servant, or somebody else in his boarding-house, meddled with his private papers. Being extremely modest by nature and discipline, this was really a great annoyance to him. Probably he had no means of securing his writings, finished or in progress, from the observation of one determined to see them; yet he was too much in earnest in his own plans of improvement to be willing to relinquish them. Accordingly, on the eighth of June of this same year, he inserts a specimen of secret handwriting, which prying eyes might look at for weeks and not read a word without some assistance; and when, at last, they should succeed, they would find the sentences not sufficiently flattering to make them forget their trouble in deciphering them. Of this secret manner of writing only a few specimens remain. Probably it was mostly used for private hints to himself; and when their purpose had been accomplished, these secret hints were destroyed.