Chapter 30

Yet to the ample and constant employment of a whole community one prerequisite is indispensable,--that a variety of pursuits shall have been created or naturalized therein. A people who have but a single source of profit are uniformly poor, not because that vocation is necessarily ill-chosen, but because no single calling can employ and reward the varied capacities of male and female, old and young, robust and feeble. Thus a lumbering or fishing region with us is apt to have a large proportion of needy inhabitants; and the same is true of a region exclusively devoted to cotton growing or gold mining. A diversity of pursuits is indispensable to general activity and enduring prosperity.

Sixty or seventy years ago, what was then the District, and is now the State, of Maine, was a proverb in New England for the poverty of its people, mainly because they were so largely engaged in timber cutting. The great grain-growing, wheat-exporting districts of the Russian empire have a poor and rude people for a like reason. Thus the industry of Massachusetts is immensely more productive per head than that of North Carolina, or even that of Indiana, as it will cease to be whenever manufactures shall have been diffused over our whole country, as they must and will be. In Massachusetts half the women and nearly half the children add by their daily labor to the aggregate of realized wealth; in North Carolina and in Indiana little wealth is produced save by the labor of men, including boys of fifteen or upward. When this disparity shall have ceased, its consequence will also disappear.

CXV. THE LAST DAYS OF HERCULANEUM. (401)

Edwin Atherstone, 1788-1872, was born at Nottingham, England, and became known to the literary world chiefly through two poems, "The Last Days of Herculaneum" and "The Fall of Nineveh." Both poems are written in blank verse, and are remarkable for their splendor of diction and their great descriptive power. Atherstone is compared to Thomson, whom he resembles somewhat in style. ###

There was a man, A Roman soldier, for some daring deed That trespassed on the laws, in dungeon low Chained down. His was a noble spirit, rough, But generous, and brave, and kind. He had a son; it was a rosy boy, A little faithful copy of his sire, In face and gesture. From infancy, the child Had been his father's solace and his care.

Every sport The father shared and heightened. But at length, The rigorous law had grasped him, and condemned To fetters and to darkness.

The captive's lot, He felt in all its bitterness: the walls Of his deep dungeon answered many a sigh And heart-heaved groan. His tale was known, and touched His jailer with compassion; and the boy, Thenceforth a frequent visitor, beguiled His father's lingering hours, and brought a balm With his loved presence, that in every wound Dropped healing. But, in this terrific hour, He was a poisoned arrow in the breast Where he had been a cure.

With earliest morn Of that first day of darkness and amaze, He came. The iron door was closed--for them Never to open more! The day, the night Dragged slowly by; nor did they know the fate Impending o'er the city. Well they heard The pent-up thunders in the earth beneath, And felt its giddy rocking; and the air Grew hot at length, and thick; but in his straw The boy was sleeping: and the father hoped The earthquake might pass by: nor would he wake From his sound rest the unfearing child, nor tell The dangers of their state.

On his low couch The fettered soldier sank, and, with deep awe, Listened the fearful sounds: with upturned eye, To the great gods he breathed a prayer; then, strove To calm himself, and lose in sleep awhile His useless terrors. But he could not sleep: His body burned with feverish heat; his chains Clanked loud, although he moved not; deep in earth Groaned unimaginable thunders; sounds, Fearful and ominous, arose and died, Like the sad mornings of November's wind, In the blank midnight. Deepest horror chilled His blood that burned before; cold, clammy sweats Came o'er him; then anon, a fiery thrill Shot through his veins. Now, on his couch he shrunk And shivered as in fear; now, upright leaped, As though he heard the battle trumpet sound, And longed to cope with death.

He slept, at last, A troubled, dreamy sleep. Well had he slept Never to waken more! His hours are few, But terrible his agony.

Soon the storm Burst forth; the lightnings glanced; the air Shook with the thunders. They awoke; they sprung Amazed upon their feet. The dungeon glowed A moment as in sunshine--and was dark: Again, a flood of white flame fills the cell, Dying away upon the dazzled eye In darkening, quivering tints, as stunning sound Dies throbbing, ringing in the ear.

With intensest awe, The soldier's frame was filled; and many a thought Of strange foreboding hurried through his mind, As underneath he felt the fevered earth Jarring and lifting; and the massive walls, Heard harshly grate and strain: yet knew he not, While evils undefined and yet to come Glanced through his thoughts, what deep and cureless wound Fate had already given.--Where, man of woe! Where, wretched father! is thy boy? Thou call'st His name in vain:--he can not answer thee.

Loudly the father called upon his child: No voice replied. Trembling and anxiously He searched their couch of straw; with headlong haste Trod round his stinted limits, and, low bent, Groped darkling on the earth:--no child was there. Again he called: again, at farthest stretch Of his accursed fetters, till the blood Seemed bursting from his ears, and from his eyes Fire flashed, he strained with arm extended far, And fingers widely spread, greedy to touch Though but his idol's garment. Useless toil! Yet still renewed: still round and round he goes, And strains, and snatches, and with dreadful cries Calls on his boy.

Mad frenzy fires him now. He plants against the wall his feet; his chain Grasps; tugs with giant strength to force away The deep-driven staple; yells and shrieks with rage: And, like a desert lion in the snare, Raging to break his toils,--to and fro bounds. But see! the ground is opening;--a blue light Mounts, gently waving,--noiseless;--thin and cold It seems, and like a rainbow tint, not flame; But by its luster, on the earth outstretched, Behold the lifeless child! his dress is singed, And, o'er his face serene, a darkened line Points out the lightning's track.

The father saw, And all his fury fled:--a dead calm fell That instant on him:--speechless--fixed--he stood, And with a look that never wandered, gazed Intensely on the corse. Those laughing eyes Were not yet closed,--and round those ruby lips The wonted smile returned.

Silent and pale The father stands:--no tear is in his eye:-- The thunders bellow;--but he hears them not:-- The ground lifts like a sea;--he knows it not:-- The strong walls grind and gape:--the vaulted roof Takes shape like bubble tossing in the wind; See! he looks up and smiles; for death to him Is happiness. Yet could one last embrace Be given, 't were still a sweeter thing to die.

It will be given. Look! how the rolling ground, At every swell, nearer and still more near Moves toward the father's outstretched arm his boy. Once he has touched his garment:--how his eye Lightens with love, and hope, and anxious fears! Ha, see! he has him now!--he clasps him round; Kisses his face; puts back the curling locks, That shaded his fine brow; looks in his eyes; Grasps in his own those little dimpled hands; Then folds him to his breast, as he was wont To lie when sleeping; and resigned, awaits Undreaded death.

And death came soon and swift And pangless. The huge pile sank down at once Into the opening earth. Walls--arches--roof-- And deep foundation stones--all--mingling--fell!

NOTES.--Herculaneum and Pompeii were cities of Italy, which were destroyed by an eruption of Vesuvius in the year 79 A. D., being entirely buried under ashes and lava. During the last century they have been dug out to a considerable extent, and many of the streets, buildings, and utensils have been found in a state of perfect preservation.

CXVI. HOW MEN REASON. (405)

My friend, the Professor, whom I have mentioned to you once or twice, told me yesterday that somebody had been abusing him in some of the journals of his calling. I told him that I did n't doubt he deserved it; that I hoped he did deserve a little abuse occasionally, and would for a number of years to come; that nobody could do anything to make his neighbors wiser or better without being liable to abuse for it; especially that people hated to have their little mistakes made fun of, and perhaps he had been doing something of the kind. The Professor smiled.

Now, said I, hear what I am going to say. It will not take many years to bring you to the period of life when men, at least the majority of writing and talking men, do nothing but praise. Men, like peaches and pears, grow sweet a little while before they begin to decay. I don't know what it is,--whether a spontaneous change, mental or bodily, or whether it is through experience of the thanklessness of critical honesty,--but it is a fact, that most writers, except sour and unsuccessful ones, get tired of finding fault at about the time when they are beginning to grow old.

As a general thing, I would not give a great deal for the fair words of a critic, if he is himself an author, over fifty years of age. At thirty, we are all trying to cut our names in big letters upon the walls of this tenement of life; twenty years later, we have carved it, or shut up our jackknives. Then we are ready to help others, and care less to hinder any, because nobody's elbows are in our way. So I am glad you have a little life left; you will be saccharine enough in a few years.

Some of the softening effects of advancing age have struck me very much in what I have heard or seen here and elsewhere. I just now spoke of the sweetening process that authors undergo. Do you know that in the gradual passage from maturity to helplessness the harshest characters sometimes have a period in which they are gentle and placid as young children? I have heard it said, but I can not be sponsor for its truth, that the famous chieftain, Lochiel, was rocked in a cradle like a baby, in his old age. An old man, whose studies had been of the severest scholastic kind, used to love to hear little nursery stories read over and over to him. One who saw the Duke of Wellington in his last years describes him as very gentle in his aspect and demeanor. I remember a person of singularly stern and lofty bearing who became remarkably gracious and easy in all his ways in the later period of his life.

And that leads me to say that men often remind me of pears in their way of coming to maturity. Some are ripe at twenty, like human Jargonelles, and must be made the most of, for their day is soon over. Some come into their perfect condition late, like the autumn kinds, and they last better than the summer fruit. And some, that, like the Winter Nelis, have been hard and uninviting until all the rest have had their season, get their glow and perfume long after the frost and snow have done their worst with the orchards. Beware of rash criticisms; the rough and stringent fruit you condemn may be an autumn or a winter pear, and that which you picked up beneath the same bough in August may have been only its worm--eaten windfalls. Milton was a Saint Germain with a graft of the roseate Early Catherine. Rich, juicy, lively, fragrant, russet-skinned old Chaucer was an Easter Beurre'; the buds of a new summer were swelling when he ripened.

--Holmes.

NOTES.--The above selection is from the "Autocrat of the Breakfast Table."

Lochiel. See note on page 214.

The Duke of Wellington (b. 1769, d. 1852) was the most celebrated of English generals. He won great renown in India and in the "Peninsular War," and commanded the allied forces when Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo.

Easter Beurre', Saint Germain, Winter Nelis, Early Catherine and Jargonelles are the names of certain varieties of pears.

Milton. See biographical notice on page 312.

Chaucer, Geoffrey (b. 1328, d. 1400). is often called "The Father of English Poetry." He was the first poet buried in Westminster Abbey. He was a prolific writer, but his "Canterbury Tales" is by far the best known of his works.

CXVII. THUNDERSTORM ON THE ALPS. (408)

Clear, placid Leman! thy contrasted lake, With the wild world I dwell in, is a thing Which warns me, with its stillness, to forsake Earth's troubled waters for a purer spring. This quiet sail is as a noiseless wing To waft me from distraction; once I loved Torn ocean's roar, but thy soft murmuring Sounds sweet, as if a sister's voice reproved, That I with stern delights should e'er have been so moved.

All heaven and earth are still--though not in sleep, But breathless, as we grow when feeling most; And silent, as we stand in thoughts too deep-- All heaven and earth are still: from the high host Of stars, to the lulled lake and mountain coast, All is concentered in a life intense, Where not a beam, nor air, nor leaf is lost, But hath a part of being, and a sense Of that which is of all Creator and defense.

The sky is changed! and such a change! O night, And storm, and darkness, ye are wondrous strong, Yet lovely in your strength, as is the light Of a dark eye in woman! Far along, From peak to peak, the rattling crags among, Leaps the live thunder! Not from one lone cloud, But every mountain now hath found a tongue, And Jura answers, through her misty shroud, Back to the joyous Alps, who call to her aloud!

And this is in the night.--Most glorious night! Thou wert not sent for slumber! let me be A sharer in thy fierce and far delight,-- A portion of the tempest and of thee! How the lit lake shines,--a phosphoric sea! And the big rain comes dancing to the earth! And now again, 'tis black,--and now, the glee Of the loud hills shakes with its mountain mirth, As if they did rejoice o'er a young earthquake's birth.

Now, where the swift Rhone cleaves his way between Heights which appear as lovers who have parted In hate, whose mining depths so intervene, That they can meet no more, though broken-hearted; Though in their souls, which thus each other thwarted, Love was the very root of the fond rage, Which blighted their life's bloom, and then--departed. Itself expired, but leaving them an age Of years, all winters,--war within themselves to wage.

Now, where the quick Rhone thus hath cleft his way, The mightiest of the storms hath ta'en his stand! For here, not one, but many make their play, And fling their thunderbolts from hand to hand, Flashing and cast around! Of all the band, The brightest through these parted hills hath forked His lightnings,--as if he did understand, That in such gaps as desolation worked, There, the hot shaft should blast whatever therein lurked. --Byron.

NOTE.--Lake Leman (or Lake of Geneva) is in the south-western part of Switzerland, separating it in part from Savoy. The Rhone flows through it, entering by a deep narrow gap, with mountain groups on either hand, eight or nine thousand feet above the water. The scenery about the lake is magnificent, the Jura mountains bordering it on the northwest, and the Alps lying on the south and east.

CXVIII. ORIGIN OF PROPERTY. (410)

Sir William Blackstone, 1723-1780, was the son of a silk merchant, and was born in London. He studied with great success at Oxford, and was admitted to the bar in 1745. At first he could not obtain business enough in his profession to support himself, and for a time relinquished practice, and lectured at Oxford. He afterwards returned to London, and resumed his practice with great success, still continuing to lecture at Oxford. He was elected to Parliament in 1761; and in 1770 was made a justice of the Court of Common Pleas, which office he held till his death. Blackstone's fame rests upon his "Commentaries on the Laws of England," published about 1769. He was a man of great ability, sound learning, unflagging industry, and moral integrity. His great work is still a common text-book in the study of law. ###

In the beginning of the world, we are informed by Holy Writ, the all- bountiful Creator gave to man dominion over all the earth, and "over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth." This is the only true and solid foundation of man's dominion over external things, whatever airy, metaphysical notions may have been started by fanciful writers upon this subject. The earth, therefore, and all things therein, are the general property of all mankind, exclusive of other beings, from the immediate gift of the Creator. And while the earth continued bare of inhabitants, it is reasonable to suppose that all was in common among them, and that everyone took from the public stock, to his own use, such things as his immediate necessities required.

These general notions of property were then sufficient to answer all the purposes of human life; and might, perhaps, still have answered them, had it been possible for mankind to have remained in a state of primeval simplicity, in which "all things were common to him." Not that this communion of goods seems ever to have been applicable, even in the earliest ages, to aught but the substance of the thing; nor could it be extended to the use of it. For, by the law of nature and reason, he who first began to use it, acquired therein a kind of transient property, that lasted so long as he was using it, and no longer. Or, to speak with greater precision, the right of possession continued for the same time, only, that the act of possession lasted.

Thus, the ground was in common, and no part of it was the permanent property of any man in particular; yet, whoever was in the occupation of any determined spot of it, for rest, for shade, or the like, acquired for the time a sort of ownership, from which it would have been unjust and contrary to the law of nature to have driven him by force; but, the instant that he quitted the use or occupation of it, another might seize it without injustice. Thus, also, a vine or other tree might be said to be in common, as all men were equally entitled to its produce; and yet, any private individual might gain the sole property of the fruit which he had gathered for his own repast: a doctrine well illustrated by Cicero, who compares the world to a great theater, which is common to the public, and yet the place which any man has taken is, for the time, his own.

But when mankind increased in number, craft, and ambition, it became necessary to entertain conceptions of a more permanent dominion; and to appropriate to individuals not the immediate use only, but the very substance of the thing to be used. Otherwise, innumerable tumults must have arisen, and the good order of the world been continually broken and disturbed, while a variety of persons were striving who should get the first occupation of the same thing, or disputing which of them had actually gained it. As human life also grew more and more refined, abundance of conveniences were devised to render it more easy, commodious, and agreeable; as habitations for shelter and safety, and raiment for warmth and decency. But no man would be at the trouble to provide either, so long as he had only a usufructuary property in them, which was to cease the instant that he quitted possession; if, as soon as he walked out of his tent or pulled off his garment, the next stranger who came by would have a right to inhabit the one and to wear the other.

In the case of habitations, in particular, it was natural to observe that even the brute creation, to whom everything else was in common, maintained a kind of permanent property in their dwellings, especially for the protection of their young; that the birds of the air had nests, and the beasts of the fields had caverns, the invasion of which they esteemed a very flagrant injustice, and would sacrifice their lives to preserve them. Hence a property was soon established in every man's house and homestead; which seem to have been originally mere temporary huts or movable cabins, suited to the design of Providence for more speedily peopling the earth, and suited to the wandering life of their owners, before any extensive property in the soil or ground was established.

There can be no doubt but that movables of every kind became sooner appropriated than the permanent, substantial soil; partly because they were more susceptible of a long occupancy, which might be continue for months together without any sensible interruption, and at length, by usage, ripen into an established right; but, principally, because few of them could be fit for use till improved and meliorated by the bodily labor of the occupant; which bodily labor, bestowed upon any subject which before lay in common to all men, is universally allowed to give the fairest and most reasonable title to an exclusive property therein.

The article of food was a more immediate call, and therefore a more early consideration. Such as were not contented with the spontaneous product of the earth, sought for a more solid refreshment in the flesh of beasts, which they obtained by hunting. But the frequent disappointments incident to that method of provision, induced them to gather together such animals as were of a more tame and sequacious nature and to establish themselves in a less precarious manner, partly by the milk of the dams, and partly by the flesh of the young.

The support of these their cattle made the article of water also a very important point. And, therefore, the book of Genesis, (the most venerable monument of antiquity, considered merely with a view to history,) will furnish us with frequent instances of violent contentions concerning wells; the exclusive property of which appears to have been established in the first digger or occupant, even in places where the ground and herbage remained yet in common. Thus, we find Abraham, who was but a sojourner, asserting his right to a well in the country of Abimelech, and exacting an oath for his security "because he had digged that well." And Isaac, about ninety years afterwards, reclaimed this his father's property; and, after much contention with the Philistines, was suffered to enjoy it in peace.

All this while, the soil and pasture of the earth remained still in common as before, and open to every occupant; except, perhaps, in the neighborhood of towns, where the necessity of a sale and exclusive property in lands, (for the sake of agriculture,) was earlier felt, and therefore more readily complied with. Otherwise, when the multitude of men and cattle had consumed every convenience on one spot of ground, it was deemed a natural right to seize upon and occupy such other lands as would more easily supply their necessities.