I
pretended
to notice nothing; but at parting I told him
that twelve glasses of wine wouldn't hurt him, and that he had
had only six.
that twelve glasses of wine wouldn't hurt him, and that he had
had only six.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v04 - Bes to Bro
2341 (#539) ###########################################
FREDRIKA BREMER
2341
first days of her stay at Axelholm; but she now became silent
and thoughtful, often absent; and some people thought that she
seemed less friendly than formerly towards the Candidate, but
somewhat more attentive to the Landed Proprietor, although she
constantly declined his invitation "to take a tour to Oestanvik. "
The evening after this explanation took place, Elise was
engaged with Jacobi in a lively conversation in the balcony.
"And if," said Jacobi, "if I endeavor to win her affections,
oh, tell me! would her parents, would her mother see it without
displeasure? Ah, speak openly with me; the happiness of my
life depends upon it! "
"You have my approval and my good wishes," answered Elise;
"I tell you now what I have often told my husband, that I should
very much like to call you my son! "
"Oh! " exclaimed Jacobi, deeply affected, falling on his knees
and pressing Elise's hand to his lips: "oh, that every act in my
life might prove my gratitude, my love -! "
At this moment Louise, who had been looking for her mother,
approached the balcony; she saw Jacobi's action and heard his
words. She withdrew quickly, as if she had been stung by a
serpent.
From this time a great change was more and more percept-
ible in her. Silent, shy, and very pale, she moved about like a
dreaming person in the merry circle at Axelholm, and willingly
agreed to her mother's proposal to shorten her stay at this place.
Jacobi, who was as much astonished as sorry at Louise's
sudden unfriendliness towards him, began to think the place was
somehow bewitched, and wished more than once to leave it.
A FAMILY PICTURE
From The Home'
HE family is assembled in the library; tea is just finished.
at the pressing request of Gabrielle and Petrea, lays
out the cards in order to tell the sisters their fortune. The
seems to have made up
Candidate seats himself beside her, and
his mind to be a little more cheerful.
looks more like a cathedral than ever.
enters, bows, blows his nose, and kisses the hand of his "gracious
aunt. ”
But then "the object »
The Landed Proprietor
## p. 2342 (#540) ###########################################
FREDRIKA BREMER
2342
Landed Proprietor - Very cold this evening; I think we shall
have frost.
Elise-It is a miserable spring; we have just read a melan-
choly account of the famine in the northern provinces; these
years of dearth are truly unfortunate.
Landed Proprietor-Oh yes, the famine up there. No, let us
talk of something else; that is too gloomy. I have had my peas
covered with straw. Cousin Louise, are you fond of playing
Patience? I am very fond of it myself; it is so composing. At
Oestanvik I have got very small cards for Patience; I am quite
sure you would like them, Cousin Louise.
The Landed Proprietor seats himself on the other side of
Louise. The Candidate is seized with a fit of curious shrugs.
Louise This is not Patience, but a little conjuring by means
of which I can tell future things. Shall I tell your fortune,
Cousin Thure?
――――
Landed Proprietor-Oh yes! do tell my fortune; but don't
tell me anything disagreeable. If I hear anything disagreeable
in the evening, I always dream of it at night. Tell me now
from the cards that I shall have a pretty little wife; - a wife
beautiful and amiable as Cousin Louise.
The Candidate (with an expression in his eyes as if he would
send the Landed Proprietor head-over-heels to Oestanvik)—I don't
know whether Miss Louise likes flattery.
Landed Proprietor (who takes no notice of his rival) — Cousin
Louise, are you fond of blue?
Louise Blue?
It is a pretty color; but I almost like green
-
better.
Landed Proprietor-Well, that's very droll; it suits exceed-
ingly well. At Oestanvik my drawing-room furniture is blue;
beautiful light-blue satin. But in my bedroom I have green
Cousin Louise, I believe really-
moreen.
The Candidate coughs as though he were going to be suffo-
cated, and rushes out of the room. Louise looks after him and
sighs, and afterwards sees in the cards so many misfortunes for
Cousin Thure that he is quite frightened. "The peas frosted! "-
"conflagration in the drawing-room"- and at last "a basket"
["the mitten "]. The Landed Proprietor declares still laughingly
that he will not receive "a basket. " The sisters smile and make
their remarks.
—
## p. 2343 (#541) ###########################################
2343
CLEMENS BRENTANO
(1778-1842)
HE intellectual upheaval in Germany at the beginning of this
century brought a host of remarkable characters upon the
literary stage, and none more gifted, more whimsical, more
winning than Clemens Brentano, the erratic son of a brilliant family.
Born September 8th, 1778, at Ehrenbreitstein, Brentano spent his
youth among the stimulating influences which accompanied the
renaissance of German culture. His grandmother, Sophie de la Roche,
had been the close friend of Wieland, and his mother the youthful
companion of Goethe. Clemens, after a vain attempt to follow in
the mercantile footsteps of his father, went to Jena, where he met
the Schlegels; and here his brilliant but unsteady literary career
began.
In 1803 he married the talented Sophie Mareau, but three years
later his happiness was terminated by her death. His next matri-
monial venture was, however, a failure: an elopement in 1808 with
the daughter of a Frankfort banker was quickly followed by a
divorce, and he thereafter led the uncontrolled life of an errant poet.
Among his early writings, published under the pseudonym of
'Marie,' were several satires and dramas and a novel entitled 'Godwi,'
which he himself called "a romance gone mad. " The meeting
with Achim von Arnim, who subsequently married his sister Bettina,
decided his fate: he embarked in literature once and for all in close
association with Von Arnim. Together they compiled a collection of
several hundred folk-songs of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eight-
eenth centuries, under the name of 'Des Knaben Wunderhorn' (The
Boy's Wonderhorn), 1806-1808. That so musical a people as the Ger-
mans should be masters of lyric poetry is but natural,-every long-
ing, every impression, every impulse gushes into song; and in 'Des
Knaben Wunderhorn' we hear the tuneful voices of a naïve race,
singing what they have seen or dreamed or felt during three hundred
years. The work is dedicated to Goethe, who wrote an almost
enthusiastic review of it for the Literary Gazette of Jena. ་་ Every
lover or master of musical art," he says, "should have this volume
upon his piano. "
The Wunderhorn' was greeted by the German public with ex-
traordinary cordiality. It was in fact an epoch-making work, the
pioneer in the new field of German folk poetry. It carried out in a
## p. 2344 (#542) ###########################################
2344
CLEMENS BRENTANO
purely national spirit the efforts which Herder had made in behalf of
the folk-songs of all peoples. It revealed the spirit of the time. 1806
was the year of the battle of Jena, and Germany in her hour of deep-
est humiliation gave ear to the encouraging voices from out her own
past. "The editors of the Wunderhorn,'" said their friend Görres,
"have deserved of their countrymen a civic crown, for having saved
from destruction what yet remained to be saved;" and on this civic
crown the poets' laurels are still green.
Brentano's contagious laughter may even now be heard re-echoing
through the pages of his book on The Philistine' (1811). His dra-
matic power is evinced in the broadly conceived play 'Die Gründung
Prags' (The Founding of Prague: 1815); but it is upon two stories,
told in the simple style of the folk-tale, that his widest popularity is
founded. 'Die Geschichte vom braven Casperl und der schönen
Annerl' (The Story of Good Casper and Pretty Annie) and his fable
of Gockel, Hinkel, und Gackeleia,' both of the year 1838, are still
an indispensable part of the reading of every German boy and girl.
Like his brilliant sister, Brentano is a fascinating figure in litera-
ture. He was amiable and winning, full of quips and cranks, and
with an inexhaustible fund of stories. Astonishing tales of advent-
ure, related with great circumstantiality of detail, and of which he
himself was the hero, played an important part in his conversation.
Tieck once said he had never known a better improvisatore than
Brentano, nor one who could "lie more gracefully. ”
When Brentano was forty years of age a total change came over
his life. The witty and fascinating man of the world was trans-
formed into a pious and gloomy ascetic. The visions of the stig-
matized nun of Dülmen, Katharina Emmerich, attracted him, and
he remained under her influence until her death in 1824. These vis-
ions he subsequently published as the Life of the Virgin Mary. '
The eccentricities of his later years bordered upon insanity. He
died in the Catholic faith in the year 1842.
## p. 2345 (#543) ###########################################
CLEMENS BRENTANO
THE NURSE'S WATCH
From The Boy's Wonderhorn ›
THE
HE moon it shines,
My darling whines;
The clock strikes twelve:- God cheer
The sick both far and near.
God knoweth all;
-
Mousy nibbles in the wall;
The clock strikes one:- - like day,
Dreams o'er thy pillow play.
The matin-bell
Wakes the nun in convent cell;
The clock strikes two:--they go
To choir in a row.
The wind it blows,
The cock he crows;
The clock strikes three: -the wagoner
In his straw bed begins to stir.
The steed he paws the floor,
Creaks the stable door;
The clock strikes four:-'tis plain
The coachman sifts his grain.
The swallow's laugh the still air shakes,
The sun awakes;
The clock strikes five:- the traveler must be gone,
He puts his stockings on.
The hen is clacking,
The ducks are quacking;
The clock strikes six:-awake, arise,
Thou lazy hag; come, ope thy eyes.
Quick to the baker's run;
The rolls are done;
The clock strikes seven:-
'Tis time the milk were in the oven.
Put in some butter, do,
And some fine sugar, too;
The clock strikes eight:-
Now bring my baby's porridge straight.
2345
Englished by Charles T. Brooks.
## p. 2346 (#544) ###########################################
2346
CLEMENS BRENTANO
THE CASTLE IN AUSTRIA
From The Boy's Wonderhorn >
HERE lies a castle in Austria,
Right goodly to behold,
Walled up with marble stones so fair,
With silver and with red gold.
TH
Therein lies captive a young boy,
For life and death he lies bound,
Full forty fathoms under the earth,
Midst vipers and snakes around.
His father came from Rosenberg,
Before the tower he went:-
"My son, my dearest son, how hard
Is thy imprisonment! "
-
"O father, dearest father mine,
So hardly I am bound,
Full forty fathoms under the earth,
'Midst vipers and snakes around! »
His father went before the lord:-
"Let loose thy captive to me!
I have at home three casks of gold,
And these for the boy I'll gi'e. "
"Three casks of gold, they help you not:
That boy, and he must die!
He wears round his neck a golden chain;
Therein doth his ruin lie. "
"And if he thus wear a golden chain,
He hath not stolen it; nay!
A maiden good gave it to him
For true love, did she say. "
They led the boy forth from the tower,
And the sacrament took he:-
"Help thou, rich Christ, from heaven high,
It's come to an end with me! "
They led him to the scaffold place,
Up the ladder he must go:—
## p. 2347 (#545) ###########################################
CLEMENS BRENTANO
2347
"O headsman, dearest headsman, do
But a short respite allow! "
"A short respite I must not grant;
Thou wouldst escape and fly:
Reach me a silken handkerchief
Around his eyes to tie. "
"Oh, do not, do not bind mine eyes!
I must look on the world so fine;
I see it to-day, then never more,
With these weeping eyes of mine. "
His father near the scaffold stood,
And his heart, it almost rends:-
"O son, O thou my dearest son,
Thy death I will avenge! "
-
"O father, dearest father mine!
My death thou shalt not avenge:
'Twould bring to my soul but heavy pains;
Let me die in innocence.
"It is not for this life of mine,
Nor for my body proud;
'Tis but for my dear mother's sake:
At home she weeps aloud. "
Not yet three days had passed away,
When an angel from heaven came down :
"Take ye the boy from the scaffold away;
Else the city shall sink under ground! "
And not six months had passed away,
Ere his death was avenged amain;
And upwards of three hundred men
For the boy's life were slain.
Who is it that hath made this lay,
Hath sung it, and so on?
That, in Vienna in Austria,
Three maidens fair have done.
## p. 2348 (#546) ###########################################
2348
ELISABETH BRENTANO (BETTINA VON ARNIM)
(1785-1859)
O PICTURE of German life at the beginning of this century
would be complete which did not include the distinguished
women who left their mark upon the time. Among these
Bettina von Arnim stands easily foremost. There was something
triumphant in her nature, which in her youth manifested itself in her
splendid enthusiasm for the two great geniuses who dominated her
life, Goethe and Beethoven,-- and which, in the lean years when
Germany was overclouded, maintained itself by an inexhaustible
optimism. Her merry willfulness and wit
covered a warm heart and a vigorous mind;
and both of her great idols understood her
and took her seriously.
Elisabeth Brentano was the daughter of
Goethe's friend, Maximiliane de la Roche.
She was born at Frankfort-on-the-Main in
1785, and was brought up after the death
of her mother under the somewhat peculiar
influence of the highly-strung Caroline von
Günderode. Through her filial intimacy
with Goethe's mother, she came to know
the poet; and out of their friendship grew
the correspondence which formed the basis
of Bettina's famous book, 'Goethe's Brief-
wechsel mit einem Kinde' (Goethe's Correspondence with a Child).
She attached herself with unbounded enthusiasm to Goethe, and he
responded with affectionate tact. To him Bettina was the embodi-
ment of the loving grace and willfulness of 'Mignon. '
ELISABETH BRENTANO
In 1811 these relations were interrupted, owing to Bettina's atti-
tude toward Goethe's wife. In the same year she married Achim
von Arnim, one of the most refined poets and noblest characters of
that brilliant circle. The marriage was an ideal one; each cherished
and delighted in the genius of the other, but in 1831 the death of
Von Arnim brought this happiness to an end. Goethe died in the
following year, and Germany went into mourning. Then in 1835
Bettina appeared before the world for the first time as an authoress,
in Goethe's Correspondence with a Child. ' The dithyrambic exalt-
ation, the unrestrained but beautiful enthusiasm of the book came
## p. 2349 (#547) ###########################################
ELISABETH BRENTANO
2349
like an electric shock. Into an atmosphere of spiritual stagnation,
these letters brought a fresh access of vitality and hope. Bettina's
old friendly relations with Goethe had been resumed later in life,
and in a letter written to her niece she gives a charming account of
the visit to the poet in 1824, which proved to be her last. This
letter first saw the light in 1896, and an extract from it has been
included below.
The inspiration which went out from Bettina's magnetic nature
was profound. She had her part in every great movement of her
time, from the liberation of Greece to the fight with cholera in Berlin.
During the latter, her devotion to the cause of the suffering poor in
Berlin opened her eyes to the miseries of the common people; and
she wrote a work full of indignant fervor, 'Dies Buch gehört dem
König' (This Book belongs to the King), in consequence of which her
welcome at the court of Frederick William IV. grew cool. A subse-
quent book, written in a similar vein, was suppressed. But Bettina's
love of the people, as of every cause in which she was interested,
was genuine and not to be quenched; she acted upon the maxim
once expressed by Emerson, "Every brave heart must treat society
as a child, and never allow it to dictate. " Emerson greatly admired
Bettina, and Louisa M. Alcott relates that she first made acquain-
tance with the famous 'Correspondence' when in her girlhood she
was left to browse in Emerson's library. Bettina's influence was
most keenly felt by the young, and she had the youth of Germany
at her feet. She died in 1859.
There is in Weimar a picture in which are represented the
literary men of the period, grouped as in Raphael's School of
Athens, with Goethe and Schiller occupying the centre. Upon the
broad steps which lead to the elevation where they are standing, is
the girlish figure of Bettina bending forward and holding a laurel
wreath in her hand. This is the position which she occupies in the
history of German literature.
DEDICATION: TO GOETHE
From 'Goethe's Correspondence with a Child'
THOU
HOU, who knowest love, and the refinement of sentiment, oh
how beautiful is everything in thee! How the streams of
life rush through thy sensitive heart, and plunge with force.
into the cold waves of thy time, then boil and bubble up till
mountain and vale flush with the glow of life, and the forests
stand with glistening boughs upon the shore of thy being, and
## p. 2350 (#548) ###########################################
ELISABETH BRENTANO
2350
all upon which rests thy glance is filled with happiness and life!
O God, how happy were I with thee! And were I winging my
flight far over all times, and far over thee, I would fold my
pinions and yield myself wholly to the domination of thine eyes.
Men will never understand thee, and those nearest to thee
will most thoroughly disown and betray thee; I look into the
future, and I hear them cry, "Stone him! " Now, when thine
own inspiration, like a lion, stands beside thee and guards thee,
vulgarity ventures not to approach thee. Thy mother said
recently, "The men to-day are all like Gerning, who always says,
'We, the superfluous learned';" and she speaks truly, for he is
superfluous. Rather be dead than superfluous! But I am not so,
for I am thine, because I recognize thee in all things. I know
that when the clouds lift themselves up before the sun-god, they
will soon be depressed by his fiery hand; I know that he endures
no shadow except that which his own fame seeks; the rest of
consciousness will overshadow thee. I know, when he descends
in the evening, that he will again appear in the morning with
golden front. Thou art eternal, therefore it is good for me to
be with thee.
When, in the evening, I am alone in my dark room, and the
neighbors' lights are thrown upon my wall, they sometimes light
up thy bust; or when all is silent in the city, here and there a
dog barks or a cock crows: I know not why, but it seems some-
thing beyond human to me; I know what I shall do to still my
pain.
I would fain speak with thee otherwise than with words; I
would fain press myself to thy heart. I feel that my soul is
aflame. How fearfully still is the air before the storm! So stand
now my thoughts, cold and silent, and my heart surges like the
Dear, dear Goethe! A reminiscence of thee breaks the
spell; the signs of fire and warfare sink slowly down in my sky,
and thou art like the in-streaming moonlight. Thou art great
and glorious, and better than all that I have ever known and
experienced up to this time. Thy whole life is so good!
sea.
## p. 2351 (#549) ###########################################
ELISABETH BRENTANO
TO GOETHE
2351
CASSEL, August 13th, 1807.
Hо can interpret and measure what is passing within me?
WHO I am happy now in remembrance of the past, which I
To my
scarcely was when that past was the present.
sensitive heart the surprise of being with thee, the coming and
going and returning in a few blessed days-this was all like
clouds flitting across my heaven; through my too near presence I
feared it might be darkened by my shadow, as it is ever darker
when it nears the earth; now, in the distance, it is mild and
lofty and ever clear.
I would fain press thy dear hand with both of mine to my
bosom, and say to thee, "How peace and content have come to
me since I have known thee! "
I know that the evening has not come when life's twilight
gathers in my heart: oh, would it were so! Would that I had
lived out my days, that my wishes and joys were fulfilled, and
that they could all be heaped upon thee, that thou mightst be
therewith decked and crowned as with evergreen bays.
When I was alone with thee on that evening I could not
comprehend thee: thou didst smile at me because I was moved,
and laughed at me because I wept; but why? And yet it was
thy laughter, the tone of thy laughter, which moved me to tears;
and I am content, and see, under the cloak of this riddle, roses
burst forth which spring alike from sadness and joy. Yes, thou
art right, prophet: I shall yet with light heart struggle up
through jest and mirth; I shall weary myself with struggling as
I did in my childhood (ah, it seems as if it were but yester-
day! ) when with the exuberance of joy I wandered through the
blossoming fields, pulling up the flowers by the roots and throw-
ing them into the water. But I wish to seek rest in a warm,
firm earnestness, and there at hand standest
hand standest thou, smiling.
prophet!
I say to thee yet once more: Whoever in this wide world
understands what is passing within me, who am so restful in
thee, so silent, so unwavering in my feeling? I could, like the
mountains, bear nights and days in the past without disturbing
thee in thy reflections. And yet when at times the wind bears
## p. 2352 (#550) ###########################################
ELISABETH BRENTANO
2352
the fragrance and the germs together from the blossoming world
up to the mountain heights, they will be intoxicated with delight
as I was yesterday. Then I loved the world, then I was as glad
as a gushing, murmuring spring in which the sun for the first
time shines.
Farewell, sublime one who blindest and intimidatest me!
From this steep rock upon which my love has in life-danger
ventured, I cannot clamber down. I cannot think of descending,
for I should break my neck in the attempt.
BETTINA'S LAST MEETING WITH GOETHE
From a Letter to her Niece in 1824, first published in 1896
N THE evening I was alone again with Goethe. Had any one
observed us, he would have had something to tell to poster-
ity. Goethe's peculiarities were exhibited to the full: first he
would growl at me, then to make it all up again he would caress
me, with the most flattering words. His bottle of wine he kept
in the adjoining room, because I had reproached him for his
drinking the night before: on some pretext or other he disap-
peared from the scene half a dozen times in order to drink a
glass.
I pretended to notice nothing; but at parting I told him
that twelve glasses of wine wouldn't hurt him, and that he had
had only six. "How do you know that so positively? " he said.
"I heard the gurgle of the bottle in the next room, and I heard
you drinking, and then you have betrayed yourself to me, as
Solomon in the Song of Songs betrayed himself to his beloved,
by your breath. "
"You are an arrant rogue," he said; "now
take yourself off," and he brought the candle to light me out.
But I sprang in front of him and knelt upon the threshold of
the room.
"Now I shall see if I can shut you in, and whether
you are a good spirit or an evil one, like the rat in Faust; I
kiss this threshold and bless it, for over it daily passes the most
glorious human spirit and my best friend. " "Over you and your
love I shall never pass," he answered, "it is too dear to me; and
around your spirit I creep so" (and he carefully paced around
the spot where I was kneeling), "for you are too artful, and it
is better to keep on good terms with you. " And so he dismissed
me with tears in his eyes. I remained standing in the dark
before his door, to gulp down my emotion. I was thinking that
## p. 2353 (#551) ###########################################
ELISABETH BRENTANO
2353
this door, which I had closed with my own hand, had separated
me from him in all probability forever. Whoever comes near
him must confess that his genius has partly passed into good-
ness; the fiery sun of his spirit is transformed at its setting into
a soft purple light.
IN GOETHE'S GARDEN
FROM this hillock all my world survey!
Yon vale, bedecked by nature's fairy fingers,
Where the still by-road picturesquely lingers,
The cottage white whose quaint charms grace the way-
These are the scenes that o'er my heart hold sway.
I from this hillock all my world survey!
Though I ascend to heights fair lands dividing,
Where stately ships I see the ocean riding,
While cities gird the view in proud array,
Naught prompts my heart's impulses to obey.
I from this hillock all my world survey!
And could I stand while Paradise descrying,
Still for these verdant meads should I be sighing,
Where thy dear roof-peaks skirt the verdant way:
Beyond these bounds my heart longs not to stray.
IV-148
―――――
## p. 2354 (#552) ###########################################
2354
JOHN BRIGHT
(1811-1889)
OHN BRIGHT was the modern representative of the ancient
Tribunes of the people or Demagogues (in the original and
perfectly honorable sense); and a full comparison of his
work and position with those of the Cleons or the Gracchi would
almost be an outline of the respective peoples, polities, and problems.
He was a higher type of man and politician than Cleon, -largely
because the English aristocracy is not an unpatriotic and unprincipled
clique like the Athenian, ready to use any weapon from murder down
or to make their country a province of a
foreign empire rather than give up their
class monopoly of power; but like his pro-
totype he was a democrat by nature as well
as profession, the welfare of the common
people at once his passion and his political
livelihood, full of faith that popular in-
stincts are both morally right and intellect-
ually sound, and all his own instincts and
most of his labors antagonistic to those of
the aristocracy. It is a phase of the same
fact to say that he also represented the
active force of religious feeling in politics,
as opposed to pure secular statesmanship.
The son of a Quaker manufacturer of Rochdale, England, and
born near that place November 16th, 1811, he began his public career
when a mere boy as a stirring and effective temperance orator, his
ready eloquence and intense earnestness prevailing over an ungrace-
ful manner and a bad delivery; he wrought all his life for popular
education and for the widest extension of the franchise; and being a
Quaker and a member of the Peace Society, he opposed all war on
principle, fighting the Crimean War bitterly, and leaving the Glad-
stone Cabinet in 1882 on account of the bombardment of Alexandria.
He was retired from the service of the public for some time on
account of his opposition to the Crimean War; but Mr. Gladstone,
who differed from him on this point, calls it the action of his life
most worthy of honor. He was perhaps the most warlike opponent
of war ever high in public life; the pugnacious and aggressive agita-
tor, pouring out floods of fiery oratory to the effect that nobody ought
to fight anybody, was a curious paradox.
JOHN BRIGHT
## p. 2355 (#553) ###########################################
JOHN BRIGHT
2355
He was by far the most influential English friend of the North in
the Civil War, and the magic of his eloquence and his name was a
force of perhaps decisive potency in keeping the working classes on
the same side; so that mass meetings of unemployed laborers with
half-starving families resolved that they would rather starve alto-
gether than help to perpetuate slavery in America. He shares with
Richard Cobden the credit of having obtained free trade for Eng-
land: Bright's thrilling oratory was second only to Cobden's organ-
izing power in winning the victory, and both had the immense
weight of manufacturers opposing their own class. That he opposed
the game laws and favored electoral reform is a matter of course.
Mr. Bright entered on an active political career in 1839, when he
joined the Anti-Corn-Law League. He first became a member of
Parliament in 1843, and illustrates a most valuable feature of English
political practice. When a change of feeling in one place prevented.
his re-election, he selected another which was glad to honor itself by
having a great man represent it, so that the country was not robbed
of a statesman by a village faction; and there being no spoils sys-
tem, he did not have to waste his time in office-jobbing to keep his
seat. He sat first for Durham, then for Manchester, and finally for
Birmingham, remaining in public life over forty years; and never
had to make a "deal" or get any one an office in all that period.
He was in Mr. Gladstone's Cabinet from 1868 to 1870, and again
from 1873 to 1882. On the Home Rule question the two old friends.
and long co-workers divided; Mr. Bright, with more than half the
oldest and sincerest friends of liberty and haters of oppression in
England, holding the step to be political suicide for the British
Empire.
As an orator, Mr. Bright stood in a sense alone. He was direct
and logical; he carefully collected and massed his facts, and used
strong, homely Saxon English, and short crisp words; he was a
master of telling epigram whose force lay in its truth as much as in
its humor. Several volumes of his speeches have been published:
'On Public Affairs'; 'On Parliamentary Reform'; 'On Questions of
Public Policy'; 'On the American Question,' etc. His life has been
written by Gilchrist, Smith, Robertson, and others. He died March
27th, 1889.
## p. 2356 (#554) ###########################################
2356
JOHN BRIGHT
FROM THE SPEECH ON THE CORN LAWS (1843)
IT
T MUST not be supposed, because I wish to represent the inter-
est of the many, that I am hostile to the interest of the few.
But is it not perfectly certain that if the foundation of the
most magnificent building be destroyed and undermined, the
whole fabric itself is in danger? Is it not certain, also, that
the vast body of the people who form the foundation of the
social fabric, if they are suffering, if they are trampled upon, if
they are degraded, if they are discontented, if "their hands are
against every man, and every man's hands are against them," if
they do not flourish as well, reasonably speaking, as the classes
who are above them because they are richer and more power-
ful, --then are those classes as much in danger as the working
classes themselves?
There never was a revolution in any country which destroyed
the great body of the people. There have been convulsions of
a most dire character which have overturned old-established mon-
archies and have hurled thrones and sceptres to the dust. There
have been revolutions which have brought down most powerful
aristocracies, and swept them from the face of the earth forever,
but never was there a revolution yet which destroyed the people.
And whatever may come as a consequence of the state of things
in this country, of this we may rest assured: that the common
people, that the great bulk of our countrymen will remain and
survive the shock, though it may be that the Crown and the
aristocracy and the Church may be leveled with the dust, and
rise no more. In seeking to represent the working classes, and
in standing up for their rights and liberties, I hold that I am
also defending the rights and liberties of the middle and richer
classes of society. Doing justice to one class cannot inflict
injustice on any other class, and "justice and impartiality to all"
is what we all have a right to from government. And we have
a right to clamor; and so long as I have breath, so long will I
clamor against the oppression which I see to exist, and in favor
of the rights of the great body of the people.
What is the condition in which we are? I have already
spoken of Ireland. You know that hundreds of thousands meet
there, week after week, in various parts of the country, to pro-
claim to all the world the tyranny under which they suffer.
·
## p. 2357 (#555) ###########################################
JOHN BRIGHT
2357
You know that in South Wales, at this moment, there is an
insurrection of the most extraordinary character going on, and
that the Government is sending, day after day, soldiers and
artillery amongst the innocent inhabitants of that mountainous
country for the purpose of putting down the insurrection thereby
raised and carried on. You know that in the Staffordshire iron-
works almost all the workmen are now out and in want of
wages, from want of employment and from attempting to resist
the inevitable reduction of wages which must follow restriction
upon trade.
You know that in August last, Lancashire and
Yorkshire rose in peaceful insurrection to proclaim to the world,
and in face of Heaven, the wrongs of an insulted and oppressed
people. I know that my own neighborhood is unsettled and
uncomfortable. I know that in your own city your families are
suffering. Yes, I have been to your cottages and seen their
condition. Thanks to my canvass of Durham, I have been able
to see the condition of many honest and independent—or ought-
to-be-independent and industrious artisans. I have seen even
freemen of your city sitting, looking disconsolate and sad. Their
hands were ready to labor; their skill was ready to produce all
that their trade demanded. They were as honest and industrious
as any man in this assembly, but no man hired them. They
were in a state of involuntary idleness, and were driving fast to
the point of pauperism. I have seen their wives, too, with three
or four children about them- -one in the cradle, one at the
breast. I have seen their countenances, and I have seen the
signs of their sufferings. I have seen the emblems and symbols
of affliction such as I did not expect to see in this city. Ay!
and I have seen those little children who at not a distant day
will be the men and women of this city of Durham; I have
seen their poor little wan faces and anxious looks, as if the fur-
rows of old age were coming upon them before they had escaped
from the age of childhood. I have seen all this in this city, and
I have seen far more in the neighborhood from which I have
come. You have seen, in all probability, people from my neigh-
borhood walking your streets and begging for that bread which
the Corn Laws would not allow them to earn.
-
"Bread-taxed weaver, all can see
What the tax hath done for thee,
And thy children, vilely led,
## p. 2358 (#556) ###########################################
2358
JOHN BRIGHT
Singing hymns for shameful bread,
Till the stones of every street
Know their little naked feet. "
This is what the Corn Law does for the weavers of my neigh-
borhood, and for the weavers and artisans of yours.
FROM THE SPEECH ON INCENDIARISM IN IRELAND (1844)
HE great and all-present evil of the rural districts is this-
you have too many people for the work to be done, and you,
the landed proprietors, are alone responsible for this state
of things; and to speak honestly, I believe many of you know
it. I have been charged with saying out-of-doors that this House
is a club of land-owners legislating for land-owners. If I had
not said it, the public must long ago have found out that fact.
My honorable friend the member for Stockport on one occasion
proposed that before you passed a law to raise the price of bread,
you should consider how far you had the power to raise the rates
of wages. What did you say to that? You said that the laborers
did not understand political economy, or they would not apply to
Parliament to raise wages; that Parliament could not raise wages.
And yet the very next thing you did was to pass a law to raise
the price of produce of your own land, at the expense of the very
class whose wages you confessed your inability to increase.
What is the condition of the county of Suffolk? Is it not
notorious that the rents are as high as they were fifty years ago,
and probably much higher? But the return for the farmer's cap-
ital is much lower, and the condition of the laborer is very much
worse.
The farmers are subject to the law of competition, and
rents are thereby raised from time to time so as to keep their
profits down to the lowest point, and the laborers by the compe-
tition amongst them are reduced to the point below which life
cannot be maintained. Your tenants and laborers are being de-
voured by this excessive competition, whilst you, their magnani-
mous landlords, shelter yourselves from all competition by the
Corn Law yourselves have passed, and make the competition of
all other classes serve still more to swell your rentals. It was
for this object the Corn Law was passed, and yet in the face of
your countrymen you dare to call it a law for the protection of
native industry.
## p. 2359 (#557) ###########################################
JOHN BRIGHT
2359
Again, a rural police is kept up by the gentry; the far-
mers say for the sole use of watching game and frightening poach.
ers, for which formerly they had to pay watchers. Is this true,
or is it not? I say, then, you care everything for the rights-
and for something beyond the rights of your own property,
but you are oblivious to its duties. How many lives have been
sacrificed during the past year to the childish infatuation of pre-
serving game? The noble lord, the member for North Lan-
cashire, could tell of a gamekeeper killed in an affray on his
father's estate in that county. For the offense one man was
hanged, and four men are now on their way to penal colo-
nies. Six families are thus deprived of husband and father, that
this wretched system of game-preserving may be continued in a
country densely peopled as this is. The Marquis of Normanby's
gamekeeper has been murdered also, and the poacher who shot
him only escaped death by the intervention of the Home Secre-
tary. At Godalming, in Surrey, a gamekeeper has been mur-
dered; and at Buckhill, in Buckinghamshire, a person has recently
been killed in a poaching affray. This insane system is the cause
of a fearful loss of life; it tends to the ruin of your tenantry,
and is the fruitful cause of the demoralization of the peasantry.
But you are caring for the rights of property; for its most
obvious duties you have no concern. With such a policy, what
can you expect but that which is now passing before you?
It is the remark of a beautiful writer that "to have known
nothing but misery is the most portentous condition under which
human nature can start on its course. >> Has your agricultural
laborer ever known anything but misery? He is born in a
miserable hovel, which in mockery is termed a house or a home;
he is reared in penury; he passes a life of hopeless and unre-
quited toil, and the jail or the union house is before him as the
only asylum on this side of the pauper's grave. Is this the
result of your protection to native industry? Have you cared for
the laborer till, from a home of comfort, he has but a hovel for
shelter? and have you cherished him into starvation and rags? I
tell you what your boasted protection is—it is a protection of
native idleness at the expense of the impoverishment of native
industry.
## p. 2360 (#558) ###########################################
2360
JOHN BRIGHT
FROM THE SPEECH ON NON-RECOGNITION OF THE SOUTHERN
CONFEDERACY (1861)
I
ADVISE you, and I advise the people of England, to abstain
from applying to the United States doctrines and principles
which we never apply to our own case. At any rate, they
[the Americans] have never fought "for the balance of power »
in Europe. They have never fought to keep up a decaying
empire. They have never squandered the money of their people
in such a phantom expedition as we have been engaged in. And
now, at this moment, when you are told that they are going to
be ruined by their vast expenditure,-why, the sum that they
are going to raise in the great emergency of this grievous war
is not greater than what we raise every year during a time of
peace.
They say they are not going to liberate slaves. No; the
object of the Washington government is to maintain their own
Constitution and to act legally, as it permits and requires. No
man is more in favor of peace than I am; no man has
denounced war more than I have, probably, in this country;
few men in their public life have suffered more obloquy-I
had almost said, more indignity-in consequence of it. But I
cannot for the life of me see, upon any of those principles upon
which States are governed now,-I say nothing of the literal
word of the New Testament,-I cannot see how the state of
affairs in America, with regard to the United States government,
could have been different from what it is at this moment. We
had a Heptarchy in this country, and it was thought to be a
good thing to get rid of it, and have a united nation. If the
thirty-three or thirty-four States of the American Union can
break off whenever they like, I can see nothing but disaster and
confusion throughout the whole of that continent. I say that
the war, be it successful or not, be it Christian or not, be it
wise or not, is a war to sustain the government and to sustain
the authority of a great nation; and that the people of England,
if they are true to their own sympathies, to their own history,
and to their own great act of 1834, to which reference has
already been made, will have no sympathy with those who wish
to build up a great empire on the perpetual bondage of millions
of their fellow-men.
## p. 2361 (#559) ###########################################
JOHN BRIGHT
2361
FROM THE SPEECH ON THE STATE OF IRELAND (1866)
I
THINK I was told in 1849, as I stood in the burial ground at
Skibbereen, that at least four hundred people who had died
of famine were buried within the quarter of an
acre of
ground on which I was then looking. It is a country, too, from
which there has been a greater emigration by sea within a given
time than has been known at any time from any other country
in the world. It is a country where there has been, for genera-
tions past, a general sense of wrong, out of which has grown a
chronic state of insurrection; and at this very moment when I
speak, the general safeguard of constitutional liberty is with-
drawn, and we meet in this hall, and I speak here to-night,
rather by the forbearance and permission of the Irish executive
than under the protection of the common safeguards of the rights
and liberties of the people of the United Kingdom.
I venture to say that this is a miserable and a humiliating pict-
ure to draw of this country. Bear in mind that I am not speak-
ing of Poland suffering under the conquest of Russia. There is
a gentleman, now a candidate for an Irish county, who is very
great upon the wrongs of Poland; but I have found him always
in the House of Commons taking sides with that great party
which has systematically supported the wrongs of Ireland. I am
not speaking of Hungary, or of Venice as she was under the rule
of Austria, or of the Greeks under the dominion of the Turk;
but I am speaking of Ireland-part of the United Kingdom-
part of that which boasts itself to be the most civilized and the
most Christian nation in the world. I took the liberty recently,
at a meeting in Glasgow, to say that I believed it was impossible
for a class to govern a great nation wisely and justly. Now, in
Ireland there has been a field in which all the principles of the
Tory party have had their complete experiment and development.
You have had the country gentleman in all his power. You
have had any number of Acts of Parliament which the ancient
Parliament of Ireland or the Parliament of the United Kingdom
could give him. You have had the Established Church supported
by the law, even to the extent, not many years ago, of collecting
its revenues by the aid of military force. In point of fact, I
believe it would be impossible to imagine a state of things in
which the Tory party should have a more entire and complete
T
## p. 2362 (#560) ###########################################
2362
JOHN BRIGHT
opportunity for their trial than they have had within the limits.
of this island. And yet what has happened? This, surely: that
the kingdom has been continually weakened, that the harmony
of the empire has been disturbed, and that the mischief has
not been confined to the United Kingdom, but has spread to the
colonies.
I am told-you can answer it if I am wrong—that it is not
common in Ireland now to give leases to tenants, especially to
Catholic tenants. If that be so, then the security for the property
rests only upon the good feeling and favor of the owner of the
land; for the laws, as we
we know, have been made by the land-
owners, and many propositions for the advantage of the tenants
have unfortunately been too little considered by Parliament.
The result is that you have bad farming, bad dwelling-houses,
bad temper, and everything bad connected with the occupation
and cultivation of land in Ireland. One of the results-a result
the most appalling-is this, that your population is fleeing your
country and seeking refuge in a distant land. On this point I
wish to refer to a letter which I received a few days ago from a
most esteemed citizen of Dublin. He told me that he believed
that a very large portion of what he called the poor, amongst
Irishmen, sympathized with any scheme or any proposition that
was adverse to the Imperial Government. He said further that the
people here are rather in the country than of it, and that they
are looking more to America than they are looking to England.
I think there is a good deal in that. When we consider how many
Irishmen have found a refuge in America, I do not know how we
can wonder at that statement. You will recollect that when the
ancient Hebrew prophet prayed in his captivity, he prayed with
his window open towards Jerusalem. You know that the fol-
lowers of Mohammed, when they pray, turn their faces towards
Mecca. When the Irish peasant asks for food and freedom and
blessing, his eye follows the setting sun, the aspirations of his
heart reach beyond the wide Atlantic, and in spirit he grasps
hands with the great Republic of the West. If this be so, I say
then that the disease is not only serious, but it is desperate; but
desperate as it is, I believe there is a certain remedy for it if
the people and Parliament of the United Kingdom are willing to
apply it. .
I believe that at the root of a general discontent there is in
all countries a general grievance and general suffering. The
## p. 2363 (#561) ###########################################
JOHN BRIGHT
2363
surface of society is not incessantly disturbed without a cause.
I recollect in the poem of the greatest of Italian poets, he tells
us that as he saw in vision the Stygian lake, and stood upon its
banks, he observed the constant commotion upon the surface of
the pool, and his good instructor and guide explained to him the
cause of it:
--
"This, too, for certain know, that underneath
The water dwells a multitude, whose sighs
Into these bubbles make the surface heave,
As thine eye tells thee wheresoe'er it turn. "
And I say that in Ireland, for generations back, the misery
and the wrongs of the people have made their sign, and have
found a voice in constant insurrection and disorder. I have said
that Ireland is a country of many wrongs and of many sorrows.
Her past lies almost in shadow. Her present is full of anxiety
and peril. Her future depends on the power of her people to
substitute equality and justice for supremacy, and a generous
patriotism for the spirit of faction. In the effort now making
in Great Britain to create a free representation of the people you
have the deepest interest. The people never wish to suffer, and
they never wish to inflict injustice. They have no sympathy with
the wrong-doer, whether in Great Britain or in Ireland; and when
they are fairly represented in the Imperial Parliament, as I hope
they will one day be, they will speedily give an effective and
final answer to that old question of the Parliament of Kilkenny-
"How comes it to pass that the King has never been the richer
for Ireland? »
FROM THE SPEECH ON THE IRISH ESTABLISHED CHURCH
(1868)
I
AM one of those who do not believe that the Established
Church of Ireland-of which I am not a member-would
go to absolute ruin, in the manner of which many of its
friends are now so fearful. There was a paper sent to me this
morning, called 'An Address from the Protestants of Ireland to
their Protestant Brethren of Great Britain. ' It is dated «< 5,
Dawson Street," and is signed by "John Trant Hamilton, T. A.
Lefroy, and R. W. Gamble. " The paper is written in a fair and
## p. 2364 (#562) ###########################################
2364
JOHN BRIGHT
mild, and I would even say,- for persons who have these opin-
ions, in a kindly and just spirit. But they have been alarmed,
and I would wish, if I can, to offer them consolation. They say
they have no interest in protecting any abuses of the Established
Church, but they protest against their being now deprived of the
Church of their fathers. Now, I am quite of opinion that it
would be a most monstrous thing to deprive the Protestants of
the Church of their fathers; and there is no man in the world
who would more strenuously resist even any step in that direc-
tion than I would, unless it were Mr. Gladstone, the author of
the famous resolutions. The next sentence goes on to say, "We
ask for no ascendancy. " Having read that sentence, I think
that we must come to the conclusion that these gentlemen are
in a better frame of mind than we thought them to be in. I
can understand easily that these gentlemen are very sorry and
doubtful as to the depths into which they are to be plunged;
but I disagree with them in this- that I think there would still
be a Protestant Church in Ireland when all is done that Parlia-
ment has proposed to do. The only difference will be, that it
will not then be an establishment - that it will have no special
favor or grant from the State-that it will stand in relation to
the State just as your Church does, and just as the churches of
the majority of the people of Great Britain at this moment stand.
There will then be no Protestant bishops from Ireland to sit in
the House of Lords; but he must be the most enthusiastic Prot-
estant and Churchman who believes that there can be any ad-
vantage to his Church and to Protestantism generally in Ireland
from such a phenomenon.
-
## p. 2365 (#563) ###########################################
2365
BRILLAT-SAVARIN
(1755-1826)
B
RILLAT-SAVARIN was a French magistrate and legislator, whose
reputation as man of letters rests mainly upon a single
volume, his inimitable Physiologie du Goût. ' Although
writing in the present century, he was essentially a Frenchman of
the old régime, having been born in 1755 at Belley, almost on the
border-line of Savoy, where he afterwards gained distinction as an
advocate. In later life he regretted his native province chiefly for
its figpeckers, superior in his opinion to ortolans or robins, and for the
cuisine of the innkeeper Genin, where "the
old-timers of Belley used to gather to eat
chestnuts and drink the new white wine
known as vin bourru. »
After holding various minor offices in
his department, Savarin became mayor of
Belley in 1793; but the Reign of Terror
soon forced him to flee to Switzerland and
join the colony of French refugees at Lau-
sanne. Souvenirs of this period are fre-
quent in his 'Physiologie du Goût,' all
eminently gastronomic, as befits his sub-
ject-matter, but full of interest, as showing
his unfailing cheerfulness amidst the vicis-
situdes and privations of exile. He fled first to Dôle, to "obtain
from the Representative Prôt a safe-conduct, which was to save me
from going to prison and thence probably to the scaffold," and which
he ultimately owed to Madame Prôt, with whom he spent the even-
ing playing duets, and who declared, "Citizen, any one who cultivates
the fine arts as you do cannot betray his country! " It was not the
safe-conduct, however, but an unexpected dinner which he enjoyed
on his route, that made this a red-letter day to Savarin:-"What a
good dinner!
FREDRIKA BREMER
2341
first days of her stay at Axelholm; but she now became silent
and thoughtful, often absent; and some people thought that she
seemed less friendly than formerly towards the Candidate, but
somewhat more attentive to the Landed Proprietor, although she
constantly declined his invitation "to take a tour to Oestanvik. "
The evening after this explanation took place, Elise was
engaged with Jacobi in a lively conversation in the balcony.
"And if," said Jacobi, "if I endeavor to win her affections,
oh, tell me! would her parents, would her mother see it without
displeasure? Ah, speak openly with me; the happiness of my
life depends upon it! "
"You have my approval and my good wishes," answered Elise;
"I tell you now what I have often told my husband, that I should
very much like to call you my son! "
"Oh! " exclaimed Jacobi, deeply affected, falling on his knees
and pressing Elise's hand to his lips: "oh, that every act in my
life might prove my gratitude, my love -! "
At this moment Louise, who had been looking for her mother,
approached the balcony; she saw Jacobi's action and heard his
words. She withdrew quickly, as if she had been stung by a
serpent.
From this time a great change was more and more percept-
ible in her. Silent, shy, and very pale, she moved about like a
dreaming person in the merry circle at Axelholm, and willingly
agreed to her mother's proposal to shorten her stay at this place.
Jacobi, who was as much astonished as sorry at Louise's
sudden unfriendliness towards him, began to think the place was
somehow bewitched, and wished more than once to leave it.
A FAMILY PICTURE
From The Home'
HE family is assembled in the library; tea is just finished.
at the pressing request of Gabrielle and Petrea, lays
out the cards in order to tell the sisters their fortune. The
seems to have made up
Candidate seats himself beside her, and
his mind to be a little more cheerful.
looks more like a cathedral than ever.
enters, bows, blows his nose, and kisses the hand of his "gracious
aunt. ”
But then "the object »
The Landed Proprietor
## p. 2342 (#540) ###########################################
FREDRIKA BREMER
2342
Landed Proprietor - Very cold this evening; I think we shall
have frost.
Elise-It is a miserable spring; we have just read a melan-
choly account of the famine in the northern provinces; these
years of dearth are truly unfortunate.
Landed Proprietor-Oh yes, the famine up there. No, let us
talk of something else; that is too gloomy. I have had my peas
covered with straw. Cousin Louise, are you fond of playing
Patience? I am very fond of it myself; it is so composing. At
Oestanvik I have got very small cards for Patience; I am quite
sure you would like them, Cousin Louise.
The Landed Proprietor seats himself on the other side of
Louise. The Candidate is seized with a fit of curious shrugs.
Louise This is not Patience, but a little conjuring by means
of which I can tell future things. Shall I tell your fortune,
Cousin Thure?
――――
Landed Proprietor-Oh yes! do tell my fortune; but don't
tell me anything disagreeable. If I hear anything disagreeable
in the evening, I always dream of it at night. Tell me now
from the cards that I shall have a pretty little wife; - a wife
beautiful and amiable as Cousin Louise.
The Candidate (with an expression in his eyes as if he would
send the Landed Proprietor head-over-heels to Oestanvik)—I don't
know whether Miss Louise likes flattery.
Landed Proprietor (who takes no notice of his rival) — Cousin
Louise, are you fond of blue?
Louise Blue?
It is a pretty color; but I almost like green
-
better.
Landed Proprietor-Well, that's very droll; it suits exceed-
ingly well. At Oestanvik my drawing-room furniture is blue;
beautiful light-blue satin. But in my bedroom I have green
Cousin Louise, I believe really-
moreen.
The Candidate coughs as though he were going to be suffo-
cated, and rushes out of the room. Louise looks after him and
sighs, and afterwards sees in the cards so many misfortunes for
Cousin Thure that he is quite frightened. "The peas frosted! "-
"conflagration in the drawing-room"- and at last "a basket"
["the mitten "]. The Landed Proprietor declares still laughingly
that he will not receive "a basket. " The sisters smile and make
their remarks.
—
## p. 2343 (#541) ###########################################
2343
CLEMENS BRENTANO
(1778-1842)
HE intellectual upheaval in Germany at the beginning of this
century brought a host of remarkable characters upon the
literary stage, and none more gifted, more whimsical, more
winning than Clemens Brentano, the erratic son of a brilliant family.
Born September 8th, 1778, at Ehrenbreitstein, Brentano spent his
youth among the stimulating influences which accompanied the
renaissance of German culture. His grandmother, Sophie de la Roche,
had been the close friend of Wieland, and his mother the youthful
companion of Goethe. Clemens, after a vain attempt to follow in
the mercantile footsteps of his father, went to Jena, where he met
the Schlegels; and here his brilliant but unsteady literary career
began.
In 1803 he married the talented Sophie Mareau, but three years
later his happiness was terminated by her death. His next matri-
monial venture was, however, a failure: an elopement in 1808 with
the daughter of a Frankfort banker was quickly followed by a
divorce, and he thereafter led the uncontrolled life of an errant poet.
Among his early writings, published under the pseudonym of
'Marie,' were several satires and dramas and a novel entitled 'Godwi,'
which he himself called "a romance gone mad. " The meeting
with Achim von Arnim, who subsequently married his sister Bettina,
decided his fate: he embarked in literature once and for all in close
association with Von Arnim. Together they compiled a collection of
several hundred folk-songs of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eight-
eenth centuries, under the name of 'Des Knaben Wunderhorn' (The
Boy's Wonderhorn), 1806-1808. That so musical a people as the Ger-
mans should be masters of lyric poetry is but natural,-every long-
ing, every impression, every impulse gushes into song; and in 'Des
Knaben Wunderhorn' we hear the tuneful voices of a naïve race,
singing what they have seen or dreamed or felt during three hundred
years. The work is dedicated to Goethe, who wrote an almost
enthusiastic review of it for the Literary Gazette of Jena. ་་ Every
lover or master of musical art," he says, "should have this volume
upon his piano. "
The Wunderhorn' was greeted by the German public with ex-
traordinary cordiality. It was in fact an epoch-making work, the
pioneer in the new field of German folk poetry. It carried out in a
## p. 2344 (#542) ###########################################
2344
CLEMENS BRENTANO
purely national spirit the efforts which Herder had made in behalf of
the folk-songs of all peoples. It revealed the spirit of the time. 1806
was the year of the battle of Jena, and Germany in her hour of deep-
est humiliation gave ear to the encouraging voices from out her own
past. "The editors of the Wunderhorn,'" said their friend Görres,
"have deserved of their countrymen a civic crown, for having saved
from destruction what yet remained to be saved;" and on this civic
crown the poets' laurels are still green.
Brentano's contagious laughter may even now be heard re-echoing
through the pages of his book on The Philistine' (1811). His dra-
matic power is evinced in the broadly conceived play 'Die Gründung
Prags' (The Founding of Prague: 1815); but it is upon two stories,
told in the simple style of the folk-tale, that his widest popularity is
founded. 'Die Geschichte vom braven Casperl und der schönen
Annerl' (The Story of Good Casper and Pretty Annie) and his fable
of Gockel, Hinkel, und Gackeleia,' both of the year 1838, are still
an indispensable part of the reading of every German boy and girl.
Like his brilliant sister, Brentano is a fascinating figure in litera-
ture. He was amiable and winning, full of quips and cranks, and
with an inexhaustible fund of stories. Astonishing tales of advent-
ure, related with great circumstantiality of detail, and of which he
himself was the hero, played an important part in his conversation.
Tieck once said he had never known a better improvisatore than
Brentano, nor one who could "lie more gracefully. ”
When Brentano was forty years of age a total change came over
his life. The witty and fascinating man of the world was trans-
formed into a pious and gloomy ascetic. The visions of the stig-
matized nun of Dülmen, Katharina Emmerich, attracted him, and
he remained under her influence until her death in 1824. These vis-
ions he subsequently published as the Life of the Virgin Mary. '
The eccentricities of his later years bordered upon insanity. He
died in the Catholic faith in the year 1842.
## p. 2345 (#543) ###########################################
CLEMENS BRENTANO
THE NURSE'S WATCH
From The Boy's Wonderhorn ›
THE
HE moon it shines,
My darling whines;
The clock strikes twelve:- God cheer
The sick both far and near.
God knoweth all;
-
Mousy nibbles in the wall;
The clock strikes one:- - like day,
Dreams o'er thy pillow play.
The matin-bell
Wakes the nun in convent cell;
The clock strikes two:--they go
To choir in a row.
The wind it blows,
The cock he crows;
The clock strikes three: -the wagoner
In his straw bed begins to stir.
The steed he paws the floor,
Creaks the stable door;
The clock strikes four:-'tis plain
The coachman sifts his grain.
The swallow's laugh the still air shakes,
The sun awakes;
The clock strikes five:- the traveler must be gone,
He puts his stockings on.
The hen is clacking,
The ducks are quacking;
The clock strikes six:-awake, arise,
Thou lazy hag; come, ope thy eyes.
Quick to the baker's run;
The rolls are done;
The clock strikes seven:-
'Tis time the milk were in the oven.
Put in some butter, do,
And some fine sugar, too;
The clock strikes eight:-
Now bring my baby's porridge straight.
2345
Englished by Charles T. Brooks.
## p. 2346 (#544) ###########################################
2346
CLEMENS BRENTANO
THE CASTLE IN AUSTRIA
From The Boy's Wonderhorn >
HERE lies a castle in Austria,
Right goodly to behold,
Walled up with marble stones so fair,
With silver and with red gold.
TH
Therein lies captive a young boy,
For life and death he lies bound,
Full forty fathoms under the earth,
Midst vipers and snakes around.
His father came from Rosenberg,
Before the tower he went:-
"My son, my dearest son, how hard
Is thy imprisonment! "
-
"O father, dearest father mine,
So hardly I am bound,
Full forty fathoms under the earth,
'Midst vipers and snakes around! »
His father went before the lord:-
"Let loose thy captive to me!
I have at home three casks of gold,
And these for the boy I'll gi'e. "
"Three casks of gold, they help you not:
That boy, and he must die!
He wears round his neck a golden chain;
Therein doth his ruin lie. "
"And if he thus wear a golden chain,
He hath not stolen it; nay!
A maiden good gave it to him
For true love, did she say. "
They led the boy forth from the tower,
And the sacrament took he:-
"Help thou, rich Christ, from heaven high,
It's come to an end with me! "
They led him to the scaffold place,
Up the ladder he must go:—
## p. 2347 (#545) ###########################################
CLEMENS BRENTANO
2347
"O headsman, dearest headsman, do
But a short respite allow! "
"A short respite I must not grant;
Thou wouldst escape and fly:
Reach me a silken handkerchief
Around his eyes to tie. "
"Oh, do not, do not bind mine eyes!
I must look on the world so fine;
I see it to-day, then never more,
With these weeping eyes of mine. "
His father near the scaffold stood,
And his heart, it almost rends:-
"O son, O thou my dearest son,
Thy death I will avenge! "
-
"O father, dearest father mine!
My death thou shalt not avenge:
'Twould bring to my soul but heavy pains;
Let me die in innocence.
"It is not for this life of mine,
Nor for my body proud;
'Tis but for my dear mother's sake:
At home she weeps aloud. "
Not yet three days had passed away,
When an angel from heaven came down :
"Take ye the boy from the scaffold away;
Else the city shall sink under ground! "
And not six months had passed away,
Ere his death was avenged amain;
And upwards of three hundred men
For the boy's life were slain.
Who is it that hath made this lay,
Hath sung it, and so on?
That, in Vienna in Austria,
Three maidens fair have done.
## p. 2348 (#546) ###########################################
2348
ELISABETH BRENTANO (BETTINA VON ARNIM)
(1785-1859)
O PICTURE of German life at the beginning of this century
would be complete which did not include the distinguished
women who left their mark upon the time. Among these
Bettina von Arnim stands easily foremost. There was something
triumphant in her nature, which in her youth manifested itself in her
splendid enthusiasm for the two great geniuses who dominated her
life, Goethe and Beethoven,-- and which, in the lean years when
Germany was overclouded, maintained itself by an inexhaustible
optimism. Her merry willfulness and wit
covered a warm heart and a vigorous mind;
and both of her great idols understood her
and took her seriously.
Elisabeth Brentano was the daughter of
Goethe's friend, Maximiliane de la Roche.
She was born at Frankfort-on-the-Main in
1785, and was brought up after the death
of her mother under the somewhat peculiar
influence of the highly-strung Caroline von
Günderode. Through her filial intimacy
with Goethe's mother, she came to know
the poet; and out of their friendship grew
the correspondence which formed the basis
of Bettina's famous book, 'Goethe's Brief-
wechsel mit einem Kinde' (Goethe's Correspondence with a Child).
She attached herself with unbounded enthusiasm to Goethe, and he
responded with affectionate tact. To him Bettina was the embodi-
ment of the loving grace and willfulness of 'Mignon. '
ELISABETH BRENTANO
In 1811 these relations were interrupted, owing to Bettina's atti-
tude toward Goethe's wife. In the same year she married Achim
von Arnim, one of the most refined poets and noblest characters of
that brilliant circle. The marriage was an ideal one; each cherished
and delighted in the genius of the other, but in 1831 the death of
Von Arnim brought this happiness to an end. Goethe died in the
following year, and Germany went into mourning. Then in 1835
Bettina appeared before the world for the first time as an authoress,
in Goethe's Correspondence with a Child. ' The dithyrambic exalt-
ation, the unrestrained but beautiful enthusiasm of the book came
## p. 2349 (#547) ###########################################
ELISABETH BRENTANO
2349
like an electric shock. Into an atmosphere of spiritual stagnation,
these letters brought a fresh access of vitality and hope. Bettina's
old friendly relations with Goethe had been resumed later in life,
and in a letter written to her niece she gives a charming account of
the visit to the poet in 1824, which proved to be her last. This
letter first saw the light in 1896, and an extract from it has been
included below.
The inspiration which went out from Bettina's magnetic nature
was profound. She had her part in every great movement of her
time, from the liberation of Greece to the fight with cholera in Berlin.
During the latter, her devotion to the cause of the suffering poor in
Berlin opened her eyes to the miseries of the common people; and
she wrote a work full of indignant fervor, 'Dies Buch gehört dem
König' (This Book belongs to the King), in consequence of which her
welcome at the court of Frederick William IV. grew cool. A subse-
quent book, written in a similar vein, was suppressed. But Bettina's
love of the people, as of every cause in which she was interested,
was genuine and not to be quenched; she acted upon the maxim
once expressed by Emerson, "Every brave heart must treat society
as a child, and never allow it to dictate. " Emerson greatly admired
Bettina, and Louisa M. Alcott relates that she first made acquain-
tance with the famous 'Correspondence' when in her girlhood she
was left to browse in Emerson's library. Bettina's influence was
most keenly felt by the young, and she had the youth of Germany
at her feet. She died in 1859.
There is in Weimar a picture in which are represented the
literary men of the period, grouped as in Raphael's School of
Athens, with Goethe and Schiller occupying the centre. Upon the
broad steps which lead to the elevation where they are standing, is
the girlish figure of Bettina bending forward and holding a laurel
wreath in her hand. This is the position which she occupies in the
history of German literature.
DEDICATION: TO GOETHE
From 'Goethe's Correspondence with a Child'
THOU
HOU, who knowest love, and the refinement of sentiment, oh
how beautiful is everything in thee! How the streams of
life rush through thy sensitive heart, and plunge with force.
into the cold waves of thy time, then boil and bubble up till
mountain and vale flush with the glow of life, and the forests
stand with glistening boughs upon the shore of thy being, and
## p. 2350 (#548) ###########################################
ELISABETH BRENTANO
2350
all upon which rests thy glance is filled with happiness and life!
O God, how happy were I with thee! And were I winging my
flight far over all times, and far over thee, I would fold my
pinions and yield myself wholly to the domination of thine eyes.
Men will never understand thee, and those nearest to thee
will most thoroughly disown and betray thee; I look into the
future, and I hear them cry, "Stone him! " Now, when thine
own inspiration, like a lion, stands beside thee and guards thee,
vulgarity ventures not to approach thee. Thy mother said
recently, "The men to-day are all like Gerning, who always says,
'We, the superfluous learned';" and she speaks truly, for he is
superfluous. Rather be dead than superfluous! But I am not so,
for I am thine, because I recognize thee in all things. I know
that when the clouds lift themselves up before the sun-god, they
will soon be depressed by his fiery hand; I know that he endures
no shadow except that which his own fame seeks; the rest of
consciousness will overshadow thee. I know, when he descends
in the evening, that he will again appear in the morning with
golden front. Thou art eternal, therefore it is good for me to
be with thee.
When, in the evening, I am alone in my dark room, and the
neighbors' lights are thrown upon my wall, they sometimes light
up thy bust; or when all is silent in the city, here and there a
dog barks or a cock crows: I know not why, but it seems some-
thing beyond human to me; I know what I shall do to still my
pain.
I would fain speak with thee otherwise than with words; I
would fain press myself to thy heart. I feel that my soul is
aflame. How fearfully still is the air before the storm! So stand
now my thoughts, cold and silent, and my heart surges like the
Dear, dear Goethe! A reminiscence of thee breaks the
spell; the signs of fire and warfare sink slowly down in my sky,
and thou art like the in-streaming moonlight. Thou art great
and glorious, and better than all that I have ever known and
experienced up to this time. Thy whole life is so good!
sea.
## p. 2351 (#549) ###########################################
ELISABETH BRENTANO
TO GOETHE
2351
CASSEL, August 13th, 1807.
Hо can interpret and measure what is passing within me?
WHO I am happy now in remembrance of the past, which I
To my
scarcely was when that past was the present.
sensitive heart the surprise of being with thee, the coming and
going and returning in a few blessed days-this was all like
clouds flitting across my heaven; through my too near presence I
feared it might be darkened by my shadow, as it is ever darker
when it nears the earth; now, in the distance, it is mild and
lofty and ever clear.
I would fain press thy dear hand with both of mine to my
bosom, and say to thee, "How peace and content have come to
me since I have known thee! "
I know that the evening has not come when life's twilight
gathers in my heart: oh, would it were so! Would that I had
lived out my days, that my wishes and joys were fulfilled, and
that they could all be heaped upon thee, that thou mightst be
therewith decked and crowned as with evergreen bays.
When I was alone with thee on that evening I could not
comprehend thee: thou didst smile at me because I was moved,
and laughed at me because I wept; but why? And yet it was
thy laughter, the tone of thy laughter, which moved me to tears;
and I am content, and see, under the cloak of this riddle, roses
burst forth which spring alike from sadness and joy. Yes, thou
art right, prophet: I shall yet with light heart struggle up
through jest and mirth; I shall weary myself with struggling as
I did in my childhood (ah, it seems as if it were but yester-
day! ) when with the exuberance of joy I wandered through the
blossoming fields, pulling up the flowers by the roots and throw-
ing them into the water. But I wish to seek rest in a warm,
firm earnestness, and there at hand standest
hand standest thou, smiling.
prophet!
I say to thee yet once more: Whoever in this wide world
understands what is passing within me, who am so restful in
thee, so silent, so unwavering in my feeling? I could, like the
mountains, bear nights and days in the past without disturbing
thee in thy reflections. And yet when at times the wind bears
## p. 2352 (#550) ###########################################
ELISABETH BRENTANO
2352
the fragrance and the germs together from the blossoming world
up to the mountain heights, they will be intoxicated with delight
as I was yesterday. Then I loved the world, then I was as glad
as a gushing, murmuring spring in which the sun for the first
time shines.
Farewell, sublime one who blindest and intimidatest me!
From this steep rock upon which my love has in life-danger
ventured, I cannot clamber down. I cannot think of descending,
for I should break my neck in the attempt.
BETTINA'S LAST MEETING WITH GOETHE
From a Letter to her Niece in 1824, first published in 1896
N THE evening I was alone again with Goethe. Had any one
observed us, he would have had something to tell to poster-
ity. Goethe's peculiarities were exhibited to the full: first he
would growl at me, then to make it all up again he would caress
me, with the most flattering words. His bottle of wine he kept
in the adjoining room, because I had reproached him for his
drinking the night before: on some pretext or other he disap-
peared from the scene half a dozen times in order to drink a
glass.
I pretended to notice nothing; but at parting I told him
that twelve glasses of wine wouldn't hurt him, and that he had
had only six. "How do you know that so positively? " he said.
"I heard the gurgle of the bottle in the next room, and I heard
you drinking, and then you have betrayed yourself to me, as
Solomon in the Song of Songs betrayed himself to his beloved,
by your breath. "
"You are an arrant rogue," he said; "now
take yourself off," and he brought the candle to light me out.
But I sprang in front of him and knelt upon the threshold of
the room.
"Now I shall see if I can shut you in, and whether
you are a good spirit or an evil one, like the rat in Faust; I
kiss this threshold and bless it, for over it daily passes the most
glorious human spirit and my best friend. " "Over you and your
love I shall never pass," he answered, "it is too dear to me; and
around your spirit I creep so" (and he carefully paced around
the spot where I was kneeling), "for you are too artful, and it
is better to keep on good terms with you. " And so he dismissed
me with tears in his eyes. I remained standing in the dark
before his door, to gulp down my emotion. I was thinking that
## p. 2353 (#551) ###########################################
ELISABETH BRENTANO
2353
this door, which I had closed with my own hand, had separated
me from him in all probability forever. Whoever comes near
him must confess that his genius has partly passed into good-
ness; the fiery sun of his spirit is transformed at its setting into
a soft purple light.
IN GOETHE'S GARDEN
FROM this hillock all my world survey!
Yon vale, bedecked by nature's fairy fingers,
Where the still by-road picturesquely lingers,
The cottage white whose quaint charms grace the way-
These are the scenes that o'er my heart hold sway.
I from this hillock all my world survey!
Though I ascend to heights fair lands dividing,
Where stately ships I see the ocean riding,
While cities gird the view in proud array,
Naught prompts my heart's impulses to obey.
I from this hillock all my world survey!
And could I stand while Paradise descrying,
Still for these verdant meads should I be sighing,
Where thy dear roof-peaks skirt the verdant way:
Beyond these bounds my heart longs not to stray.
IV-148
―――――
## p. 2354 (#552) ###########################################
2354
JOHN BRIGHT
(1811-1889)
OHN BRIGHT was the modern representative of the ancient
Tribunes of the people or Demagogues (in the original and
perfectly honorable sense); and a full comparison of his
work and position with those of the Cleons or the Gracchi would
almost be an outline of the respective peoples, polities, and problems.
He was a higher type of man and politician than Cleon, -largely
because the English aristocracy is not an unpatriotic and unprincipled
clique like the Athenian, ready to use any weapon from murder down
or to make their country a province of a
foreign empire rather than give up their
class monopoly of power; but like his pro-
totype he was a democrat by nature as well
as profession, the welfare of the common
people at once his passion and his political
livelihood, full of faith that popular in-
stincts are both morally right and intellect-
ually sound, and all his own instincts and
most of his labors antagonistic to those of
the aristocracy. It is a phase of the same
fact to say that he also represented the
active force of religious feeling in politics,
as opposed to pure secular statesmanship.
The son of a Quaker manufacturer of Rochdale, England, and
born near that place November 16th, 1811, he began his public career
when a mere boy as a stirring and effective temperance orator, his
ready eloquence and intense earnestness prevailing over an ungrace-
ful manner and a bad delivery; he wrought all his life for popular
education and for the widest extension of the franchise; and being a
Quaker and a member of the Peace Society, he opposed all war on
principle, fighting the Crimean War bitterly, and leaving the Glad-
stone Cabinet in 1882 on account of the bombardment of Alexandria.
He was retired from the service of the public for some time on
account of his opposition to the Crimean War; but Mr. Gladstone,
who differed from him on this point, calls it the action of his life
most worthy of honor. He was perhaps the most warlike opponent
of war ever high in public life; the pugnacious and aggressive agita-
tor, pouring out floods of fiery oratory to the effect that nobody ought
to fight anybody, was a curious paradox.
JOHN BRIGHT
## p. 2355 (#553) ###########################################
JOHN BRIGHT
2355
He was by far the most influential English friend of the North in
the Civil War, and the magic of his eloquence and his name was a
force of perhaps decisive potency in keeping the working classes on
the same side; so that mass meetings of unemployed laborers with
half-starving families resolved that they would rather starve alto-
gether than help to perpetuate slavery in America. He shares with
Richard Cobden the credit of having obtained free trade for Eng-
land: Bright's thrilling oratory was second only to Cobden's organ-
izing power in winning the victory, and both had the immense
weight of manufacturers opposing their own class. That he opposed
the game laws and favored electoral reform is a matter of course.
Mr. Bright entered on an active political career in 1839, when he
joined the Anti-Corn-Law League. He first became a member of
Parliament in 1843, and illustrates a most valuable feature of English
political practice. When a change of feeling in one place prevented.
his re-election, he selected another which was glad to honor itself by
having a great man represent it, so that the country was not robbed
of a statesman by a village faction; and there being no spoils sys-
tem, he did not have to waste his time in office-jobbing to keep his
seat. He sat first for Durham, then for Manchester, and finally for
Birmingham, remaining in public life over forty years; and never
had to make a "deal" or get any one an office in all that period.
He was in Mr. Gladstone's Cabinet from 1868 to 1870, and again
from 1873 to 1882. On the Home Rule question the two old friends.
and long co-workers divided; Mr. Bright, with more than half the
oldest and sincerest friends of liberty and haters of oppression in
England, holding the step to be political suicide for the British
Empire.
As an orator, Mr. Bright stood in a sense alone. He was direct
and logical; he carefully collected and massed his facts, and used
strong, homely Saxon English, and short crisp words; he was a
master of telling epigram whose force lay in its truth as much as in
its humor. Several volumes of his speeches have been published:
'On Public Affairs'; 'On Parliamentary Reform'; 'On Questions of
Public Policy'; 'On the American Question,' etc. His life has been
written by Gilchrist, Smith, Robertson, and others. He died March
27th, 1889.
## p. 2356 (#554) ###########################################
2356
JOHN BRIGHT
FROM THE SPEECH ON THE CORN LAWS (1843)
IT
T MUST not be supposed, because I wish to represent the inter-
est of the many, that I am hostile to the interest of the few.
But is it not perfectly certain that if the foundation of the
most magnificent building be destroyed and undermined, the
whole fabric itself is in danger? Is it not certain, also, that
the vast body of the people who form the foundation of the
social fabric, if they are suffering, if they are trampled upon, if
they are degraded, if they are discontented, if "their hands are
against every man, and every man's hands are against them," if
they do not flourish as well, reasonably speaking, as the classes
who are above them because they are richer and more power-
ful, --then are those classes as much in danger as the working
classes themselves?
There never was a revolution in any country which destroyed
the great body of the people. There have been convulsions of
a most dire character which have overturned old-established mon-
archies and have hurled thrones and sceptres to the dust. There
have been revolutions which have brought down most powerful
aristocracies, and swept them from the face of the earth forever,
but never was there a revolution yet which destroyed the people.
And whatever may come as a consequence of the state of things
in this country, of this we may rest assured: that the common
people, that the great bulk of our countrymen will remain and
survive the shock, though it may be that the Crown and the
aristocracy and the Church may be leveled with the dust, and
rise no more. In seeking to represent the working classes, and
in standing up for their rights and liberties, I hold that I am
also defending the rights and liberties of the middle and richer
classes of society. Doing justice to one class cannot inflict
injustice on any other class, and "justice and impartiality to all"
is what we all have a right to from government. And we have
a right to clamor; and so long as I have breath, so long will I
clamor against the oppression which I see to exist, and in favor
of the rights of the great body of the people.
What is the condition in which we are? I have already
spoken of Ireland. You know that hundreds of thousands meet
there, week after week, in various parts of the country, to pro-
claim to all the world the tyranny under which they suffer.
·
## p. 2357 (#555) ###########################################
JOHN BRIGHT
2357
You know that in South Wales, at this moment, there is an
insurrection of the most extraordinary character going on, and
that the Government is sending, day after day, soldiers and
artillery amongst the innocent inhabitants of that mountainous
country for the purpose of putting down the insurrection thereby
raised and carried on. You know that in the Staffordshire iron-
works almost all the workmen are now out and in want of
wages, from want of employment and from attempting to resist
the inevitable reduction of wages which must follow restriction
upon trade.
You know that in August last, Lancashire and
Yorkshire rose in peaceful insurrection to proclaim to the world,
and in face of Heaven, the wrongs of an insulted and oppressed
people. I know that my own neighborhood is unsettled and
uncomfortable. I know that in your own city your families are
suffering. Yes, I have been to your cottages and seen their
condition. Thanks to my canvass of Durham, I have been able
to see the condition of many honest and independent—or ought-
to-be-independent and industrious artisans. I have seen even
freemen of your city sitting, looking disconsolate and sad. Their
hands were ready to labor; their skill was ready to produce all
that their trade demanded. They were as honest and industrious
as any man in this assembly, but no man hired them. They
were in a state of involuntary idleness, and were driving fast to
the point of pauperism. I have seen their wives, too, with three
or four children about them- -one in the cradle, one at the
breast. I have seen their countenances, and I have seen the
signs of their sufferings. I have seen the emblems and symbols
of affliction such as I did not expect to see in this city. Ay!
and I have seen those little children who at not a distant day
will be the men and women of this city of Durham; I have
seen their poor little wan faces and anxious looks, as if the fur-
rows of old age were coming upon them before they had escaped
from the age of childhood. I have seen all this in this city, and
I have seen far more in the neighborhood from which I have
come. You have seen, in all probability, people from my neigh-
borhood walking your streets and begging for that bread which
the Corn Laws would not allow them to earn.
-
"Bread-taxed weaver, all can see
What the tax hath done for thee,
And thy children, vilely led,
## p. 2358 (#556) ###########################################
2358
JOHN BRIGHT
Singing hymns for shameful bread,
Till the stones of every street
Know their little naked feet. "
This is what the Corn Law does for the weavers of my neigh-
borhood, and for the weavers and artisans of yours.
FROM THE SPEECH ON INCENDIARISM IN IRELAND (1844)
HE great and all-present evil of the rural districts is this-
you have too many people for the work to be done, and you,
the landed proprietors, are alone responsible for this state
of things; and to speak honestly, I believe many of you know
it. I have been charged with saying out-of-doors that this House
is a club of land-owners legislating for land-owners. If I had
not said it, the public must long ago have found out that fact.
My honorable friend the member for Stockport on one occasion
proposed that before you passed a law to raise the price of bread,
you should consider how far you had the power to raise the rates
of wages. What did you say to that? You said that the laborers
did not understand political economy, or they would not apply to
Parliament to raise wages; that Parliament could not raise wages.
And yet the very next thing you did was to pass a law to raise
the price of produce of your own land, at the expense of the very
class whose wages you confessed your inability to increase.
What is the condition of the county of Suffolk? Is it not
notorious that the rents are as high as they were fifty years ago,
and probably much higher? But the return for the farmer's cap-
ital is much lower, and the condition of the laborer is very much
worse.
The farmers are subject to the law of competition, and
rents are thereby raised from time to time so as to keep their
profits down to the lowest point, and the laborers by the compe-
tition amongst them are reduced to the point below which life
cannot be maintained. Your tenants and laborers are being de-
voured by this excessive competition, whilst you, their magnani-
mous landlords, shelter yourselves from all competition by the
Corn Law yourselves have passed, and make the competition of
all other classes serve still more to swell your rentals. It was
for this object the Corn Law was passed, and yet in the face of
your countrymen you dare to call it a law for the protection of
native industry.
## p. 2359 (#557) ###########################################
JOHN BRIGHT
2359
Again, a rural police is kept up by the gentry; the far-
mers say for the sole use of watching game and frightening poach.
ers, for which formerly they had to pay watchers. Is this true,
or is it not? I say, then, you care everything for the rights-
and for something beyond the rights of your own property,
but you are oblivious to its duties. How many lives have been
sacrificed during the past year to the childish infatuation of pre-
serving game? The noble lord, the member for North Lan-
cashire, could tell of a gamekeeper killed in an affray on his
father's estate in that county. For the offense one man was
hanged, and four men are now on their way to penal colo-
nies. Six families are thus deprived of husband and father, that
this wretched system of game-preserving may be continued in a
country densely peopled as this is. The Marquis of Normanby's
gamekeeper has been murdered also, and the poacher who shot
him only escaped death by the intervention of the Home Secre-
tary. At Godalming, in Surrey, a gamekeeper has been mur-
dered; and at Buckhill, in Buckinghamshire, a person has recently
been killed in a poaching affray. This insane system is the cause
of a fearful loss of life; it tends to the ruin of your tenantry,
and is the fruitful cause of the demoralization of the peasantry.
But you are caring for the rights of property; for its most
obvious duties you have no concern. With such a policy, what
can you expect but that which is now passing before you?
It is the remark of a beautiful writer that "to have known
nothing but misery is the most portentous condition under which
human nature can start on its course. >> Has your agricultural
laborer ever known anything but misery? He is born in a
miserable hovel, which in mockery is termed a house or a home;
he is reared in penury; he passes a life of hopeless and unre-
quited toil, and the jail or the union house is before him as the
only asylum on this side of the pauper's grave. Is this the
result of your protection to native industry? Have you cared for
the laborer till, from a home of comfort, he has but a hovel for
shelter? and have you cherished him into starvation and rags? I
tell you what your boasted protection is—it is a protection of
native idleness at the expense of the impoverishment of native
industry.
## p. 2360 (#558) ###########################################
2360
JOHN BRIGHT
FROM THE SPEECH ON NON-RECOGNITION OF THE SOUTHERN
CONFEDERACY (1861)
I
ADVISE you, and I advise the people of England, to abstain
from applying to the United States doctrines and principles
which we never apply to our own case. At any rate, they
[the Americans] have never fought "for the balance of power »
in Europe. They have never fought to keep up a decaying
empire. They have never squandered the money of their people
in such a phantom expedition as we have been engaged in. And
now, at this moment, when you are told that they are going to
be ruined by their vast expenditure,-why, the sum that they
are going to raise in the great emergency of this grievous war
is not greater than what we raise every year during a time of
peace.
They say they are not going to liberate slaves. No; the
object of the Washington government is to maintain their own
Constitution and to act legally, as it permits and requires. No
man is more in favor of peace than I am; no man has
denounced war more than I have, probably, in this country;
few men in their public life have suffered more obloquy-I
had almost said, more indignity-in consequence of it. But I
cannot for the life of me see, upon any of those principles upon
which States are governed now,-I say nothing of the literal
word of the New Testament,-I cannot see how the state of
affairs in America, with regard to the United States government,
could have been different from what it is at this moment. We
had a Heptarchy in this country, and it was thought to be a
good thing to get rid of it, and have a united nation. If the
thirty-three or thirty-four States of the American Union can
break off whenever they like, I can see nothing but disaster and
confusion throughout the whole of that continent. I say that
the war, be it successful or not, be it Christian or not, be it
wise or not, is a war to sustain the government and to sustain
the authority of a great nation; and that the people of England,
if they are true to their own sympathies, to their own history,
and to their own great act of 1834, to which reference has
already been made, will have no sympathy with those who wish
to build up a great empire on the perpetual bondage of millions
of their fellow-men.
## p. 2361 (#559) ###########################################
JOHN BRIGHT
2361
FROM THE SPEECH ON THE STATE OF IRELAND (1866)
I
THINK I was told in 1849, as I stood in the burial ground at
Skibbereen, that at least four hundred people who had died
of famine were buried within the quarter of an
acre of
ground on which I was then looking. It is a country, too, from
which there has been a greater emigration by sea within a given
time than has been known at any time from any other country
in the world. It is a country where there has been, for genera-
tions past, a general sense of wrong, out of which has grown a
chronic state of insurrection; and at this very moment when I
speak, the general safeguard of constitutional liberty is with-
drawn, and we meet in this hall, and I speak here to-night,
rather by the forbearance and permission of the Irish executive
than under the protection of the common safeguards of the rights
and liberties of the people of the United Kingdom.
I venture to say that this is a miserable and a humiliating pict-
ure to draw of this country. Bear in mind that I am not speak-
ing of Poland suffering under the conquest of Russia. There is
a gentleman, now a candidate for an Irish county, who is very
great upon the wrongs of Poland; but I have found him always
in the House of Commons taking sides with that great party
which has systematically supported the wrongs of Ireland. I am
not speaking of Hungary, or of Venice as she was under the rule
of Austria, or of the Greeks under the dominion of the Turk;
but I am speaking of Ireland-part of the United Kingdom-
part of that which boasts itself to be the most civilized and the
most Christian nation in the world. I took the liberty recently,
at a meeting in Glasgow, to say that I believed it was impossible
for a class to govern a great nation wisely and justly. Now, in
Ireland there has been a field in which all the principles of the
Tory party have had their complete experiment and development.
You have had the country gentleman in all his power. You
have had any number of Acts of Parliament which the ancient
Parliament of Ireland or the Parliament of the United Kingdom
could give him. You have had the Established Church supported
by the law, even to the extent, not many years ago, of collecting
its revenues by the aid of military force. In point of fact, I
believe it would be impossible to imagine a state of things in
which the Tory party should have a more entire and complete
T
## p. 2362 (#560) ###########################################
2362
JOHN BRIGHT
opportunity for their trial than they have had within the limits.
of this island. And yet what has happened? This, surely: that
the kingdom has been continually weakened, that the harmony
of the empire has been disturbed, and that the mischief has
not been confined to the United Kingdom, but has spread to the
colonies.
I am told-you can answer it if I am wrong—that it is not
common in Ireland now to give leases to tenants, especially to
Catholic tenants. If that be so, then the security for the property
rests only upon the good feeling and favor of the owner of the
land; for the laws, as we
we know, have been made by the land-
owners, and many propositions for the advantage of the tenants
have unfortunately been too little considered by Parliament.
The result is that you have bad farming, bad dwelling-houses,
bad temper, and everything bad connected with the occupation
and cultivation of land in Ireland. One of the results-a result
the most appalling-is this, that your population is fleeing your
country and seeking refuge in a distant land. On this point I
wish to refer to a letter which I received a few days ago from a
most esteemed citizen of Dublin. He told me that he believed
that a very large portion of what he called the poor, amongst
Irishmen, sympathized with any scheme or any proposition that
was adverse to the Imperial Government. He said further that the
people here are rather in the country than of it, and that they
are looking more to America than they are looking to England.
I think there is a good deal in that. When we consider how many
Irishmen have found a refuge in America, I do not know how we
can wonder at that statement. You will recollect that when the
ancient Hebrew prophet prayed in his captivity, he prayed with
his window open towards Jerusalem. You know that the fol-
lowers of Mohammed, when they pray, turn their faces towards
Mecca. When the Irish peasant asks for food and freedom and
blessing, his eye follows the setting sun, the aspirations of his
heart reach beyond the wide Atlantic, and in spirit he grasps
hands with the great Republic of the West. If this be so, I say
then that the disease is not only serious, but it is desperate; but
desperate as it is, I believe there is a certain remedy for it if
the people and Parliament of the United Kingdom are willing to
apply it. .
I believe that at the root of a general discontent there is in
all countries a general grievance and general suffering. The
## p. 2363 (#561) ###########################################
JOHN BRIGHT
2363
surface of society is not incessantly disturbed without a cause.
I recollect in the poem of the greatest of Italian poets, he tells
us that as he saw in vision the Stygian lake, and stood upon its
banks, he observed the constant commotion upon the surface of
the pool, and his good instructor and guide explained to him the
cause of it:
--
"This, too, for certain know, that underneath
The water dwells a multitude, whose sighs
Into these bubbles make the surface heave,
As thine eye tells thee wheresoe'er it turn. "
And I say that in Ireland, for generations back, the misery
and the wrongs of the people have made their sign, and have
found a voice in constant insurrection and disorder. I have said
that Ireland is a country of many wrongs and of many sorrows.
Her past lies almost in shadow. Her present is full of anxiety
and peril. Her future depends on the power of her people to
substitute equality and justice for supremacy, and a generous
patriotism for the spirit of faction. In the effort now making
in Great Britain to create a free representation of the people you
have the deepest interest. The people never wish to suffer, and
they never wish to inflict injustice. They have no sympathy with
the wrong-doer, whether in Great Britain or in Ireland; and when
they are fairly represented in the Imperial Parliament, as I hope
they will one day be, they will speedily give an effective and
final answer to that old question of the Parliament of Kilkenny-
"How comes it to pass that the King has never been the richer
for Ireland? »
FROM THE SPEECH ON THE IRISH ESTABLISHED CHURCH
(1868)
I
AM one of those who do not believe that the Established
Church of Ireland-of which I am not a member-would
go to absolute ruin, in the manner of which many of its
friends are now so fearful. There was a paper sent to me this
morning, called 'An Address from the Protestants of Ireland to
their Protestant Brethren of Great Britain. ' It is dated «< 5,
Dawson Street," and is signed by "John Trant Hamilton, T. A.
Lefroy, and R. W. Gamble. " The paper is written in a fair and
## p. 2364 (#562) ###########################################
2364
JOHN BRIGHT
mild, and I would even say,- for persons who have these opin-
ions, in a kindly and just spirit. But they have been alarmed,
and I would wish, if I can, to offer them consolation. They say
they have no interest in protecting any abuses of the Established
Church, but they protest against their being now deprived of the
Church of their fathers. Now, I am quite of opinion that it
would be a most monstrous thing to deprive the Protestants of
the Church of their fathers; and there is no man in the world
who would more strenuously resist even any step in that direc-
tion than I would, unless it were Mr. Gladstone, the author of
the famous resolutions. The next sentence goes on to say, "We
ask for no ascendancy. " Having read that sentence, I think
that we must come to the conclusion that these gentlemen are
in a better frame of mind than we thought them to be in. I
can understand easily that these gentlemen are very sorry and
doubtful as to the depths into which they are to be plunged;
but I disagree with them in this- that I think there would still
be a Protestant Church in Ireland when all is done that Parlia-
ment has proposed to do. The only difference will be, that it
will not then be an establishment - that it will have no special
favor or grant from the State-that it will stand in relation to
the State just as your Church does, and just as the churches of
the majority of the people of Great Britain at this moment stand.
There will then be no Protestant bishops from Ireland to sit in
the House of Lords; but he must be the most enthusiastic Prot-
estant and Churchman who believes that there can be any ad-
vantage to his Church and to Protestantism generally in Ireland
from such a phenomenon.
-
## p. 2365 (#563) ###########################################
2365
BRILLAT-SAVARIN
(1755-1826)
B
RILLAT-SAVARIN was a French magistrate and legislator, whose
reputation as man of letters rests mainly upon a single
volume, his inimitable Physiologie du Goût. ' Although
writing in the present century, he was essentially a Frenchman of
the old régime, having been born in 1755 at Belley, almost on the
border-line of Savoy, where he afterwards gained distinction as an
advocate. In later life he regretted his native province chiefly for
its figpeckers, superior in his opinion to ortolans or robins, and for the
cuisine of the innkeeper Genin, where "the
old-timers of Belley used to gather to eat
chestnuts and drink the new white wine
known as vin bourru. »
After holding various minor offices in
his department, Savarin became mayor of
Belley in 1793; but the Reign of Terror
soon forced him to flee to Switzerland and
join the colony of French refugees at Lau-
sanne. Souvenirs of this period are fre-
quent in his 'Physiologie du Goût,' all
eminently gastronomic, as befits his sub-
ject-matter, but full of interest, as showing
his unfailing cheerfulness amidst the vicis-
situdes and privations of exile. He fled first to Dôle, to "obtain
from the Representative Prôt a safe-conduct, which was to save me
from going to prison and thence probably to the scaffold," and which
he ultimately owed to Madame Prôt, with whom he spent the even-
ing playing duets, and who declared, "Citizen, any one who cultivates
the fine arts as you do cannot betray his country! " It was not the
safe-conduct, however, but an unexpected dinner which he enjoyed
on his route, that made this a red-letter day to Savarin:-"What a
good dinner!
