The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 02, No. 12, October, 1858

We need be at no loss to discover the effects of the combined influences here stated. The ordinary phrases of our country-people denote an alert judgment,—as, "I reckon," "I calculate," "I guess." The inventiveness which characterizes Americans, the multiplicity of patents, comes from the tendency to go behind the actual, to test possibilities, to bring everything to the standard of thought. Emerson dissolves England in the alembic of his brain, and makes a thought of that. Our politics are yearly becoming more and more questions of principle, questions of right and wrong. There is almost infinite promise and significance in this gradual victory of the moral over the political, of life over mechanism. Mr. Benton complains of the "speculative philanthropy" of New England, because it suggests questions upon which he could not meet his constituents, and interferes with his domestic arrangements. It is much as if one should pray God to abolish the sun because his own eyes are sore!

* * * * *

We now pass to the second great tendency which, as is here affirmed, organization and moral discipline are unitedly tending to establish on this shore. An inevitable consequence of the nervous intensity and susceptibility characteristic of Americans is an access of personal magnetism, or influence; we keenly feel each other, have social impressibility. The nervous is the public element in the body, the mediating and communicating power. It is the agent of every sense,—of sight, hearing, taste, touch, smell,—and of the power of speech. It is the vehicle of all fellow-feeling, of all social sympathy. It introduces man to man, and makes strangers acquainted. And a most unceremonious master of these ceremonies it is;—running indiscriminately across ranks; introducing beggar and baron; forcing the haughtiest master, spite of his theories, to feel that the slave is a man and a fellow; compelling the prince to acknowledge the peasant,—not with a shake of the hand, perhaps, but, it may be, with knee-shakings and heart-shakings. A terrible leveller and democrat is this master element in the human frame; yet king and kaiser must entertain him in courts and on thrones. Now the high development of this in the American Man renders him communicative, gives him a quick interest in men; he cannot let them pass without giving and taking. Hence the much-blamed inquisitiveness,—"What is your name? Where do you live? Where are you going? What is your business? Do you eat baked beans on Sunday?" Mrs. Trollope is horrified; it is a bore; but one likes the man the better for it. He is interested in you;—that is the simple secret of all. King Carlyle calls us "eighteen millions of bores." To be sure; is that so bad? The primitive English element was pirate; let the primitive American be bore. The fathers of the Britain that is took men by the throat; let the fathers of the America that is to be take them by the—button;—that is amelioration enough for one thousand years! In truth, this intense personal interest which characterizes the American, though often awkwardly manifested and troublesome, is an admirable feature in his constitution, and few traits should awaken our pride or expectation more. It is this keen fellow-feeling that fits him for the broadest and most beneficent public interest. This makes him a philanthropist. And his philanthropy is peculiar. It is not merely of the neighborhood sort, such as sends a Thanksgiving turkey to poor Robert and a hat that does not fit well to poor Peter. For here the predilection for principles and generalizations comes in, and leads him to translate his fellow-feeling into social axioms. Thus it occurs that the American is that man who is grappling most earnestly and intelligently with the problem of man's relation to man. In every village is some knot of active minds that brood over questions of this kind. The monarch newspaper of America is deeply tinged with the same hue; nor could one with a contrary complexion attain its position. This great current of human interest floats our politics; it feeds the springs of enthusiasm, coming forth in doctrines of non-resistance, of government by love, and the like; and our literature contains essays upon love and friendship which, in our judgment, are not equalled in the literature of the world.

Nor is a moral discipline wanting to second this tendency. A terrible social anomaly has been forced upon us,—has had time to intertwine itself with trade, with creeds, with partisan prejudice and patriotic pride, and, having become next to unconquerable, now shows that it can keep no terms and must kill or be killed. And through this the question of man's duties to man, on the broadest scale, is incessantly kept in agitation. It is like a lurid handwriting across the sky,—"Learn what man should be and do to his fellow." And the companion sentence is this,—"Thy justice to the strangers shall be the best security to thine own household."

* * * * *

By the co-working of these two grand tendencies we obtain at once the largest speculative breadth and the closest practical and personal interest. What sweeter promise could any one ask than that of this rare and admirable combination? Thought and action have been more than sufficiently separated. The philosopher has discoursed to a few, and in the dialect of the few, in Academic shades; sanctity has hidden itself away, lost in the joy of its secret contemplations; the great world has rolled by, unhearing, unheeding,—like London roaring with cataract thunder around St. Paul's, while within the choral service is performed to an audience of one. Thinking and doing have hardly recognized each other. Now we are not of those vague, enthusiastic persons who fancy that all truths are for all ears,—that the highest spiritual fact can be communicated, where there is no spiritual apprehension to lay hold upon it. He that hath ears, let him hear. Nor would we attempt to confuse the functions of sayer and doer. But let there be a sympathy and understanding between them, that, when achieved, will mark an epoch in the world's history. Nowhere, at least in modern times, have thought and action approached so nearly and intimately as in America; nowhere is speculative intellect so colored with the hues of practical interest without limiting its own flight; nowhere are labor and executive power so receptive of pure intellectual suggestion. The union of what is deepest and most recondite in thought with clear-sighted sagacity has been well hit by Lowell in his description of the typical American scholar,—

"Sits in a mystery calm and intense,And looks round about him with sharp common-sense."

That is, the New Man has two things that seldom make each other's acquaintance,—Sight and Insight. Accordingly, our subtilest thinker, whom the scholarly Mr. Vaughan classes with the mystics and accuses of going beyond the legitimate range even of mystics, has written such an estimate of the most practical nation in the world as has never been written of that or any other before. The American knows what is about him, has tact, sagacity, conversance with surfaces and circumstances, is the shrewdest guesser in the world; and seeing him on this side alone, one might say,—This is the man of to-day, a quick worker, good to sail ships, bore mountains, buy and sell, but belonging to the surface, knowing only that. The medal turns, and lo! here is this 'cute Yankee a thinker, a mystic, fellow of the antique, Oriental in his subtilest contemplations, a rider of the sunbeam, dwelling upon Truth's sweetness with such pure devotion and delight that vigorous Mr. Kingsley must shriek, "Windrush!" "Intellectual Epicurism!" and disturb himself in a somewhat diverting manner. Pollok declaimed against the attempt to lay hold of the earth with one hand and heaven with the other. But that is the peculiar feat for which the American is born,—to bring together seeing and doing, principle and practice, eternity and to-day. The American is given, they say, to extremes. True, but to both extremes; he belongs to the two antipodes. To the one he appertains by intellectual emancipation and penetrative power; to the other by his pungent element of sympathy with persons. Speaking of the older Northern States, and of the people as a whole, we affirm that their inhabitants are more speculative and more practical, the scholars know more of immediate common interests and speak more the dialect of the people, while the mechanics know more of speculative truth and understand better the necessary vocabulary of thought, than any other people.

Lyell says, that the New World is really the Old World,—that there, preëminently, the antique geological formations are found, and nearer the surface than elsewhere. Thus the physical peculiarity of our continent is, that here an elaborate and highly finished surface is immediately superimposed upon the oldest rock, rock wrought in fire and kneaded with earthquake knuckles. We discover in this a symbol of the American Man. He likewise brings into near association the most ancient and the most modern. By insight he dwells in the old thoughts, the eternal truths, the meditations that rapt away the early seers into trance and dream; but he brings these into sharp contact with life, associates them with the newest work, the toil and interests of this year and day.

We shall find space to mention but one peril which besets the New Man. It is danger of physical exhaustion. Dr. Kane, the hero of two Arctic nights, came forth to the day only to die. That which makes the preëminence of our organization makes also its peril. Denmark is said to be impoverished by the disproportion of the learned to the industrial class; production is insufficient, and too much of a good thing cripples the country. The nervous system is a learned class in the body; it contributes dignity and superior uses, but makes no corn grow in the physiological fields. A brain of great animation and power is a perilous freight for the stanchest body; in a weak and shattered body it is like gold in a spent swimmer's pocket,—the richer it would make him on dry land, the less chance it gives him of arriving there. That this danger is not imaginary too many are able to testify.—Few scenes in Rabelais are more exquisitely ludicrous than that in which he pictures the monk Panurge in a storm at sea. The oily ecclesiastic is terrified as only a combination of hypocrite and coward can be; and, in the extremity of his craven distress, he fancies that any situation on shore, no matter how despicable, would be paradise. So at length he whines, "Oh that I were on dry land, and somebody kicking me!" In a similar manner—similar, save that farce deepens to tragedy—many a man in America of opulent mental outfit, but with only a poor wreck of a body to bear the precious cargo, must often have been tempted to cry, "Oh that I had a sound digestion, and were some part of a dunce!" In truth, we are a nation of health-hunters, betraying the want by the search. It were to be wished that an accurate computation could be made how much money has been paid in the United States, within a score of years, for patent medicines. It would buy up a kingdom of respectable dimensions. So eager is this health-hunger, that it bites at bare hooks. The "advertising man" of Arnold's Globules offers his services as nostrum-puffer-general, and appeals to past success as proof of his abilities in this line. But Arnold's Globules will sell no whit the worse. Is the amiable Mr. Knox right, after all? Doubtless, we answer, the American organization is more easily disordered than the English,—just as a railway-train running at forty miles an hour is more liable to accident than one proceeding at twenty. Besides, Americans have not learned to live as these new circumstances require. The New Man is a clipper-ship, that can run out of sight of land while one of the old bluff-bowed, round-ribbed craft is creeping out of port; but, from the very nature of his superiorities, he is apt to be shorter-lived, and more likely to spring a leak in the strain of a storm. He demands nicer navigation. It will not do for him to beat over sand-bars. Yet dinner-pilotage in this country is reckless and unscientific to a degree. The land is full of wrecks hopelessly snagged upon indigestible diet. As yet, it is difficult to obtain a hearing for precaution. Men answer you out of their past experience,—much like a headstrong personage who was about to attempt crossing a river in a boat sure to sink. "You will drown, if you go in that thing," said a bystander. "Never was drowned yet," was the prompt retort; and pushing off, he soon lost the opportunity to repeat that boast! But this resistance is constantly becoming less. Meantime, numbers of foreseeing men are waking up, or are already awakened, to the importance of recreation and physical culture,—members of the clerical profession, to the credit of the craft be it said, taking the lead. Messrs. Beecher, Bellows, and Hale plead the cause of amusements; the author of "Saints and their Bodies" celebrates the uses and urges the need of athletic sports; gymnasia are becoming matters of course in the cities and larger towns; "The New York Tribune" attends to the matter of cookery; and it is safe to predict that the habits of the people will undergo in time the necessary changes. That health is possible to Americans ought not to be questioned. Of despair we will not listen to a word. In crossing the ocean, in the backwoods-experience which everywhere precedes cultivation, in the excitement which has followed the obliteration of social monopolies and the throwing open of the wealth of a continent to free competition, the old traditional precautions have been lost, the old household wisdoms, the old economies of health; and these we have now to reproduce for ourselves. It will be done. And when this is done, though ancient English brawn will not reappear, there will be health, and its great blessing of cheerful spirits. The special means by which this shall be accomplished we leave to the care of the gentlemen abovenamed, and their compeers—merely putting in one word for gentle exercise, and two words for the cherishing of mental health, the expulsion of morbid excitements, assume what guise they may. We should take extreme care not to admit decay at the summit. A healthy soul is a better prophylactic than belladonna. Refusing to despond respecting American health, we cheerfully trust that the genius of the New Man will find all required physical support, and due length of time for demonstrating its quality.

And now we may notice a doubt which some readers will cherish. Is not all this, they may say, over-sanguine and enthusiastic? Is it not a self-complacent dream? Are the tendencies adverted to so productive? Is any such genius really forming as is here claimed? Is it not, on the contrary, now fully understood that the Americans are a commonplace people, meagre-minded money-makers, destitute of originality? What have they done to demonstrate genius yet?—These skepticisms are somewhat prevalent nowadays, and are a natural enough reaction from Fourth-of-July flatulencies. Let them have their day. The fact will vindicate itself. Meanwhile we may remark, that the appeal to attained performance, in justification of the view taken in this paper of American abilities and prospects, would obviously place us at undue disadvantage. We speak here, and are plainly entitled to speak, rather of tendencies than of attainments, of powers forming themselves in man, and not of results produced without him. Nevertheless, results there are,—admirable, satisfactory results.

As first of these may be mentioned American Reform. In depth, in breadth, in vigor, in practical quality, this may challenge comparison with anything of a similar kind elsewhere. This is the direct outburst of a new life, arising and wrestling with the old forms, habitudes, institutions, with whatsoever is imported and traditional, on the one hand, and with the crude or barbarous improvisations of native energy, on the other. It is a force springing out of the summit of the brain, the angel of its noblest sentiment, going forth with no less an aim than to construct a whole new social status from ideas. And the token of its superiority is this, that it builds its new outward life only from the most ancient incorruptible material, out of the eternal granite of Moral Law. Sweeping social schemes prevail in France. But American Reform is not a scheme; it is the service of an idea. It is made conservative by that which also makes it radical, by working in the interest of the moral sentiment.

The Literature of the New World is also worthy of the New Man. We are quite aware that a large portion of this literature is trash. So was a large part in Shakspeare's, in Cervantes's, in Plato's age and place. But we admit even that the comparison does not hold,—that an especial accusation may be brought against the issues of the press in this country. Wise men should have anticipated this, and, instead of reasoning from the size of our lakes, prairies, and mountains, and demanding epics and philosophies of us before we are fairly out of our primitive woods, the critics should have hastened to say,—A colony must have time to strike root, and to draw up therefrom a new life, before it can arrive at valuable and genuine literary expression. The Life must come before the Thought. Nothing could be more absurd than the expectation that American literature should spring away into the air from the top of European performance. Our first literature was colonial,—that is, imitative, written for the approbation of European critics,—of course, having somewhat the empty correctness of good school-boy composition. Next followed what we may call fire-weed literature,—the first rank, raw product of new lands. Under these two heads a vast number of books must of course be reckoned. But beyond these American literature has already passed, and now can point to books that spring out of the pure genius of the New Man. And having only these in mind, we hesitate not to say that there is now sounding upon these shores a deeper, subtler, and more universal note than is heard in any other land touched by the Atlantic Sea. We have now writings in several departments of literature, and in both prose and verse, which are characterized by a breadth and largeness of suggestion, by a spirituality and a prophetic adherence to the moral sentiment, which justify all that has here been affirmed or reasoned. And our deepest thought finds a popular reception which proves it not foreign or exceptional. Wilkinson's "Human Body," the largest piece of speculative construction which England has produced in two centuries, has not yet, after some eight years, we believe, exhausted its first edition. Emerson's Poems, still less adapted, one would say, than the work just mentioned, to the taste of populaces, had reached its fourth edition in about the same period. Learned works have, of course, a superior reception in the mother-country; works of pure thought in the daughter. Said to us, during the past season, the subtilest thinker of Great Britain,—"I must send to America whatever I wish to put in print, unless I pay for its publication from my own pocket."

And beyond this, there is a hush in the nation's heart, an expectancy, a waiting and longing for some unspoken word, which sometimes seems awful in the bounty of its promise. I know men educated to speak, with the burden of a speaker's vocation on their hearts, but now these many years remaining heroically silent; the fountains of a fresh consciousness sweet within them, but not yet flowing into speech, and they too earnest, too expectant, too sure of the future to say aught beneath the strain. "Why do you not speak?" was inquired of one. "Because I can keep silent," he said, "and the word I am to utter will command me." No man assumes that attitude until he is already a party to the deepest truth, is the silent side of a seer; and in a nation where any numbers are passing this more than Pythagorean lustrum, a speech is surely coming that will no more need to apologize for itself than the speech of the forest or the ocean-shore. The region of the trade-winds is skirted with calm. Sydney Smith said of Macaulay, that his talk, to render it charming, "needed only a few brilliant flashes of silence." We are talkative, but the flashes of silence are not wanting, and there is prophecy in them as well as charm. Said one, of a speaker,—"He was so rarely eloquent, that what he did not say was even better than what he did." And here, not only are some wholly silent, but in our best writings the impressive not-saying lends its higher suggestion than that expressly put forth. What spaces between Emerson's sentences! Each seems to float like a solitary summer-cloud in a whole sky of silence.

Yes, the fact is already indubitable, a rich life, sure in due time of its rich expression, is forming here. As out of the deeps of Destiny, the Man for the Continent, head-craftsman, hand-craftsman, already puts his foot to this shore. All hail, new-comer! Welcome to great tasks, great toils, to mighty disciplines, to victories that shall not be too cheaply purchased, to defeats that shall be better than victories! We give thee joy of new powers, new work, unprecedented futures! We give the world joy of a new and mighty artist to plan, a new strong artisan to quarry and to build in the great architectures of humanity!

THE POET KEATS

His was the soul, once pent in English clay,Whereby ungrateful England seemed to holdThe sweet Narcissus, parted from his stream,—Endymion, not unmindful of his dream,Like a weak bird the flock has left behind.Untimely notes the poet sung alone,Checked by the chilling frosts of words unkind;And his grieved soul, some thousand years astray,Paled like the moon in most unwelcome day.His speech betrayed him ere his heart grew cold;With morning freshness to the world he toldOf man's first love, and fearless creed of youth,When Beauty he believed the type of Truth.In the vexed glories of unquiet Troy,So might to Helen's jealous ear discourseThe flute, first tuned on Ida's haunted hill,Against OEnone's coming, to betrayIn what sweet solitude her shepherd lay.Yet, Poet-Priest! the world shall ever thrillTo thy loved theme, its charm undying still!Hearts in their youth are Greek as Homer's song,And all Olympus half contents the boy,Who from the quarries of abounding joyBrings his white idols without thought of wrong.With reverent hand he sets each votive stone,And last, the altar "To the God Unknown."As in our dreams the face that we love bestBlooms as at first, while we ourselves grow old,—As the returning Spring in sunlight throwsThrough prison-bars, on graves, its ardent gold,—And as the splendors of a Syrian roseLie unreproved upon the saddest breast,—So mythic story fits a changing world:Still the bark drifts with sails forever furled.An unschooled Fancy deemed the work her own,While mystic meaning through each fable shone.

HER GRACE, THE DRUMMER'S DAUGHTER

Foray, a mass of crags embellished by some greenness, looked up to heaven a hundred miles from shore. It was a fortified position, and a place of banishment. In the course of a long war, waged on sea and land between two great nations, this, "least of all," became a point of some importance to the authority investing it; the fort was well supplied with the machinery of death, and the prison filled with prisoners. But peace had now been of long continuance; and though a nation's banner floated from the tower of the fort, and was seen afar by mariners,—though the cannon occupied their ancient places, ordered for instant use,—though all within the fort was managed and conducted day by day with careful regard to orders,—the operations indicated, in the spirit of their conduct, no fear of warlike surprises. No man gave or obeyed an order as if his life depended on his expedition. Neither was the prison the very place it had been; for, once, every cell had its occupant,—an exile, or a prisoner of war.

The officials of the island led an easy life, therefore. Active was the brain that resisted the influences of so much leisure as most of these people had. But, under provocation even, Nature must be true. So true is she, indeed, that every violation of her dignities illustrates the meaning of that sovereign utterance, VENGEANCE IS MINE. She will not bring a thorn-tree from an acorn. Pray, day and night, and see if she will let you gather figs of thistles. Prayer has its conditions, and faith is not the sum of them.

But Nature's buoyant spirits must needs conquer the weight of influences whose business is to depress. And they, seeking, find their centre among things celestial, in spite of all opposing. Much leisure, light labor, was not the worst thing that could befall some of the men whose lot was cast on Foray.