Part 17

Now to the lecture. We have seen in outline how Britain became English, and how England became Christian; how the Church was unified; and how the unification of the English people was fairly begun. So we have an English Church, and an English Nation, with a capital “N.” Now, how were these to be carried through the Middle Ages? Let that be our main question to-day.

In general the means were these: wiser kingship, resistance to enemies, incorporation of new national elements (do not gnash on me if I do not always “nash” that way), improvement of the constitution, as seen in the Magna Charta and the House of Commons, and the reforms in the church. These means I shall treat under seven points, and if I do not get through the seven I will get through as many as I can.

1. Wider, broader and superior kingship. This begins with Alfred, the first really great king, and the only Christian king that was ever styled the Great. All his life was one of illness, yet he always maintained a cheerful, a devout spirit, and a busy hand. He reminds us of King David in his various trials and activities.

Now some of the things which Alfred did were these: in national affairs he tried to rescue, defend, unify, and greaten England. He was an organizer; he created a navy. He made good roads. He repaired fortresses. He brought London from the ashes; he started it on its way to universal commerce. His long-lost and curious jewel bears the words “Alfred made me.” And this might almost be said of England. Her realms became one nation, that is the southern realm. The old Britons were in the west.

Thomas Hughes has written a life of Alfred the Great; this is the best one you will find concerning him. I presume you have read it. He worked his way out of ignorance; he gave an impetus to popular education and literature; I do not believe that he was unable to write. Why, in those days it was not considered to be the manly and royal thing for a man to write his own name; he had a servant to do that. Sometimes he simply put a sign there; the sign of the cross, a mark. Now that is what is meant by a man signing his name. It does not mean that he could not write it, but the man who can write subscribes his name.

His schemes of education were vast; they were the last vigorous attempt at popular enlightenment in the Middle Ages. I have not time to dwell on all these things, but you will remember that Alfred gave a great impetus to the study of the Scriptures, and that from him and his co-laborers came a version of the Psalms and other portions of the Scriptures. Then his education recognized the supremacy of the moral law. He believed in the ten commandments and he worked them into the laws. Labor on Sundays was forbidden. Women of every class were carefully protected from insult; monks must not be idle and vicious; they must go to work educating people in the villages. He made out a rule for his aldermen to attend the schools or resign their offices; and that was a good thing for the aldermen. If they would not go to school, they resigned; and that was a good thing for the people. The clergy must have wives; bishops must visit among the dioceses, visit and preach to some purpose. In all respects his laws were designed for the greatest good of the greatest number. Judges must be hung if they caused the scales of justice to be swayed by bribes. He probably did not introduce, but probably modified, trial by jury. In those days the jury was formed in this way: they took the men who knew the most about an act or a crime, the men who had been eye-witnesses; they called them together and got what they knew about it, and made up the decision. In our day they take the men who know the least about it, and the biggest fools in all the land; (I hope one thing will come, and that is this—I do not suppose anybody here has been on a jury, or I would not make this remark—I hope the day will come when we will have such times as this, that you can get a jury who will not let a scoundrel off and perjure themselves. Let us reform the jury laws. The Chautauqua Circle might accomplish much in that way).

One account of his death is this: When he was dying, in 901, he called to his side Edward, and said: Now, my dear son, sit down beside me and I will deliver to you the true counsel. I feel that my hour is near: my face is pale; my days are nearly run; we soon must part; I shall go to another world and thou shalt be left alone with all my wealth. I pray thee, for thy heart, my dear child, strive to be a father and a lord to thy people. Be the children’s father, the widow’s friend, comfort the poor, shelter the weak, and with all thy might do thou right whatever is wrong. And, my son, govern thyself by law, and then the Lord shall love thee, and God, above all things, shall be thy reward.

And so departed the peaceable, the truth-teller, England’s darling. His bones are dust, his good sword rust, his soul is with the saints we trust.

And Edward followed him, a truly great ruler. He held all the realm south of the Humber. He claimed the lordship over Northumbria, Wales and Scotland. That lordship came to be contested. For the first time all the isle of Britain came to be united under one monarch. And he was a West Saxon. Thus the unity of England was virtually established.

There were fierce struggles by the succeeding king, but one final result was that the Scots gained some ground, some territory. Their southern line was brought down to about here [pointing], that is from the Solway to Berwick, where it remains, and where a new basis was laid for Scottish civilization. In that portion of the country is the border land so long renowned for many a story, for many a fight, for many a poem. Walter Scott celebrates many of the marches in many of his stories and songs.

Now a third thing: The incorporation of the Danes. If England would retain her national character, she must have power of absorption and a Christian spirit. What was to be done with the Danes—with all the Danish element here in the Danelagh. That same Danish element was here when you have the map even in this form. There were some other people mingled with them, but the Danes held the controlling power, and those Norse settlers, in some parts of it, may have been few, but still they had the power. Now they gradually learned English, English manners, and acquired the English spirit. They learned English Christianity, and gradually conformed in everything. And here is one remarkable fact: the Scandinavian people, the people of Denmark, Norway and Sweden, have always been a people disposed to conform to the people with whom they lived. In France they became Frenchmen; in Russia they became Russians; in Italy they became Italians; in Ireland they became intensely Irish, and so now in this country, they become Americans more readily and more gracefully than the Germans.

About 911 a viking left Norway, left his two little isles, and sailing about came down here [pointing]. Alfred warded him off. He sailed about for some time and then he entered the Seine (911), got possession of this valley, married a French princess, put on white robes and for a few days acted as a Christian gentleman. He invited all sea-rovers into this valley, and they made a splendid country of it. Still more and more of these settlers came, and thus Normandy rose among the nations. It became a tremendous power. Not so much at first with her sword as with her civilization. It may seem rather strange that this Norse colony should take the lead in western Europe, should take the lead in civilization, in culture, learning, architecture, scholarship; yet that is the fact. Norman will, both of the noble and weak kind, had its way in enlarging this realm during the sway of four successive dukes.

Then we come to Robert the Magnificent, who wedded the sister of Canute. He attempted to invade England and failed. He was father of William. He would not fail, and the enterprise with which the father had been unsuccessful remained as an inheritance for the son. His father died on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 1035. He was left ruler over some of the most lawless and turbulent barons in Europe. He was scarcely eight years old, and his record of thirty years while reorganizing Normandy and in bringing the nobles to order is a proof of his real greatness. He fought his way, he gained his dukedom, he broke up nests of treason, he destroyed castles, he upset conspiracies, he showed what one young man could do, when he had definite aims, wise plans, fixed principles, and industry and resolution, courage and firmness, and the ability to keep what he had gained.

William was a hard man, austere, exacting, persevering. His heavy hand made the English themselves comprehend their own national unity through a unity of suffering. If they had not perished for a moment, they would not have survived for ages. My time is spent or we would leap from the eleventh to the thirteenth century, and emphasize our last points, _resistance to the Pope, and organization of the House of Commons_. But these you can think of at your leisure.

FOOTNOTE:

[F] Held in the Amphitheater, at Chautauqua, August 4, 1882.

REASONS FOR THE STUDY OF GREEK.

By PROF. H. LUMMIS.

By those best qualified to judge, the thorough study of Greek is conceded to be the very highest kind of mental discipline and culture.

George P. Marsh, in his lectures on the English language, thus speaks: “Let me repeat, that so far from dissuading from the study of Greek, as a branch of general education, I do but echo the universal opinion of all persons competent to pronounce on the subject, in expressing my own conviction that the language and literature of ancient Greece constitute the most efficient instrument of mental training ever enjoyed by man: and that a familiarity with that wonderful speech, its poetry, its philosophy, its eloquence, and the history it embalms, is incomparably _the most valuable of intellectual possessions_.” Such testimony from so eminent a scholar, and from so critical a mind is decisive in regard to the value of the study of Greek as a discipline, as well as in respect to the richness of the literature which it contains.

In the field of art we admit that he who would be great must study the great models, and be directed by competent masters. Even a Raphael owes something of his high renown to the patient diligence with which he studied the best pieces of his master Pietro Vanucci, the most noted artist of his day. So he who aspires to become a master in the expression of thought will wisely seek the masterpieces of those who have embalmed great thought in the most finished and excellent language. That the writers of Greece are preëminently the writers who have done this as profound and widely read a linguist as Max Müller testifies. He says: “What the inhabitants of the small city of Athens achieved in philosophy, in poetry, in art, in science, in politics, is known to all of us; and our admiration for them increases tenfold if, by a study of other literatures, such as the literatures of India, Persia, and China, we are enabled to compare their achievements with those of other nations of antiquity. The rudiments of almost everything, with the exception of religion, we, the people of Europe, the heirs to a fortune accumulated during twenty or thirty centuries of intellectual toil, owe to the Greeks; and strange as it may sound, but few, I think would gainsay it, that to the present day the achievements of these, our distant ancestors and earliest masters, the songs of Homer, the dialogues of Plato, the speeches of Demosthenes, and the statues of Phidias, stand, if not unrivalled, at least unsurpassed by anything that has been achieved by their descendants and pupils. Like their own goddess, Athene, the people of Athens seem to spring full armed into the arena of history; and we look in vain to Egypt, Syria, or India for more than a few of the seeds that burst into such marvellous growth on the soil of Attica.”

He belittles human nature who thinks the practical value of commercial arithmetic to be greater than such a mastery of language as shall enable one to express himself correctly in his own tongue. To study an instrument for the expression of thought, so wonderfully flexible, so admirably exact, so widely comprehensive, so astonishingly strong, is to the student of his native tongue what training in a great international exposition of machinery, like that exhibited in Philadelphia in our centennial year, would be to a bright young mechanic, a schooling of incalculable worth. What an insight it gives into the subtle changes in the forms of words; what a comprehension of the root meanings of words, what an idea of the power of arrangement in words, what a conception of the music and beauty in the sounds of words.

Coleridge has admirably characterized the excellence of this queen of languages: “Greek—the shrine of the genius of the old world, as universal as our race; as individual as ourselves; of infinite flexibility; of indefatigable strength; with the complication and distinctness of Nature herself; with words like pictures; with words like the gossamer film of summer, at once the variety and picturesqueness of Homer; the gloom and intensity of Æschylus; not compressed to the closest by Thucydides, nor fathomed to the bottom by Plato; not sounding with all its thunders nor lit up with all its ardors under the Promethean touch of Demosthenes.” The thorough drill of a competent teacher in introducing the student to the Greek tongue, is a most valuable discipline to the memory; the acquisition of multitudes of roots and affixes is of high importance to a full comprehension of the meaning of words in our own language, the exercise of the judgment in distinguishing words of like or of opposite meanings, the fine force of the particles of the language, and the delicate shades of thought given by variation in mode or tense, has far higher value as a broad training of that faculty than the most thorough mathematical discipline.

The improved methods of instruction have removed the old objection that it takes a lifetime to acquire the language. The objection applies as much to music, or even to a single kind of music: it takes a lifetime to become perfect master of the violin.

THE UGLY MAN.

I was the youngest but one of a large family, of whom the daughters were remarkable for their personal beauty, while the sons, of whom I was the last, graduated in plainness that was all but repulsive. This peculiarity, by which the beauty was given to the girls and the plainness to the boys, had been in the family for generations; and, both in uncles and aunts and cousins of either sex, is still discernible at the time I write.

But that which, in my own case, made this personal deformity an additional misfortune, was the fact, that, along with my ugliness, I had inherited a most sensitive disposition. And as there are never wanting persons to speak of a child’s deficiencies even in its very presence, I soon became aware of my defects. Not being precocious, I was looked upon as more stupid than I was in fact; while the real ability I possessed was altogether unsuspected. Often indeed the gibes and jeers of my beautiful sisters, and the rough remarks of my less ugly brothers, cut my childish soul to the quick. _My small, flat, squab nose was in everybody’s mouth._ I was told of it twenty times a day. Whoever wanted something to do, found instant employment in twitting me on the subject of this unlucky feature. I was never allowed to forget it; and often have I stood in the midst of a circle roaring with laughter at my expense. The natural result followed: from being naturally over-sensitive, I became only too keenly alive to the supposed opinions of others. In church I sat with my head rigidly fixed on my shoulders, turning myself neither to the right hand nor to the left, lest the persons behind me should catch a glimpse of my unlovely profile. I looked straight before me like an arrow; and on leaving my seat, as I went down the aisle and had to face my enemies and critics, I would hold my cap up to my eyes, and endeavor to pass demurely by, with nose unobserved.

Nor was my poor little nose my only cause of annoyance, for my face was large and splay, my complexion was muddy and pale, and the color of my eyes was a washed-out green. The space too between my nose and upper lip was long and protuberant, and my lips themselves were in full bloom like those of a negro. Indeed, the only thing in my favor, as regards personal appearance, was my hair, which was of a glossy auburn, and curled naturally in profusion. But this, my only redeeming feature, I was unacquainted with at the time. In my ignorance (for though often told of my faults, I never, as a child, heard myself praised), I even looked upon this propensity in my hair to curl as a positive misfortune, inasmuch as my friends informed me that it always appeared unkempt and wild, and therefore I naturally thought it an addition to my defects. Oh, how I envied the oiled and trim locks of my companions, which showed no such erratic tendency as mine; and in the agony of my mind I often had recourse to the hairdresser, who, at my directions, cut off close each offending curl, and sent me home shorn. But, alas! my triumph was but short. Sisters and brothers crowded round me soon, and proclaimed that my large inanimate face only looked larger and more inanimate still; while aunts and mother dismissed me from their presence with the observation that I was now a perfect fright.

Such, then, was the one thought uppermost in my childish mind. I had a strong faith in my own ugliness. Happy days and hours I had, as all healthy children will have. I frolicked and played; and being naughty as well as ugly, I was often whipped; while my pretty little sister, the youngest of us all, being pretty as well as naughty, was only scolded and warned. However, no punishment I ever received (and I had many) hurt me so much as the oft-recurring, never-long-absent reflection, that Nature, when she turned me out of her mint, had impressed me with her strongest stamp of ugliness. Nay, when at times a child’s party was given at our house, and little neighbors came to see us for a few hours, I was quick at observing how that none of them took to me. If a game were proposed, I was always assigned the lowest place in it. If others were kings and queens, I was only a servant and a slave; and when others were captains and admirals, I was a common sailor; and on one occasion, which I well remember, I was degraded to the position of powder-monkey. It seemed indeed by universal, tacit consent that I should be thus used; and in my own secret little heart I attributed the cause to my ugliness. Often while I joined in the game and shouted my utmost, I was in reality sad and disheartened; and have more than once climbed a tree and hid myself in its topmost branches, while the sport proceeded in the garden below, and my absence was unnoticed.

Thus it was that my childhood fled away, till, as time progressed, the evil became more serious. Having been so often rebuffed and humiliated, I lost all ambition to excel. Insensibly I acquiesced in the idea that I was in all points inferior to others, and that no efforts of my own could ever raise me to their level. My friends now not only called me ugly, but stupid. My plain elder brother was undeniably clever. My plainer second brother was shrewd, but I was both the ugliest and stupidest of all. At first I wept at this double discovery. I then grew content at being at the bottom of my class at school. My master held me up to ridicule (the rascal has since been made a bishop), and that, too, not only because I was backward and idle, for in these respects I richly deserved his blame; but, alas! for poor human nature so apt to be biased by mere externals, because I was ugly. I felt at the time that, had I not been so very plain, my being a dunce would have been more overlooked. I saw good-looking dunces in the class with me, who were easily pardoned; but I was an ugly dunce, and therefore was ridiculed and punished. This treatment made me sullen. At last I never cared to work at all. I copied my exercises and blundered over my translations so much, that the master grew tired of hearing me, and would often pass me over entirely—a course that pleased me exceedingly, and only confirmed me in my idleness. I was called stupid, and I became stupid; and I discovered, till I half became a little misanthrope, that the ugliness for which I was bantered at home, caused me also to be treated with greater harshness for my faults at school.

Nor was it my enforced stupidity alone that thus gave the sting to my plainness, but my poverty. My father was very badly off. I wore my elder brothers’ old clothes, which were too large for me. I assumed, I recollect, on one occasion one of their cast-off hats, and it overshadowed me completely. My well-dressed school-fellows christened me Guy Fawkes on account of my frumpish attire: and one of them, kinder than the rest, came to me one day when I was all alone, and told me he was sorry for me. This last incident completed my humiliation. I did not weep but I kept very silent for a day or two. I entered into no sports. I walked apart and thought of my ugliness, my stupidity, my poverty; nor was it till a week or more had passed away that I regained my usual spirits.

Shortly after the above-mentioned events, when I was about fourteen years of age, my poor father began to think seriously of the future career of his ugly bantling. And now a fresh sorrow awaited me. My acquirements were so small, my manners and appearance so unprepossessing, that there was great difficulty in deciding on my future course. “Come here, Jack,” said my father one day to me. “Can you read well?” “No,” he answered for me. “Can you write well?” “No,” he said again. “Can you cast accounts well?” “No,” he replied once more. “You can do nothing well, but take birds’ nests. I don’t know at all what is to become of you.”

On hearing these words, poor Jack left the room very much crestfallen; and quite agreed with his father, that he did not at all know what was to become of him, being both the ugliest and stupidest of his family. “Send him to college, father, and make a clergyman of him,” suggested an amiable and compassionate sister, thinking more of her brother’s feelings than the Church’s interests. This last speech of hers I overheard, as I was disappearing through the doorway, with the additional words: “Perhaps he may just pass through, without being absolutely plucked.”

* * * * *

Since the above-mentioned scenes, years have passed away and a great change has come over me. I have already said more than once that I was a backward boy, and very lazy over my books. About the age of sixteen years, however, a visible alteration took place in this respect. At the suggestion of a sister (a suggestion indeed half made in fun), I was induced to try my hand at writing verses. At first I refused, being quite aghast at such a daring proposal; but on the request being repeated, I complied. Then it was that I caught the first sound of praise my ugly ears had ever heard yet. She and I were both alike surprised. I could not believe that I had composed the poem out of my own stupid head. I read it over and over again, and each time with increasing wonder. I was actually startled at myself, while the pleasing idea stole into my mind that I was not so great a fool after all.