Chapter 21

The hills, Rock-ribbed, and ancient as the sun; the vales Stretching in pensive quietness between; The venerable woods; rivers that move In majesty, and the complaining brooks, That make the meadows green; and, poured round all, Old Ocean's gray and melancholy waste,-- Are but the solemn decorations all Of the great tomb of man. The golden sun, The planets, all the infinite host of heaven, Are shining on the sad abodes of death, Through the still lapse of ages.

All that tread The globe are but a handful to the tribes That slumber in its bosom. Take the wings Of morning, pierce the Barcan wilderness, Or lose thyself in the continuous woods Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound Save his own dashings,--yet the dead are there: And millions in those solitudes, since first The flight of years began, have laid them down In their last sleep,--the dead reign there alone.

So shalt thou rest; and what if thou withdraw In silence from the living, and no friend Take note of thy departure? All that breathe Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care Plod on, and each one as before will chase His favorite phantom; yet all these shall leave Their mirth and their employments, and shall come And make their bed with thee. As the long train Of ages glide away, the sons of men-- The youth in life's green spring, and he who goes In the full strength of years, matron and maid, The speechless babe, and the gray-headed man Shall one by one be gathered to thy side By those who in their turn shall follow them.

So live, that when thy summons comes to join The innumerable caravan, which moves To that mysterious realm, where each shall take His chamber in the silent halls of death, Thou go not, like the quarry slave at night, Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave, Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams. --Bryant.

NOTES.--Thanatopsis is composed of two Greek words, thanatos, meaning death, and opsis, a view. The word, therefore, signifies a view of death, or reflections on death.

Barca is in the northeastern part of Africa: the southern and eastern portions of the country are a barren desert.

The Oregon (or Columbia) River is the most important river of the United States emptying into the Pacific. The Lewis and Clark Expedition (1803-1806) had first explored the country through which it flows only five years before the poem was written.

LXXVI. INDIAN JUGGLERS. (278)

William Hazlitt, 1778-1830, was born in Maidstone, England. His father was a Unitarian clergyman, and he was sent to a college of that denomination to be educated for the ministry; but having a greater taste for art than theology, he resolved, on leaving school, to devote himself to painting. He succeeded so well in his efforts as to meet the warmest commendation of his friends, but did not succeed in satisfying his own fastidious taste. On this account he threw away his pencil and took up his pen. His works, though numerous, are, with the exception of a life of Napoleon, chiefly criticisms on literature and art.

Hazlitt is thought to have treated his contemporaries with an unjust severity; but his genial appreciation of the English classics, and the thorough and loving manner in which he discusses their merits, make his essays the delight of every lover of those perpetual wellsprings of intellectual pleasure. His "Table Talk," "Characters of Shakespeare's Plays," "Lectures on the English Poets," and "Lectures on the Literature of the Elizabethan Age," are the works that exhibit his style and general merits in their most favorable light. ###

Coming forward and seating himself on the ground, in his white dress and tightened turban, the chief of the Indian jugglers begins with tossing up two brass balls, which is what any of us could do, and concludes by keeping up four at the same time, which is what none of us could do to save our lives, not if we were to take our whole lives to do it in.

Is it then a trifling power we see at work, or is it not something next to miraculous? It is the utmost stretch of human ingenuity, which nothing but the bending the faculties of body and mind to it from the tenderest infancy with incessant, ever-anxious application up to manhood, can accomplish or make even a slight approach to. Man, thou art a wonderful animal, and thy ways past finding out! Thou canst do strange things, but thou turnest them to small account!

To conceive of this extraordinary dexterity, distracts the imagination and makes admiration breathless. Yet it costs nothing to the performer, any more than if it were a mere mechanical deception with which he had nothing to do, but to watch and laugh at the astonishment of the spectators. A single error of a hair's breadth, of the smallest conceivable portion of time, would be fatal; the precision of the movements must be like a mathematical truth; their rapidity is like lightning.

To catch four balls in succession, in less than a second of time, and deliver them back so as to return with seeming consciousness to the hand again; to make them revolve around him at certain intervals, like the planets in their spheres; to make them chase each other like sparkles of fire, or shoot up like flowers or meteors; to throw them behind his back, and twine them round his neck like ribbons, or like serpents; to do what appears an impossibility, and to do it with all the ease, the grace, the carelessness imaginable; to laugh at, to play with the glittering mockeries, to follow them with his eye as if he could fascinate them with its lambent fire, or as if he had only to see that they kept time with the music on the stage--there is something in all this which he who does not admire may be quite sure he never really admired anything in the whole course of his life. It is skill surmounting difficulty, and beauty triumphing over skill. It seems as if the difficulty, once mastered, naturally resolved itself into ease and grace, and as if, to be overcome at all, it must be overcome without an effort. The smallest awkwardness or want of pliancy or self-possession would stop the whole process. It is the work of witchcraft, and yet sport for children.

Some of the other feats are quite as curious and wonderful--such as the balancing the artificial tree, and shooting a bird from each branch through a quill--though none of them have the elegance or facility of the keeping up of the brass balls. You are in pain for the result, and glad when the experiment is over; they are not accompanied with the same unmixed, unchecked delight as the former; and I would not give much to be merely astonished without being pleased at the same time. As to the swallowing of the sword, the police ought to interfere to prevent it.

When I saw the Indian juggler do the same things before, his feet were bare, and he had large rings on his toes, which he kept turning round all the time of the performance, as if they moved of themselves.

The hearing a speech in Parliament drawled or stammered out by the honorable member or the noble lord, the ringing the changes on their commonplaces, which anyone could repeat after them as well as they, stirs me not a jot,--shakes not my good opinion of myself. I ask what there is that I can do as well as this. Nothing. What have I been doing all my life? Have I been idle, or have I nothing to show for all my labor and pains? Or have I passed my time in pouring words like water into empty sieves, rolling a stone up a hill and then down again, trying to prove an argument in the teeth of facts, and looking for causes in the dark, and not finding them? Is there no one thing in which I can challenge competition, that I can bring as an instance of exact perfection, in which others can not find a flaw?

The utmost I can pretend to is to write a description of what this fellow can do. I can write a book: so can many others who have not even learned to spell. What abortions are these essays! What errors, what ill-pieced transitions, what crooked reasons, what lame conclusions! How little is made out, and that little how ill! Yet they are the best I can do.

I endeavor to recollect all I have ever heard or thought upon a subject, and to express it as neatly as I can. Instead of writing on four subjects at a time, it is as much as I can manage, to keep the thread of one discourse clear and unentangled. I have also time on my hands to correct my opinions and polish my periods; but the one I can not, and the other I will not, do. I am fond of arguing; yet, with a good deal of pains and practice, it is often much as I can do to beat my man, though he may be a very indifferent hand. A common fencer would disarm his adversary in the twinkling of an eye, unless he were a professor like himself. A stroke of wit will sometimes produce this effect, but there is no such power or superiority in sense or reasoning. There is no complete mastery of execution to be shown there; and you hardly know the professor from the impudent pretender or the mere clown.

LXXVII. ANTONY OVER CAESAR'S DEAD BODY. (281)

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears: I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones; So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus Hath told you Caesar was ambitious: If it were so, it was a grievous fault, And grievously hath Caesar answered it. Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest-- For Brutus is an honorable man; So are they all, all honorable men-- Come I to speak in Caesar's funeral.

He was my, friend, faithful and just to me: But Brutus says he was ambitious; And Brutus is an honorable man. He hath brought many captives home to Rome, Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill: Did this in Caesar seem ambitious? When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept: Ambition should be made of sterner stuff: Yet Brutus says he was ambitious; And Brutus is an honorable man.

You all did see, that on the Lupercal, I thrice presented him a kingly crown, Which he did thrice refuse. Was this ambition? Yet Brutus says he was ambitious; And, sure, he is an honorable man. I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke, But here I am to speak what I do know. You all did love him once, not without cause; What cause withholds you, then, to mourn for him? O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts, And men have lost their reason. Bear with me; My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar, And I must pause till it come back to me.

But yesterday the word of Caesar might Have stood against the world; now lies he there, And none so poor to do him reverence. O masters! if I were disposed to stir Your hearts and minds to mutiny and rage, I should do Brutus wrong, and Cassius wrong, Who, you all know, are honorable men. I will not do them wrong; I rather choose To wrong the dead, to wrong myself and you, Than I will wrong such honorable men.

But here's a parchment with the seal of Caesar; I found it in his closet; 't is his will: Let but the commons hear this testament-- Which, pardon me, I do not mean to read-- And they would go and kiss dead Caesar's wounds, And dip their napkins in his sacred blood; Yea, beg a hair of him for memory, And, dying, mention it within their wills, Bequeathing it as a rich legacy Unto their issue.

Citizen. We'll hear the will: read it, Mark Antony. All. The will, the will; we will hear Caesar's will. Ant. Have patience, gentle friends, I must not read it; It is not meet you know how Caesar loved you. You are not wood, you are not stones, but men; And, being men, hearing the will of Caesar, It will inflame you, it will make you mad; 'T is good you know not that you are his heirs; For, if you should, Oh what would come of it! Cit. Read the will; we'll hear it, Antony; You shall read the will, Caesar's will. Ant. Will you be patient? Will you stay awhile? I have o'ershot myself to tell you of it: I fear I wrong the honorable men Whose daggers have stabbed Caesar. I do fear it. Cit. They were traitors: honorable men! All. The will! the testament! Ant. You will compel me, then, to read the will? Then make a ring about the corpse of Caesar, And let me show you him that made the will.

(He comes down from the pulpit.)

If you have tears, prepare to shed them now. You all do know this mantle: I remember The first time ever Caesar put it on; 'T was on a summer's evening, in his tent, That day he overcame the Nervii; Look! in this place, ran Cassius' dagger through: See what a rent the envious Casca made: Through this, the well belove'd Brutus stabbed; And, as he plucked his cursed steel away, Mark how the blood of Caesar followed it, As rushing out of doors, to be resolved If Brutus so unkindly knocked, or no; For Brutus, as you know, was Caesar's angel: Judge, O you gods, how dearly Caesar loved him!

This was the most unkindest cut of all; For, when the noble Caesar saw him stab, Ingratitude, more strong than traitors' arms, Quite vanquished him: then burst his mighty heart; And, in his mantle muffling up his face, Even at the base of Pompey's statua, Which all the while ran blood, great Caesar fell.

Oh, what a fall was there, my countrymen! Then I, and you, and all of us fell down, Whilst bloody treason flourished over us. Oh, now you weep; and, I perceive, you feel The dint of pity: these are gracious drops. Kind souls, what, weep you when you but behold Our Caesar's vesture wounded? Look you here, Here is himself, marred, as you see, with traitors. 1st Cit. O piteous spectacle! 2d Cit. O noble Caesar! 3d Cit. We will be revenged! All. Revenge! About! Seek! Burn! Fire! Kill! Slay! Let not a traitor live. Ant. Stay, countrymen. 1st Cit. Peace there! hear the noble Antony. 2d Cit. We'll hear him, we'll follow him, we'll die with him. Ant. Good friends, sweet friends, let me not stir you up To such a sudden flood of mutiny. They that have done this deed are honorable: What private griefs they have, alas, I know not, That made them do it; they are wise and honorable, And will, no doubt, with reasons answer you.

I come not, friends, to steal away your hearts: I am no orator, as Brutus is; But, as you know me all, a plain, blunt man, That love my friend; and that they know full well That gave me public leave to speak of him: For I have neither wit, nor words, nor worth, Action, nor utterance, nor the power of speech, To stir men's blood: I only speak right on: I tell you that which you yourselves do know; Show you sweet Caesar's wounds, poor, poor, dumb mouths, And bid them speak for me: but were I Brutus, And Brutus Antony, there were an Antony Would ruffle up your spirits, and put a tongue In every wound of Caesar, that should move The stones of Rome to rise and mutiny.

Shakespeare.--Julius Caesar, Act iii, Scene ii.

NOTES.--Gaius Julius Caesar (b. 102, d. 44 B. C.) was the most remarkable genius of the ancient world, Caesar ruled Rome as imperator five years and a half, and, in the intervals of seven campaigns during that time, spent only fifteen months in Rome. Under his rule Rome was probably at her best, and his murder at once produced a state of anarchy.

The conspirators against Caesar--among whom were Brutus, Cassius and Casca--professed to be moved by honest zeal for the good of Rome; but their own ambition was no doubt the true motive, except with Brutus.

Mark Antony was a strong friend of Julius Caesar. Upon the latter's death, Antony, by his funeral oration, incited the people and drove the conspirators from Rome.

The Lupercal was a festival of purification and expiation held in Rome on the 15th of February. Antony was officiating as priest at this festival when he offered the crown to Caesar.

In his will Caesar left to every citizen of Rome a sum of money, and bequeathed his private gardens to the public.

The Nervii were one of the most warlike tribes of Celtic Gaul. Caesar almost annihilated them in 57 B. C.

Pompey, once associated with Caesar in the government of Rome, was afterwards at war with him. He was murdered by those who thought to propitiate Caesar, but the latter wept when Pompey's head was sent to him, and had the murderers put to death.

Statua is the Latin form of statue, in common use in Shakespeare's time; this form is required here by the meter.

LXXVIII. THE ENGLISH CHARACTER. (286)

William Hickling Prescott, 1796-1859, the historian, was the son of William Prescott, an eminent jurist, and the grandson of Col. William Prescott, who commanded the Americans at the battle of Bunker Hill. He was born in Salem, Massachusetts, graduated at Harvard University in 1814, and died in Boston. Just as he was completing his college course, the careless sport of a fellow-student injured one of his eyes so seriously that he never recovered from it. He had intended to adopt law as his profession; but, from his detective eyesight, he was obliged to choose work in which he could regulate his hours of labor, and could employ the aid of a secretary. He chose to be a historian; and followed his choice with wonderful system, perseverance, and success till the close of his life. His works are: "The Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella," "The Conquest of Mexico," "The Conquest of Peru," "The Reign of Philip II," and a volume of "Miscellanies." He had not completed the history of Philip at the time of his death. As a writer of history, Mr. Prescott ranks with the first for accuracy, precision, clearness, and beauty of style. As a man, he was genial, kind-hearted and even-tempered. ###

On the whole, what I have seen raises my preconceived estimate of the English character. It is full of generous, true, and manly qualities; and I doubt if there ever was so high a standard of morality in an aristocracy which has such means for self-indulgence at its command, and which occupies a position that secures it so much deference. In general, they do not seem to abuse their great advantages. The respect for religion--at least for the forms of it--is universal, and there are few, I imagine, of the great proprietors who are not more or less occupied with improving their estates, and with providing for the comfort of their tenantry, while many take a leading part in the great political movements of the time. There never was an aristocracy which combined so much practical knowledge and industry with the advantages of exalted rank.

The Englishman is seen to most advantage in his country home. For he is constitutionally both domestic and rural in his habits. His fireside and his farm--these are the places in which one sees his simple and warm- hearted nature more freely unfolded. There is a shyness in an Englishman, --a natural reserve, which makes him cold to strangers, and difficult to approach. But once corner him in his own house, a frank and full expansion will be given to his feelings that we should look for in vain in the colder Yankee, and a depth not to be found in the light and superficial Frenchman,--speaking of nationalities, not of individualities.

The Englishman is the most truly rural in his tastes and habits of any people in the world. I am speaking of the higher classes. The aristocracy of other countries affect the camp and the city. But the English love their old castles and country seats with a patriotic love. They are fond of country sports. Every man shoots or hunts. No man is too old to be in the saddle some part of the day, and men of seventy years and more follow the hounds, and, take a five-barred gate at a leap. The women are good whips, are fond of horses and dogs, and other animals. Duchesses have their cows, their poultry, their pigs,--all watched over and provided with accommodations of Dutch-like neatness. All this is characteristic of the people. It may be thought to detract something from the feminine graces which in other lands make a woman so amiably dependent as to be nearly imbecile. But it produces a healthy and blooming race of women to match the hardy Englishman,--the finest development of the physical and moral nature which the world has witnessed. For we are not to look on the English gentleman as a mere Nimrod. With all his relish for field sports and country usages, he has his house filled with collections of art and with extensive libraries. The tables of the drawing-rooms are covered with the latest works, sent down by the London publisher. Every guest is provided with an apparatus for writing, and often a little library of books for his own amusement. The English country gentleman of the present day is anything but a Squire Western, though he does retain all his relish for field sports.

The character of an Englishman, under its most refined aspect, has some disagreeable points which jar unpleasantly on the foreigner not accustomed to them. The consciousness of national superiority, combined with natural feelings of independence, gives him an air of arrogance, though it must be owned that this is never betrayed in his own house,--I may almost say in his own country. But abroad, when he seems to institute a comparison between himself and the people he is thrown with, it becomes so obvious that he is the most unpopular, not to say odious, person in the world. Even the open hand with which he dispenses his bounty will not atone for the violence he offers to national vanity.

There are other defects, which are visible even in his most favored circumstances. Such is his bigotry, surpassing everything in a quiet passive form, that has been witnessed since the more active bigotry of the times of the Spanish Philips. Such, too, is the exclusive, limited range of his knowledge and conceptions of all political and social topics and relations. The Englishman, the cultivated Englishman, has no standard of excellence borrowed from mankind. His speculation never travels beyond his own little--great little--island. That is the world to him. True, he travels, shoots lions among the Hottentots, chases the grizzly bear over the Rocky Mountains, kills elephants in India and salmon on the coast of Labrador, comes home, and very likely makes a book. But the scope of his ideas does not seem to be enlarged by all this. The body travels, not the mind. And, however he may abuse his own land, he returns home as hearty a John Bull, with all his prejudices and national tastes as rooted, as before. The English--the men of fortune--all travel. Yet how little sympathy they show for other people or institutions, and how slight is the interest they take in them! They are islanders, cut off from the great world. But their island is, indeed, a world of its own. With all their faults, never has the sun shone--if one may use the expression in reference to England--all a more noble race, or one that has done more for the great interests of humanity.