No More Learning

We will drop over the dress this crêpe - yes, that one,
but in small, light pleats. The crêpe will be as a cloud thrown
over the dress-a transparent, vapory, impalpable cloud. The
arms are to be absolutely bare, as I already told you. On each
shoulder there must be a simple knot, showing the upper part
of the arm. Of what is the knot to be? I'm still undecided;
I need to think it over-till to-morrow, madame, till to-morrow. "
Madame Derline came back the next day, and the next, and
every day till the day before the famous Thursday; and each
time that she came back, while awaiting her turn to try on, she
ordered dresses, very simple ones, but yet costing from seven to
eight hundred francs each.


## p. 6845 (#225) ###########################################

LUDOVIC HALÉVY
6845
And that was not all. On the day of her first visit to M.
Arthur, when Madame Derline came out of the great house she
was broken-hearted-positively broken-hearted-at the sight of
her brougham: it really did make a pitiful appearance among all
the stylish carriages which were waiting in three rows and taking
up half the street. It was the brougham of her late mother-
in-law, and it still rolled through the streets of Paris after fif-
teen years' service. Madame Derline got into the woe-begone
brougham to drive straight to a very well-known carriage-maker,
and that evening, cleverly seizing the psychological moment, she
explained to M. Derline that she had seen a certain little black
coupé lined with blue satin that would frame delightfully her new
dresses.
The coupé was bought the next day by M. Derline, who also
was beginning fully to realize the extent of his new duties. But
the next day it was discovered that it was impossible to harness
to that jewel of a coupé the old horse who had pulled the old
carriage, and no less impossible to put on the box the old coach-
man who drove the old horse.
This is how on Thursday, April 25th, at half-past ten in the
evening, a very pretty chestnut mare, driven by a very correct
English coachman, took M. and Madame Derline to the Palmers'.
They still lacked something-a little groom to sit beside the
English coachman. But a certain amount of discretion had to be
employed. The most beautiful woman in Paris intended to wait
ten days before asking for the little groom.
While she was going up-stairs at the Palmers', she distinctly
felt her heart beat like the strokes of a hammer. She was going
to play a decisive game. She knew that the Palmers had been
going everywhere, saying, "Come on Thursday: we will show
you Madame Derline, the most beautiful woman in Paris. "
Curiosity as well as jealousy had been well awakened.
She entered, and from the first minute she had the delicious
sensation of her success. Throughout the long gallery of the
Palmers' house it was a true triumphal march. She advanced
with firm and precise step, erect, and head well held.
She ap-
peared to see nothing, to hear nothing, but how well she saw!
how well she felt the fire of all those eyes on her shoulders!
Around her arose a little murmur of admiration, and never had
music been sweeter to her.
Yes, decidedly, all went well. She was on a fair way to con-
quer Paris. And, sure of herself, at each step she became more


## p. 6846 (#226) ###########################################


6846
LUDOVIC HALÉVY
k
confident, lighter, and bolder, as she advanced on the arm of
Palmer, who in passing pointed out the counts, the marquises,
and the dukes. And then Palmer suddenly said to her:—
"I want to present to you one of your greatest admirers, who
the other night at the opera spoke of nothing but your beauty;
he is the Prince of Nérins. "
She became as red as a cherry. Palmer looked at her and
began to laugh.
"Ah, you read the other day in that paper-? "
"I read - yes, I read -»
"But where is the prince, where is he? I saw him during
the day, and he was to be here early. "
Madame Derline was not to see the Prince of Nérins that
evening. And yet he had intended to go to the Palmers' and
preside at the deification of his lawyeress. He had dined at the
club, and had allowed himself to be dragged off to a first per-
formance at a minor theatre. An operetta of the regulation type
was being played. The principal personage was a young queen,
who was always escorted by the customary four maids of honor.
Three of these young ladies were very well known to first-
nighters, as having already figured in the tableaux of operettas
and in groups of fairies, but the fourth-oh, the fourth! She
was a new one, a tall brunette of the most striking beauty. The
prince made himself remarked more than all others by his enthu-
siasm. He completely forgot that he was to leave after the first
act. The play was over very late, and the prince was still there,
having paid no attention to the piece or the music, having seen
nothing but the wonderful brunette, having heard nothing but
the stanza which she had unworthily massacred in the middle of
the second act. And while they were leaving the theatre, the
prince was saying to whoever would listen:-
"That brunette! oh, that brunette! She hasn't an equal in
any theatre! She is the most beautiful woman in Paris! the
most beautiful! "
—
It was one o'clock in the morning. The prince asked himself
if he should go to the Palmers'. Poor Madame Derline: she was
of very slight importance beside this new wonder! And then,
too, the prince was a methodical man. The hour for whist had
arrived; so he departed to play whist.
The following morning Madame Derline found ten lines on
the Palmers' ball in the "society column. " There was mention
of the marquises, the countesses, and the duchesses who were


## p. 6847 (#227) ###########################################

LUDOVIC HALÉVY
6847
there, but about Madame Derline there was not a word-not a
word.
On the other hand, the writer of theatrical gossip celebrated
in enthusiastic terms the beauty of that ideal maid of honor, and
said, "Besides, the Prince of Nérins declared that Mademoiselle
Miranda was indisputably the most beautiful woman in Paris! »
Madame Derline threw the paper into the fire. She did not
wish her husband to know that she was already not the most
beautiful woman in Paris.
She has however kept the great dressmaker and the English
coachman, but she has never dared to ask for the little groom.


## p. 6848 (#228) ###########################################

6848
THOMAS C. HALIBURTON
(1796-1865)
N 1835 there appeared in a Nova-Scotian journal a series of
articles satirizing the New England character, as expressed
in the person of Sam Slick, a Yankee clock-peddler. Within
a few weeks these had become so popular that they were republished
in book form, the little duodecimo volume called The Clockmaker,
or the Sayings and Doings of Samuel Slick of Slickville,' being read
by all classes of people. Indeed, the popularity of this skit wholly
obscured the importance of the author's more serious work as a histo-
rian and publicist. Thomas C. Haliburton,
the inventor of this famous Yankee char-
acter, was born in Windsor, Nova Scotia,
1796, educated in his native town, and called
to the bar there in 1820. Eight years later
he was appointed Chief Justice of Com-
mon Pleas, and presently transferred to the
Supreme Court, in which he sat until 1856,
when he removed to England, where he
died in 1865.
While his historical work is not import-
ant, his History of Nova Scotia' has done
more to make Acadia known to the out-
side world than any other work except
'Evangeline,' and Longfellow acknowledged
himself much indebted to Haliburton for material. His Bubbles of
Canada' and 'Rule and Misrule of the English in America,' dealing
with political situations of importance in his time, and his half-dozen
other books, are now forgotten. It is as a humorist only that he is
remembered.

T. C. HALIBURTON
Of his Sam Slick' Professor Felton of Harvard wrote: "We can
distinguish the real from the counterfeit Yankee at the first sound of
the voice, and by the turn of a single sentence: and we have no hesi-
tation in declaring that Sam Slick is not what he pretends to be;
that there is no organic life in him; that he is an impostor, an im-
possibility, a nonentity. " The London Athenæum, on the other hand,
pronounced that "he [the clockmaker] deserves to be entered on our
list of friends containing the names of Tristram Shandy, the shep-
herd of the 'Noctes Ambrosianæ,' and other rhapsodical discoursers on


## p. 6849 (#229) ###########################################

THOMAS C. HALIBURTON
6849
time and change, who besides the delight of their discourse possess
also the charm of individuality. "
Farcical as is his delineation of the shrewd, conceited, bragging,
cozening, hard-working, garrulous Yankee, little as he admires the
institutions that produced this type of citizen, it is plain that Judge
Haliburton uses the clockmaker and his kind to point the moral
against the dullness, lack of enterprise, laziness, and provincial shift-
lessness of the Nova-Scotians. He means to sting his fellow-country-
men into effort and action if he can. Whether the book really served
for admonition and correction, whether the Yankee clock really struck
the hour for the "Bluenose" awakening, as its author fondly believed,
at least he created the conventional Yankee of general acceptation,-
the lank, awkward figure, ill articulated and ill dressed, with trousers
and coat-sleeves too short, with hat too large, with hair too long, with
sharp nose, keen eyes, shrewd smile, with flattened vowels and nasal
tones, with queer vocabulary and queerer syntax-in short, the Yankee
of the stage, of caricature, of tradition, universally believed in
(at least across the seas) until Lowell's genius revealed the true New-
Englander in Hosea Biglow. Even as a Pretender, therefore, Sam
Slick has his important place in the Republic of Letters, -a place the
more important as interest in him becomes more and more merely
historic.
MR. SAMUEL SLICK
From The Clockmaker. Copyright 1871, by Hurd & Houghton. Reprinted
by permission of Houghton, Mifflin & Co. , publishers, Boston
I
HAD heard of Yankee clock-peddlers, tin-peddlers, and Bible-
peddlers, especially of him who sold Polyglot Bibles (all in
English) to the amount of sixteen thousand pounds. The
house of every substantial farmer had three substantial orna-
ments: a wooden clock, a tin reflector, and a Polyglot Bible.
How is it that an American can sell his wares at whatever price
he pleases, where a Bluenose would fail to make a sale at all?
I will inquire of the Clockmaker the secret of his success.
"What a pity it is, Mr. Slick," for such was his name,-
"what a pity it is," said I, "that you, who are so successful in
teaching these people the value of clocks, could not also teach.
them the value of time. "
—
—
—
"I guess," said he, "they have got that ring to grow on their
horns yet, which every four-year-old has in our country. We
reckon hours and minutes to be dollars and cents. They do
XII-429


## p. 6850 (#230) ###########################################

6850
THOMAS C. HALIBURTON
nothing in these parts but eat, drink, smoke, sleep, ride about,
lounge at taverns, make speeches at temperance meetings, and
talk about 'House of Assembly. ' If a man don't hoe his corn,
and he don't get a crop, he says it is owing to the bank; and if
he runs into debt and is sued, why, he says the lawyers are a
curse to the country. They are a most idle set of folks, I tell
you. "
"But how is it," said I, "that you manage to sell such an
immense number of clocks, which certainly cannot be called
necessary articles, among a people with whom there seems to
be so great a scarcity of money? »
Mr. Slick paused, as if considering the propriety of answering
the question, and looking me in the face, said in a confidential
tone:
"Why, I don't care if I do tell you; for the market is glutted,
and I shall quit this circuit. It is done by a knowledge of soft
sawder and human natur'. But here is Deacon Flint's," said he;
"I have but one clock left, and I guess I will sell it to him. "
At the gate of a most comfortable-looking farm-house stood.
Deacon Flint, a respectable old man who had understood the
value of time better than most of his neighbors, if one might
judge from the appearance of everything about him. After the
usual salutation, an invitation to "alight" was accepted by Mr.
Slick, who said he wished to take leave of Mrs. Flint before he
left Colchester.
We had hardly entered the house before the Clockmaker
pointed to the view from the window, and addressing himself to
me, said: "If I was to tell them in Connecticut there was such
a farm as this away down-east here in Nova Scotia, they wouldn't
believe me. Why, there ain't such a location in all New Eng-
land. The deacon has a hundred acres of dike-
>>
«< Seventy," said the deacon, "only seventy. "
"Well, seventy: but then there is your fine deep bottom; why,
I could run a ramrod into it-»
"Interval, we call it," said the deacon, who, though evidently
pleased at this eulogium, seemed to wish the experiment of the
ramrod to be tried in the right place.
"Well, interval, if you please though Professor Eleazer
Cumstick, in his work on Ohio, calls them bottoms-is just as
good as dike. Then there is that water privilege, worth three or
four thousand dollars, twice as good as what Governor Cass paid
-


## p. 6851 (#231) ###########################################

THOMAS C. HALIBURTON
6851
fifteen thousand dollars for. I wonder, deacon, you don't put up
a carding-mill on it; the same works would carry a turning-lathe,
a shingle machine, a circular saw, grind bark, and-"
"Too old," said the deacon; "too old for all those specula-
tions. "
"Old! " repeated the Clockmaker, "not you: why, you are
worth half a dozen of the young men we see nowadays; you are
young enough to have"-here he said something in a lower
tone of voice, which I did not distinctly hear: but whatever it
was, the deacon was pleased; he smiled, and said he did not
think of such things now.
"But your beasts-dear me, your beasts must be put in and
have a feed;" saying which, he went out to order them to be
taken to the stable.
As the old gentleman closed the door after him, Mr. Slick
drew near to me, and said in an undertone, "That is what I call
'soft sawder. ' An Englishman would pass that man as a sheep
passes a hog in a pasture, without looking at him; or," said he,
looking rather archly, "if he was mounted on a pretty smart
horse, I guess he'd trot away if he could. Now I find -> Here
his lecture on "soft sawder" was cut short by the entrance of
Mrs. Flint.
"Jist come to say good-by, Mrs. Flint. "
"What, have you sold all your clocks? "
"Yes, and very low too; for money is scarce, and I wish to
close the consarn -no, I am wrong in saying all, for I have
just one left. Neighbor Steel's wife asked to have the refusal
of it, but I guess I won't sell it; I had but two of them, this
one and the feller of it, that I sold Governor Lincoln. General
Green, the Secretary of State for Maine, said he'd give me fifty
dollars for this here one-it has composition wheels and patent
axles, is a beautiful article, a real first-chop, no mistake, genuine
superfine but I guess I'll take it back; and besides, Squire Hawk
might think kinder hard that I did not give him the offer. "
"Dear me! " said Mrs. Flint, "I should like to see it; where
is it ? "
-
"It is in a chest of mine over the way, at Tom Tape's store.
I guess he can ship it on to Eastport. "
"That's a good man," said Mrs. Flint, "jist let's look at it. "
Mr. Slick, willing to oblige, yielded to these entreaties and
soon produced the clock,-a gaudy, highly varnished, trumpery-


## p. 6852 (#232) ###########################################

6852
THOMAS C. HALIBURTON
looking affair. He placed it on the chimney-piece, where its
beauties were pointed out and duly appreciated by Mrs. Flint,
whose admiration was about ending in a proposal, when Mr.
Flint returned from giving his directions about the care of the
horses. The deacon praised the clock; he too thought it a hand-
some one: but the deacon was a prudent man; he had a watch;
he was sorry, but he had no occasion for a clock.
"I guess you're in the wrong furrow this time, deacon: it
ain't for sale," said Mr. Slick; "and if it was, I reckon neigh-
bor Steel's wife would have it, for she gave me no peace about
it. "
Mrs. Flint said that Mr. Steel had enough to do, poor man,
to pay his interest, without buying clocks for his wife.
"It is no consarn of mine," said Mr. Slick, "as long as he
pays me, what he has to do: but I guess I don't want to sell
it, and besides, it comes too high; that clock can't be made at
Rhode Island under forty dollars. —Why, it ain't possible! " said
the Clockmaker in apparent surprise, looking at his watch; "why,
as I'm alive, it is four o'clock, and if I haven't been two hours.
here! How on airth shall I reach River Philip to-night? I'll tell
you what, Mrs. Flint; I'll leave the clock in your care till I
return, on my way to the States. I'll set it a-going, and put it
to the right time. "
As soon as this operation was performed, he delivered the key
to the deacon with a sort of serio-comic injunction to wind up
the clock every Saturday night,-which Mrs. Flint said she would
take care should be done, and promised to remind her husband
of it, in case he should chance to forget it.
"That," said the Clockmaker, as soon as we were mounted,
"that I call 'human natur''! Now, that clock is sold for forty
dollars; it cost me just six dollars and fifty cents. Mrs. Flint
will never let Mrs. Steel have the refusal, nor will the deacon
learn, until I call for the clock, having once indulged in the use
of a superfluity, how difficult it is to give it up. We can do
without any article of luxury we have never had; but when once
obtained, it is not in human natur' to surrender it voluntarily.
Of fifteen thousand sold by myself and partners in this province,
twelve thousand were left in this manner, and only ten clocks
were ever returned; when we called for them they invariably
bought them. We trust to 'soft sawder' to get them into the
house, and to human natur' that they never come out of it. ”


## p. 6853 (#233) ###########################################

6853
HENRY HALLAM
(1777-1859)
HE work of Henry Hallam as a historian was timely. He
filled a distinct want, and he seems likely to hold his place
Se for decades to come. His security rests not upon his power
of philosophizing from the great events, crises, and epochs in human
affairs; not upon broad generalizations regarding the development
and trend of civilization: but rather upon his clear and comprehens-
ive vision of the all-important facts of history, upon his calm and
legal-like presentation of these facts. He walks forth in the vast
valley of crumbling bones and dust, the chaos of the ages, and with
painstaking care and unerring judgment takes up on this side and
on that, from the heap of rubbish, the few perfect parts that go to
make up a complete framework. He compels us to clothe the skele-
ton, and construct a body of our own fashioning; to form our own
theories, to deduce our own philosophy. That, then, is the reason that
Hallam will remain a source of profit and inspiration to his readers.
In his great work The Middle Ages,' as it is commonly known
(though its fuller title is 'View of the State of Europe during the
Middle Ages'), published in 1818, Hallam adopted a method to such
an end, that was peculiarly his own. At the risk of repetition and
retracing, he took up first one country after another and sketched
in outline its growth into a nation, devoting to each a chapter that
was a complete book in itself, and bringing in the doings of near-by
countries only so much as was absolutely necessary. In this way
Hallam traces, with admirable arrangement and sense of proportion,
the main lines in the history of France, Italy, Spain, Germany, and
of the Greeks and Saracens. To give a detailed narration is furthest
from his thought and furthest from his achievement. He deals pri-
marily with results; and with him, as he himself has said, "a single
sentence or paragraph is often sufficient to give the character of
entire generations. " He takes the continent in magnificent sweeps,
casting aside legend, tradition, intrigue, and disaster, and catching up
only those greater facts and results which he puts together dexter-
ously and accurately to form indeed the framework of the long story
of the Middle Ages.
This brief summary of Hallam's methods and system applies, it
should be said, more to his 'Middle Ages' than to any other work


## p. 6854 (#234) ###########################################

6854
HENRY HALLAM
.
of his. In fact, it would seem that his name for the future rests
upon this work almost wholly; for while his compendious and careful
'Introduction to the Literature of Europe in the Fifteenth, Sixteenth,
and Seventeenth Centuries' (published in 1838-9), shows immense
erudition and amazingly wide reading, one cannot help getting the
impression of confusion and clumsiness in its construction. In it
Hallam's opinions are discriminating, as in everything he ever wrote,
but they are by no means profound, and to the average student his
'Literature' can hardly fail to be dispiriting and dull.
It is not surprising that a legal acumen and a logical arrangement
of his facts should characterize Hallam's historical writings. Born at
Windsor, July 9th, 1777, and a Christ Church College graduate in 1799,
he studied for the law at Christ College, Oxford, and practiced indus-
triously for some years on the Oxford Circuit.
Of independent
means, he relinquished the law and devoted himself to his literary
life and to his important personal interests and his friends. Of the
latter he had many, and they were among the most distinguished
of his contemporaries. He was a member of the famous Holland
House circle and a guest at Bowood; and Sydney Smith, Macaulay.
and other social and literary lights esteemed his society. He passed
most of his time, season by season, in his London house in Wim-
pole Street, an uninteresting and retired neighborhood, as pictured
in a line of that 'In Memoriam' which Lord Tennyson wrote as
his tribute to a friendship with Hallam's beloved son Arthur. Vari-
ous societies, British and foreign, honored his works emphatically;
he was a member of the Institute of France, and it is interesting to
Americans to know that he and Washington Irving received in 1830
the medals offered by King George IV. for eminence in historical
writings.
His life was relatively quiet and uneventful. It is somewhat curi-
ous that we have not more reminiscences and pen pictures of him,
especially as his contemporaries held him in such affection. He had
almost nothing to say to political life, though his prime came to
him during the Corn Law agitations. Indeed, he kept himself, dur-
ing all his busy years until his death in 1859, a student of the past
rather than a worker of his day. We owe much to his profound
studies of the centuries preceding his own; yet a real admirer of Hal-
lam could wish that he had been less concentrated on his analysis
of the past, and bolder to cope with questions of the present. As
he himself says, he ended his Constitutional History of England'
(published in 1827) at the accession of George III. , because he had
"been influenced by unwillingness to excite the prejudices of modern
politics. " It must be a matter of regret that Hallam should thus
stop (ingloriously, we might almost say! ) just at the threshold of


## p. 6855 (#235) ###########################################

HENRY HALLAM
6855
what was a most interesting part of England's modern Constitutional
history.
At this ending of a century, every student and historian specializes,
-takes up some one period and attempts to exhaust it. Those were
not the methods of Hallam's time. Some of the advantages of those
methods Hallam undoubtedly missed. This weakness shows occasion-
ally on points which seemed to be so obscure in Hallam's thought as
to render his expression blind and ambiguous. On the whole, how-
ever, such instances are infrequent. It is sufficient praise to say that
Hallam has done what he set out to do: to furnish for the intelligent
and seeking reader a just and accurate outline; to point out the land-
marks and beacons on the way that will guide him unfailingly in his
future search. In these respects Hallam's achievements are remark-
able and incomparable.
ENGLISH DOMESTIC COMFORT IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY
From View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages'
I
T is an error to suppose that the English gentry were lodged in
stately or even in well-sized houses. Generally speaking, their
dwellings were almost as inferior to those of their descendants
in capacity as they were in convenience. The usual arrange-
ment consisted of an entrance passage running through the house,
with a hall on one side, a parlor beyond, and one or two cham-
bers above; and on the opposite side, a kitchen, pantry, and other
offices. Such was the ordinary manor-house of the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries. Larger structures were erected by men of
great estates after the Wars of the Roses; but I should conceive
it difficult to name a house in England, still inhabited by a gen-
tleman and not belonging to the order of castles, the principal
apartments of which are older than the reign of Henry VII.
The instances at least must be extremely few.
France by no means appears to have made a greater progress
than our own country in domestic architecture. Except fortified
castles, I do not find any considerable dwellings mentioned before
the reign of Charles VII. , and very few of so early a date. Even
in Italy, where from the size of her cities and social refinements
of her inhabitants, greater elegance and splendor in building were
justly to be expected, the domestic architecture of the Middle
Ages did not attain any perfection. In several towns the houses


## p. 6856 (#236) ###########################################

6856
HENRY HALLAM
were covered with thatch, and suffered consequently from de-
structive fires.
The two most essential improvements in architecture during
this period, one of which had been missed by the sagacity of
Greece and Rome, were chimneys and glass windows. Nothing
apparently can be more simple than the former: yet the wisdom
of ancient times had been content to let the smoke escape by
an aperture in the centre of the roof; and a discovery of which
Vitruvius had not a glimpse was made, perhaps in this country,
by some forgotten semi-barbarian. About the middle of the four-
teenth century the use of chimneys is distinctly mentioned in
England and in Italy; but they are found in several of our cas-
tles which bear a much older date. This country seems to have
lost very early the art of making glass, which was preserved in
France, whence artificers were brought into England to furnish
the windows in some new churches in the seventh century. . .
But if the domestic buildings of the fifteenth century would
not seem very spacious or convenient at present, far less would
this luxurious generation be content with their internal accommo-
dations. A gentleman's house containing three or four beds was
extraordinarily well provided; few, probably, had more than two.
The walls were commonly bare, without wainscot or even plaster;
except that some great houses were furnished with hangings, and
that perhaps hardly so soon as the reign of Edward IV. It is
unnecessary to add that neither libraries of books nor pictures
could have found a place among furniture. Silver plate was very
rare, and hardly used for the table. A few inventories of furni-
ture that still remain exhibit a miserable deficiency.
was incomparably greater in private gentlemen's houses than
among citizens, and especially foreign merchants. We have an
inventory of the goods belonging to Contarini, a rich Venetian
trader, at his house in St. Botolph's Lane, A. D. 1481. There
appear to have been no less than ten beds, and glass windows
are especially noticed as movable furniture. No mention, how-
ever, is made of chairs or looking-glasses. If we compare this
account, however trifling in our estimation, with a similar inven-
tory of furniture in Skipton Castle, the great honor of the earls
of Cumberland, and among the most splendid mansions of the
North, not at the same period - for I have not found any inven-
tory of a nobleman's furniture so ancient - but in 1572, after
almost a century of continual improvement, we shall be astonished
――


## p. 6857 (#237) ###########################################

HENRY HALLAM
6857
at the inferior provision of the baronial residence. There were
not more than seven or eight beds in this great castle; nor had
any of the chambers either chairs, glasses, or carpets. It is in
this sense probably that we must understand Eneas Sylvius,-
if he meant anything more than to express a traveler's discon-
tent, when he declares that the kings of Scotland would rejoice
to be as well lodged as the second class of citizens at Nuremberg.
—
THE MIDDLE AGES AS A PERIOD OF INTELLECTUAL
DARKNESS
From View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages
I'
F WE would listen to some literary historians, we should believe
that the darkest ages contained many individuals not only
distinguished among their contemporaries, but positively emi-
nent for abilities and knowledge. A proneness to extol every
monk of whose production a few letters or a devotional treatise
survives, every bishop of whom it is related that he composed
homilies, runs through the laborious work of The Benedictines
of St. Maur,' 'The Literary History of France,' and in a less
degree is observable even in Tiraboschi and in most books of
this class. Bede, Alcuin, Hincmar, Raban, and a number of
inferior names, become real giants of learning in their uncritical
panegyrics. But one might justly say that ignorance is the
smallest def of the writers of these dark ages. Several of
them were tolerably acquainted with books; but that wherein they
are uniformly deficient is original argument or expression. Almost
every one is a compiler of scraps from the Fathers, or from such
semi-classical authors as Boëtius, Cassiodorus, or Martianus Capella.
Indeed, I am not aware that there appeared more than two
really considerable men in the republic of letters from the sixth.
to the middle of the eleventh century-John, surnamed Scotus
or Erigena, a native of Ireland; and Gerbert, who became pope
by the name of Sylvester II. : the first endowed with a bold and
acute metaphysical genius; the second excellent, for the time.
when he lived, in mathematical science and mechanical inventions.
If it be demanded by what cause it happened that a few
sparks of ancient learning survived throughout this long win-
ter, we can only ascribe their preservation to the establishment
of Christianity. Religion alone made a bridge, as it were, across


## p. 6858 (#238) ###########################################

6858
HENRY HALLAM
the chaos, and has linked the two periods of ancient and mod-
ern civilization. Without this connecting principle, Europe might
indeed have awakened to intellectual pursuits; and the genius of
recent times needed not to be invigorated by the imitation of
antiquity. But the memory of Greece and Rome would have
been feebly preserved by tradition, and the monuments of those
nations might have excited, on the return of civilization, that
vague sentiment of speculation and wonder with which men now
contemplate Persepolis or the Pyramids. It is not, however, from
religion simply that we have derived this advantage, but from
religion as it was modified in the Dark Ages. Such is the com-
plex reciprocation of good and evil in the dispensations of Provi-
dence that we may assert, with only an apparent paradox, that
had religion been more pure it would have been less permanent;
and that Christianity has been preserved by means of its cor-
ruptions. The sole hope for literature depended on the Latin
language; and I do not see why that should not have been lost,
if three circumstances in the prevailing religious system, all of
which we are justly accustomed to disapprove, had not conspired
to maintain it, the papal supremacy, the monastic institutions,
and the use of a Latin liturgy. 1. A continual intercourse was
kept up, in consequence of the first, between Rome and the
several nations of Europe; her laws were received by the bishops,
her legates presided in councils: so that a common language was
as necessary in the Church as it is at present in the diplomatic
relations of kingdoms. 2. Throughout the whole course of the
Middle Ages there was no learning, and very little regularity of
manners, among the parochial clergy. Almost every distinguished
man was either the member of a chapter or a convent. The
monasteries were subjected to strict rules of discipline, and held
out more opportunities for study than the secular clergy possessed,
and fewer for worldly dissipations. But their most important
service was as secure repositories for books. All our manu-
scripts have been preserved in this manner, and could hardly have
descended to us by any other channel; at least, there were inter-
vals when I do not conceive that any royal or private libraries
existed.
In the shadows of this universal ignorance a thousand super-
stitions, like foul animals of night, were propagated and nour-
ished. It would be very unsatisfactory to exhibit a few specimens
of this odious brood, when the real character of those times is
.
-


## p. 6859 (#239) ###########################################

HENRY HALLAM
6859
only to be judged by their accumulated multitude. There are
many books, from which a sufficient number of instances may
be collected to show the absurdity and ignorance of the Middle
Ages in this respect. I shall only mention two, as affording
more general evidence than any local or obscure superstition.
In the tenth century an opinion prevailed everywhere that the
end of the world was approaching. Many charters begin with
these words: "As the world is now drawing to its close. " An
army marching under the Emperor Otho I. was so terrified by
an eclipse of the sun, which it conceived to announce this con-
summation, as to disperse hastily on all sides. As this notion.
seems to have been founded on some confused theory of the
millennium, it naturally died away when the seasons proceeded
in the eleventh century with their usual regularity. A far more
remarkable and permanent superstition was the appeal to Heaven
in judicial controversies, whether through the means of combat
or of ordeal. The principle of these was the same; but in the
former it was mingled with feelings independent of religion, -
the natural dictates of resentment in a brave man unjustly
accused, and the sympathy of a warlike people with the display
of skill and intrepidity. These, in course of time, almost oblit-
erated the primary character of judicial combat, and ultimately
changed it into the modern duel, in which assuredly there is no
mixture of superstition. But in the various tests of innocence
which were called ordeals, this stood undisguised and unqualified.
It is not necessary to describe what is so well known - the cere-
monies of trial by handling hot iron, by plunging the arm into
boiling fluids, by floating or sinking in cold water, or by swallow-
ing a piece of consecrated bread. It is observable that as the
interference of Heaven was relied upon as a matter of course, it
seems to have been reckoned nearly indifferent whether such a
test were adopted as must, humanly considered, absolve all the
guilty, or one that must convict all the innocent. The ordeals of
hot iron or water were however more commonly used; and it
has been a perplexing question by what dexterity these tremen-
dous proofs were eluded. They seem at least to have placed the
decision of all judicial controversies in the hands of the clergy,
who must have known the secret, whatever that might be, of sat-
isfying the spectators that an accused person had held a mass of
burning iron with impunity. For several centuries this mode of
investigation was in great repute, though not without opposition.


## p. 6860 (#240) ###########################################

6860
HENRY HALLAM
from some eminent bishops.
It does discredit to the memory of
Charlemagne that he was one of its warmest advocates. But the
judicial combat, which indeed might be reckoned one species of
ordeal, gradually put an end to the rest; and as the Church
acquired better notions of law and a code of her own, she strenu-
ously exerted herself against all these barbarous superstitions.
At the same time it must be admitted that the evils of super-
stition in the Middle Ages, though separately considered very
serious, are not to be weighed against the benefits of the religion
with which they were so mingled. In the original principles of
monastic orders, and the rules by which they ought at least to
have been governed, there was a character of meekness, self-
denial, and charity that could not wholly be effaced. These vir-
tues, rather than justice and veracity, were inculcated by the
religious ethics of the Middle Ages; and in the relief of indi-
gence, it may upon the whole be asserted that the monks did
not fall short of their profession. This eleemosynary spirit,
indeed, remarkably distinguishes both Christianity and Moham-
medanism from the moral systems of Greece and Rome, which
were very deficient in general humanity and sympathy with suf-
fering. Nor do we find in any single instance during ancient
times, if I mistake not, those public institutions for the alleviation
of human miseries which have long been scattered over every
part of Europe. The virtues of the monks assumed a still higher
character when they stood forward as protectors of the oppressed.
By an established law, founded on very ancient superstition, the
precincts of a church afforded sanctuary to accused persons.
Under a due administration of justice this privilege would have
been simply and constantly mischievous, as we properly consider
it to be in those countries where it still subsists. But in the
rapine and tumult of the Middle Ages, the right of sanctuary
might as often be a shield to innocence as an immunity to crime.
We can hardly regret, in reflecting on the desolating violence
which prevailed, that there should have been some green spots
in the wilderness where the feeble and the persecuted could find
refuge. How must this right have enhanced the veneration for
religious institutions! How gladly must the victims of internal
warfare have turned their eyes from the baronial castle, the dread
and scourge of the neighborhood, to those venerable walls within.
which not even the clamor of arms could be heard to disturb the
chant of holy men and the sacred service of the altar!


## p. 6861 (#241) ###########################################

6861
FITZ-GREENE HALLECK
(1790-1867)
ITZ-GREENE HALLECK did his share, as an American poet, in
giving dignity to the native literature during the first half
of the nineteenth century. Like his friend and fellow-
worker Drake, he wrote polished and pleasing verse at a time when
such work was rare and not fostered by the social conditions.
A New-Englander of good Puritan stock, he was born July 8th,
1790, in the old Connecticut coast town of Guilford. He had such
schooling as the place afforded, but at fifteen became a clerk in
his uncle's store, where he remained until
his majority. His bookish ancestry, or the
writing ichor of a man predestined to
letters, led him while yet a school-lad to
scribble verses, practicing a 'prentice hand.
When twenty-one he went to New York,
entering a counting-room and only leaving
it, after twenty years of service, for a sim-
ilar position with John Jacob Astor, held
for sixteen years,- a long life of mercantile
employment. But Halleck's interests lay
in another direction. All his spare money
went for books, and soon after arriving in
the great city he formed the friendship with
Drake which lasted until the latter's death
in 1820, and inspired what is perhaps Halleck's best short lyric.
Halleck and Drake were collaborators in the clever satiric (Croaker'
papers, which, appearing during 1819 in the New York Evening Post,
caught the public fancy, as Irving and Paulding caught it with the
'Salmagundi' papers. The same year Halleck's long satirical poem
'Fanny' was published, and met with success. A European trip at
the age of thirty-two broadened his culture; and in the Poems'
issued in 1827 several pieces show this influence, including the famil-
iar martial lay of Marco Bozzaris. '
In 1849, Mr. Astor having granted him a small annuity, the poet
returned to his native Guilford to live with his sister in one of the
town's old-time houses, and to lead a life of quiet, studious retire-
ment. Between brother and sister, neither of whom had married, a
tender and beautiful friendship existed. Not much literary work was

FITZ-GREENE HALLECK


## p. 6862 (#242) ###########################################

6862
FITZ-GREENE HALLECK
done by Halleck during the last twenty years, though his poem 'Con-
necticut' belongs to this period, and reflects his love for his own
State. He died at Guilford, November 19th, 1867, aged seventy-seven.
Full honor has been awarded him since. On the eightieth anniver-
sary of his birth a fine obelisk, erected through the efforts of leading
men of letters, was dedicated with imposing ceremony at Guilford,
and was the first monument to an American poet, as the statue to
Halleck in Central Park, New York, set up in 1877, is the first memo-
rial of its kind. An address by Bayard Taylor and a poem by Dr.
Holmes on this occasion indicated the quality of the respect felt for
the poet. His 'Poetical Writings' have been edited by James Grant
Wilson (1869), who at the same time prepared his biography.
Fitz-Greene Halleck will always have a place in the American
anthology. His verse to-day strikes the ear as somewhat academic
and confined; the body of his work is slender, nor was his range
wide. But as a forerunner of greater singers, and within his limita-
tions, he produced poetry that is felicitous in diction, skillful in the
handling of metres, and possessed of feeling in the lyric vein and of
fire in the heroic. Two or three of his compositions certainly have
vitality enough for a prolonged existence. He cannot be overlooked
in tracing the development of letters in the United States.
Α
MARCO BOZZARIS
T MIDNIGHT, in his guarded tent,
The Turk was dreaming of the hour
When Greece, her knee in suppliance bent,
Should tremble at his power.
In dreams, through camp and court, he bore
The trophies of a conqueror;
In dreams his song of triumph heard;
Then wore his monarch's signet ring,
Then pressed that monarch's throne - a king;
As wild his thoughts, and gay of wing,
As Eden's garden bird.
At midnight, in the forest shades,
Bozzaris ranged his Suliote band-
True as the steel of their tried blades,
Heroes in heart and hand.
There had the Persian's thousands stood,
There had the glad earth drunk their blood
On old Platæa's day;


## p. 6863 (#243) ###########################################

FITZ-GREENE HALLECK
6863
And now there breathed that haunted air
The sons of sires who conquered there,
With arms to strike, and soul to dare,
As quick, as far, as they.
-
An hour passed on- - the Turk awoke;
That bright dream was his last:
He woke to hear his sentries shriek,
"To arms! they come! the Greek! the Greek! "
He woke to die 'midst flame and smoke,
And shout, and groan, and sabre-stroke,
And death-shots falling thick and fast
As lightnings from the mountain cloud;
And heard, with voice as trumpet loud,
Bozzaris cheer his band:-
"Strike - till the last armed foe expires;
Strike for your altars and your fires;
Strike for the green graves of your sires,
God and your native land! "
—
—
—
—
They fought like brave men, long and well;
They piled that ground with Moslem slain;
They conquered-but Bozzaris fell,
Bleeding at every vein.
His few surviving comrades saw
His smile when rang their proud hurrah,
And the red field was won;
Then saw in death his eyelids close
Calmly, as to a night's repose,
Like flowers at set of sun.
Come to the bridal chamber, Death!
Come to the mother's, when she feels
For the first time her first-born's breath;
Come when the blessed seals
That close the pestilence are broke,
And crowded cities wail its stroke;
Come in consumption's ghastly form,
The earthquake shock, the ocean storm;
Come when the heart beats high and warm
With banquet song, and dance, and wine:
And thou art terrible - the tear,
The groan, the knell, the pall, the bier,
And all we know, or dream, or fear
Of agony are thine.


## p. 6864 (#244) ###########################################

6864
FITZ-GREENE HALLECK
But to the hero, when his sword
Has won the battle for the free,
Thy voice sounds like a prophet's word;
And in its hollow tones are heard
The thanks of millions yet to be.
Come when his task of fame is,wrought;
Come with her laurel-leaf, blood-bought;
Come in her crowning hour and then
Thy sunken eye's unearthly light
To him is welcome as the sight
Of sky and stars to prisoned men
Thy grasp is welcome as the hand
Of brother in a foreign land;
Thy summons welcome as the cry
That told the Indian isles were nigh
To the world-seeking Genoese,
When the land wind, from woods of palm
And orange groves, and fields of balm,
Blew o'er the Haytian seas.
Bozzaris! with the storied brave
Greece nurtured in her glory's time,
Rest thee there is no prouder grave,
Even in her own proud clime.
She wore no funeral weeds for thee,
Nor bade the dark hearse wave its plume
Like torn branch from death's leafless tree,
In sorrow's pomp and pageantry,
The heartless luxury of the tomb.
But she remembers thee as one
Long loved, and for a season gone;
For thee her poet's lyre is wreathed,
Her marble wrought, her music breathed;
For thee she rings the birthday bells;
Of thee her babes' first lisping tells;
For thine her evening prayer is said
At palace couch and cottage bed;
Her soldier, closing with the foe,
Gives for thy sake a deadlier blow;
His plighted maiden, when she fears
For him, the joy of her young years,
Thinks of thy fate, and checks her tears.
And she, the mother of thy boys,
Though in her eye and faded cheek
Is read the grief she will not speak,


## p. 6865 (#245) ###########################################

FITZ-GREENE HALLECK
6865
XII-430
The memory of her buried joys;
And even she who gave thee birth,
Will, by their pilgrim-circled hearth,
Talk of thy doom without a sigh;
For thou art Freedom's now, and Fame's-
One of the few, the immortal names
That were not born to die.
ROBERT BURNS
TH
HERE have been loftier themes than his,
And longer scrolls, and louder lyres,
And lays lit up with Poesy's
Purer and holier fires.
Yet read the names that know not death:
Few nobler ones than Burns are there;
And few have won a greener wreath
Than that which binds his hair.
His is that language of the heart
In which the answering heart would speak;
Thought, word, that bids the warm tear start,
Or the smile light the cheek.
And his that music to whose tone
The common pulse of man keeps time,
In cot or castle's mirth or moan,
In cold or sunny clime.
And who hath heard his song, nor knelt
'Before its spell with willing knee,
And listened, and believed, and felt
The Poet's mastery?
O'er the mind's sea, in calm and storm,
O'er the heart's sunshine and its showers,
O'er Passion's moments, bright and warm,
O'er Reason's dark, cold hours;
On fields where brave men "die or do,"
In halls where rings the banquet's mirth,
Where mourners weep, where lovers woo,
From throne to cottage hearth:


## p. 6866 (#246) ###########################################

6866
FITZ-GREENE HALLECK
What sweet tears dim the eyes unshed,
What wild vows falter on the tongue,
When Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled,'
Or 'Auld Lang Syne,' is sung!
Pure hopes, that lift the soul above,
Come with the Cotter's hymn of praise;
And dreams of youth, and truth, and love,
With Logan's banks and braes.
And when he breathes his master-lay
Of Alloway's witch-haunted wall,
All passions in our frames of clay
Come thronging at his call.
Imagination's world of air,
And our own world, its gloom and glee,-
Wit, pathos, poetry, are there,
And death's sublimity.
And Burns, though brief the race he ran,
Though rough and dark the path he trod,
Lived, died, in form and soul a Man,
The image of his God.
Through care, and pain, and want, and woe,
With wounds that only death could heal,-
Tortures the poor alone can know,
The proud alone can feel,-
He kept his honesty and truth,
His independent tongue and pen,
And moved, in manhood as in youth,
Pride of his fellow-men.
Strong sense, deep feeling, passions strong,
A hate of tyrant and of knave,
A love of right, a scorn of wrong,
Of coward and of slave;
A kind, true heart, a spirit high,
That could not fear and would not bow,
Were written in his manly eye
And on his manly brow.
Praise to the bard! His words are driven,
Like flower seeds by the far winds sown,


## p. 6867 (#247) ###########################################

FITZ-GREENE HALLECK
6867
Where'er, beneath the sky of heaven,
The birds of fame have flown.
Praise to the man! A nation stood
Beside his coffin with wet eyes,-
Her brave, her beautiful, her good,-
As when a loved one dies.
―――
And still, as on his funeral day,
Men stand his cold earth-couch around,
With the mute homage that we pay
To consecrated ground.
And consecrated ground it is,—
The last, the hallowed home of one
Who lives upon all memories,
Though with the buried gone.
Such graves as his are pilgrim shrines,
Shrines to no code or creed confined;
The Delphian vales, the Palestines,
The Meccas of the mind.
Sages, with Wisdom's garland wreathed,
Crowned kings, and mitred priests of power,
And warriors with their bright swords sheathed,
The mightiest of the hour;
And lowlier names, whose humble home
Is lit by Fortune's dimmer star,
Are there; o'er wave and mountain come,
From countries near and far,
Pilgrims whose wandering feet have pressed
The Switzer's snow, the Arab's sand,
Or trod the piled leaves of the West-
My own green forest-land:
All ask the cottage of his birth,
Gaze on the scenes he loved and sung,
And gather feelings not of earth
His fields and streams among.
They linger by the Doon's low trees,
And pastoral Nith, and wooded Ayr,
And round thy sepulchres, Dumfries!
The Poet's tomb is there.


## p. 6868 (#248) ###########################################

6868
FITZ-GREENE HALLECK
*
But what to them the sculptor's art,
His funeral columns, wreaths, and urns?