Concord Days

"I am, dear Sir, Yours very truly,"CHRISTOPHER WALTON."London, 15th February, 1868."

"The object of these publications," says Mr. Walton, in his Prospectus, "and of their distribution in the libraries of Great Britain and the United States, is to induce and promote in a general manner, the study of pure metaphysical science, commencing at its root and ground in Deity, thence through all those principles of nature, eternal and temporal, of mind, spirit, and body, which develop and concentre themselves in the form, constitution, and support of man, as such, with a view to render it subservient to its true end and design, namely, the radical purification of theology throughout the earth, and the final resolution of it into a fixed and progressive science, and art in its kind, as contemplated and provided for by Christianity."

For those interested in the history of Mysticism, "Vaughan's Hours with the Mystics," published in London, 1856, is an interesting volume, full of information communicated by way of conversation, and in an attractive style.

CRABBE ROBINSON'S DIARYThursday, 19.

Crabbe Robinson's Diary is interesting; all he tells us of Landor, Wordsworth, Coleridge, is especially so. The book gives, perhaps, the best personal and literary picture of the times in which he lived. Few men had a wider circle of literary acquaintances than the author. His book is a real addition to contemporary literature, and shows the value of the Diary for preserving in an attractive form what would otherwise have been lost to the world. Robinson is no Boswell; he knew what to omit, what to commit to writing, gave fair transcripts of what he saw, without prepossession or prejudice.

COLERIDGE

What Robinson tells of Coleridge is especially noticeable.

"I used," he says, "to compare him as a disputant to a serpent, – easy to kill if you assume the offensive; but if you attack him, his bite is mortal. Some time after writing this, when I saw Madame De Stael, in London, I asked her what she thought of him. She replied, 'He is very great in monologue, but he has no idea of dialogue.'"

Perhaps not. Yet with his equal, he would not have been found wanting in this respect. Less English than German in genius, he would have been on terms of equality with thinkers of all times. But for his introduction of German ideas into English literature, we had waited a generation or more. He comprehended and interpreted the ideas and methods of its great thinkers. Better than most, he fulfilled Plato's canon, that "only the gods discriminate and define." I find him the most stimulating of modern British thinkers. He had wider sympathies with pure thought, and cast more piercing glances into its essence and laws than any contemporary.

I must repeat my sense of obligation to him for the quickening influence which the perusal of his pages always awakens, at every paragraph making me his debtor for a thought, an image, which it were worth while to have lived for, so stimulating is his phrase to imagination and reason alike; scarcely less to understanding and memory. If his mysticism tinge his speculations with its shifting hues, and one threads the labyrinth into which he conducts with wonder and amazement, he yet surrenders unreservedly to his guide, sure of coming to the light, with memorable experiences to reward him for the adventure.

His appreciation of the Greek, as of the Teutonic genius, is the more remarkable when we consider how rarely his countrymen have comprehended foreign ideas; and that Shakespeare even found in him his first interpreter.

In his Literary Remains, we find these remarkable notes on the Greek drama: —

"It is truly singular that Plato – whose philosophy and religion were both exotic at home, and a mere opposition to the finite in all things, genuine prophet and anticipator of the protestant era – should have given in his dialogue of the Banquet a justification of our Shakespeare. For he relates that, when all the other guests had either dispersed or fallen asleep, Socrates only, together with Aristophanes and Agathon, remained awake; and that, while he continued to drink with them out of a large goblet, he compelled them, though most reluctantly, to admit that it was the business of one and the same genius to excel in tragic and comic poetry; or, that the tragic poet ought, at the same time, to contain within himself the powers of comedy. Now, as this was certainly repugnant to the entire theory of the ancient critics, and contrary to all their experience, it is evident that Plato must have fixed the eye of his contemplation on the innermost essentials of the drama, abstracted from conditions of age and country. In another passage he even adds the reason, namely: that opposites illustrate each other's nature, and in their struggle draw forth the strength of the combatants, and display the conquered as sovereign even in the territories of the rival power."

Again: "The tragic poet idealizes his characters by giving to the spiritual part of our nature a more decided preponderance over animal cravings and impulses than is met with in real life; the comic poet idealizes his characters by making the animal the governing power, and the intellectual the mere instrument. But as tragedy is not a collection of virtues and perfections, but takes care only that the vices and imperfections shall spring from the passions, errors, and prejudices which arise of the soul; so neither is comedy a mere crowd of vices and follies, but whatever qualities it represents, even though they are in a certain sense amiable, it still displays them as having their origin in some dependence on our lower nature, accompanied with a defect in true freedom of spirit and self-subsistence, and subject to that unconnection by contradiction of inward being, to which all folly is owing."

Coleridge, while writing this masterly analysis of the seats of the tragic and comic in man's inner being, and with the text of Plato and of Shakespeare before him, must have been contemplating the springs of his own defects, the strength twinned with his weaknesses, which ever made him the helpless demigod he was; aspiring ever, yet drawn downward by the leash of his frailties, as tragic a character as any that Shakespeare himself has drawn.

SELDEN'S TABLE TALKTuesday, 24.

"Learned Selden," learned in civil and political wisdom as were few of his great contemporaries. If his book of Table Talk has less repute than Bacon's famous Essays, like that, opened anywhere, it displays the author's eminent discretion, his comprehensive understanding, apposite illustration of his theme. His homely, familiar manner, has its attractions as well for the scholar as for the common reader; pregnant as are his sentences with his great good sense, rare learning, bringing abstruse subjects home to the affairs of life in a style at once perspicuous and agreeable. "He was a person," says Lord Clarendon, "whom no character can flatter, or transmit in any expressions equal to his merit. He was of such stupendous learning in all kinds of languages that a man would have thought he had been entirely conversant among books, and had never spent an hour but in reading and writing. Yet his humanity, courtesy, and affability were such, that he would have been thought to have been bred in the best courts, but that his good-nature, charity, and delight in doing good, and in communicating all he knew, exceeded his breeding. His style in all his writings seems harsh, and sometimes obscure, which is not wholly to be imputed to the abstruse subjects of which he commonly treated, but to a little undervaluing of style, and too much propensity to the language of antiquity; but in his conversation he was the most clear discourser, and had the best faculty of making hard things easy, and of presenting them to the understanding, of any man that hath been known."

Coleridge, who never let any person of eminence, in thought or erudition, escape his attention, says: "There is more weighty bullion sense in this book (The Table Talk) than I ever found in the same number of pages of any uninspired writer."

Ben Jonson addressed him thus: —

… "You that have beenEver at home, yet have all countries seen,And like a compass keeping one foot stillUpon your centre, do your circle fillOf general knowledge…I wondered at the richness, but am lostTo see the workmanship so excel the cost!To mark the excellent seasoning of your style,And manly elocution! not one whileWith horror rough, then rioting with wit,But to the subject still the colors fit,In sharpness of all search, wisdom choice,Newness of sense, antiquity of voice!I yield, I yield. The matter of your praiseFloods in upon me, and I cannot raiseA bank against it; nothing but the roundLarge clasp of nature such a wit can bound."

One's pen cannot be better drawn across paper, than in transcribing some of his wise and pithy sayings: —

"Books. 'Tis good to have translators, because they serve as a comment, so far as the judgment of the man goes."

"Quoting of authors is most for matter of fact; and then I cite them as I would produce a witness, sometimes for a free expression; and then I give the author his due, and gain myself praise for reading him."

"Henry the Eighth made a law that all men might read the Scripture, except servants; but no woman except ladies and gentlewomen who had leisure and might ask somebody the meaning. The law was repealed in Edward Sixth's days."

"Laymen have best interpreted the hard places in the Bible, such as Scaliger, Grotius, Salmasius, etc. The text serves only to guess by; we must satisfy ourselves fully out of the authors that lived about those times."

"Ceremony. Ceremony keeps up all things. 'Tis like a penny glass to a rich spirit, or some excellent water; without it the water were spilt, the spirit lost."

"Damnation. To preach long, loud, and damnation, is the way to be cried up. We love a man that damns us, and we run after him to save us."

"Friends. Old friends are best. King James used to call for his old shoes, they were easiest to his feet."

"Language. Words must be fitted to a man's mouth. 'Twas well said of the fellow that was to make a speech for my Lord Mayor: he desired to take measure of his lordship's mouth."

"Learning. No man is wiser for his learning; it may administer matter to work in, or objects to work upon; but wit and wisdom are born with a man."

"Power. Syllables govern the world."

"Reason. The reason of a thing is not to be inquired after till you are sure the thing itself is so. We commonly are at 'What's the reason of it?' before we are sure of the thing. 'Twas an excellent question of my Lady Cotton, when Sir Robert Cotton was magnifying of a shoe which was Moses' or Noah's, and wondering at the strange shape and fashion of it, – 'But, Mr. Cotton,' says she, 'are you sure it is a shoe?'"

"Religion. Religion is like the fashion; one man wears his doublet slashed, another laced, another plain; but every man has a doublet. So every man has his religion. We differ about trimming."

"We look after religion as the butcher did after his knife, when he had it in his mouth."

WOMANSunday, 29.Ever the feminine fades into mystery,Pales undistinguished into the powers of nature,There working with earnest force in silence,Bashful and beautiful in its reserves.

Divination seems heightened and raised to its highest power in woman, like mercury, the more sensitive to the breath of its atmosphere; – the most delicate metre of character, as if in the finest persons, the sex predominated to give the salient graces and gifts peculiar to woman. The difference appears to be of bias, not of positive power, of thought and feeling differently disposed, and where the extremes merge towards unity, not easily discriminated. Still, each preserves its distinctive traits under all differences, neither being mistaken for the other. A woman's thought is not taken for a man's, nor the contrary; though the outward expression were the same, each preserves its sexual tone and color. Any seeming exceptions are counterfeits, and confirm the law that sentiment is feminine, thought masculine, by whomsoever expressed; neither can blend fully and confound the other under any metamorphosis, sex being a constant factor individualizing the personality of souls. The ancient philosophers had so good an opinion of the sex, that they ascribed all sciences to the Muses, all sweetness and morality to the Graces, and prophetic inspiration to the Sibyls.

Women have been subject alike to the admiration and contempt of men. It were handsomer to quote the poet's praises than blame, the Greek poets Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides especially. I like to enrich my pages with some of their fine lines, and not less for the new interest taken in the sex.

Æschylus"Wedlock is a state preordained of Destiny, and itsObligations are more binding than an oath.""Bite thy lips or ever thou speak words of impurity.""Can heaven's fair beams show a fond wife a sightMore welcome than her husband from his warsReturned with glory, when she opes the gateAnd springs to welcome him."Euripides"Men need not try where women fail.""To a father waxing oldNothing is dearer than a daughter; sonsHave spirits of a higher pitch, but less inclinedTo sweet endearing tenderness.""Happy is it so to placeA daughter; yet it pains a father's heartWhen he delivers to another's houseA child, the object of his tender care.""A wise man in his house should find a wifeGentle and courteous, or no wife at all.""With silence of the tongueAnd cheerfulness of look I entertainedMy husband; where my province to commandI knew, and where to yield obedience to him.""When the wife enduresThe ungentle converse of a husband rudeIn manners, in his person rude, to dieWere rather to be wished.""If well accorded, the connubial stateFrom all its strings speaks perfect harmony;If ill at home, abroad the harsh notes jar,And with rude discord wound the ear of peace.""For women are by nature formedTo feel some consolation when their tongueGives utterance to the afflictions they endure.""O trebly blest the placid lot of those,Whose hearth-foundations are in pure love laid,Where husband's breast with tempered ardor glows,And wife, oft mother, is in heart a maid."Sophocles

"Note well a house that is prosperous among men, and you Will find virtue among its women folk."

"Seek not thy fellow-citizens to guideTill thou canst order well thine own fireside."

SEPTEMBER

"While slowly o'er the hillsThe unnerved day piles his prodigious sunshine.Here be gardens of Hesperian mould,Recesses rare, temples of birch and fern,Perfumes of light-green sumac, ivy thick,And old stone fences tottering to their fall,And gleaming lakes that cool invite the bath,And most aerial mountains for the West."– Channing.WALDEN PONDMonday, 6.

To Walden with May, who takes a pencil sketch for her collection. Thoreau's hermitage has disappeared, and the grounds are overgrown with pines and sumac, leaving the site hardly traceable. The shores of Walden are as sylvan as ever near Thoreau's haunt, but have been shorn of wood on the southern side. No spot of water in these parts has a more interesting history. It well deserved the poet's praises while Thoreau dwelt on its shores.

"It is not far beyond the village church,After we pass the wood that skirts the road,A lake, – the blue-eyed Walden, – that doth smileMost tenderly upon its neighbor pines,And they as if to recompense this love,In double beauty spread their branches forth.This lake has tranquil loveliness and breadth,And of late years has added to its charms,For one attracted to its pleasant edgeHas built himself a little hermitage,Where with much piety he passes life."More fitting place I cannot fancy now,For such a man to let the line run offThe mortal reel, such patience hath the lake,Such gratitude and cheer are in the pines.But more than either lake or forest's depthsThis man has in himself: a tranquil man,With sunny sides where well the fruit is ripe,Good front, and resolute bearing to this life,And some serener virtues, which controlThis rich exterior prudence, virtues high,That in the principles of things are set,Great by their nature and consigned to him,Who, like a faithful merchant, does accountTo God for what he spends, and in what way."Thrice happy art thou, Walden! in thyself,Such purity is in thy limpid springs;In those green shores which do reflect in thee,And in this man who dwells upon thy edge,A holy man within a hermitage.May all good showers fall gently into thee;May thy surrounding forests long be spared,And may the dweller on thy tranquil shoresHere lead a life of deep tranquillity,Pure as thy waters, handsome as thy shores,And with those virtues which are like the stars."

"When I first paddled a boat on Walden," wrote Thoreau, "it was completely surrounded by thick and lofty pine and oak woods, and in some spots, coves of grape vines had run over the trees and formed bowers under which a boat could pass. The hills which form its shore are so steep, and the woods on them so high, that as you looked down the pond from the west end, it had the appearance of an amphitheatre. For some kind of sylvan spectacle, I have spent many an hour when I was younger, floating over its surface as the zephyr willed, having paddled my boat to the middle, and lying on my back across the seats in a summer forenoon, and looking into the sky, dreaming awake until I was aroused by my boat touching the sand, and I arose to see what shore my fates had impelled me to. In these days, when idleness was the most attractive and productive industry, many a forenoon have I stolen away, preferring to spend thus the most valued part of the day. For I was rich, if not in money, in sunny hours and summer days, and spent them lavishly. Nor do I regret that I did not waste more of them behind a counter, or in a workshop, or at the teacher's desk, in which last two places I have spent many of them.

"I must say that I do not know what made me leave the pond. I left it as unaccountably as I went to it. To speak sincerely, I went there because I had got ready to go. I left it for the same reason.

"These woods! why do I not feel their being cut more freely? Does it not affect me nearly? The axe can deprive me of much. Concord is sheared of its pride. I am certain by the loss attached to my native town in consequence, one and a main link is broken. I shall go to Walden less frequently.

"Look out what window I will, my eyes rest in the distance on a forest. Is this circumstance of no value? Why such pains in old countries to plant gardens and parks? A certain sample of wild nature, a certain primitiveness? The towns thus bordered with a fringe and tasselled border, each has its preservers. Methinks the town should have more supervisors to control its parks than it has. It concerns us all whether these proprietors choose to cut down all the woods this winter or not. I love to look at Ebby Hubbard's oaks and pines on the hillside from Brister's Hill, and am thankful that there is one old miser who will not sell or cut his woods, though it is said that they are wasting. 'It is an ill wind that blows nobody any good.'"

"Walk round Walden Pond these warm winter days. The wood-chopper finds that the wood cuts easier than when it had the frost in it, though it does not split so readily. Thus every change in the weather has its influence on him, and is appreciated by him in a peculiar way. The wood-cutter and his practices and experiences are more to be attended to; his accidents, perhaps, more than any others, should mark the epochs in a winter's day. Now that the Indian is gone, he stands nearest to nature. Who has written the history of his day? How far still is the writer of books from the man, his old playmate, it may be, who chops in the woods? There are ages between them. Homer refers to the progress of the wood-cutter's work to mark the time of day on the plains of Troy. And the inference from such premises commonly is, that he lived in a more primitive state of society than the present. But I think this is a mistake. Like proves like in all ages, and the fact that I myself should take pleasure in preferring the simple and peaceful labors which are always proceeding; that the contrast itself always attracts the civilized poet to what is rudest and most primitive in his contemporaries; – all this rather proves a certain interval between the poet and the wood-chopper, whose labor he refers to, than an unusual nearness to him, on the principle that familiarity breeds contempt. Homer is to be subjected to a very different kind of criticism from any he has received. That reader who most fully appreciates the poet, and derives the greater pleasure from his work, lives in circumstances most like those of the poet himself.

"This afternoon I throw off my outside coat, a mild spring day. I must hie me to the meadows. The air is full of bluebirds. The ground is almost entirely bare. The villagers are out in the sun, and every man is happy whose work takes him out-of-doors. I go by Sleepy Hollow towards the great fields. I lean over a rail to hear what is in the air, liquid with the bluebird's warble. My life partakes of infinity. The air is deep as our natures. Is the drawing in of this vital air attended with no more glorious results than I witness? The air is a velvet cushion against which I press my ear. I go forth to make new demands on life. I wish to begin this summer well. To do something in it worthy and wise. To transcend my daily routine and that of my townsmen, to have my immortality now, – that it be in the quality of my daily life, – to pay the greatest price, the greatest tax of any man in Concord, and enjoy the most! I will give all I am for my nobility. I will pay all my days for my success. I pray that the life of this spring and summer may be fair in my memory. May I dare as I have never done. May I purify myself anew as with fire and water, soul and body. May my melody not be wanting to the season. May I gird myself to be a hunter of the beautiful, that nought escape me. May I attain to a youth never attained. I am eager to report the glory of the universe: may I be worthy to do it; to have got through regarding human values, so as not to be distracted from regarding divine values. It is reasonable that a man should be something worthier at the end of the year than he was at the beginning."

A delightful volume might be compiled from Thoreau's Journals by selecting what he wrote at a certain date annually, thus giving a calendar of his thoughts on that day from year to year. Such a book would be instructive in many ways, – to the naturalist, the farmer, woodman, scholar; and as he was wont to weave a sensible moral into his writings, it would prove a suggestive treatise on morals and religion also. Not every preacher takes his text from his time, his own eyes, ears, and feet, in his sensible, superior manner.

THE IDEAL CHURCHMonday, 13.

The divinity students come according to appointment and pass the day. It is gratifying to be sought by thoughtful young persons, especially by young divines, and a hopeful sign when graduates of our schools set themselves to examining the foundations of their faith; the ceilings alike with underpinnings of the world's religious ideas and institutions, their genesis and history. Plainly, the drift of thinking here in New England, if not elsewhere, is towards a Personal Theism, inclusive of the faiths of all races, embodying the substance of their Sacred Books, with added forms and instrumentalities suited to the needs of our time. The least curious observer (I tell my visitors) cannot fail to see that at no previous period in our religious history, had so profound and anxious inquiries been made into the springs and foundations of spiritual truths. The signs of our time indicate that we are on the eve of a recasting of the old forms. Always there had been two divisions in the theological as in the political and social spheres, – the conservative and the radically progressive. This division marks itself at the present, so sweeping is the wave of religious speculation, not only among professed Christians, but among the thoughtful outside of churches. Wherever we look, earnest men are pondering in what manner they can best serve God and man.

Let us discriminate religious truth from mere opinions. The fruit of temperament, culture, individuality, these are wont to be local, narrow, exclusive. The planting of a church to which all men can subscribe, demands a common bond of sympathy, the feeling of brotherhood, mutual respect, peculiarities, culture, respect for old and young. Such is the bond of union for the New Church. The essence of all creeds is God, Personal, Incarnate, without whom a church and divine worship were impossible. Not to enter into the metaphysics of creeds and philosophy of systems, let us sketch an outline of our Ideal Church.