Part 7

“What recollections of childhood crowd upon my memory. I am carried back to my first impressions of the life of man. It seems to me always, in these moments of calm, that I should have been the happiest man in the world with an income of twenty-five hundred dollars a year, living as the father of a family with my wife and son, in our old home at Ajaccio.… I still remember with emotion the minute details of a journey in which I accompanied Paoli. More than five hundred of us, young persons of the first families in the island, formed his body-guard. I felt proud of walking by his side, and he appeared to take pleasure in pointing out to me the passes of our mountains which had been witnesses of the heroic struggle of our countrymen for independence. The impressions made upon me still vibrate in my heart.… Religion is the dominion of the soul. It is the hope of life, the anchor of safety, the deliverance from evil. What a service has Christianity rendered to humanity! What a power would it still have did its ministers comprehend their mission!”

* * * * *

Napoleon’s hand-writing was of a most unintelligible character. “Do you write orthographically?” he asked his amanuensis one day at St. Helena. “A man occupied with public business can not attend to orthography. His ideas must flow faster than his hand can trace. He has only time to place his points. He must compress words into letters, and phrases into words, and let the scribes make it out afterward.”

* * * * *

“The rapid succession of your victories,” said Las Cases to Napoleon, “must have been a source of great delight to you.” “By no means,” Napoleon replied; “those who think so know nothing of the peril of our situation. The victory of to-day was instantly forgotten in preparation for the battle which was to be fought on the morrow. The aspect of danger was continually before me. I enjoyed not one moment of repose.”

* * * * *

“Tents,” said Napoleon, “are unhealthy; it is much better for the soldier to bivouac in the open air, for then he can build a fire and sleep with warm feet. Tents are necessary only for the general officers, who are obliged to read and consult their maps.”

* * * * *

“My extreme youth when I took command of the army of Italy,” Napoleon remarked, “made it necessary for me to evince great reserve of manner, and the utmost severity of morals. This was indispensable to enable me to sustain authority over men so greatly superior in age and experience. I pursued a line of conduct in the highest degree irreproachable and exemplary. In spotless morality I was a Cato, and must have appeared such to all. I was a philosopher and a sage. My supremacy could be retained only by proving myself a better man than any other in the army. Had I yielded to human weaknesses I should have lost my power.”

* * * * *

Napoleon sent the celebrated picture of St. Jerome from the Duke of Parma’s gallery to the Museum at Paris. The duke, to save his work of art, offered Napoleon two hundred thousand dollars, which the conqueror refused to take, saying: “The sum which he offers will be soon spent; but the possession of such a masterpiece at Paris will adorn that capital for ages, and give birth to similar exertions of genius.”

* * * * *

“Different matters are arranged in my head,” said Napoleon, “as in drawers. I open one drawer and close another as I wish. I have never been kept awake by an involuntary pre-occupation of the mind. If I desire repose I shut up all the drawers, and sleep. I have always slept when I wanted rest, and almost always at will.”

* * * * *

While at Milan, Napoleon had just mounted his horse one morning, when a dragoon, bearing important dispatches, presented himself before him. Napoleon gave a verbal answer and ordered the courier to take it back with all speed.

“I have no horse,” the man answered. “I rode mine so hard that it fell dead at your palace gates.”

Napoleon alighted. “Take mine,” he said.

The man hesitated.

“You think him too magnificently caparisoned and too fine an animal,” said Napoleon. “Nothing is too good for a French soldier.”

* * * * *

“Pavia,” said Napoleon, “is the only place I ever gave up to pillage. I promised that the soldiers should have it at their mercy for twenty-four hours; but after three hours I could bear such scenes of outrage no longer, and put an end to them. Policy and morality are equally opposed to the system. Nothing is so certain to disorganize and completely ruin an army.”

* * * * *

“I have,” said Napoleon, “a taste for founding, not for possessing. My riches consist in glory and celebrity. The Simplon and the Louvre were, in the eyes of the people and of foreigners, more my property than any private domains could possibly have been.”

* * * * *

To General Clark, on the death of his nephew, at Arcola, Napoleon wrote: “Your nephew, Elliott, has been slain upon the battlefield. That young man has several times marched at the head of our columns. He has died gloriously, and in the face of the enemy. He did not have a moment’s suffering. Where is the _reasonable man_ who would not envy such a death? Where is he who, in the vicissitudes of life would not give himself up to leave in this manner a world so often ungrateful?”

* * * * *

Napoleon had no tendencies to gallantry. Madame de Stäel once said to him: “It is reported that you are not very partial to the ladies.” “I am very fond of my wife, Madame,” was the laconic reply.

* * * * *

“The English,” said Napoleon, “appear to prefer the bottle to the society of their ladies; as is exemplified by dismissing the ladies from the table and remaining for hours to drink and intoxicate themselves. If I were in England I should decidedly leave the table with the ladies. If the object is to talk instead of to drink, why banish them. Surely conversation is never so lively nor so witty as when ladies take a part in it. Were I an Englishwoman I should feel very discontented at being turned out by the men to wait for two or three hours while they were drinking. In France, society is nothing unless ladies are present. They are the life of conversation.”

* * * * *

A lady of rank once said to him, “What is life worth if one cannot be General Bonaparte?” Napoleon answered her wisely: “Madame! one may be a dutiful wife and the good mother of a family.”

* * * * *

Traveling through Switzerland, Napoleon was greeted with such enthusiasm that Bourrienne said to him, “It must be delightful to be greeted with such demonstrations of enthusiastic admiration.” “Bah,” replied Napoleon; “this same unthinking crowd under a slight change of circumstances would follow me just as eagerly to the scaffold.”

* * * * *

Speaking of the Theophilanthropists, Napoleon said, “They can accomplish nothing; they are merely actors.” “What!” was the reply; “do you thus stigmatize those whose tenets inculcate universal benevolence and the moral virtues?” “All moral systems are fine,” rejoined Napoleon. “The Gospel alone has shown a full and complete assemblage of the principles of morality, stripped of all absurdity. It is not made up, like your creed, of a few commonplace sentences put into bad verse. Do you wish to find out the really sublime? Repeat the Lord’s Prayer. Such enthusiasts are only to be met with the weapons of ridicule; all their efforts will prove ineffectual.”

MATTHEW ARNOLD.

By PROF. A. B. HYDE, D.D.

A man of letters, eminent in England, deserves, on visiting these shores, our brotherly attention. Nothing so holds us in fellowship with the people of “the little mother-land” as our reading their literature, and their reading ours, without translation. Their writers and speakers are thus our true kinsfolk, nearer to us than French or German can be. Mr. Arnold, known well rather than widely, has position among English thinkers of our day, such as demands for the readers of THE CHAUTAUQUAN a reasonable understanding of him and his work. His essays and addresses are published in seven volumes by MacMillan & Co. His poems, in two or three volumes, are had from the same house. He came to this country partly to visit and partly to deliver a few lectures. Mr. Arnold was born at Christmas of 1822, in Laleham, where his father was privately fitting students for the universities. His father, Thomas Arnold, eminent as clergyman and historian, is still more famed as teacher. At Rugby school his pupils loved and honored him. He understood the good and evil of English boys, and with wonderful skill he trained them in sound learning, and moulded them to pure and generous character. Gaining from him the tone of manly sentiment, many of his “Tom Browns” have been blessings to their generation.

Matthew was his eldest son. Another, Delafield Arnold, early worn out in the educational work of India, was buried on his homeward voyage, at Gibraltar, while his devoted wife went to a grave under the solemn shadow of the Himalayas.

In Matthew’s boyhood the family home was fixed at Fox How, near the abode of the poet Wordsworth. Here in his vacations the father studied, and Matthew could see Coleridge, Southey, and Wordsworth, the “Lake Poets.” To Fox How, haunt of the muses, a crowd of distinguished visitors made streaming pilgrimage, and here the lad who early “seemed no vulgar boy,” could absorb the deep things of reason and the sweet things of song. He deeply revered these men under whose shadow he sat as a boyish listener. Of his father he says: “We rested till then in thy shade, as under the boughs of an oak. Toil and dejection have tried thy spirit, of that we say nothing. To us thou wast still cheerful and helpful and firm.”

After Wordsworth’s death he says of the dear and venerable man to whom his eyes in young weariness had often turned for refreshment:

“He spake and loosed our heart in tears, Our youth returned, for there was shed On spirits that had long been dead, The freshness of the early world.”

In 1840, having prepared under his father, he was elected a scholar at Baliol College, Oxford, and four years later he gained a prize for an English poem. The next year he was made a Fellow of Oriel College. In 1846 he became private secretary of Lord Lansdowne, and so remained for several years. He also—after his marriage, in 1851, with Frances Wightman, daughter of an eminent jurist—served as Her Majesty’s Inspector of British schools. In 1857 he was with sharp competition chosen Professor of Poetry at Oxford. The term of office is ten years. Finding himself in later years growing alien from poetic composition (“these lips but rarely frame them now”), he allowed the place to pass to Principal Shairp, a man more distinguished as a critic than a producer of poetry. Mr. Arnold still gives an occasional poem, oftenest on simple themes, as the death of his terrier, “Geist,” or his canary, “Matthias.” His “Westminster Abbey,” on the death of Dean Stanley, is grand as an anthem. He is now heard chiefly in essays, critical and æsthetic, and educational or other addresses. He is of noble presence and kindly, earnest face, over which his rich, full hair, now sable-silvered, parts and clusters. He is no orator, speaking low and slowly, but the charm of his personal appearance, the beauty of his thought, the clear incisive force of his silvery rhetoric make him to cultivated audiences ever welcome. Take him for all in all, he is so felt to-day and sure to be so read and felt hereafter, that some study of him as thinker and poet may be both instructive and entertaining.

Of his lectures in this country the best was on Emerson, whom he prized as “the friend and aid of those who wished to live in the spirit.”

His first stir of thought was from Wordsworth, not young Wordsworth, the flush “high-priest of man and nature and of human life,” but from the venerable laureate, when his utterances began to have “the sweetness, the gravity, the beauty, the languor of death.” The lofty energy which Arnold inherited from his father was seriously impaired by the contemplative egotism of his father’s friend. At the time when impressions deep and lasting were easily made on his young mind, Goethe, critic and artist of many generations, went to his grave. “Knowest thou,” says Carlyle, “no prophet even in the vesture, environment and dialect of this age? I know him and name him Goethe. In him man’s life begins again to be divine.” Goethe had at first held the principles of Rousseau. Later he announced with the serenity of a Brahmin and the authority of a Delphic oracle, that the chief end of man is “to cultivate his own spirit.” This utterance fell like a gospel on Arnold’s ear. He began to expound and enforce it, striving to engraft it on literary society and to embody it in the English national life. To him we owe that sense of the word “culture” which is so hard to state, and other terms and phrases, as “perfection, sweetness and light,” “harmonious development,” and the like. A better English pleader for the new “development” could hardly have been found. Clear and graceful in statement, gentle under criticism, patient under reproof and witty in reply, his one defect is in not doing what both the sacred and the profane oracles enjoin as the first thing in culture—to understand himself. Let us trace his ideas and doctrines in politics, in education, in religion, and in poetry.

His view of the human race is that we are utterly separate, “enisled,” each forever by himself as in “the unplumbed, salt, estranging sea.”

“Yes, in the sea of life enisled, With echoing straits between us thrown, Dotting the shoreless, watery wild, We mortal millions live _alone_.”

It follows from this isolation (which is in one sense true) that no man can be his brother’s keeper. A strong-lunged islander can _call_ to his fellow, but nothing more. With this view of the “environment” the first duty ever to be taught and ever rehearsed is _endurance_. Patience under an order of things that “man did not make and can not mar,” is a teaching traceable through all his poetry and prose. Then comes in many a pleasing form the lesson of “self-centering.”

“With joy the stars perform their shining, And the sea its long, moon-silvered roll; Why? self-poised they live, nor pine with noting All the fever of some differing soul. Bounded by themselves and unregarding In what state God’s other works may be In their own tasks all their powers pouring, These attain the mighty life you see.”

In the “hopeless tangle of our age,” to which he is keenly alive, and to explore which is a task of misery and distress, “alone, self-poised, henceforward man must labor.” “No man can save his brother’s soul, nor pay his brother’s debt.” As man is thus set apart from his fellow, “self-culture,” “self-perfecting” are his duty and his chief concern. By culture Mr. Arnold means the development of every capacity and power enfolded within us, and the adapting of ourselves perfectly to the island, larger or smaller, of our Crusoe life. This culture is gained not by unions, coöperations, or harangues “with tremendous cheers.” It is of one’s self and for one’s self, save as the wind may waft the odors of one “islet” to another. Culture must come by patient personal effort. Here Mr. Arnold looks back longingly to feudal times, and even beyond. The evil communications of the present corrupt good manners. He seems to say “_any_ former times are better than these,” and to

“Pine for force A ghost of time to raise, As if he thus might stop the course Of these appointed nays.”

Such a doctrine can never come well into politics. It is too remote—unsystematic, not to say fastidious. Pure as Arnold’s motives are known to be, he is too dainty to serve in a party, even that of Mr. Gladstone. He scouts “equality,” and prefers benevolence to democracy. As a result, the “sweetness and light” shed from his “islet” is little regarded by the masses, being about as effective as an aurora borealis.

_Punch_ sums up Arnold’s discourses to the laboring classes—and all other classes:

To Matthew Arnold hark With both ears all avidity! That Matthew—a man of mark— Says “Cultivate Lucidity!”

In education Mr. Arnold’s efforts have been steady and sincere. To him, among others, is due the successful entrance of young women in England upon higher study, so that Cambridge and Oxford are now beset by troops of young ladies who must some day effect entrance. He inherits from his father an educational zeal. His pleadings for literature in courses of study as against the exclusive pursuit of physical science and the “practical” branches, has been earnest and eloquent. He holds that, to know ourselves and the world, we must know the best that has been thought and said in the world. The study of belles-letters may be so conducted as to yield only a smattering of benefit, but it may be made a very serious and critical search after truth. What has been done by civilized nations, and what manner of people they were, is as well worth knowing as chemistry or geology.

Examining a young man on the meaning of “Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased?” he received as explanation, “Can you not wait upon the lunatic?” He asks whether to know the products of the combustion of wax is better than to understand Shakspere? He is sure that man’s need of beauty in truth, and of acquaintance with the general human mind demands the study of literature, and that for this study the best of all is the Greek.

Few will question, most teachers will accept, his educational doctrines.

Mr. Arnold explains that to attain perfect culture, we must be perfectly religious, and for this, we must properly understand the Bible. This brings us to look at his darkened side. He is an _evolutionist_ in religion; that is, he holds that as the ages roll on, new religions unfold in newness of vigor and meaning, while the old decay and disappear. He tells us that to-day poetry is the true religion. In our time “every creed is shaken, every dogma questioned, every tradition dissolving.” “The strongest part of our religion to-day is its unconscious poetry, for poetry attaches its emotion to the _idea_, and all else is illusion.” Poetry has the highest truth, and the highest seriousness.

“Be ye perfect,” said the Great Teacher, and this, says Mr. Arnold, is a harmonious development of all sides of our humanity; a thing not found in our broken world. Therefore he calls the orthodox belief a failure; the working classes will have nothing to say to it. He will fix it for them. He takes out of it all its facts and leaves only its tone and its ideas—its poetry. The scheme of Christianity has never been understood until now a select few have grasped it.

“There is an enduring power, not ourselves, which makes for righteousness”—that is his cloudy piety. The “method” and “secret” of Jesus were commendable; the “method” was repentance, the “secret” was peace; but the Christian religion rests on the assumption of a Personal Ruler, “this cannot be verified.” Even the resurrection St. Paul poorly understood. It is in fact “rising to that harmonious conformity with the real and the eternal which is life and peace until it becomes glory.” Even the doctrine of the Trinity Mr. Arnold can speak of as “a fairy-tale of the three Lord Shaftburys,” a phrase that Ingersoll might quote. One can see—and it is a sad sight—how his religious views have been spoiled by a vain philosophy. How reassuring to know that Mr. Moody, preaching Jesus and the Resurrection at Oxford, in Arnold’s sight, found the working classes (and others) glad to hear. Where he had said,

Resolve to be thyself! And know that he Who finds himself, loses his misery.

Many are learning “Deny thyself” and in finding the Savior, losing their misery.

This gifted disbeliever has longings that he cannot quite conceal. He does not believe Jesus divine, yet he seems to yearn for faith in him, such as his father had, and such as was easy when

Men called from chamber, church and tent, And Christ was by to save.

He himself would gladly have been caught in the tide

Of love which set so deep and strong From Christ’s then open grave.

Turning sadly away he says:

Now he is dead! Far hence he lies In the lone Syrian town, And on his grave, with shining eyes, The Syrian stars look down?

At last we seem to find this scholar and poet, Christian born and Christian bred, sinking into the pantheism of heathenism, such as our missionaries confront in India.

Myriads who live, who have lived, What are we all but a mood, A single mood, of the life Of the Being in whom we exist, Who alone is all things in one?

Through all Mr. Arnold’s utterances there seems a certain air of condescension. To the masses, “the un-Hellenic public,” he seems to look from his own “islet” and say, “Cultivate your own spirit;” “Cherish light and sweetness,” and to add, “Look at me and aspire to your own best self.” This looks like a delicate self-worship, such as was in Goethe, and thither “self-culture” easily leads.

In Mr. Arnold as poet one finds enough to admire and enjoy. His first volume of poems was given anonymously to the world in 1849. It made some stir. We thought another of the immortals was among us, and so it proved. He followed in song the same who were his masters in culture, striving, “Wordsworth’s sweet calm, and Goethe’s wide and luminous view to gain.” He took up poetry seriously, for he thought that “poetry is the impassioned expression in the countenance of all science,” “the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge.” To him poetry is no idle warbling, but an intense criticism of life in which he works from sense of duty. In all his poems one finds dignity and grace of spirit, something of Goethe’s spiritual unrest, and of Wordsworth’s healing balm found in communion with nature.

Thus, after Rustum in desperate fight has unknowingly slain his son Sohrab, (who has disclosed himself in his last moments) with how quiet dignity does the Oxus move on, leaving on its bank Sohrab in his gore, and Rustum in his hot agony and blinding tears!

But the majestic river floated on Out of the mist and hum of that low land Into the frosted starlight, and there moved Rejoicing through the hushed Chorasmian waste Under the solitary moon, till at last The longed-for dash of waves is heard, and wide His luminous home of waters opens bright And tranquil, from whose floor the new-bathed stars Emerge and shine upon the Aral sea.

He comes to nature, not to bring anything, but to seek rest and refreshment. Byron pours out upon nature, as in Childe Harold, the “sparkling gloom” of his own spirit. Coleridge, as in the Hymn at Chamouni, fills nature with his own lofty rapture. Arnold’s poems all show how he asks of nature, not pleasure or exaltation—only relief. By the lake he says:

How sweet to feel, on the boon air, All our unquiet pulses cease!

In his Summer Night,

The calm moonlight seems to say, Hast thou, then, still the old, unquiet breast?

He turns to the

Heavens whose pure dark regions have no sign Of languor, though so calm and though so great, Yet so untroubled, so unpassionate! A world above man’s head to let him see How boundless might his soul’s horizon be; How it were good to live there and be free.

In Kensington Gardens he says: