The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 53, March, 1862

You will not unfrequently find parents who, if they cannot keep back their children from some little treat, will try to infuse a sting into it, so as to prevent the children from enjoying it. They will impress on their children that they must be very wicked to care so much about going out to some children’s party; or they will insist that their children should return home at some preposterously early hour, so as to lose the best part of the fun, and so as to appear ridiculous in the eyes of their young companions. You will find this amiable tendency in people intrusted with the care of older children. I have heard of a man whose nephew lived with him, and lived a very cheerless life. When the season came round at which the lad hoped to be allowed to go and visit his parents, he ventured, after much hesitation, to hint this to his uncle. Of course the uncle felt that it was quite right the lad should go, but he grudged him the chance of the little enjoyment, and the happy thought struck him that he might let the lad go, and at the same time make the poor fellow uncomfortable in going. Accordingly he conveyed his permission to the lad to go by roaring out in a savage manner, “Begone!” This made the poor lad feel as if it were his duty to stay, and as if it were very wicked in him to wish to go; and though he ultimately went, he enjoyed his visit with only half a heart. There are parents and guardians who take great pains to make their children think themselves very bad,—to make the little things grow up in the endurance of the pangs of a bad conscience. For conscience, in children, is a quite artificial thing: you may dictate to it what it is to say. And parents, often injudicious, sometimes malignant, not seldom apply hard names to their children, which sink down into the little heart and memory far more deeply than they think. If a child cannot eat fat, you may instil into him that it is because he is so wicked; and he will believe you for a while. A favorite weapon in the hands of some parents, who have devoted themselves diligently to making their children miserable, is to frequently predict to the children the remorse which they (the children) will feel after they (the parents) are dead. In such cases, it would be difficult to specify the precise things which the children are to feel remorseful about. It must just be, generally, because they were so wicked, and because they did not sufficiently believe the infallibility and impeccability of their ancestors. I am reminded of the woman mentioned by Sam Weller, whose husband disappeared. The woman had been a fearful termagant; the husband, a very inoffensive man. After his disappearance, the woman issued an advertisement, assuring him, that, if he returned, he would be fully forgiven; which, as Mr. Weller justly remarked, was very generous, seeing he had never done anything at all.

Yes, the conscience of children is an artificial and a sensitive thing. The other day, a friend of mine, who is one of the kindest of parents and the most amiable of men, told me what happened in his house on a certain Fast-day. A Scotch Fast-day, you may remember, is the institution which so completely puzzled Mr. Buckle. That historian fancied that to fast means in Scotland to abstain from food. Had Mr. Buckle known anything whatever about Scotland, he would have known that a Scotch Fast-day means a week-day on which people go to church, but on which (especially in the dwellings of the clergy) there is a better dinner than usual. I never knew man or woman in all my life who on a Fast-day refrained from eating. And quite right, too. The growth of common sense has gradually abolished literal fasting. In a Oriental climate, abstinence from food may give the mind the preeminence over the body, and so leave the mind better fitted for religious duties. In our country, literal fasting would have just the contrary effect: it would give the body the mastery over the soul; it would make a man so physically uncomfortable that he could not attend with profit to his religious duties at all. I am aware, Anglican reader, of the defects of my countrymen; but commend me to the average Scotchman for sound practical sense. But to return. These Fast-days are by many people observed as rigorously as the Scotch Sunday. On the forenoon of such a day, my friend’s little child, three years old, came to him in much distress. She said, as one who had a fearful sin to confess, “I have been playing with my toys this morning”; and then began to cry as if her little heart would break. I know some stupid parents who would have strongly encouraged this needless sensitiveness; and who would thus have made their child unhappy at the time, and prepared the way for an indignant bursting of these artificial trammels when the child had grown up to maturity. But my friend was not of that stamp. He comforted the little thing, and told her, that, though it might be as well not to play with her toys on a Fast-day, what she had done was nothing to cry about. I think, my reader, that, even if you were a Scotch minister, you would appear with considerable confidence before your Judge, if you had never done worse than failed to observe a Scotch Fast-day with the Covenanting austerity.

But when one looks back and looks round, and tries to reckon up the sorrows of childhood arising from parental folly, one feels that the task is endless. There are parents who will not suffer their children to go to the little feasts which children occasionally have, either on that wicked principle that all enjoyment is sinful, or because the children have recently committed some small offence, which is to be thus punished. There are parents who take pleasure in informing strangers, in their children’s presence, about their children’s faults, to the extreme bitterness of the children’s hearts. There are parents who will not allow their children to be taught dancing, regarding dancing as sinful. The result is, that the children are awkward and unlike other children; and when they are suffered to spend an evening among a number of companions who have all learned dancing, they suffer a keen mortification which older people ought to be able to understand. Then you will find parents, possessing ample means, who will not dress their children like others, but send them out in very shabby garments. Few things cause a more painful sense of humiliation to a child. It is a sad sight to see a little fellow hiding round the corner when some one passes who is likely to recognize him, afraid to go through the decent streets, and creeping out of sight by back-ways. We have all seen that. We have all sympathized heartily with the reduced widow who has it not in her power to dress her boy better; and we have all felt lively indignation at the parents who had the power to attire their children becomingly, but whose heartless parsimony made the little things go about under a constant sense of painful degradation.

An extremely wicked way of punishing children is by shutting them up in a dark place. Darkness is naturally fearful to human beings, and the stupid ghost-stories of many nurses make it especially fearful to a child. It is a stupid and wicked thing to send a child on an errand in a dark night. I do not remember passing through a greater trial in my youth than once walking three miles alone (it was not going on an errand) in the dark, along a road thickly shaded with trees. I was a little fellow; but I got over the distance in half an hour. Part of the way was along the wall of a church-yard, one of those ghastly, weedy, neglected, accursed-looking spots where stupidity has done what it can to add circumstances of disgust and horror to the Christian’s long sleep. Nobody ever supposed that this walk was a trial to a boy of twelve years old: so little are the thoughts of children understood. And children are reticent: I am telling now about that dismal walk for the very first time. And in the illnesses of childhood, children sometimes get very close and real views of death. I remember, when I was nine years old, how every evening, when I lay down to sleep, I used for about a year to picture myself lying dead, till I felt as though the coffin were closing round me. I used to read at that period, with a curious feeling of fascination, Blair’s poem, “The Grave.” But I never dreamed of telling anybody about these thoughts. I believe that thoughtful children keep most of their thoughts to themselves, and in respect of the things of which they think most are as profoundly alone as the Ancient Mariner in the Pacific. I have heard of a parent, an important member of a very strait sect of the Pharisees, whose child, when dying, begged to be buried not in a certain foul old hideous church-yard, but in a certain cheerful cemetery. This request the poor little creature made with all the energy of terror and despair. But the strait Pharisee refused the dying request, and pointed out with polemical bitterness to the child that he must be very wicked indeed to care at such a time where he was to be buried, or what might be done with his body after death. How I should enjoy the spectacle of that unnatural, heartless, stupid wretch tarred and feathered! The dying child was caring for a thing about which Shakspeare cared; and it was not in mere human weakness, but “by faith,” that “Joseph, when he was a-dying, gave commandment concerning his bones.”

I believe that real depression of spirits, usually the sad heritage of after-years, is often felt in very early youth. It sometimes comes of the child’s belief that he must be very bad, because he is so frequently told that he is so. It sometimes comes of the child’s fears, early felt, as to what is to become of him. His parents, possibly, with the good sense and kind feeling which distinguish various parents, have taken pains to drive it into the child, that, if his father should die, he will certainly starve, and may very probably have to become a wandering beggar. And these sayings have sunk deep into the little heart. I remember how a friend told me that his constant wonder, when he was twelve or thirteen years old, was this: If life was such a burden already, and so miserable to look back upon, how could he ever bear it when be had grown older?

But now, my reader, I am going to stop. I have a great deal more marked down to say; but the subject is growing so thoroughly distressing to me, as I go on, that I shall go on no farther. It would make me sour and wretched for the next week, if I were to state and illustrate the varied sorrows of childhood of which I intended yet to speak: and if I were to talk out my heart to you about the people who cause these, I fear my character for good-nature would be gone with you forever. “This genial writer,” as the newspapers call me, would show but little geniality: I am aware, indeed, that I have already been writing in a style which, to say the least, is snappish. So I shall say nothing of the first death that comes in the family in our childish days,—its hurry, its confusion, its awe-struck mystery, its wonderfully vivid recalling of the words and looks of the dead; nor of the terrible trial to a little child of being sent away from home to school,—the heart-sickness, and the weary counting of the weeks and days before the time of returning home again. But let me say to every reader who has it in his power directly or indirectly to do so, Oh, do what you can to make children happy! oh, seek to give that great enduring blessing of a happy youth! Whatever after-life may prove, let there be something bright to look back upon in the horizon of their early time! You may sour the human spirit forever, by cruelty and injustice in youth. There is a past suffering which exalts and purifies; but this leaves only an evil result: it darkens all the world, and all our views of it. Let us try to make every little child happy. The most selfish parent might try to please a little child, if it were only to see the fresh expression of unblunted feeling, and a liveliness of pleasurable emotion which in after-years we shall never know, I do not believe a great English barrister is so happy when he has the Great Seal committed to him as two little and rather ragged urchins whom I saw this very afternoon. I was walking along a country-road, and overtook them. They were about five years old. I walked slower, and talked to them for a few minutes, and found that they were good boys, and went to school every day. Then I produced two coins of the copper coinage of Britain: one a large penny of ancient days, another a small penny of the present age. “There is a penny for each of you,” I said, with some solemnity: “one is large, you see, and the other small; but they are each worth exactly the same. Go and get something good.” I wish you had seen them go off! It is a cheap and easy thing to make a little heart happy. May this hand never write another essay, if it ever wilfully miss the chance of doing so! It is all quite right in after-years to be careworn and sad. We understand these matters ourselves. Let others bear the burden which we ourselves bear, and which is doubtless good for us. But the poor little things! I can enter into the feeling of a kind-hearted man who told me that he never could look at a number of little children but the tears came into his eyes. How much these young creatures have to bear yet! I think you can, as you look at them, in some degree understand and sympathize with the Redeemer, who, when he “saw a great multitude, was moved with compassion toward them”! Ah, you smooth little face, (you may think,) I know what years will make of you, if they find you in this world! And you, light little heart, will know your weight of care!

And I remember, as I write these concluding lines, who they were that the Best and Kindest this world ever saw liked to have near him; and what the reason was he gave why he felt most in his element when they were by his side. He wished to have little children round him, and would not have them chidden away; and this because there was something about them that reminded him of the Place from which he came. He liked the little faces and the little voices,—he to whom the wisest are in understanding as children. And oftentimes, I believe, these little ones still do his work. Oftentimes, I believe, when the worn man is led to him in childlike confidence, it is by the hand of a little child.

THE REHABILITATION OF SPAIN

Three hundred and fifty years ago, a Spanish gentleman sailed on a cruise that may be considered remarkable even in the history of the wonderful adventures of the age of Columbus and Da Gama. Juan Ponce de Leon, having lost the government of Porto Rico, resolved to discover a world for himself, and so become as renowned as “The Admiral.” With the strong fanaticism of his time and his race, he believed that there was a third world to be found, and that it “had been saved up” for him, a gentleman of Leon, and a loyal subject of their Catholic Majesties, who had done good service for his sovereigns and the faith in Granada, and later in the Indies. While he was thinking of the course in which he should sail, he was told that to the North there lay a land which not only contained unlimited gold, and many other material good things, but also a fountain of such marvellous nature that to bathe in it was to secure the return of youth. This revival of an old classic story13 fired the imagination of the adventurous cavalier, and he sailed forthwith (March 3, 1512) in search of a land so rich in things that all men, from philosophers to politicians, desire to have,—perfect health and boundless wealth. We need not say that Ponce de Leon failed as completely as if he had sailed in search of the Northwest Passage, for he died in less than ten years, a worn-out old man, aged beyond his years, leaving little gold behind him, and presenting at his parting hour anything but the appearance of youth. He was a type of the Spaniards of those days, who believed everything, and whose valor was as great as their credulity; and his cruise in search of the Fontaine de Jouvence was quite worthy of a native of a country which seems to be allowed the privilege of an occasional “dip” into that fountain, though at long intervals, but is denied the power of constantly bathing in it.

Spain, unlike most other countries, rises and falls, and apparently is never so near to degradation as when she is most strong, and never so near to power as when she is at the weakest point to which a nation can sink and still remain a nation. All states have had both good and evil fortune, but no other great European kingdom has known the extreme and extraordinary changes that have been experienced by Spain. France has met with heavy reverses, but she has been a great and powerful country ever since the days of Philip Augustus, whose body was turned up the other day, after a repose of more than six centuries. Even the victories of the English Plantagenets could but temporarily check her growth; and notwithstanding the successes of Eugène and Marlborough, Louis XIV. left France a greater country than he found it. England’s lowest point was reached during the reigns of her first four Stuart monarchs, but her weakness was exhibited only on the side of foreign politics: it being absurd to suppose that the country which could produce Hampden and Cromwell, Strafford and Falkland, and the men who formed the Cavalier and Roundhead armies, was then in a state of decay. At the worst, she was but depressed, and the removal of such dead weights from her as Charles I. and James II. was all that was necessary to enable her to vindicate her claim to a first-rate place in the European family. In 1783, at the close of the American War, men said that all was over with England; but so mistaken were they, that at that very time were growing up the men who were to lead her fleets and armies with success in contests compared with which the combats of Gates and Burgoyne, of Cornwallis and Washington, were but as skirmishes. No other nation, perhaps, ever had so sudden and so great a fall as that which France met with in 1814-15. It was the most perfect specimen of the “grand smash” order of things that history mentions, if we consider both what was lost, and how quickly it was lost. But it was humiliating merely, and was attended with no loss of true strength. There was taken from France that which she had no right to hold, any more than England has at this moment to hold Gibraltar and Aden and India. France remained much as she had been under the old monarchy, and there were some millions more of Frenchmen than had ever lived under a Bourbon of former days, and they were of a better breed than the political slaves, and in some instances the personal serfs, who had existed under kings that misruled at Versailles and Marly. How rapidly France rose above the effects of her fall we have seen, as her recovery belongs to contemporary history. Her various mind was never more vigorous than it has been since 1815. As to her political and military greatness, millions of men who were living on Waterloo’s day, and who read of that “dishonest victory” as “news,” lived to read the details of Solferino, and of the redemption of Italy.

Not so has it been with Spain. Unlike all other nations in all other respects, she could not allow herself to resemble them even in the matter of making sacrifices to Mutability. Had Juan Ponce de Leon been so unlucky as to find the Fountain of Youth, and had he been so unwise as to reserve its waters for his own private washing and drinking, and so have lived from the age of American discovery to the age of American secession, he would, as a Spaniard, have been forced to undergo many mortifications in the course of the dozen generations that he would then have survived beyond his originally appointed time. Spain has been a greater country than any other in Europe, but she has experienced greater changes than any other European country. She has never known such a catastrophe as that which befell France in the early part of our century, but her losses have been far beyond those which France has ever met with. It was the lot of France to fall at once, to pass from the highest place in the world to the lowest at one step, to abdicate her hegemony with something of that rapidity which is common in dreams, but which is of rare occurrence in real life. It has been the lot of Spain to perish by the dry rot, and to lose imperial positions through the operation of internal causes. So situated as to be almost beyond the reach of effective foreign attack, Spain has had to contend against the processes of domestic decay more than any other leading nation of modern times. To these she has often had to succumb, but she has never failed in due time to redeem herself, and, after having been a by-word for imbecility, to rise again to a commanding place. Three times in less than three centuries have the Spaniards fallen so low as to become of less account in the European system than the feeblest of the Northern peoples; and on each occasion has the native, inherent vigor of the race enabled it to astonish mankind by entering again upon the career of greatness, not always, it must be allowed, after the wisest fashion, but so as to testify to the continued existence of those high qualities which made the Castilian the Roman of the sixteenth century.

Spain was of considerable importance in Europe from a very early period of modern history; but the want of union among her communities, and the presence of Mussulman power in the Peninsula, prevented her from exercising more influence in the Old World than would fall to our share in the New, should the principles of the Secession party prevail. It was not until a union had been effected through the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella, that the power of Christian Spain was brought to bear upon the remnant of the Mussulmans of that country, and rounded and completed the work of redeeming it from the dominion of the followers of the Prophet, who had, on the whole, ruled their possessions better than the Christian states had been ruled. The fall of Granada, in 1492, was hailed throughout Christendom as a great triumph for the Cross, as in one sense it was; but there was not a Christian country which would not have been the gainer, if the Mussulmans of Spain had risen victorious from the last game which they played with the adversaries of their religion in a duel that had endured for more than seven hundred years. Many a Pagan country, too, which had never heard either of Jesus or of Mahomet, was interested in the event of the War of Granada. Montezuma and Atahuallpa, who never had so much as dreamed of Europe, had their fate determined by the decision of the long struggle between the rival religions and peoples of the Peninsula; and Boabdil was not the only monarch, by many, who then and there had his lot decided. Much of America, and not a little of Europe, were conquered on the Plains of Granada; and “the Last Sigh of the Moor” may have been given, not so much to his own sad fate, as over the evil that was to come, and which was to affect popes and princes and peoples alike. There was not a country in the world but might have served itself well, if it had sent aid to the struggling Moors. Instead of rejoicing over the victory of the Spanish Christians, the world might have sent forth a wail in consequence of it, as best expressing the sense that should have existed of the woes which that victory was to be the means of bringing upon mankind. The issue of that Peninsular contest was in every way bad, and no good has ever come from it, but evil in abundance. The fountain that was then unsealed was one of bitter waters only. The sympathies of men should be with the Moors, who were the more enlightened, the more liberal, and the wiser of the two races that then grappled for a final encounter. Being the weaker party, they fell, but they were destined to have grand funeral games.

Freed from the presence of any Mussulman states, Spain was enabled to begin a grand European career in the latter years of the fifteenth century, the conquest of Granada and the discovery of America having given her a degree of power that gained for her the world’s profoundest respect. Partly by success in war, and partly through a series of fortunate marriages, she became the first member of the European commonwealth in a quarter of a century after the overthrow of the Moors. The first of her Austro-Burgundian kings was made Emperor of Germany, and by birth he was lord of the Netherlands. In a few years, and after the conquest of Mexico, he had a French king among his captives, and the Pope was shut up by one of his armies in the Castle of St. Angelo. Yet a few years more, and Peru was added to the dominions of Spain. The position and principles of the Emperor-King made him the champion of the old order of things in Europe as against the Reformation, which added immensely to his power. Spain was then, as she is now, and as probably she ever will be, intensely Catholic, and as Papal as any country valuing its independence well could be. How she regarded Protestantism, and all other forms of “heresy,” we know from the fiery energy—it was literally of a fiery character—with which she disposed of all the Reformers, of every degree, upon whom her iron hand could be laid. Had Charles V. been inclined to favor the Reformation, from his position as Emperor of Germany, he would soon have been diverted from any such thought by considerations drawn from his position as King of the Spains. A Mussulman, or a Hebrew, or an avowed atheist would have had a better chance of being a powerful and popular sovereign at Valladolid than a pious man who should have been inclined to look with favor upon Dr. Luther. It may be doubted if even a king could have been safe from the inquiries of the Inquisition. Thus Spain was not only at the head of Europe because of her military superiority and the extent of her home territory and foreign dominion, but, as the champion of the Church, she had a moral power such as no other country has ever possessed, her championship of the Pope being something very different from Napoleon III.’s championship of the Pope of to-day. The German aristocracy might be after the loaves and fishes of the Church, when they professed readiness to aid in warfare against the Reformers; but no one could doubt the zeal of the Spanish patricians, when they dedicated their swords and lances to the work of extirpating all enemies of the faith. An Englishman of 1857 could not have been more hostile to a Sepoy than a Spaniard of 1557 was to a Protestant. Religious power, political power, military power, and long-continued success in the cabinet and in the field, all combined to place Spain in a position such as no other nation had ever known, such as no other nation ever will know. Even the failures of Charles V.—his flight before Maurice of Saxony, and his defeat at Metz—did not sensibly abate the power of Spain, for they concerned Germany more than they did the Peninsular subjects of the disappointed monarch.