Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851.

"O, friend," said the Parson, "this is the true sympathy between life and nature, and thus we should feel ever, did we take more care to preserve the health and innocence of a child. We are told that we must become as children to enter into the kingdom of heaven; methinks we should also become as children to know what delight there is in our heritage of earth!"

CHAPTER XVII

The maid-servant (for Jackeymo was in the fields) brought the table under the awning, and, with the English luxury of tea, there were other drinks as cheap and as grateful on summer evenings – drinks which Jackeymo had retained and taught from the customs of the south – unebriate liquors, pressed from cooling fruits, sweetened with honey, and deliciously iced; ice should cost nothing in a country in which one is frozen up half the year! And Jackeymo, too, had added to our good, solid, heavy English bread, preparations of wheat much lighter, and more propitious to digestion – with those crisp grissins, which seem to enjoy being eaten, they make so pleasant a noise between one's teeth.

The Parson esteemed it a little treat to drink tea with the Riccaboccas. There was something of elegance and grace in that homely meal, at the poor exile's table, which pleased the eye as well as taste. And the very utensils, plain Wedgewood though they were, had a classical simplicity, which made Mrs. Hazeldean's old India delf, and Mrs. Dale's best Worcester china, look tawdry and barbarous in comparison. For it was Flaxman who gave designs to Wedgewood, and the most truly refined of all our manufactures in porcelain (if we do not look to the mere material) is in the reach of the most thrifty.

The little banquet was at first rather a silent one; but Riccabocca threw off his gloom, and became gay and animated. Then poor Mrs. Riccabocca smiled, and pressed the grissins; and Violante, forgetting all her stateliness, laughed and played tricks on the Parson, stealing away his cup of warm tea when his head was turned, and substituting iced cherry-juice. Then the Parson got up and ran after Violante, making angry faces, and Violante dodged beautifully, till the Parson, fairly tired out, was too glad to cry "Peace," and come back to the cherry-juice. Thus time rolled on, till they heard afar the stroke of the distant church-clock, and Mr. Dale started up and cried, "But we shall be too late for Leonard. Come, naughty little girl, get your father his hat."

"And umbrella!" said Riccabocca, looking up at the cloudless moonlit sky.

"Umbrella against the stars?" asked the Parson, laughing.

"The stars are no friends of mine," said Riccabocca, "and one never knows what may happen!"

The Philosopher and the Parson walked on amicably.

"You have done me good," said Riccabocca, "but I hope I am not always so unreasonably melancholic as you seem to suspect. The evenings will sometimes appear long, and dull too, to a man whose thoughts on the past are almost his sole companions."

"Sole companions? – your child?"

"She is so young."

"Your wife?"

"She is so – ," the bland Italian appeared to check some disparaging adjective, and mildly added, "so good, I allow; but you must own that we can not have much in common."

"I own nothing of the sort. You have your house and your interests, your happiness and your lives, in common. We men are so exacting, we expect to find ideal nymphs and goddesses when we condescend to marry a mortal; and if we did, our chickens would be boiled to rags, and our mutton come up as cold as a stone."

"Per Bacco, you are an oracle," said Riccabocca, laughing. "But I am not so skeptical as you are. I honor the fair sex too much. There are a great many women who realize the ideal of men to be found in – the poets!"

"There's my dear Mrs. Dale," resumed the Parson, not heeding this sarcastic compliment to the sex, but sinking his voice into a whisper, and looking round cautiously – "there's my dear Mrs. Dale, the best woman in the world – an angel I would say, if the word was not profane; but – "

"What's the BUT" asked the Doctor demurely.

"BUT I too might say that 'we have not much in common,' if I were only to compare mind to mind, and, when my poor Carry says something less profound than Madame de Stael might have said, smile on her in contempt from the elevation of logic and Latin. Yet, when I remember all the little sorrows and joys that we have shared together, and feel how solitary I should have been without her – oh, then, I am instantly aware that there is between us in common something infinitely closer and better than if the same course of study had given us the same equality of ideas; and I was forced to brace myself for a combat of intellect, as I am when I fall in with a tiresome sage like yourself. I don't pretend to say that Mrs. Riccabocca is a Mrs. Dale," added the Parson, with lofty candor – "there is but one Mrs. Dale in the world; but still, you have drawn a prize in the wheel matrimonial! Think of Socrates, and yet he was content even with his – Xantippe!"

Dr. Riccabocca called to mind Mrs. Dale's "little tempers," and inly rejoiced that no second Mrs. Dale had existed to fall to his own lot. His placid Jemima gained by the contrast. Nevertheless, he had the ill grace to reply, "Socrates was a man beyond all imitation! – Yet I believe that even he spent very few of his evenings at home. But, revenons à nos moutons, we are nearly at Mrs. Fairfield's cottage, and you have not yet told me what you have settled as to Leonard."

The Parson halted, took Riccabocca by the button, and informed him, in very few words, that Leonard was to go to Lansmere to see some relations there, who had the fortune, if they had the will, to give full career to his abilities.

"The great thing, in the mean while," said the Parson, "would be to enlighten him a little as to what he calls – enlightenment."

"Ah!" said Riccabocca, diverted, and rubbing his hands, "I shall listen with interest to what you say on that subject."

"And must aid me; for the first step in this modern march of enlightenment is to leave the poor Parson behind; and if one calls out, 'Hold! and look at the sign-post,' the traveler hurries on the faster, saying to himself, 'Pooh, pooh! – that is only the cry of the Parson!' But my gentleman, when he doubts me, will listen to you – you're a philosopher!"

"We philosophers are of some use now and then, even to Parsons!"

"If you were not so conceited a set of deluded poor creatures already, I would say 'Yes,'" replied the Parson generously; and, taking hold of Riccabocca's umbrella, he applied the brass handle thereof, by way of a knocker, to the cottage door.

CHAPTER XVIII

Certainly it is a glorious fever that desire To Know! And there are few sights in the moral world more sublime than that which many a garret might afford, if Asmodeus would bare the roofs to our survey – viz., a brave, patient, earnest human being, toiling his own arduous way, athwart the iron walls of penury, into the magnificent Infinite, which is luminous with starry souls.

So there sits Leonard, the self-taught, in the little cottage alone; for, though scarcely past the hour in which great folks dine, it is the hour in which small folks go to bed, and Mrs. Fairfield has retired to rest, while Leonard has settled to his books. He had placed his table under the lattice, and from time to time he looked up and enjoyed the stillness of the moon. Well for him that, in reparation for those hours stolen from night, the hardy physical labor commenced with dawn. Students would not be the sad dyspeptics they are, if they worked as many hours in the open air as my scholar-peasant. But even in him you could see that the mind had begun a little to affect the frame. They who task the intellect must pay the penalty with the body. Ill, believe me, would this work-day world get on if all within it were hard-reading, studious animals, playing the deuce with the ganglionic apparatus.

Leonard started as he heard the knock at the door; the Parson's well-known voice reassured him. In some surprise, he admitted his visitors.

"We are come to talk to you, Leonard," said Mr. Dale, "but I fear we shall disturb Mrs. Fairfield."

"Oh, no, sir! the door to the staircase is shut, and she sleeps soundly."

"Why, this is a French book – do you read French, Leonard?" asked Riccabocca.

"I have not found French difficult, sir. Once over the grammar, and the language is so clear; it seems the very language for reasoning."

"True. Voltaire said justly, 'Whatever is obscure is not French,'" observed Riccabocca.

"I wish I could say the same of English," muttered the Parson.

"But what is this? – Latin too? – Virgil?"

"Yes, sir. But I find I make little way there without a master. I fear I must give it up" (and Leonard sighed).

The two gentlemen exchanged looks and seated themselves. The young peasant remained standing modestly, and in his air and mien there was something that touched the heart while it pleased the eye. He was no longer the timid boy who had sunk from the frown of Mr. Stirn, nor that rude personation of simple physical strength, roused to undisciplined bravery, which had received its downfall on the village-green of Hazeldean. The power of thought was on his brow – somewhat unquiet still, but mild and earnest. The features had attained that refinement which is often attributed to race, but comes, in truth, from elegance of idea, whether caught from our parents or learned from books. In his rich brown hair, thrown carelessly from his temples, and curling almost to the shoulders in his large blue eye, which was deepened to the hue of the violet by the long dark lash – in that firmness of lip which comes from the grapple with difficulties, there was considerable beauty, but no longer the beauty of the mere peasant. And yet there was still about the whole countenance that expression of goodness and purity which a painter would give to his ideal of the peasant lover – such as Tasso would have placed in the Aminta, or Fletcher have admitted to the side of the Faithful Shepherdess.

"You must draw a chair here, and sit down between us, Leonard," said the Parson.

"If any one," said Riccabocca "has a right to sit, it is the one who is to hear the sermon; and if any one ought to stand, it is the one who is about to preach it."

"Don't be frightened, Leonard," said the Parson, graciously; "it is only a criticism, not a sermon," and he pulled out Leonard's Prize Essay.

CHAPTER XIX

Parson. – "You take for your motto this aphorism[8]– 'Knowledge is Power.– Bacon.'"

Riccabocca. – "Bacon make such an aphorism! The last man in the world to have said any thing so pert and so shallow."

Leonard (astonished). – "Do you mean to say, sir, that that aphorism is not in Lord Bacon! Why, I have seen it quoted as his in almost every newspaper, and in almost every speech in favor of popular education."

Riccabocca. – "Then that should be a warning to you never again to fall into the error of the would-be scholar – viz., quote second-hand. Lord Bacon wrote a great book to show in what knowledge is power, how that power should be defined, in what it might be mistaken. And, pray, do you think so sensible a man would ever have taken the trouble to write a great book upon the subject, if he could have packed up all he had to say into the portable dogma, 'Knowledge is power?' Pooh! no such aphorism is to be found in Bacon from the first page of his writings to the last."

Parson (candidly). – "Well, I supposed it was Lord Bacon's, and I am very glad to hear that the aphorism has not the sanction of his authority."

Leonard (recovering his surprise). – "But why so?"

Parson. – "Because it either says a great deal too much, or just – nothing at all."

Leonard. – "At least, sir, it seems to me undeniable."

Parson. – "Well, grant that it is undeniable. Does it prove much in favor of knowledge? Pray, is not ignorance power too?"

Riccabocca. – "And a power that has had much the best end of the quarter-staff."

Parson. – "All evil is power, and does its power make it any thing the better?"

Riccabocca. – "Fanaticism is power – and a power that has often swept away knowledge like a whirlwind. The Mussulman burns the library of a world – and forces the Koran and the sword from the schools of Byzantium to the colleges of Hindostan."

Parson (bearing on with a new column of illustration). – "Hunger is power. The barbarians, starved out of their energy by their own swarming population, swept into Italy and annihilated letters. The Romans, however degraded, had more knowledge, at least, than the Gaul and the Visigoth."

Riccabocca (bringing up the reserve). – "And even in Greece, when Greek met Greek, the Athenians – our masters in all knowledge – were beat by the Spartans, who held learning in contempt."

Parson. – "Wherefore you see, Leonard, that though knowledge be power, it is only one of the powers of the world; that there are others as strong, and often much stronger; and the assertion either means but a barren truism, not worth so frequent a repetition, or it means something that you would find it very difficult to prove."

Leonard. – "One nation may be beaten by another that has more physical strength and more military discipline; which last, permit me to say, sir, is a species of knowledge – "

Riccabocca. – "Yes; but your knowledge-mongers at present call upon us to discard military discipline, and the qualities that produce it, from the list of the useful arts. And in your own essay, you insist upon knowledge as the great disbander of armies, and the foe of all military discipline."

Parson. – "Let the young man proceed. Nations, you say, may be beaten by other nations less learned and civilized?"

Leonard. – "But knowledge elevates a class. I invite my own humble order to knowledge, because knowledge will lift them into power."

Riccabocca. – "What do you say to that, Mr. Dale?"

Parson. – "In the first place, is it true that the class which has the most knowledge gets the most power? I suppose philosophers, like my friend Dr. Riccabocca, think they have the most knowledge. And pray, in what age have philosophers governed the world? Are they not always grumbling that nobody attends to them?"

"Per Bacco," said Riccabocca, "if people had attended to us, it would have been a droll sort of world by this time!"

Parson. – "Very likely. But, as a general rule, those have the most knowledge who give themselves up to it the most. Let us put out of the question philosophers (who are often but ingenious lunatics), and speak only of erudite scholars, men of letters and practical science, professors, tutors, and fellows of colleges. I fancy any member of Parliament would tell us that there is no class of men which has less actual influence on public affairs. They have more knowledge than manufacturers and ship-owners, squires and farmers; but, do you find that they have more power over the Government and the votes of the House of Commons?"

"They ought to have," said Leonard.

"Ought they?" said the Parson: "we'll consider that later. Meanwhile, you must not escape from your own proposition, which is, that knowledge is power – not that it ought to be. Now, even granting your corollary, that the power of a class is therefore proportioned to its knowledge – pray, do you suppose that while your order, the operatives, are instructing themselves, all the rest of the community are to be at a stand-still? Diffuse knowledge as you may, you will never produce equality of knowledge. Those who have most leisure, application, and aptitude for learning, will still know the most. Nay, by a very natural law, the more general the appetite for knowledge, the more the increased competition would favor those most adapted to excel by circumstance and nature. At this day, there is a vast increase of knowledge spread over all society, compared with that in the Middle Ages; but is there not a still greater distinction between the highly-educated gentleman and the intelligent mechanic, than there was then between the baron who could not sign his name and the churl at the plow? between the accomplished statesman, versed in all historical lore, and the voter whose politics are formed by his newspaper, than there was between the legislator who passed laws against witches, and the burgher who defended his guild from some feudal aggression? between the enlightened scholar and the dunce of to-day, than there was between the monkish alchemist and the block head of yesterday? Peasant, voter, and dunce of this century are no doubt wiser than the churl, burgher, and blockhead of the twelfth. But the gentleman, statesman, and scholar of the present age are at least quite as favorable a contrast to the alchemist, witch-burner, and baron of old. As the progress of enlightenment has done hitherto, so will it ever do. Knowledge is like capital: the more there is in a country, the greater the disparities in wealth between one man and another. Therefore, if the working class increase in knowledge, so do the other classes; and if the working class rise peacefully and legitimately into power, it is not in proportion to their own knowledge alone, but rather according as it seems to the knowledge of the other orders of the community, that such augmentation of proportional power is just, and safe, and wise."

Placed between the Parson and the Philosopher, Leonard felt that his position was not favorable to the display of his forces. Insensibly he edged his chair somewhat away, and said mournfully —

"Then, according to you, the reign of knowledge would be no great advance in the aggregate freedom and welfare of man?"

Parson. – "Let us define. By knowledge, do you mean intellectual cultivation? – by the reign of knowledge, the ascendency of the most cultivated minds?"

Leonard, (after a pause.) – "Yes."

Riccabocca. – "Oh indiscreet young man, that is an unfortunate concession of yours: for the ascendency of the most cultivated minds would be a terrible oligarchy!"

Parson. – "Perfectly true; and we now reply to your exclamation, that men who, by profession, have most learning ought to have more influence than squires and merchants, farmers and mechanics. Observe, all the knowledge that we mortals can acquire, is not knowledge positive and perfect, but knowledge comparative, and subject to all the errors and passions of humanity. And suppose that you could establish, as the sole regulators of affairs, those who had the most mental cultivation, do you think they would not like that power well enough to take all means their superior intelligence could devise to keep it to themselves? The experiment was tried of old by the priests of Egypt; and in the empire of China, at this day, the aristocracy are elected from those who have most distinguished themselves in learned colleges. If I may call myself a member of that body, 'the people,' I would rather be an Englishman, however much displeased with dull Ministers and blundering Parliaments, than I would be a Chinese under the rule of the picked sages of the Celestial Empire. Happily, therefore, my dear Leonard, nations are governed by many things besides what is commonly called knowledge; and the greatest practical ministers, who, like Themistocles, have made small states great – and the most dominant races who, like the Romans, have stretched their rule from a village half over the universe – have been distinguished by various qualities which a philosopher would sneer at, and a knowledge-monger would call 'sad prejudices,' and 'lamentable errors of reason.'"

Leonard (bitterly.) – "Sir, you make use of knowledge itself to argue against knowledge."

Parson. – "I make use of the little I know to prove the foolishness of idolatry. I do not argue against knowledge; I argue against knowledge-worship. For here, I see in your Essay, that you are not contented with raising human knowledge into something like divine omnipotence, you must also confound her with virtue. According to you, we have only to diffuse the intelligence of the few among the many, and all at which we preachers aim is accomplished. – Nay more; for whereas we humble preachers have never presumed to say, with the heathen Stoic, that even virtue is sure of happiness be low (though it be the best road to it), you tell us plainly that this knowledge of yours gives not only the virtue of a saint, but bestows the bliss of a god. Before the steps of your idol, the evils of life disappear. To hear you, one has but 'to know,' in order to be exempt from the sins and sorrows of the ignorant. Has it ever been so? Grant that you diffuse among the many all the knowledge ever attained by the few. Have the wise few been so unerring and so happy? You supposed that your motto was accurately cited from Bacon. What was Bacon himself? The poet tells you —

'The wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind.'

Can you hope to bestow upon the vast mass of your order the luminous intelligence of this 'Lord Chancellor of nature?' Grant that you do so – and what guarantee have you for the virtue and the happiness which you assume as the concomitants of the gift? See Bacon himself; what black ingratitude! what miserable self-seeking! what truckling servility! what abject and pitiful spirit! So far from intellectual knowledge, in its highest form and type, insuring virtue and bliss, it is by no means uncommon to find great mental cultivation combined with great moral corruption." (Aside to Riccabocca) – "Push on, will you?"

Riccabocca. – "A combination remarkable in eras as in individuals. Petronius shows us a state of morals at which a commonplace devil would blush, in the midst of a society more intellectually cultivated than certainly was that which produced Regulus or the Horatii. And the most learned eras in modern Italy were precisely those which brought the vices into the most ghastly refinement."

Leonard (rising in great agitation, and clasping his hands.) – "I can not contend with you, who produce against information so slender and crude as mine the stores which have been locked from my reach. But I feel that there must be another side to this shield – a shield that you will not even allow to be silver. And oh, if you thus speak of knowledge, why have you encouraged me to know?"

CHAPTER XX

"Ah, my son!" said the Parson, "if I wished to prove the value of Religion, would you think I served it much, if I took as my motto, 'Religion is power?' Would not that be a base and sordid view of its advantages? And would you not say he who regards religion as a power, intends to abuse it as a priestcraft?"

"Well put!" said Riccabocca.

"Wait a moment – let me think. Ah – I see, sir!" said Leonard.

Parson. – "If the cause be holy, do not weigh it in the scales of the market; if its objects be peaceful, do not seek to arm it with the weapons of strife; if it is to be the cement of society, do not vaunt it as the triumph of class against class."

Leonard (ingenuously.) – "You correct me nobly, sir. Knowledge is power, but not in the sense in which I have interpreted the saying."

Parson. – "Knowledge is one of the powers in the moral world, but one that, in its immediate result, is not always of the most worldly advantage to the possessor. It is one of the slowest, because one of the most durable, of agencies. It may take a thousand years for a thought to come into power; and the thinker who originated it might have died in rags or in chains."

Riccabocca. – "Our Italian proverb saith that 'the teacher is like the candle, which lights others in consuming itself.'"

Parson. – "Therefore he who has the true ambition of knowledge should entertain it for the power of his idea, not for the power it may bestow on himself; it should be lodged in the conscience, and, like the conscience, look for no certain reward on this side the grave. And since knowledge is compatible with good and with evil, would it not be better to say, 'Knowledge is a trust?'"

"You are right, sir," said Leonard, cheerfully, "pray proceed."

Parson. – "You ask me why we encourage you to know. First, because (as you say yourself in your Essay) knowledge, irrespective of gain, is in itself a delight, and ought to be something far more. Like liberty, like religion, it may be abused; but I have no more right to say that the poor shall be ignorant, than I have to say that the rich only shall be free, and that the clergy alone shall learn the truths of redemption. You truly observe in your treatise that knowledge opens to us other excitements than those of the senses, and another life than that of the moment. The difference between us is this, that you forget that the same refinement which brings us new pleasures exposes us to new pains – the horny hand of the peasant feels not the nettles which sting the fine skin of the scholar. You forget also, that whatever widens the sphere of the desires, opens to them also new temptations. Vanity, the desire of applause, pride, the sense of superiority – gnawing discontent where that superiority is not recognized – morbid susceptibility, which comes with all new feelings – the underrating of simple pleasures apart from the intellectual – the chase of the imagination, often unduly stimulated, for things unattainable below – all these are surely among the first temptations that beset the entrance into knowledge."