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## p. 14221 (#415) ##########################################

14221
CHARLES SUMNER
(1811-1874)
HARLES SUMNER was born in Boston, January 6th, 1811. His
name is inscribed on the roll of men of letters; but it is
e indeed writ larger, and more familiarly known, upon a
somewhat different page. There can be no doubt, however, that the
effective orator has an honored place among literary artists. In fact
some men, weary of fictitious pathos and useless tears, might be
tempted to give the highest honors, even in the art of expression,
not to epic poet or romancer, but to him who in a vital crisis sways
a doubting Senate or a reluctant mob to heroic decision and action.
And this learned jurist, this many-sided indefatigable scholar, this
puritanic reformer and persistent doctrinaire, was an inspiring orator,
a powerful preacher of political ethics and civic righteousness.
Perhaps there has been no more typical example of that earlier
Bostonian culture, with its high standards, than Charles Sumner. He
knew nothing of such early hardships, such a struggle for intellectual
life, as Lincoln's. He followed his grandfather and his father from
the best classical schools to Harvard College, where he graduated in
1830. When he came of age he was already Judge Story's favorite
pupil. At twenty-five he was widely known, even to European
scholars, through his learned essays in the Jurist, and had pub-
lished several volumes of legal Reports' which are still standard
works of reference. His interest was deepest in the large problems
of international law. In England, thanks to Judge Story's enthusias-
tic letters and his own modest worth, he had such popularity and
social success no young American of private station had ever
enjoyed. He was repeatedly invited to a seat beside the judges in
the highest English courts.
From his three happy years in England, France, Italy, and Ger-
many (1837-1840), he returned to the rather uncongenial and un-
remunerative practice of law in his native Boston. He was not only
learned in history and kindred fields, but a trained connoisseur in
music and art as well. Naturally he was one of the favorites in
the brilliant circle centring about the Ticknors. His lifelong friend-
ships with Longfellow, and others of the group, were already firmly
knit. A casual remark of his at this period indicates an ambition to
become some day president of Harvard College. Judge Story's dying
as


## p. 14222 (#416) ##########################################

14222
CHARLES SUMNER
(
desire was that Charles Sumner should fill his chair in the Harvard
Law School.
But in that very year, this industrious many-sided scholar had sud-
denly discovered the sterner purpose for which his life had thus far
been the preparation. He was invited to deliver the Fourth of July
oration, in the presence of the citizen militia, on the eve of the war
of conquest against Mexico. His speech, on "The True Grandeur of
Nations,' was a fervent protest against all war as a survival of bar-
barism.
In the next autumn - eight years later than his old schoolmate
Phillips — he plunged into the Abolition agitation. His speech in
November 1845 at once gave him a leading place in the political
wing of the movement. The social ostracism and ridicule he had to
face cannot have disturbed his lofty soul. The partial abandonment
of his cherished studies no doubt cost him an inward struggle. But
there was no hesitation, when the call grew clear to him.
« ( Forego thy dreams of lettered ease;
Lay thou the scholar's promise by:
The rights of man are more than these. )
He heard, and answered: Here am I. ) »
It was in 1851 that a fusion of Free-Soilers and Democrats made
Sumner United States Senator from Massachusetts. He succeeded
Webster, and Clay left the Senate on the day Sumner entered it.
Mr. Carl Schurz makes effective use of this dramatic coincidence in
his noble Eulogy.
Sumner held his seat in the Senate until his death; his chair be-
ing kept vacant by his State for three years during his slow recovery
from the famous assault on him in his seat in the Senate chamber,
by Preston Smith Brooks of South Carolina. His assailant rained
blows upon his head with a bludgeon, while his victim was trying to
extricate himself from his seat until he fell senseless and bloody upon
the floor.
Through all changing conditions, almost single-handed at first, then
as leader of a triumphant party, again alienated from nearly all his
old associates, Sumner advocated always the ideal rights of man, the
cause of the weak against the strong. He had no conception of pol-
itic delay, of concealment, of compromise. He was not a practical
legislator even. Very few measures were enacted into law in the
form in which he presented them. He had in large measure the
scornful intolerance of the devoted reformer. Even as a preacher,
his lack of humor or wit would have seemed a heavy handicap. Yet
he was on the one hand the most welcome guest of gentle, schol-
arly Longfellow; and on the other the favorite counselor of shrewd,


## p. 14223 (#417) ##########################################

CHARLES SUMNER
14223
humorous, self-taught Abraham Lincoln, who, with all his sure-footed
caution, never chafed under Mr. Sumner's impetuous advocacy of the
most advanced ideal measures. Perhaps no civilian, save Lincoln him-
self, molded in so large measure the issues of that most vital crisis in
our national history.
From the fifteen stately volumes that record Charles Sumner's
life work, it would hardly be possible to select a page without some
allusion to the cause to which that life was so freely given. It has
seemed desirable for a literary work to select chiefly from some of
his other utterances, like the early Phi Beta Kappa oration at Har-
vard, commemorating four friends then recently departed.
There is an important biography of Sumner by his friend and
literary executor, Edward L. Pierce. The best brief summary of his
career is the Eulogy delivered at Boston by Senator Schurz. Besides
the exquisite dirge written for his friend's funeral, the poet Longfel-
low includes Sumner in the little group of "Three Friends) to whom
a sheaf of sonnets is devoted. Whittier also greeted repeatedly in
generous verse his fellow-warrior and beloved comrade.
IN TIME OF PEACE PREPARE FOR WAR
T
He sentiment that “In time of peace we must prepare for
war,” has been transmitted from distant ages when brute
force prevailed. It is the terrible inheritance, damnosa
hæreditas, which painfully reminds the people of our day of their
relations with the past. It belongs to the rejected dogmas of
barbarism. It is the companion of those harsh rules of tyranny
by which the happiness of the many has been offered up to the
propensities of the few. It is the child of suspicion and the fore-
runner of violence. Having in its favor the almost uninterrupted
usage of the world, it possesses a hold on popular opinion which
is not easily unloosed. And yet the conscientious soul cannot fail,
on careful observation, to detect its mischievous fallacy,- at least
among Christian States in the present age: a fallacy the most
costly the world has witnessed; which dooms nations to annual
tributes, in comparison with which all that have been extorted by
conquests are as the widow's mite by the side of Pharisaical con-
tributions. So true is what Rousseau said, and Guizot has since
repeated, that "A bad principle is far worse than a bad fact: »
for the operations of the one are finite, while those of the other
are infinite.


## p. 14224 (#418) ##########################################

14224
CHARLES SUMNER
I speak of this principle with earnestness; for I believe it to
be erroneous and false, founded in ignorance and barbarism, un-
worthy of an age of light, and disgraceful to Christians. I have
called it a principle; but it is a mere prejudice,- sustained by
vulgar example only, and not by lofty truth,-in obeying which
we imitate the early mariners, who steered from headland to
headland and hugged the shore, unwilling to venture upon the
broad ocean, where their guide was the luminaries of heaven.
Dismissing from our minds the actual usage of nations on the
one side and the considerations of economy on the other, let us
regard these preparations for war in the unclouded light of
reason, in a just appreciation of the nature of man, and in the
injunctions of the highest truth; and we cannot hesitate to brand
them as pernicious. They are pernicious on two grounds; and
whoso would vindicate them must satisfactorily answer these ob-
jections: first, because they inflame the people who make them,
exciting them to deeds of violence, otherwise alien to their minds;
and secondly, because, having their origin in the low motive of
distrust and hate, they inevitably, by a sure law of the human
mind, excite a corresponding feeling in other nations. Thus they
are, in fact, not the preservers of peace, but the provokers of
war.
In illustration of the first of these objections, it will occur to
every inquirer, that the possession of power is always in itself
dangerous, that it tempts the purest and highest natures to
self-indulgence, that it can rarely be enjoyed without abuse; nor
is the power to employ force in war, an exception to this law.
History teaches that the nations possessing the greatest arma-
ments have always been the most belligerent; while the feebler
powers have enjoyed for a longer period the blessings of peace.
The din of war resounds throughout more than seven hundred
years of Roman history, with only two short lulls of repose;
while smaller States, less potent in arms, and without the excite-
ment to quarrels on this account, have enjoyed long eras of peace.
It is not in the history of nations only that we find proofs of
this law. Like every moral principle, it applies equally to indi-
viduals. The experience of private life in all ages confirms it.
The wearing of arms has always been a provocative to combat.
It has excited the spirit and furnished the implements of strife.
Reverting to the progress of society in modern Europe, we find
that the odious system of private quarrels, of hostile meetings


## p. 14225 (#419) ##########################################

CHARLES SUMNER
14225
use of
even in the street, continued so long as men persevered in the
habit of wearing arms. Innumerable families were thinned by
death received in these hasty and unpremeditated encounters;
and the lives of scholars and poets were often exposed to their
rude chances. Marlowe, “with all his rare learning and wit,” per-
ished ignominiously under the weapon of an unknown adversary;
and Savage, whose genius and misfortune inspired the friendship
and the eulogies of Johnson, was tried for murder committed in
a sudden broil. “ The expert swordsman,” says Mr. Jay, “the
practiced marksman, is ever more ready to engage in personal
combats than the man who is unaccustomed to the
deadly weapons. In those portions of our country where it is
supposed essential to personal safety to go armed with pistols
and bowie knives, mortal affrays are so frequent as to excite but
little attention, and to secure, with rare exceptions, impunity to
the murderer; whereas at the North and East, where we are un-
provided with such facilities for taking life, comparatively few
murders of the kind are perpetrated. We might, indeed, safely
submit the decision of the principle we are discussing to the cal-
culations of pecuniary interest. Let two men, equal in age and
health, apply for an insurance on their lives, -one known to be
ever armed to defend his honor and his life against every assail-
ant, and the other a meek, unresisting Quaker: can we doubt
for a moment which of these men would be deemed by the
insurance company most likely to reach a good old age ? ”
The second objection is founded on that law of the human
mind in obedience to which the sentiment of distrust or hate
of which these preparations are the representatives — must excite
a corresponding sentiment in others. This law is a part of the
unalterable nature of man, recognized in early ages, though un-
happily too rarely made the guide to peaceful intercourse among
nations. It is an expansion of the old Horatian adage, “Si vis
me flere, dolendum est primum ipsi tibi” (If you wish me to
weep, you must yourself first weep). Nobody can question its
force or its applicability; nor is it too much to say that it dis-
tinctly declares that military preparations by one nation, in time
of professed peace, must naturally prompt similar preparations by
other nations, and quicken everywhere within the circle of their
influence the spirit of war. So are we all knit together, that the
feelings in our own bosoms awaken corresponding feelings in the
bosoms of others; as harp answers to harp in its softest vibra-
tions; as deep responds to deep in the might of its passions.
XXIV-890


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14226
CHARLES SUMNER
What within us is good invites the good in our brother, -gen-
erosity begets generosity; love wins love; peace secures peace:
while all within us that is bad challenges the bad in our brother,
- distrust engenders distrust; hate provokes hate; war arouses
war.
Life is full of illustrations of this beautiful law. Even the
miserable maniac, in whose mind the common rules of conduct
are overthrown, confesses its overruling power; and the vacant
stare of madness may be illumined by a word of love. The wild
beasts confess it; and what is the story of Orpheus, whose music
drew in listening rapture the lions and panthers of the forest,
but an expression of its prevailing influence? It speaks also in
the examples of literature. And here, at the risk of protracting
this discussion, I am tempted to glance at some of these instruct-
ive instances, - hoping, however, not to seem to attach undue
meaning to them, and especially disclaiming any conclusions from
them beyond the simple law which they illustrate.
Looking back to the early dawn of the world, one of the most
touching scenes which we behold, illumined by that auroral light,
is the peaceful visit of the aged Priam to the tent of Achilles to
entreat the body of his son. The fierce combat has ended in the
death of Hector, whose unhonored corse the bloody Greek has
already trailed behind his chariot. The venerable father, after
twelve days of grief, is moved to efforts to regain the remains of
the Hector he had so dearly loved. He leaves his lofty cedarn
chamber, and with a single aged attendant, unarmed, repairs to
the Grecian camp by the side of the distant sounding sea. Enter-
ing alone, he finds Achilles within his tent, in the company of
two of his chiefs. Grasping his knees, he kisses those terrible
homicidal hands which had taken the life of his son. The heart
of the inflexible, the angry, the inflamed Achilles, touched by the
sight which he beholds, responds to the feelings of Priam. He
takes the suppliant by the hand, seats him by his side, consoles
his grief, refreshes his weary body, and concedes to the prayers
of a weak, unarmed old man, what all Troy in arms could not
win. In this scene, which fills a large part of the book of the
Iliad, the poet with unconscious power has presented a picture of
the omnipotence of that law of our nature making all mankind
of kin, in obedience to which no word of kindness, no act of
confidence, falls idly to the earth.
Among the legendary passages of Roman history, perhaps
none makes a deeper impression than that scene after the Roman


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CHARLES SUMNER
14227
youth had been consumed at Allia, and the invading Gauls under
Brennus had entered the city; where we behold the venerable
senators of the republic - too old to flee, and careless of surviv-
ing the Roman name seated each on his curule chair in a
temple, unarmed, looking, as Livy says, more august than mor-
tal, and with the majesty of the gods. The Gauls gaze on them
as upon sacred images; and the hand of slaughter, which had
raged through the streets of Rome, is stayed by the sight of an
assembly of unarmed men. At length a Gaul approaches, and
with his hands gently strokes the silver beard of a senator,
who, indignant at the license, smites the barbarian with his ivory
staff; which was the signal for general vengeance. Think you
that a band of savages could have slain these senators, if the
appeal to force had not first been made by one of their own
number? This story, though recounted by Livy, and also by
Plutarch, is properly repudiated by Niebuhr as a legend; but it
is none the less interesting, as showing the law by which hostile
feelings are necessarily aroused or subdued. The heart of man
confesses that the Roman senator provoked death for himself
and his associates.
Other instances present themselves. An admired picture by
Virgil, in his melodious epic, represents a person venerable for
piety and deserts, assuaging by words alone a furious populace
which had just broken into sedition and outrage. Guizot, in his
History of French Civilization,' has preserved a similar instruct-
ive example of the effect produced by an unarmed man, in an
illiterate epoch, who, employing the word instead of the sword,
subdued an angry multitude. And surely no reader of that
noble historical romance the Promessi Sposi' can forget that
finest scene, where Fra Cristoforo, in an age of violence, after
slaying a comrade in a broil, in unarmed penitence seeks the
presence of the family and retainers of his victim, and by his
dignified gentleness awakens the admiration of those already
mad with the desire of vengeance. Another example, made
familiar by recent translations of Frithiof's Saga,' the Swedish
epic, is more emphatic. The scene is a battle. Frithiof is in
deadly combat with Atlé, when the falchion of the latter breaks.
Throwing away his own weapon, he says:
« Swordless foeman's life
Ne'er dyed this gallant blade. ”


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14228
CHARLES SUMNER
The two champions now close in mutual clutch; they hug like
bears, says the poet: ---
« 'Tis o'er: for Frithiof's matchless strength
Has felled his ponderous size;
And 'neath that knee, at giant length,
Supine the Viking lies.
But fails my sword, thou Berserk swart! )
The voice rang far and wide,
Its point should pierce thy inmost heart,
Its hilt should drink the tide. )
(Be free to lift the weaponed hand,'
Undaunted Atlé spoke:
'Hence, fearless quest thy distant brand !
Thus I abide the stroke. ) »
(
Frithiof regains his sword, intent to close the dread debate,
while his adversary awaits the stroke; but his heart responds to
the generous courage of his foe, — he cannot injure one who has
shown such confidence in him:
« This quelled his ire, this checked his arm,
Outstretched the hand of peace. ”
SOME CHANGES IN MODERN LIFE
A
USPICIOUS omens from the past and the present cheer us for
the future. The terrible wars of the French Revolution
were the violent rending of the body which preceded the
exorcism of the fiend. Since the morning stars first sang to-
gether, the world has not witnessed a peace so harmonious and
enduring as that which now blesses the Christian nations. Great
questions between them, fraught with strife, and in another age
sure heralds of war, are now determined by mediation or arbitra-
tion. Great political movements, which only a few short years
ago must have led to forcible rebellion, are now conducted by
peaceful discussion.
Literature, the press, and various societies,
all join in the holy work of inculcating good-will to man. The
spirit of humanity now pervades the best writings, whether the
elevated philosophical inquiries of the Vestiges of Creation,'
the ingenious but melancholy moralizings of the Story of a
Feather,' or the overflowing raillery of Punch. Nor can the


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CHARLES SUMNER
14229
breathing thought and burning word of poet or orator have a
higher inspiration. Genius is never so Promethean as when it
bears the heavenly fire of love to the hearths of men.
In the last age, Dr. Johnson uttered the detestable sentiment
that he liked “a good hater. ” The man of this age must say
that he likes “a good lover. ” Thus reversing the objects of re-
gard, he follows a higher wisdom and a purer religion than the
renowned moralist knew. He recognizes that peculiar Christian
sentiment, the brotherhood of mankind, destined soon to become
the decisive touchstone of all human institutions. He confesses
the power of love, destined to enter more and more into all the
concerns of life. And as love is more heavenly than hate, so
must its influence redound more to the true glory of man, and to
his acceptance with God. A Christian poet — whose few verses
bear him with unflagging wing on his immortal flight — has
joined this sentiment with prayer. Thus he speaks in words of
uncommon pathos and power:
“He prayeth well who loveth well
Both man and bird and beast.
“He prayeth best who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God, who loveth us,
He made and loveth all. ”
>
Surely the ancient law of hate is yielding to the law of love.
It is seen in the manifold labors of philanthropy, and in the
voyages of charity. It is seen in the institutions for the insane,
for the blind, for the deaf and dumb, for the poor, for the out-
cast,- in the generous efforts to relieve those who are in prison,
- in the public schools, opening the gates of knowledge to all
the children of the land. It is seen in the diffusive amenities of
social life, and in the increasing fellowship of nations.
It is seen
in the rising opposition to slavery and to war.
There are yet other special auguries of this great change,
auspicating, in the natural progress of man, the abandonment of
all international preparations for war. To these I allude briefly,
but with a deep conviction of their significance.
Look at the past, and observe the change in dress. Down
to a period quite recent, the sword was the indispensable com-
panion of the gentleman, wherever he appeared, whether in the
street or in society; but he would be thought a madman or a
.


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14230
CHARLES SUMNER
bully who should wear it now. At an earlier period the armor
of complete steel was the habiliment of the knight. From the
picturesque sketch by Sir Walter Scott in the Lay of the Last
Minstrel,' we may learn the barbarous constraint of this costume:
« Ten of them were sheathed in steel,
With belted sword, and spur on heel;
They quitted not the harness bright,
Neither by day, nor yet by night;
They lay down to rest
With corslet laced,
Pillowed on buckler cold and hard;
They carved at the meal
With gloves of steel,
And they drunk the red wine through the helmet barred. ”
But this is all changed now.
Observe also the change in architecture and in domestic life.
The places once chosen for castles or houses were in savage,
inaccessible retreats, where the massive structure was reared,
destined to repel attacks and to inclose its inhabitants. Even
monasteries and churches were fortified, and girdled by towers,
ramparts, and ditches; while a child was often stationed as a
watchman, to observe what passed at a distance, and announce
the approach of an enemy. The homes of peaceful citizens in
towns were castellated, often without so much as an aperture
for light near the ground, but with loop-holes through which the
shafts of the crossbow might be aimed. From a letter of Mar-
garet Paston, in the time of Henry VII. of England, I draw a
curious and authentic illustration of the armed life of that period.
Addressing in dutiful phrase her “right worshipful husband," she
asks him to procure for her some crossbows and wyndnacs”
(grappling irons) “to bind them with, and quarrels” (arrows with
a square head), also “two or three short pole-axes to keep within
doors”; and she tells her absent lord of the preparations made
apparently by a neighbor,-"great ordnance within the house;
bars to bar the door crosswise, and wickets in every quarter
of the house to shoot out at, both with bows and hand-guns. ”
Savages could hardly live in greater distrust of each other. Let
now the poet of chivalry describe another scene:
(
« Ten squires, ten yeomen, mail-clad men,
Waited the beck of the warders ten;


## p. 14231 (#425) ##########################################

CHARLES SUMNER
14231
Thirty steeds, both fleet and wight,
Stood saddled in stable day and night,
Barbed with frontlet of steel, I trow,
And with Jedwood axe at saddle-bow;
A hundred more fed free in stall:
Such was the custom at Branksome Hall. ”
This also is all changed now.
PERORATION OF THE ORATION ON
THE TRUE GRANDEUR OF NATIONS
DELIVERED IN BOSTON JULY 4TH, 1845
T"4
WHAT future which filled the lofty visions of the sages and
bards of Greece and Rome, which was foretold by the
prophets and heralded by the evangelists,— when man, in
happy isles or in a new Paradise, shall confess the loveliness of
peace, — may be secured by your care; if not for yourselves, at
least for your children. Believe that you can do it, and you can
do it. The true golden age is before you, not behind you. If
man has been driven once from paradise, while an angel with a
flaming sword forbade his return, there is another paradise, even
on earth, which he may form for himself, by the cultivation of
knowledge, religion, and the kindly virtues of life: where the
confusion of tongues shall be dissolved in the union of hearts;
and joyous nature, borrowing prolific charms from the prevailing
harmony, shall spread her lap with unimagined bounty, and there
shall be a perpetual jocund spring, and sweet strains borne on
“the odoriferous wing of gentle gales,” through valleys of delight,
more pleasant than the vale of Tempe, richer than the garden of
the Hesperides, with no dragon to guard its golden fruit.
Let it not be said that the age does not demand this work.
The robber conquerors of the past, from their fiery sepulchres,
demand it; the precious blood of millions unjustly. shed in war,
crying from the ground, demands it; the voices of all good men
demand it; the conscience even of the soldier whispers, “Peace. ”
There are considerations, springing from our situation and con-
dition, which fervently invite us to take the lead in this work.
Here should bend the patriotic ardor of the land; the ambition
of the statesman; the efforts of the scholar; the pervasive influ-
ence of the press; the mild persuasion of the sanctuary; the
»


## p. 14232 (#426) ##########################################

14232
CHARLES SUMNER
early teachings of the school. Here, in ampler ether and diviner
air, are untried fields for exalted triumphs more truly worthy
the American name than any snatched from rivers of blood.
War is known as the last reason of kings. Let it be no reason
of our Republic. Let us renounce, and throw off forever, the
yoke of a tyranny more oppressive than any in the annals of
the world. As those standing on the mountain-tops first discern
the coming beams of morning, let us, from the vantage-ground of
liberal institutions, first recognize the ascending sun of a new
era! Lift high the gates, and let the King of Glory in,- the
King of true Glory,- of Peace. I catch the last words of music
from the lips of innocence and beauty :-
“And let the whole earth be filled with His glory! )
It is a beautiful picture in Grecian story, that there was at
least one spot, the small island of Delos, dedicated to the gods,
and kept at all times sacred from war. No hostile foot ever
sought to press this kindly soil; and the citizens of all countries
here met, in common worship, beneath the ægis of inviolable
peace. So let us dedicate our beloved country; and may the
blessed consecration be felt, in all parts, everywhere throughout
its ample domain! The temple of honor shall be surrounded,
here at last, by the temple of concord, that it may never more
be entered through any portal of war; the horn of abundance
shall overflow at its gates; the angel of religion shall be the
guide over its steps of flashing adamant; while within its en-
raptured courts, purged of violence and wrong, Justice, returned
to the earth from her long exile in the skies, with mighty scales
for nations as for men, shall rear her serene and majestic front;
and by her side, greatest of all, Charity, sublime in meekness,
hoping all and enduring all, shall divinely temper every righteous
decree, and with words of infinite cheer shall inspire those good
works that cannot vanish away.
And the future chiefs of the
Republic, destined to uphold the glories of a new era, unspotted
by human blood, shall be “the first in peace, and the first in the
hearts of their countrymen. ”
But while seeking these blissful glories for ourselves, let us
strive to extend them to other lands. Let the bugles sound the
truce of God to the whole world forever. Let the selfish boast
of the Spartan women become the grand chorus of mankind, that
they have never seen the smoke of an enemy's camp. Let the
>


## p. 14233 (#427) ##########################################

CHARLES SUMNER
14233
iron belt of martial music which now encompasses the earth, be
exchanged for the golden cestus of peace, clothing all with celes-
tial beauty. History dwells with fondness on the reverent hom-
age that was bestowed, by massacring soldiers, upon the spot
occupied by the sepulchre of the Lord. Vain man! to restrain
his regard to a few feet of sacred mold! The whole earth is the
sepulchre of the Lord; nor can any righteous man profane any
part thereof.
Let us recognize this truth, and now, on this Sab-
bath of our country, lay a new stone in the grand temple of
,
universal peace, whose dome shall be as lofty as the firmament
of heaven, as broad and comprehensive as the earth itself.
?
SPIRIT OF CLASSICAL AND OF MODERN LITERATURE
From the Phi Beta Kappa Oration of 1846, entitled “The Scholar, the Jurist,
the Artist, the Philanthropist
THE
VE classics possess a peculiar charm as the models - I might
almost say the masters — of composition and thought in
all ages.
In the contemplation of these august teachers of
mankind, we are filled with conflicting emotions. They are the
early voice of the world, better remembered and more cherished
still than all the intermediate words that have been uttered, -as
the language of childhood still haunts us, when the impressions
of later years have been effaced from the mind. But they show
with unwelcome frequency the tokens of the world's childhood,
before passion had yielded to the sway of reason and the affec-
tions. They want the highest charm of purity, of righteousness,
of elevated sentiments, of love to God and man. It is not in the
frigid philosophy of the Porch and the Academy that we are to
seek these; not in the marvelous teachings of Socrates, as they
come mended by the mellifluous words of Plato; not in the re-
sounding line of Homer, on whose inspiring tale of blood Alex-
ander pillowed his head; not in the animated strain of Pindar,
where virtue is pictured in the successful strife of an athlete at
the Isthmian games; not in the torrent of Demosthenes, dark
with self-love and the spirit of vengeance; not in the fitful phi-
losophy and intemperate eloquence of Tully; not in the genial
libertinism of Horace, or the stately atheism of Lucretius. No:
these must not be our masters; in none of these are we to seek


## p. 14234 (#428) ##########################################

14234
CHARLES SUMNER
the way of life. For eighteen hundred years, the spirit of these
writers has been engaged in constant contest with the Sermon
on the Mount, and with those two sublime commandments on
which hang all the law and the prophets. The strife is still pend-
ing. Heathenism, which has possessed itself of such siren forms,
is not yet exorcised. It still tempts the young, controls the affairs
of active life, and haunts the meditations of age.
Our own productions, though they may yield to those of the
ancients in the arrangement of ideas, in method, in beauty of
form, and in freshness of illustration, are far superior in the
truth, delicacy, and elevation of their sentiments,-above all, in
the benign recognition of that peculiar Christian revelation, the
brotherhood of mankind. How vain are eloquence and poetry,
compared with this heaven-descended truth! Put in one scale
that simple utterance, and in the other all the lore of antiquity,
with all its accumulating glosses and commentaries, and the last
will be light and trivial in the balance. Greek poetry has been
likened to the song of the nightingale, as she sits in the rich,
symmetrical crown of the palm-tree, trilling her thick-warbled
notes; but even this is less sweet and tender than those words of
charity to our neighbor," remote or near, which are inspired by
Christian love.
THE DIGNITY OF THE JURIST
the company a
I place not only in the immediate history of his country, but
in the grander history of civilization. It was a saying of his,
often uttered in the confidence of friendship, that a man may be
measured by the horizon of his mind, - whether it embraced the
village, town, country, or State in which he lived, or the whole
broad country, ay, the circumference of the world. In this spirit
he lived and wrought; elevating himself above the present both
in time and place, and always finding in jurisprudence an absorb-
ing interest. Only a few days before the illness which ended in
his death, it was suggested to him, in conversation with regard to
his intended retirement from the bench, that a wish had been
expressed by many to see him a candidate for the highest politi-
cal office of the country. He replied at once, spontaneously and


## p. 14235 (#429) ##########################################

CHARLES SUMNER
14235
without hesitation, that « The station of President of the United
States would not tempt him from his professor's chair, and the
calm pursuit of jurisprudence. ” Thus spoke the jurist. As a
lawyer, a judge, a professor, he was always a jurist. While
administering justice between parties, he sought to extract from
their cause the elements of future justice, and to advance the
science of the law. He stamped upon his judgments a value
which is not restrained to the occasions on which they were pro-
nounced. Unlike mere medals,- of curious importance to certain
private parties only,— they have the currency of the gold coin of
the republic, with the image and superscription of sovereignty,
wherever they go, even in foreign lands.
Many years before his death, his judgments in matters of
Admiralty and Prize had arrested the attention of that illustrious
judge and jurist, Lord Stowell; and Sir James Mackintosh, a
name emblazoned by literature and jurisprudence, had said of
them that they were “justly admired by all cultivators of the
law of nations. ” His words have often been cited as authority
in Westminster Hall,-a tribute to a foreign jurist almost un-
precedented, as all persons familiar with English law will recog-
nize; and the Chief Justice of England has made the remarkable
declaration, with regard to a point on which Story had differed
from the Queen's Bench, that his opinion would “at least neu-
tralize the effect of the English decision, and induce any of their
courts to consider the question as an open one. ”
ALLSTON IN ITALY
T"
URNING his back upon Paris and the greatness of the Empire,
he directed his steps to Italy, the enchanted ground of lit-
erature, of history, and of art; strown with richest memo-
rials of the past, filled with scenes memorable in the story of
the progress of man, teaching by the pages of philosophers and
historians, vocal with the melody of poets, ringing with the music
which St. Cecilia protects, glowing with the living marble and
canvas, beneath a sky of heavenly purity and brightness, with
the sunsets which Claude has painted, parted by the Apennines,
- early witnesses of the unrecorded Etruscan civilization,-sur-
rounded by the snow-capped Alps, and the blue classic waters of


## p. 14236 (#430) ##########################################

CHARLES SUMNER
14236
the Mediterranean Sea. The deluge of war which submerged
Europe had here subsided; and our artist took up his peaceful
abode in Rome, the modern home of art. Strange change of
condition! Rome, sole surviving city of antiquity, who once
disdained all that could be wrought by the cunning hand of
sculpture,-
* «Excudent alii spirantia mollius æra,
Credo equidem; vivos ducent de marmore vultus,” —
who has commanded the world by her arms, by her jurispru-
dence, by her church, - now sways it further by her arts. Pil.
grims from afar, where neither her eagles, her prætors, nor her
interdicts ever reached, become the willing subjects of this new
empire; and the Vatican stored with the precious remains of
antiquity, and the touching creations of a Christian pencil, has
succeeded to the Vatican whose thunders intermingled with the
strifes of modern Europe.
At Rome he was happy in the friendship of Coleridge, and in
long walks in his instructive company. We can well imagine
that the author of Genevieve' and the Ancient Mariner' would
find especial sympathies with Allston. We behold these two
natures, tremblingly alive to beauty of all kinds, looking together
upon those majestic ruins, upon the manifold accumulations of
art, upon the marble which almost spoke, and upon the warmer
canvas; listening together to the flow of the perpetual fountains
fed by ancient aqueducts; musing together in the Forum on the
mighty footprints of History; and entering together, with sym-
pathetic awe, that grand Christian church whose dome rises a
majestic symbol of the comprehensive Christianity which shall
embrace the whole earth. “Never judge of a work of art by its
defects,” was one of the lessons of Coleridge to his companion;
which, when extended by natural expansion to the other things
of life, is a sentiment of justice and charity, of higher value than
a statue of Praxiteles, or a picture of Raphael.
(
* «Others will mold more deftly the breathing bronze, I concede it,
Or from the block of marble the living features may summon. ”


## p. 14237 (#431) ##########################################

14237
EMANUEL SWEDENBORG
(1688-1772)
BY FRANK SEWALL
He universal recognition of the epochal significance of the
latter half of the eighteenth century would seem almost to
corroborate Swedenborg's declaration that at that time there
was transpiring in the spiritual world a great general judgment
which was to mark the transition from an old to a new age. What
in the political world was effected by the French Revolution, had its
counterpart in the intellectual transforma-
tions to which the two great lights that
shone forth in the northern firmament
Emanuel Swedenborg in Stockholm, and
Immanuel Kant in Königsberg — were po-
tent contributors. Both were epoch-makers:
both, having acquired a universal survey
of the world's learning and philosophical
methods up to their time, brought the minds
of men abruptly to a chasm over which
they pointed to realms hitherto unexplored,
— the realities that transcend the bodily
senses. With Kant the transcendence was
critical, — God, the Soul, and Immortality EMANUEL SWEDENBORG
were not constitutive ” but only “regulat-
ive” elements of knowledge, incapable of demonstration or negation;
with Swedenborg the transcendence was positive — into a world of
things “heard and seen. ” Were Swedenborg merely the seer, or one
of the many who have seen visions and left an account of them,
his name, however regarded by his followers, could have no place in
a history of letters or of philosophic thought. His extraordinary expe-
rience of intromission, as he claims, into open intercourse with angels
and spirits for a period of some thirty years, cannot be said to con-
stitute a philosophical moment in itself, being unique and incapable
of classification. It is only the system of universal laws governing
the relations of the two worlds, which he claims to have brought to
light, - especially the law of Discrete Degrees and their Correspond-
ence,— that gives his writings their philosophic value, and that entitles

(
»
(
-


## p. 14238 (#432) ##########################################

14238
EMANUEL SWEDENBORG
>
them, by the side of Kant's philosophy of criticism, to appeal to the
world as the philosophy of revelation.
Like Kant, Swedenborg's early studies and investigations had
almost universal range. The tastes of both inclined them to the clas-
sics, to invention, to the study of fire and iron, of tides and winds,
and of the starry heavens. The so-called Nebular Hypothesis, until
lately attributed to Kant as having a prior claim in its discovery to
La Place, is now at length admitted by undisputed authority to have
been anticipated by Swedenborg in his Principia nearly thirty years
before Kant. *
Unlike Kant, however, in one respect, who never traveled farther
than forty miles from Königsberg, Swedenborg was as extensive a
traveler literally as in the researches of his magnificent intellect.
France, Italy, Germany, Holland, and England were familiar from his
many journeyings. His books were published under noble patronage
in foreign cities. His Opera Philosophica et Mineralia' were recog-
nized by the scholars of Paris and St. Petersburg. There was noth-
ing of the cramped “philosoph” of the German lecture-room about
either the man or his writings; rather a princely largeness and frank-
ness, as of one whose nature vibrated in body and mind in harmony
with a large system of things. Emerson says of him, “He no doubt
led the most real life of any man then in the world. ”
The son of a pious father, Jasper Svedberg, Bishop of Skara in
West Gothland, Swedenborg was born at Stockholm on the 29th of
January, 1688. Living as a child in a sphere so devout that his par-
ents thought at times that an angel spoke through his lips," on his
graduation as Doctor of Philosophy at the university of Upsala at the
age of twenty-one he was thrown out upon a wide experience of the
world. In traveling in Europe he carried letters to distinguished men
in the chief seats of learning. He studies music; he writes and pub-
lishes Sapphic odes in Latin (Carmina Borea); and to keep in exercise
his athletic genius, he publishes a periodical devoted to mathematics
and inventions, the Dedalus Hyperboreus. The King, Charles XII. ,
attracted by his brilliancy, appoints him Extraordinary Assessor in
the College of Mines, to be an assistant to Polhem the Councilor
of Commerce, in his affairs and inventions. ” Through the intimacy
thus brought about, Swedenborg falls in love with the Councilor's
daughter, but to have his matrimonial proposals rejected. He never
marries. At the age of eighty years he publishes a book on Con-
jugial Love and its Chaste Delights,' - - a work whose insight into
the moral conditions of the world, and the provision for its elevation
through the sacred relation of marriage, has hardly a parallel in
»
* Article by Magnus Nyren of the Pulkowa Observatory, in Vierteljahr-
schrift der Astron. Gesellsch. : Leipzig, 1879.


## p. 14239 (#433) ##########################################

EMANUEL SWEDENBORG
14239
as
are
ethical writing. Plunged into the atmospheres of universal doubt,
and the free living, of the courts of the time, he lives to give the tes-
timony as of one of a forgotten celestial age of the world. “It came
to pass by the mercy of God the Messiah, that at the time, I have not
perceived what the acts of my life involved; but afterwards I have
been able to see clearly that the course of the Divine Providence
from very youth had governed the acts of my life, and so directed
them that at length I attained this end,—that I could through nat-
ural knowledge understand, and so by the Divine mercy of God the
Messiah serve an instrument for opening, the things which lie
inwardly concealed in the Word of God the Messiah.
So now
laid open the things which have hitherto not been disclosed. ” (Ad-
versaria. ') Thus the whole of the Wanderjahr's period is governed by
a Divine Providence looking to a special end.
After the death of King Charles XII. , whom he had assisted in an
important naval victory by a splendid feat in engineering, the Queen
elevated him to the Equestrian Order of the House of Nobles, and
changed his name from Svedberg to Swedenborg. Ere many years
should pass, both title and name were to disappear utterly from the
long series of his published works, only to reappear, at the close of
his life, in his last great treatise, the “True Christian Religion,' but
now with the changed title, — that of the true knighthood of his long
life,– Domini Jesu Christi Servus. '
His corpuscular theory of the universe as governed by the laws of
geometry and mechanics appears first in the 'Principles of Chemistry,'
published in 1721. Here we have a science of the invisibles » such
as Tyndall has since contended for, treating of bodies in their ele-
mentary forms and relations by means of geometry produced into
the realm of the intangible. In the Principia Rerum Naturalium,' -
being the first part of the great work entitled Opera Philosophica et
Mineralia,'— published in 1734, we have the theory of the origin of
the elements themselves out of «actives and finites,” and through the
« first finite » from the Infinite itself. It is an evolution of energy in
its first motions and forms. Here are discussed the ether, the laws
governing vibratory radiation, and the magnetic force, in propositions
which, in germ, anticipate the most important recent discoveries in
physical science. But the universe is not all geometry and mechan-
ism. « There is an Infinite which can by no means be geometrically
explored, because its existence is prior to geometry as being its cause. ”
It is to the nature of the Infinite, and its nexus with the finite
and the soul of man, that the author's studies are now directed. In
Dresden and Leipzig appear in 1734 the Prodromus de Infinito,'
and the treatise on the Intercourse between the Soul and the Body. '
Finally the search for the soul itself is undertaken in the great series
CC


## p. 14240 (#434) ##########################################

14240
EMANUEL SWEDENBORG
(
-
of works, the 'Economy of the Animal Kingdom, considered Anatomi-
cally, Physically, and Philosophically,' and the Animal Kingdom';
published each in two volumes in London, 1740, 1745. The “Regnum
Animale » means to him the soul's domain. In the human body, its
blood, its tissue, its organs and senses, he will penetrate to this inmost
secret of all,- what the soul is, and the modes of its abode in and
control over the forces of nature; since «in man the world is concen-
trated, and in him, as in a microcosm, the whole universe may be
contemplated from the beginning to the end. ”
Had Swedenborg's labors ceased at this point, his knowledge of
the soul would have remained where his illustrious predecessors in
these paths, from Plato down, had left it. But “the Divine permission
to contemplate the soul itself was, as he claims afterward to have
proved, to be enjoyed by a means far other than that of speculative
thinking. It was not by philosophic argument, but by direct vision,
that he was to prove the substantial reality of the spiritual world and
the life that man leads after the death of the body. Others had seen
visions. It was to be his mission not only to experience the phe-
.
nomena of the spiritual world, but to penetrate and define the laws
governing these, with an analysis as exact as that of Kant in his
critique of the æsthetic judgments.
Dante had constructed from classical and Scriptural traditions a
spiritual world in its three divisions, its nine heavens, and its celestial
Rose. Swedenborg in the Divine Love and Wisdom? shows how
Divine Love, proceeding through the Divine Wisdom into Use, cre-
ates a world; how the Divine emanations proceed through successive
atmospheres, contiguous but distinct, first spiritual, then natural, even
to the lowest ultimates of matter; how the universe therefore exists
in three discrete degrees, - God, Spirit, Nature, absolutely distinct
from each other, and so escaping pantheistic fusion, but related by a
perfect correspondence like End, Cause, and Effect, and constituting
therefore a perfect one. On this Law of Correspondence between the
discrete degrees, — the natural and the spiritual, — he bases the possi-
bility of a revelation of supernatural truth in natural language; and
his interpretation of the internal sense of the Scriptures. The three
degrees which he had previously traced, in the Principia,' in the
procession from the Infinite, of “finites, actives, and elementaries,” he
sees now to govern the whole sphere of being: the constitution of the
three angelic heavens; the threefold structure of the human mind, as
will, intellect, and sense; and the evolution of the kingdoms of nature.
They have their origin in that perfect image of God - the Trinity
of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — which since the Incarnation dwells
bodily in the glorified humanity of Jesus Christ, the only God. The
restoration to unity is complete. The universe of being is a trinal
-


## p. 14241 (#435) ##########################################

EMANUEL SWEDENBORG
14241
-
One. Science, philosophy, and theology are no more in conflict, but
harmonious stages in the unity of knowledge.
It was in the year 1743, while engaged on the concluding treatises
of the Animal Kingdom, and on the mystic prose poem (On the
Worship and Love of God: on Creation: The First Begotten, and
Paradise,' that Sweden borg became subject to a deep religious expe-
rience, and to frequent realizations of the actuality and immediate
objective presence of another world. In the Spiritual Diary' he has
kept a purely private record of these extraordinary experiences. He
describes with prosaic exactness the places visited in the spiritual
realms, the characters met, and the conversations held, and the pecul-
iar temptations to which his own soul was subjected by the infesta-
tions of evil spirits. All this was incident, he solemnly declares, to
his “being called by the Lord to a new office,” — that of revealing
to mankind the reality of the spiritual world, and of vindicating the
holiness and divine authority of the Scriptures by proving that they
possess throughout, beneath the literal, a distinct but correspondent
spiritual meaning. At length, after six years, with the first volume of
the Arcana Coelestia,' written in the full and perfect light of the
new revelation, Swedenborg begins that unparalleled series of works,
in which he claims to have set forth for the enlightenment of all
mankind, truths revealed to him not by any spirit or any angel,
but by the Lord alone while reading the Word. ” The Arcana'
itself is a work in twelve volumes, in which is set forth the spiritual
sense of the books of Genesis and Exodus. Here, a century before
the development of the higher criticism,” Swedenborg clearly
points out the distinction between the Eloistic and Jehovistic texts,
and declares the first chapters of Genesis to be the allegoric frag-
ments of a more ancient Word. Interspersed between the chapters
of the Arcana' are treatises on various phenomena of the spiritual
world, and statements of heavenly doctrine. ” Seven years were
consumed in the publication of this stupendous work. Then appear
at short intervals, through a period of fifteen years, the following
treatises:- In 1758 (Heaven and Hell”; also "The Intermediate World,
or World of Spirits: A Relation of Things Heard and Seen. ' (The
Last Judgment and the Destruction of Babylon, showing that all the
predictions in Revelation are now being fulfilled: being a revelation
of things heard and seen. ' On the Earths in the Solar System, and
on the Earths in the Starry Heavens: with an account of their
Inhabitants, and also of the Angels and Spirits there. In 1763, (On
the Angelic Wisdom concerning the Divine Love and Wisdom. ' (The
Four Doctrines: The Lord: the Sacred Scriptures: Faith: and Life. '
In 1764: Angelic Wisdom concerning the Divine Providence. In
1766: “The Apocalypse Revealed, in which are disclosed the Arcana
XXIV-891


## p. 14242 (#436) ##########################################

14242
EMANUEL SWEDENBORG
therein foretold. In 1768 : Conjugial Love and its Chaste Delights:
also Adulterous Love and its Insane Pleasures. ' In 1769: A Brief
Exposition of the Doctrines of the New Church, signified by the New
Jerusalem in Revelations. Also the Intercourse between the Soul and
the Body. Lastly in 1771, in the author's eighty-third year, appears
the great synthesis of the doctrine: “The True Christian Religion:
containing the Universal Theology of the New Church: by Emanuel
Swedenborg: Servant of the Lord Jesus Christ. In the preface the
following is set forth as a «universal of the Faith of the New
Heaven and the New Church”: “That the Lord from eternity who is
Jehovah came into the world that he might subdue the hells and
glorify his humanity; that without him no flesh could have been
saved, and that all will be saved who believe in him. ”
The hasty charge of madness, or even of honest delusion, must
at least give pause before this array of works, in which a perfectly
consistent system of interpretation appears from first to last, and in
which the principia of the spiritual world are laid down with all the
logical thoroughness of those of the natural. We have not here the
trance-vision of the Oriental and mediæval mystic. The man who
was daily in “intercourse with angels,” who was writing the heav-
enly secrets of the Divine Word, and claimed to be witnessing with
his inner vision the awful scenes of a Last Judgment in the world
of spirits, preparatory to the introduction of a new age of the world,
- so far from being a dazed and dreamy recluse, was at this very
period of his life the warm personal and political friend of the then
Prime Minister of Sweden, Count Andrew von Höpken, and according
to this gentleman's testimony in his letter to General Tuxen, was
taking a most active and responsible part in the deliberations of the
Swedish Diet. Neither was there anything whimsical or eccentric
in his manner. Besides the above testimony regarding his public life
in Sweden, those who knew him in his old age in London, where
he spent his last years, describe him as a genial old gentleman,
the favorite of little children, and beloved by the plain people with
whom he lodged. His dress when visiting was a suit of black velvet,
with long ruffles, a curious-hilted sword and gold-headed cane. He
was affable and engaging in conversation; adapting himself easily to
others, never urging his own views except when asked, and able at a
word to silence any mere curious or impertinent inquiry. His solemn
assurance before the chaplain of the Swedish Embassy, when receiv-
ing from him the sacrament on his death-bed, that all that he had
written regarding his experiences in the other world was true, leaves
no doubt of his absolute sincerity, and completes the testimony of
his long and honorable life. He died in his eighty-fifth year, on the
day which he had himself foretold in a letter to Wesley, who had


## p. 14243 (#437) ##########################################

EMANUEL SWEDENBORG
14243
desired to visit him, — Sunday; the 29th of March, 1772. “He was as
much pleased,” relates an attendant, “as if he were about to have a
holiday or were going to a merry-making. " His remains were buried
with the ceremonials of the Lutheran Church, in the Swedish Ulrica
Eleonora Chapel, Ratcliffe Highway, London, E. , where they still lie,
marked by a suitable memorial slab. In the House of Nobles on
October 7th a eulogy was pronounced upon him in the name of the
Royal Academy of Stockholm, by M. Sandel, Councilor of the Board
of Mines. Eighty years after, a silver medal was struck in his honor
by the Academy,
uauh Swall
BIBLIOGRAPHY. — The bibliography of Swedenborg's writings em-
braces some fifteen hundred editions of entire sets or of single works,
in the author's original Latin, and in translations into English, Ger-
man, French, Italian, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic, Dutch,
Polish, Russian, Spanish, Arabic, and Hindu. The London Sweden-
borg Society, established in 1810, is the chief source of publication in
England; the American Swedenborg Printing and Publishing Society,
in America. The publication in a photo-lithographic edition of all the
MSS. of Swedenborg preserved in the library of the Royal Academy
of Stockholm, both of the published and of the unpublished works, is
in progress. Thirteen volumes in folio size have already appeared.
BIOGRAPHY. —The fullest and most authentic account of Sweden-
borg's life, character, and writings is to be had in Documents Con-
cerning Swedenborg': collected, translated, and annotated by R. L.