Part 10

Margaret Fuller, speaking of the greatest of German poets, says, "He believes more in man than men, effort than success, thought than action, nature than providence. He does not insist on my believing with him."

"He who would help himself and others," says Emerson, "should not be a subject of irregular and interrupted impulses of virtue, but a continent, persisting, immovable person,--such as we have seen a few scattered up and down in time for the blessing of the world; men who have in the gravity of their nature a quality which answers to the fly-wheel in a mill, which distributes the motion equally over all the wheels, and hinders it from falling unequally and suddenly in destructive shocks. It is better that joy should be spread over all the day in the form of strength, than that it should be concentrated into ecstasies, full of danger, and followed by reactions." "It only needs that a just man should walk in our streets, to make it appear how pitiful and inartificial a contrivance is our legislation. The man whose part is taken, and who does not wait for society in anything, has a power which society cannot choose but feel."

What a character was Sir Isaac Newton! He is described as modest, candid, and affable, and without any of the eccentricities of genius, suiting himself to every company, and speaking of himself and others in such a manner that he was never even suspected of vanity. "But this," says Dr. Pemberton, "I immediately discovered in him, which at once both surprised and charmed me. Neither his extreme great age, nor his universal reputation, had rendered him stiff in opinion, or in any degree elated." His modesty arose from the depth and extent of his knowledge, which showed him what a small portion of nature he had been able to examine, and how much remained to be explored in the same field in which he had himself labored. In a letter to Leibnitz, 1675, he observes, "I was so persecuted with discussions arising out of my theory of light, that I blamed my own imprudence for parting with so substantial a blessing as my quiet, to run after a shadow." Nearly a year after his complaint to Leibnitz, he uses the following remarkable expression in a communication to Oldenburg: "I see I have made myself a slave to philosophy; but if I get free of Mr. Linus's business, I will resolutely bid adieu to it eternally, excepting what I do for my private satisfaction, or leave to come out after me; for I see a man must either resolve to put out nothing new, or to become a slave to defend it." His assistant and amanuensis for five years (Humphrey Newton) never heard him laugh but once in all that time: "'Twas upon occasion of asking a friend, to whom he had lent Euclid to read, what progress he had made in that author, and how he liked him. He answered by desiring to know what use and benefit in life that study would be to him. Upon which Sir Isaac was very merry." He was once disordered with pains, at the stomach, which confined him for some days to his bed, but which he bore with a great deal of patience and magnanimity, seemingly indifferent either to live or to die. "He seeing me," said his assistant, "much concerned at his illness, bid me not trouble myself; 'For if I die,' said Sir Isaac, 'I shall leave you an estate,' which he then for the first time mentioned." Says Bishop Atterbury, "In the whole air of his face and make there was nothing of that penetrating sagacity which appears in his compositions. He had something rather languid in his look and manner, which did not raise any great expectations in those who did not know him." When Pope expressed a wish for "some memoirs and character of Newton, as a private man," he did "not doubt that his life and manners would make as great a discovery of virtue and goodness and rectitude of heart, as his works have done of penetration and the utmost stretch of human knowledge." When Vigani told him "a loose story about a nun," he gave up his acquaintance; and when Dr. Halley ventured to say anything disrespectful to religion, he invariably checked him with the remark, "I have studied these things,--you have not." When he was asked to take snuff or tobacco, he declined, remarking "that he would make no necessities to himself." Bishop Burnet said that he "valued him for something still more valuable than all his philosophy,--for having the whitest soul he ever knew."

Slowly and modestly the great in all things is developed. "Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small." Look at the Netherlands. "Three great rivers--the Rhine, the Meuse, and the Scheldt--had deposited their slime for ages among the dunes and sand-banks heaved up by the ocean around their mouths. A delta was thus formed, habitable at last for man. It was by nature a wide morass, in which oozy islands and savage forests were interspersed among lagoons and shallows; a district lying partly below the level of the ocean at its higher tides, subject to constant overflow from the rivers, and to frequent and terrible inundations by the sea. Here, within a half submerged territory, a race of wretched ichthyophagi dwelt upon mounds, which they had raised, like beavers, above the almost fluid soil. Here, at a later day, the same race chained the tyrant Ocean and his mighty streams into subserviency, forcing them to fertilize, to render commodious, to cover with a beneficent net-work of veins and arteries, and to bind by watery highways, with the farthest ends of the world, a country disinherited by nature of its rights. A region outcast of ocean and earth wrested at last from both domains their richest treasures. A race engaged for generations in stubborn conflict with the angry elements was unconsciously educating itself for its great struggle with the still more savage despotism of man."

In the central part of a range of the Andes, at an elevation of about seven thousand feet, on a bare slope, may be observed some snow-white projecting columns. These are petrified trees, eleven being silicified, and from thirty to forty converted into coarsely crystallized white calcaraeous spar. They are abruptly broken off, the upright stumps projecting a few feet above the ground. The trunks measured from three to five feet each in circumference. They stood a little way apart from each other, but the whole formed one group. The volcanic sandstone in which the trees were imbedded, and from the lower part of which they must have sprung, had accumulated in successive thin layers around their trunks, and the stone yet retained the impression of the bark. "It required," says the eminent scientific man who visited the spot in 1835, "little geological practice to interpret the marvelous story which this scene at once unfolded. I saw the spot where a cluster of fine trees once reared their branches on the shores of the Atlantic, when that ocean, now driven back seven hundred miles, came to the foot of the Andes. I saw that they had sprung from a volcanic soil which had been raised above the level of the sea, and that subsequently this dry land, with its upright trees, had been let down into the depths of the ocean. In these depths, the formerly dry land was covered by sedimentary beds, and these again by enormous streams of submarine lava--one such mass attaining the thickness of a thousand feet; and these deluges of molten stone and aqueous deposits five times alternately had been spread out. The ocean which received such thick masses must have been profoundly deep; but again the subterranean forces exerted themselves, and I now beheld the bed of that ocean, forming a chain of mountains more than seven thousand feet in height. Nor had those antagonist forces been dormant which are always at work, wearing down the surface of the land; the great piles of strata had been intersected by many wide valleys, and the trees, now changed into silex, were exposed projecting from the volcanic soil, now changed into rocks, whence formerly, in a green and budding state, they had raised their lofty heads."

"The world," said Goethe, "is not so framed that it can keep quiet; the great are not so that they will not permit misuse of power; the masses not so that, in hope of a gradual amelioration, they will keep tranquil in an inferior condition. Could we perfect human nature, we might expect perfection everywhere; but as it is, there will always be this wavering hither and thither; one part must suffer while the other is at ease." "It is with human things," says Froude, "as it is with the great icebergs which drift southward out of the frozen seas. They swim two thirds under water, and one third above; and so long as the equilibrium is sustained you would think that they were as stable as the rocks. But the sea water is warmer than the air. Hundreds of fathoms down, the tepid current washes the base of the berg. Silently in those far deeps the centre of gravity is changed; and then, in a moment, with one vast roll, the enormous mass heaves over, and the crystal peaks which had been glancing so proudly in the sunlight are buried in the ocean forever." "The secret which you would fain keep, as soon as you go abroad, lo! there is one standing on the door-step to tell you the same." The revolution is all at once ripe, and the bottom is at the top again. Nobody and everybody is responsible. "It is seldom," says John Galt, in his life of Wolsey, "that any man can sway the current of national affairs; but a wide and earnest system of action never fails to produce results which resemble the preexpected effects of particular designs." At the gorgeous coronation of Napoleon, some one asked the republican general Augereau whether anything was wanting to the splendor of the scene. "Nothing," replied Augereau, "but the presence of the million of men who have died to do away with all this."

You remember the value, to the cause of civil liberty and Christianity, of the accidental epithet of "beggars," applied to the three hundred nobles who petitioned Margaret of Parma for a stay of the edicts of Philip and the Inquisition, about to be terribly executed upon the rebellious Protestants under the leadership of William of Orange. Motley, in his Dutch Republic, gives a vivid account of it. The duchess was agitated and irritated by the petition. "The Prince of Orange addressed a few words to the duchess, with the view of calming her irritation. He observed that the confederates were no seditious rebels, but loyal gentlemen, well-born, well-connected, and of honorable character. They had been influenced, he said, by an honest desire to save their country from impending danger,--not by avarice or ambition. 'What, madam,' cried Berlaymont in a passion, 'is it possible that your highness can entertain fears of these beggars? Is it not obvious what manner of men they are? They have not had wisdom enough to manage their own estates, and are they now to teach the king and your highness how to govern the country? By the living God, if my advice were taken, their petition should have a cudgel for a commentary, and we would make them go down the steps of the palace a great deal faster than they mounted them!' Afterward, as the three hundred gentlemen and nobles passed by the house of Berlaymont, that nobleman, standing at his window in company with Count Aremberg, repeated his jest: 'There go our fine beggars again. Look, I pray you, with what bravado they are passing before us!' 'They call us beggars,' said Brederode to the three hundred banqueting with him in the Calemburg mansion on that famous April night. 'Let us accept the name. We will contend with the Inquisition, but remain loyal to the king, even till compelled to wear the beggar's sack.' He then beckoned to one of his pages, who brought him a leathern wallet, such as was worn at that day by professional mendicants, together with a large wooden bowl, which also formed part of their regular appurtenances. Brederode immediately hung the wallet around his neck, filled the bowl with wine, lifted it with both hands, and drained it at a draught. 'Long live the beggars!' he cried, as he wiped his beard and set the bowl down. 'Long live the beggars!' Then for the first time from the lips of those reckless nobles rose the famous cry, which was so often to ring over land and sea, amid blazing cities, on blood-stained decks, through the smoke and carnage of many a stricken field. The humor of Brederode was hailed with deafening shouts of applause. The count then threw the wallet round the neck of his nearest neighbor, and handed him the wooden bowl. Each guest, in turn, donned the mendicant's knapsack. Pushing aside his golden goblet, each filled the beggar's bowl to the brim, and drained it to the beggars' health. Roars of laughter and shouts of 'Long live the beggars!' shook the walls of the stately mansion, as they were doomed never to shake again. The shibboleth was invented. The conjuration which they had been anxiously seeking was found. Their enemies had provided them with a spell which was to prove, in after days, potent enough to start a spirit from palace or hovel, forest or wave, as the deeds of the 'wild beggars,' the 'wood beggars,' and the 'beggars of the sea' taught Philip at last to understand the nation which he had driven to madness."

Johnny Appleseed, by which name Jonathan Chapman was known in every log-cabin from the Ohio River to the Northern Lakes, is an interesting character to remember. Barefooted, and with scanty clothing, he traversed the wilderness for many years, planting appleseeds in the most favorable situations. His self sacrificing life made him a favorite with the frontier settlers--men, women, and especially children; even the savages treated him with kindness, and the rattlesnakes, it was said, hesitated to bite him. "During the war of 1812, when the frontier settlers were tortured and slaughtered by the savage allies of Great Britain, Johnny Appleseed continued his wanderings, and was never harmed by the roving bands of hostile Indians. On many occasions the impunity with which he ranged the country enabled him to give the settlers warning of approaching danger, in time to allow them to take refuge in their block-houses before the savages could attack them. An informant refers to one of these instances, when the news of Hull's surrender came like a thunderbolt upon the frontier. Large bands of Indians and British were destroying everything before them, and murdering defenseless women and children, and even the block-houses were not always a sufficient protection. At this time Johnny traveled day and night, warning the people of the impending danger. He visited every cabin and delivered this message: 'The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, and He hath anointed me to blow the trumpet in the wilderness, and sound an alarm in the forest; for behold, the tribes of the heathen are round about your doors, and a devouring flame followeth after them!' The aged man who narrated this incident said that he could feel even then the thrill that was caused by this prophetic announcement of the wild-looking herald of danger, who aroused the family on a bright moonlight midnight with his piercing cry. Refusing all offers of food, and denying himself a moment's rest, he traversed the border day and night until he had warned every settler of the impending peril. Johnny also served as colporteur, systematically leaving with the settlers chapters of certain religious books, and calling for them afterward; and was the first to engage in the work of protecting dumb brutes. He believed it to be a sin to kill any creature for food. No Brahman could be more concerned for the preservation of insect life, and the only occasion on which he destroyed a venomous reptile was a source of long regret, to which he could never refer without manifesting sadness. He had selected a suitable place for planting appleseeds on a small prairie, and in order to prepare the ground, he was mowing the long grass, when he was bitten by a rattlesnake. In describing the event he sighed heavily, and said, 'Poor fellow, he only just touched me, when I, in the heat of my ungodly passion, put the heel of my scythe in him, and went away. Some time afterward I went back, and there lay the poor fellow, dead!'" "He was a man, after all,"--Hawthorne might have exclaimed of him, too,--"his Maker's own truest image, a philanthropic man!--not that steel engine of the devil's contrivance--a philanthropist!"