I think, dear madame, you would be
troubled
to
do it.
do it.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v07 - Cic to Cuv
The Howadji books, which first gave him a name and fairly
launched him as a writer, were a singular and original product,
wholly different from what could have been expected of his training
and associations; a venture in a field which, curiously enough, since
the venture was in every sense more than ordinarily successful, he
promptly and forever abandoned. "I aimed," he says in one of his
private letters, "to represent the essentially sensuous, luxurious,
languid, and sense-satisfied spirit of Eastern life. " The style was
adapted with courage, not to say audacity, to the aim. No American
at that time had ever written English so riotously beyond the
accepted conventions, so frankly, almost saucily, limited only by what
## p. 4223 (#601) ###########################################
GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS
4223
the writer chose to say of what he felt or fancied under the inspira-
tion of the East. Leigh Hunt compared the 'Nile Notes' to 'Eothen'
and to 'Hyperion,' but the relation was extravagantly remote. The
Howadji books were as individual as the lavish and brilliant bloom
of a plant in the hot rays of the southern spring-and as passing.
Once the shining and slightly gaudy flowers were shed, the normal
growth proceeded to substantial fruitage.
The Potiphar Papers' were like the Eastern books in this, that
they were at the time a still more successful venture in a field
which, if not wholly abandoned by Curtis, was not continuously cul-
tivated, but was only entered occasionally and never quite in the
same spirit. They were a series of satires, fanciful enough in con-
ception, but serious and almost savage in spirit, on the most conspic-
uous society of the day: its vulgarity, vanity, shallowness, and
stupidity, the qualities inherent in the prevalent rivalry in money-
spending. They were of marked importance at the time, because
they were the brilliant and stinging comment of a gentleman and a
patriot on a portion of society whose wealth gave dangerous promi-
nence to the false standards set up and followed. Happily the vices
Curtis scourged were those of an over-vigorous and unchastened
youth of society, and the chief value of the satire now is as a picture
of the past.
'Prue and I was a series of papers written, as Curtis's letters
show, in odd moments and with great rapidity, to meet the exigencies
of the magazine. But the papers survive as an example of the pure
literary work of the author. The opulence and extravagance of the
'Howadji' books disappear; but the rich imagination, the sportive
fancy, the warm and life-giving sentiment, the broad philosophy, are
expressed in a style of singular beauty, flexibility, and strength.
And it was in this line that the "Easy Chair" essays were con-
tinued, forming one of the most remarkable bodies of literary product
of the time. They were written for Harper's Magazine, four or five
monthly, equivalent each year to an ordinary duodecimo volume, and
the series closed with the death of the writer some thirty-five years
from their beginning. Their variety was very great. Some of them
touched the events and questions of the time, and the time embraced
the political contest with slavery, the Civil War, and the marvelously
rapid and complex development of the nation after the war.
when the events or questions of the day were touched, it was at
at once lightly and broadly, to illuminate and fix some suggestion of
philosophy; through all ran the current of wise and gracious and
noble thought or sentiment. Many of the essays were woven of
reminiscence and comment on persons. In the little volume selected
by himself and published shortly before his death, a dozen of the
## p. 4224 (#602) ###########################################
GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS
4224
twenty-seven were of this nature, embracing such varying person-
alities as Edward Everett, Browning, Wendell Phillips, Dickens,
Thoreau, Jenny Lind, Emerson, Joseph Jefferson. Whoever was thus
brought under the clear, soft, penetrating light of Curtis's pen lived
thereafter in the mind of the reader with a character more real and
just. In many of the essays of the "Easy Chair" there was a tone of
gentle satire, but always hopeful and helpful, not bitter or discoura-
ging; as if in "Titbottom's Spectacles," that broke the heart of the
wearer with their revelation of the evil in those who passed before
them, new lenses had been set, revealing the everlasting beauty and
power of the ideal which evil violates, and to whose gracious and
blessing sway the writer, with a kindly smile at the incongruities of
the actual, invited his friend the reader. The very title had a gleam
of this subtle humor, it being well known to the profession, and
established by the experience of successive generations, that in
reality there is no such thing as an "editor's easy-chair. " Even if
we allow for the fact that Curtis's seat was in his tranquil library on
Staten Island, remote from the complications and vexations of the
magazine's office, we must still recognize that the ease was not in the
chair, but in that firm high poise of the writer's spirit which enabled
him, with wisdom as unfailing as his gracious cheer, "to Report and
Consider all Matters of What Kind Soever. "
Curtis was, perhaps, in his lifetime even more widely known as a
speaker than as a writer. At the very outset of his career he be-
came one of the half-dozen lecturers under the curious and potent
lyceum system, that in the third quarter of the century did so much
to arouse and satisfy a deep interest in things of the mind in the
widely scattered communities of the American republic. At the
very outset, too, he entered with all his soul into the political agita-
tion against slavery, and became one of the most stirring and most
highly regarded popular orators of the Republican party. Later he
was eagerly sought upon occasions of historical interest and for
memorial addresses. Still later he delivered the remarkable series of
addresses on the reform of the civil service, in what was in effect a
second struggle for political emancipation, waged with as broad a
human purpose, with as high courage, as was the struggle against
slavery, and with even a riper knowledge of the conditions of safety
for the republic. The great body of these addresses, many of the
slightest as well as the more elaborate, were essentially literary.
Most of them were written out and committed to memory, and many
were marked by more of the polish and completeness of the scholar's
conscientious and deliberate work than most of the writing intended
only for publication. But they were still the orator's work, addressed
to the ear, though fitted to bear the test of study, and intended
## p. 4225 (#603) ###########################################
GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS
4225
through the ear to touch the conscience and the heart and sway the
will. Apart from the unfailing and lofty moral purpose that per-
vades them, their lasting charm lies in their music. They were the
emmelia, the "well-tuned speech," of the Greeks. But the hidden
monitor who kept the orator true to the carefully chosen "pitch"
was not the freedman of Gracchus, it was the sensitive and faithful
artistic sense of the speaker. A writer lives in the world's literature,
necessarily, by those of his writings that find a permanent form in
books. Of these Curtis left few. But fairly to judge of his influence
on the thought, and so on the life as well as the literature, of his
country, we must remember that the unusual gifts and the rare
spirit revealed in these few books pervaded also his work in the
magazine and the journal; that the fruit of his work would fill a
hundred volumes, and that it reached readers by the hundred thou-
sand. Had Curtis sought only the fame of the writer, he could
hardly have failed to gain it, and in notable measure. In pursuing
the object he did, he might rightly believe at the close of his career
-it is doubtful if he ever gave it a thought-that he had rendered
to American literature a service unrecognized and untraceable, but
singularly, perhaps uniquely, great.
Edward Cary.
THE MIST AT NEWPORT
From Lotus Eating. Copyright, 1852, by Harper & Brothers
I
RODE one afternoon with Undine along the southern shore of
the Island, by the lonely graves of which I have spoken.
could see only a few feet over the water, but the ocean con-
stantly plunged sullenly out of the heavy fog, which was full of
hoarse roars and wailings, - the chaotic sound of the sea. We
took the homeward path through the solitary fields, just unfa-
miliar enough to excite us with a vague sense of going astray.
At times, gleams of sunlight, bewildered like ourselves, strug-
gled, surprised, through the mist and disappeared. But strange.
and beautiful were those estrays; and I well understand why
Turner studied vapors so long and carefully.
Two grander figures are not in contemporary biography than
that of Coleridge, in Carlyle's 'Sterling,' looking out from High-
gate over the mingled smoke and vapor which buries London, as
VII-265
## p. 4226 (#604) ###########################################
4226
GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS
in lava Pompeii is buried; and that of Turner, in some anony-
mous but accurate sketches of his latter days, at his cottage on
the edge of London, where, apart from his fame and under a
feigned name, he sat by day and night upon the housetop, watch-
ing the sun glorify the vapors and the smoke with the same
splendor that he lavishes upon the evening west, and which we
deemed the special privilege of the sky. Those two men, great-
est in their kind among their companions, illustrate with happy
force what Wordsworth sang:
"In common things that round us lie,
Some random truths he can impart,-
The harvest of a quiet eye
That broods and sleeps on his own heart. "
Gazing from his Highgate window with "large gray eye," did
Coleridge see more than the image of his own mind and his own
career, in that limitless city, wide-sparkling, many-turreted, fad-
ing and mingling in shining mist,- with strange voices calling
from its clouds,- the solemn peal of cathedral chimes and the
low voice of the vesper bell; and out of that London fog with
its irresistible splendors, and out of the holy vapors which float
serene amid the Alps, has Turner quarried his colossal fame.
There is no grander lesson in any history of any art than the
spectacle of the greatest painter of our time, sitting upon his
house-top, and from the mist which to others was but a clog and
inconvenience, and associated in all men's minds only with link-
boys and lanterns, plucking the heart of its mystery and making
it worshiped and remembered.
NAZARETH
From 'Howadji in Syria. Copyright, 1856, by Harper & Brothers
THE
HE traditions which cluster around Nazareth are so tender and
domestic that you will willingly believe, or at least you will
listen to, the improbable stories of the friars as a father
to the enthusiastic exaggerations of his child. With Jerusalem
and its vicinity the gravity of the doctrine is too intimately
associated to allow the mind to heed the quarrels and theories
about the localities. It is the grandeur of the thought which
commands you. But in Nazareth it is the personality of the
Teacher which interests you. All the tenderness of the story
## p. 4227 (#605) ###########################################
GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS
4227
centers here. The youth of the Madonna and the unrecorded
years of the Child belong to Nazareth. Therefore imagination
unbends to the sweet associations of domestic life. The little
picture in the Uffizi recurs again, and the delicate sketches of
Overbeck, illustrating the life of Christ, in which as a blooming
boy in his father's shop he saws a bit of wood into the form of
a cross, looking up smilingly to the thoughtful Joseph and the
yearning Mary, as when he brings her the passion-flower in the
pleasant room.
The tranquil afternoon streams up the valley, and your heart
is softened as if by that tender smile of Mary; and yielding to
soliciting friars, you go quietly and see where Joseph's house.
stood, and where the Angel Gabriel saluted Mary, and the chim-
ney of the hearth upon which she warmed food for her young
child, and baked cakes for Joseph when he came home from
work, and the rock whence the Jews wished to cast Jesus, and
another rock upon which he ate with his disciples.
You listen quietly to these stories, and look at the sights.
The childish effort to give plausible form to the necessary facts.
of the history of the place is too natural to offend. When the
pretense is too transparent you smile, but do not scold. For
whether he lived upon this side of the way or upon that, this is
the landscape he saw for thirty years. A quiet workman, doubt-
less, with his father, strolling among the melancholy hills of
Galilee, looking down into the lake-like vastness of Esdraëlon,
where the great captains of his nation had fought, hearing the
wild winds blow from the sea, watching the stars, and remem-
bering the three days of his childhood when he sat in the temple
at Jerusalem.
Walking in the dying day over the same solitary hills, you
will see in the sunset but one figure moving along the horizon,-
a grave manly form, outlined upon the west.
Here was the true struggle of his life-the resolve to devote
himself to the work. These are the exceeding high mountains
upon which he was lifted in temptation; here in the fullness of
his youth and hope Satan walked with him, seductive. For
every sin smiles in the first address, says Jeremy Taylor, and
carries light in the face and honey in the lip. Green and
flowery as Esdraëlon lay the valleys of ease and reputation at his
feet; but sternly precipitous as the heights of Galilee, the cliffs
of duty above him buried their heads in heaven.
-――
## p. 4228 (#606) ###########################################
4228
GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS
Here too was he transfigured; and in the light of thought he
floats between Moses and Elias, between faith and duty, and the
splendor of his devotion so overflows history with glory that
men call him God.
AURELIA AS A GRANDMOTHER
From Prue and I. '
Copyright, 1856, by Harper & Brothers
TH
HERE will be a time when you will no longer go out to
dinner; or only very quietly, in the family. I shall be
gone then; but other old bookkeepers in white cravats will
inherit my tastes, and saunter on summer afternoons to see what
I loved to see.
They will not pause, I fear, in buying apples, to look at the
old lady in venerable cap who is rolling by in the carriage.
They will worship another Aurelia. You will not wear dia-
monds or opals any more, only one pearl upon your blue-veined
finger,- your engagement ring. Grave clergymen and antiquated
beaux will hand you down to dinner, and the group of polished
youth who gather around the yet unborn Aurelia of that day
will look at you, sitting quietly upon the sofa, and say softly,
"She must have been very handsome in her time. "
All this must be; for consider how few years since it was
your grandmother who was the belle, by whose side the hand-
some young men longed to sit and pass expressive mottoes.
Your grandmother was the Aurelia of a half-century ago,
although you cannot fancy her young. She is indissolubly asso-
ciated in your mind with caps and dark dresses. You can be-
lieve Mary Queen of Scots, or Nell Gwyn, or Cleopatra, to have
been young and blooming, although they belonged to old and
dead centuries; but not your grandmother. Think of those who
shall believe the same of you-you, who to-day are the very
flower of youth.
Might I plead with you, Aurelia, I, who would be too
happy to receive one of those graciously beaming bows that I
see you bestow upon young men, in passing,—I would ask you
to bear that thought with you always, not to sadden your sunny
smile, but to give it a more subtle grace. Wear in your sum-
mer garland this little leaf of rue. It will not be the skull at
## p. 4229 (#607) ###########################################
GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS
4229
the feast, it will rather be the tender thoughtfulness in the face.
of the young Madonna.
For the years pass like summer clouds, Aurelia, and the
children of yesterday are the wives and mothers of to-day.
Even I do sometimes discover the mild eyes of my Prue fixed
pensively upon my face, as if searching for the bloom which she
remembers there in the days, long ago, when we were young.
She will never see it there again, any more than the flowers
she held in her hand, in our old spring rambles. Yet the tear
that slowly gathers as she gazes is not grief that the bloom has
faded from my cheek, but the sweet consciousness that it can
never fade from my heart; and as her eyes fall upon her work
again, or the children climb her lap to hear the old fairy-tales
they already know by heart, my wife Prue is dearer to me than
the sweetheart of those days long ago.
PRUE'S MAGNOLIA
From Prue and I. Copyright, 1892, by Harper & Brothers
IF
F I meet Charles, who is bound for Alabama, or John, who
sails for Savannah, with a trunk full of white jackets, I do
not say to them, as their other friends say:-
"Happy travelers, who cut March and April out of the dismal
year! "
I do not envy them. They will be seasick on the way. The
Southern winds will blow all the water out of the rivers; and,
desolately stranded upon mud, they will relieve the tedium
of the interval by tying with large ropes a young gentleman
raving with delirium tremens. They will hurry along, appalled
by forests blazing in the windy night; and housed in a bad inn,
they will find themselves anxiously asking, "Are the cars punc-
tual in leaving? "-grimly sure that impatient travelers find all
conveyances too slow. The travelers are very warm indeed, even
in March and April,-but Prue doubts if it is altogether the
effect of the Southern climate.
—
Why should they go to the South? If they only wait a little,
the South will come to them. Savannah arrives in April;
Florida in May; Cuba and the Gulf come in with June; and the
full splendor of the Tropics burns through July and August.
## p. 4230 (#608) ###########################################
4230
GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS
Sitting upon the earth, do we not glide by all the constellations,
all the awful stars? Does not the flash of Orion's scimitar
dazzle as we pass? Do we not hear, as we gaze in hushed
midnights, the music of the Lyre; are we not throned with
Cassiopeia; do we not play with the tangles of Berenice's hair, as
we sail, as we sail?
When Christopher told me that he was going to Italy, I went
into Bourne's conservatory, saw a magnolia, and so reached Italy
before him. Can Christopher bring Italy home? But I brought
to Prue a branch of magnolia blossoms, with Mr. Bourne's kind-
est regards, and she put them upon her table, and our little
house smelled of Italy for a week afterward. The incident
developed Prue's Italian tastes, which I had not suspected to be
so strong. I found her looking very often at the magnolias;
even holding them in her hand, and standing before the table
with a pensive air. I suppose she was thinking of Beatrice.
Cenci, or of Tasso and Leonora, or of the wife of Marino Fali-
ero, or of some other of those sad old Italian tales of love and
woe. So easily Prue went to Italy.
Thus the spring comes in my heart as well as in the air, and
leaps along my veins as well as through the trees. I immedi-
ately travel. An orange takes me to Sorrento, and roses, when
they blow, to Pæstum. The camellias in Aurelia's hair bring
Brazil into the happy rooms she treads, and she takes me to
South America as she goes to dinner. The pearls upon her
neck make me free of the Persian Gulf. Upon her shawl, like
the Arabian prince upon his carpet, I am transported to the
vales of Cashmere; and thus, as I daily walk in the bright
spring days, I go around the world.
But the season wakes a finer longing, a desire that could only
be satisfied if the pavilions of the clouds were real, and I could
stroll among the towering splendors of a sultry spring evening.
Ah! if I could leap those flaming battlements that glow along
the west-if I could tread those cool, dewy, serene isles of
sunset, and sink with them in the sea of stars.
I say so to Prue, and my wife smiles.
## p. 4231 (#609) ###########################################
GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS
4231
-
OUR COUSIN THE CURATE
From 'Prue and I.
Copyright, 1856, by Harper & Brothers
WHE
HEN Prue and I are most cheerful, and the world looks fair
-we talk of our cousin the curate. When the world
seems a little cloudy, and we remember that though we
have lived and loved together we may not die together-we talk
of our cousin the curate. When we plan little plans for the boys
and dream dreams for the girls-we talk of our cousin the
curate. When I tell Prue of Aurelia, whose character is every
day lovelier- we talk of our cousin the curate. There is no
subject which does not seem to lead naturally to our cousin the
curate. As the soft air steals in and envelops everything in the
world, so that the trees, and the hills, and the rivers, the cities,
the crops, and the sea, are made remote and delicate and beauti-
ful by its pure baptism, so over all the events of our little lives
-comforting, refining, and elevating-falls like a benediction the
remembrance of our cousin the curate.
He was my only early companion.
He had no brother, I
had none; and we became brothers to each other.
He was
always beautiful.
His face was symmetrical and delicate; his
figure was slight and graceful. He looked as the sons of kings.
ought to look; as I am sure Philip Sidney looked when he was
a boy. His eyes were blue, and as you looked at them they
seemed to let your gaze out into a June heaven. The blood ran
close to the skin, and his complexion had the rich transparency
of light. There was nothing gross or heavy in his expression or
texture; his soul seemed to have mastered his body. But he
had strong passions, for his delicacy was positive, not negative;
it was not weakness, but intensity.
There was a patch of ground about the house which we tilled
as a garden. I was proud of my morning-glories and sweet-
peas; my cousin cultivated roses. One day and we could.
scarcely have been more than six years old - we were digging
merrily and talking. Suddenly there was some kind of differ-
ence; I taunted him, and raising his spade he struck me upon
the leg. The blow was heavy for a boy, and the blood trickled
from the wound. I burst into indignant tears, and limped
toward the house. My cousin turned pale and said nothing; but
just as I opened the door he darted by me, and before I could
## p. 4232 (#610) ###########################################
4232
GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS
interrupt him he had confessed his crime and asked for punish-
ment.
From that day he conquered himself. He devoted a kind of
ascetic energy to subduing his own will, and I remember no
other outbreak. But the penalty he paid for conquering his will
was a loss of the gushing expression of feeling. My cousin
became perfectly gentle in his manner; but there was a want of
that pungent excess which is the finest flavor of character. His
views were moderate and calm. He was swept away by no boy-
ish extravagance; and even while I wished he would sin only a
very little, I still adored him as a saint. The truth is, as I tell
Prue, I am so very bad because I have to sin for two- for
myself and our cousin the curate. Often, when I returned pant-
ing and restless from some frolic which had wasted almost all
the night, I was rebuked as I entered the room in which he lay
peacefully sleeping. There was something holy in the profound
repose of his beauty; and as I stood looking at him, how many
a time the tears have dropped from my hot eyes upon his face
while I vowed to make myself worthy of such a companion,- for
I felt my heart owning its allegiance to that strong and imperial
nature.
-―――――――
My cousin was loved by the boys, but the girls worshiped
him. His mind, large in grasp and subtle in perception, natu-
rally commanded his companions, while the lustre of his character
allured those who could not understand him. The asceticism
occasionally showed itself in a vein of hardness, or rather of
severity, in his treatment of others. He did what he thought it
his duty to do; but he forgot that few could see the right so
clearly as he, and very few of those few could so calmly obey
the least command of conscience. I confess I was a little afraid
of him, for I think I never could be severe.
In the long winter evenings I often read to Prue the story of
some old father of the church, or some quaint poem of George
Herbert's; and every Christmas Eve I read to her Milton's
'Hymn of the Nativity. ' Yet when the saint seems to us most
saintly, or the poem most pathetic or sublime, we find ourselves.
talking of our cousin the curate. I have not seen him for many
years; but when we parted, his head had the intellectual symme-
try of Milton's, without the Puritanic stoop, and with the stately
grace of a Cavalier
## p. 4233 (#611) ###########################################
GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS
4233
THE CHARM OF PARIS
From The Potiphar Papers. Copyright, 1858, by Harper & Brothers
YES, my dear Madame," answered the Pacha, "this is indeed
"YES making the best of one's opportunities. This is well
worth coming to Europe for. It is in fact for this that
Europe is chiefly valuable to an American, as the experience of
an observer shows. Paris is notoriously the great centre of
historical and romantic interest. To be sure, Italy, Rome,
Switzerland, and Germany-yes, and even England-have some
few objects of interest and attention; but the really great things
of Europe, the superior interests, are all in Paris. Why, just
reflect. Here is the Café de Paris, the Trois Frères, and the
Maison Dorée. I don't think you can get such dinners elsewhere.
Then there is the Grand Opera, the Comic Opera, and now and
then the Italian-I rather think that is good music. Are there
any such theatres as the Vaudeville, the Variétés, and the
Montansier, where there is the most dexterous balancing on the
edge of decency that ever you saw? and when the balance is
lost, as it always is at least a dozen times every evening, the
applause is tremendous, showing that the audience have such a
subtle sense of propriety that they can detect the slightest devia-
tion from the right line. Is there not the Louvre, where, if
there is not the best picture of a single great artist, there are
good specimens of all? Will you please to show me such a
promenade as the Boulevards, such fêtes as those of the Champs.
Elysées, such shops as those of the Passages and the Palais
Royal? Above all, will you indicate to such students of mankind
as Mr. Boosey, Mr. Firkin, and I, a city more abounding in
piquant little women, with eyes, and coiffures and toilettes, and
je ne sais quoi, enough to make Diogenes a dandy, to obtain
their favor?
I think, dear madame, you would be troubled to
do it. And while these things are Paris, while we are sure of
an illimitable allowance of all this in the gay capital, we do
right to remain here. Let who will, sadden in moldy old Rome,
or luxuriate in the orange groves of Sorrento and the South, or
wander among the ruins of the most marvelous of empires, and
the monuments of art of the highest human genius, or float about
the canals of Venice, or woo the Venus and the Apollo, and
learn from the silent lips of those teachers a lore sweeter than
## p. 4234 (#612) ###########################################
GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS
4234
the French novelists impart; let who will, climb the tremendous
Alps, and feel the sublimity of Switzerland as he rises from the
summer of Italian lakes and vineyards into the winter of the
glaciers, or makes the tour of all climates in a day by descending
those mountains towards the south; let those who care for it,
explore in Germany the sources of modern history, and the remote
beginnings of the American spirit;-ours be the boulevards, the
demoiselles, the operas, and the unequaled dinners. Decency
requires that we should see Rome, and climb an Alp. We will
devote a summer week to the one, and a winter month to the
other. They will restore us, renewed and refreshed, for the
manly, generous, noble, and useful life we lead in Paris. »
"PHARISAISM OF REFORM»
From Orations and Addresses. ' Copyright, 1893, by Harper & Brothers
N°
O AMERICAN, it seems to me, is so unworthy the name as he
who attempts to extenuate or defend any national abuse,
who denies or tries to hide it, or who derides as pessimists
and Pharisees those who indignantly disown it and raise the cry
of reform. If a man proposes the redress of any public wrong,
he is asked severely whether he considers himself so much wiser
and better than other men, that he must disturb the existing
order and pose as a saint. If he denounces an evil, he is
exhorted to beware of spiritual pride. If he points out a dan-
gerous public tendency or censures the action of a party, he is
advised to cultivate good-humor, to look on the bright side, to
remember that the world is a very good world, at least the best
going, and very much better than it was a hundred years ago.
Undoubtedly it is; but would it have been better if every-
body had then insisted that it was the best of all possible
worlds, and that we must not despond if sometimes a cloud
gathered in the sky, or a Benedict Arnold appeared in the
patriot army, or even a Judas Iscariot among the chosen twelve?
Christ, I think, did not doubt the beloved disciple nor the
coming of his kingdom, although he knew and said that the be-
trayer sat with him at the table. I believe we do not read that
Washington either thought it wiser that Arnold's treachery should
be denied or belittled, or that he or any other patriot despaired
although the treason was so grave. Julius Cæsar or Marlborough
## p. 4235 (#613) ###########################################
GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS
4235
or Frederick would hardly be called a great general if he had
rebuked the soldier who reported that the lines were beginning
to break. When the sea is pouring into the ship through an
open seam, everybody is aware of it. But then it is too late.
It is the watch who reports the first starting of the seam who
saves the ship.
It is an ill sign when public men find in exposure and
denunciation of public abuses evidence of the pharisaic disposi-
tion and a tendency in the critic to think himself holier than
other men. Was Martin Luther, cheerfully defending his faith
against the princes of Christendom, a Pharisee? Were the Eng-
lish Puritans, iconoclasts in Church and State but saviors of
liberty, pessimists? Were Patrick Henry demanding liberty or
death, and Wendell Phillips in the night of slavery murmuring
the music of the morning, birds of ill omen? Was Abraham
Lincoln saying of the American Union, "A house divided with
itself cannot stand," assuming to be holier than other Amer-
To win a cheap cheer, I have known even intelligent
men to sneer at the scholar in politics. But in a republic
founded upon the common school, such a sneer seems to me to
show a momentary loss of common-sense. It implies that the
political opinions of educated men are unimportant and that
ignorance is a safer counselor of the republic. If the gentleman
who in this very hall last stooped to that sneer, had asked him-
self what would have been the fortune of this State and this
country without its educated leadership, from Samuel Adams to
Charles Sumner,- both sons of Massachusetts, both scholars in
politics from Harvard College,- he might have spared his coun-
try, his party, and himself, the essential recreancy to America
and to manhood which lies in a sneer at education. To the cant
about the pharisaism of reform there is one short and final
answer. The man who tells the truth is a holier man than the
liar. The man who does not steal is a better man than the
thief.
## p. 4236 (#614) ###########################################
4236
GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS
THE CALL OF FREEDOM
From Orations and Addresses.
Copyright, 1893, by Harper & Brothers
IN
NTO how many homes along this lovely valley came the news
of Lexington and Bunker Hill eighty years ago; and young
men like us, studious, fond of leisure, young lovers, young
husbands, young brothers, and sons, knew that they must forsake
the wooded hillside, the river meadows golden with harvest, the
twilight walk along the river, the summer Sunday in the old
church, parents, wife, child, mistress, and go away to uncertain
Putnam heard the call at his plow, and turned to go
without waiting. Wooster heard it, and obeyed.
war.
Not less lovely in those days was this peaceful valley, not
less soft this summer air. Life was as dear and love as beauti-
ful to those young men as to us who stand upon their graves.
But because they were so dear and beautiful, those men went
out bravely to fight for them and fall. Through these very
streets they marched, who never returned. They fell and were
buried; but they never can die. Not sweeter are the flowers
that make your valley fair, not greener are the pines that give
your river its name, than the memory of the brave men who
died for freedom. And yet no victim of those days, sleeping
under the green sod of Connecticut, is more truly a martyr of
Liberty than every murdered man whose bones lie bleaching in
this summer sun upon the silent plains of Kansas.
Gentlemen, while we read history we make history. Because
our fathers fought in this great cause, we must not hope to escape
fighting. Because two thousand years ago Leonidas stood against
Xerxes, we must not suppose that Xerxes was slain, nor, thank
God! that Leonidas is not immortal. Every great crisis of human
history is a pass of Thermopylæ, and there is always a Leonidas
and his three hundred to die in it, if they cannot conquer.
And
so long as Liberty has one martyr, so long as one drop of blood
is poured out for her, so long from that single drop of bloody
sweat of the agony of humanity shall spring hosts as countless
as the forest leaves and mighty as the sea.
Brothers! the call has come to us. I bring it to you in these
calm retreats. I summon you to the great fight of Freedom. I
call upon you to say with your voices, whenever the occasion
offers, and with your votes when the day comes, that upon
## p. 4237 (#615) ###########################################
GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS
4237
these fertile fields of Kansas, in the very heart of the continent,
the upas-tree of slavery, dripping death-dews upon national pros-
perity and upon free labor, shall never be planted. I call upon
you to plant there the palm of peace, the wine and the olive of
a Christian civilization. I call upon you to determine whether
this great experiment of human freedom, which has been the
scorn of despotism, shall by our failure be also our sin and
shame. I call upon you to defend the hope of the world.
The voice of our brothers who are bleeding, no less than our
fathers who bled, summons us to this battle. Shall the children
of unborn generations, clustering over that vast western empire,
rise up and call us blessed or cursed? Here are our Marathon
and Lexington; here are our heroic fields. The hearts of all
good men beat with us. The fight is fierce- the issue is with
God. But God is good.
ROBERT BROWNING IN FLORENCE
From The Easy Chair. Copyright, 1891, by Harper & Brothers
IT
IS more than forty years since Margaret Fuller first gave
distinction to the literary notices and reviews of the New
York Tribune. Miss Fuller was a woman of extraordinary
scholarly attainments and intellectual independence, the friend of
Emerson and of the "Transcendental" leaders; and her criti-
cal papers were the best then published, and were fitly succeeded
by those of her scholarly friend, George Ripley. It was her
review in the Tribune of Browning's early dramas and the
'Bells and Pomegranates' that introduced him to such general
knowledge and appreciation among cultivated readers in this
country, that it is not less true of Browning than of Carlyle that
he was first better known in America than at home.
It was but about four years before the publication of Miss
Fuller's paper that the Boston issue of Tennyson's two volumes
had delighted the youth of the time with the consciousness of
the appearance of a new English poet. The eagerness and
enthusiasm with which Browning was welcomed soon after were
more limited in extent, but they were even more ardent; and
the devoted zeal of Mr. Levi Thaxter as a Browning missionary
and pioneer forecast the interest from which the Browning soci-
eties of later days have sprung. When Matthew Arnold was
## p. 4238 (#616) ###########################################
4238
GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS
told in a small and remote farming village in New England that
there had been a lecture upon Browning in the town the week
before, he stopped in amazement, and said, "Well, that is the
most surprising and significant fact I have heard in America. "
It was in those early days of Browning's fame, and in the
studio of the sculptor Powers in Florence, that the youthful
Easy Chair took up a visiting-card, and reading the name Mr.
Robert Browning, asked with eager earnestness whether it was
Browning the poet. Powers turned his large, calm, lustrous
eyes upon the youth, and answered, with some surprise at the
warmth of the question:-
-
"It is a young Englishman, recently married, who is here
with his wife, an invalid. He often comes to the studio. "
"Good Heaven! " exclaimed the youth, "it must be Browning
and Elizabeth Barrett. "
Powers, with the half-bewildered air of one suddenly made
conscious that he had been entertaining angels unawares, said
reflectively, “I think we must have them to tea. "
The youth begged to take the card which bore the poet's
address, and hastening to his room near the Piazza Novella, he
wrote a note asking permission for a young American to call
and pay his respects to Mr. and Mrs. Browning; but wrote it in
terms which, however warm, would yet permit it to be put aside
if it seemed impertinent, or if for any reason such a call were
not desired. The next morning betimes the note was dispatched,
and a half-hour had not passed when there was a brisk rap at
the Easy Chair's door. He opened it and saw a young man,
who briskly inquired:
-
"Is Mr. Easy Chair here? »
"That is my name. "
"I am Robert Browning. "
Browning shook hands heartily with his young American
admirer, and thanked him for his note. The poet was then
about thirty-five. His figure was not large, but compact, erect,
and active; the face smooth, the hair dark; the aspect that of
active intelligence, and of a man of the world. He was in no
way eccentric, either in manner or appearance. He talked
freely, with great vivacity, and delightfully, rising and walking
about the room as his talk sparkled on. He heard with evident
pleasure, but with entire simplicity and manliness, of the Ameri-
can interest in his works and in those of Mrs. Browning; and
## p. 4239 (#617) ###########################################
GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS
4239
the Easy Chair gave him a copy of Miss Fuller's paper in the
Tribune.
It was a bright, and to the Easy Chair a wonderfully happy
hour. As he went, the poet said that Mrs. Browning would cer-
tainly expect to give Mr. Easy Chair a cup of tea in the even-
ing; and with a brisk and gay good-by, Browning was gone.
The Easy Chair blithely hied him to the Café Doné, and
ordered of the flower-girl the most perfect of nosegays, with
such fervor that she smiled; and when she brought the flowers
in the afternoon, said with sympathy and meaning, "Eccola,
signore! per la donna bellissima! "
It was not in the Casa Guidi that the Brownings were then
living, but in an apartment in the Via della Scala, not far from
the place or square most familiar to strangers in Florence - the
Piazza Trinità. Through several rooms the Easy Chair passed,
Browning leading the way; until at the end they entered a
smaller room arranged with an air of English comfort, where at
a table, bending over a tea-urn, sat a slight lady, her long curls
drooping forward. "Here," said Browning, addressing her with a
tender diminutive, "here is Mr. Easy Chair. " And, as the bright
eyes but wan face of the lady turned towards him, and she put
out her hand, Mr. Easy Chair recalled the first words of her
verse he had ever known:
―――
"Onora, Onora! ' her mother is calling;
She sits at the lattice, and hears the dew falling,
Drop after drop from the sycamore laden
With dew as with blossom, and calls home the maiden:
'Night cometh, Onora! >»
The most kindly welcome and pleasant chat followed, Brown-
ing's gayety dashing and flashing in, with a sense of profuse
and bubbling vitality, glancing at a hundred topics; and when
there was some allusion to his 'Sordello,' he asked, quickly, with
an amused smile, "Have you read it? " The Easy Chair pleaded
that he had not seen it. "So much the better. Nobody under-
stands it. Don't read it, except in the revised form, which is
coming. " The revised form has come long ago, and the Easy
Chair has read, and probably supposes that he understands. But
Thackeray used to say that he did not read Browning, because he
could not comprehend him, adding ruefully, "I have no head
above my eyes. "
## p. 4240 (#618) ###########################################
4240
GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS
A few days later-
"O gift of God! O perfect day! "-
the Easy Chair went with Mr. and Mrs. Browning to Vallom-
brosa, and the one incident most clearly remembered is that of
Browning's seating himself at the organ in the chapel, and play.
ing, some Gregorian chant, perhaps, or hymn of Pergolesi's.
It was enough to the enchanted eyes of his young companion
that they saw him who was already a great English poet sitting
at the organ where the young Milton had sat, and touching the
very keys which Milton's hand had pressed.
-
## p. 4241 (#619) ###########################################
4241
ERNST CURTIUS
(1814-1896)
RNST CURTIUS, a noted German archæologist and historian,
was born at Lübeck September 2d, 1814. He studied phi-
lology at Bonn, Göttingen, and Berlin. When in 1837 Christ-
ian August Brandis was appointed confidential adviser to Prince
Otho of Bavaria, the newly elected king of Greece, Curtius accom-
panied Brandis's family to Athens as a private tutor. He remained
with the Brandises until 1840, when he joined Ottfried Müller's archæ-
ological expedition to Delphi. No sooner were the excavations well
under way, however, than Müller died.
Curtius thereupon returned to Germany,
stopping at Rome on the way; and in 1841
took his doctor's degree at Halle.
In 1844 he was appointed tutor to the
Crown Prince of Prussia (the late Emperor
Frederick), being at the same time made a
professor extraordinary at the University
of Berlin. He held his position as tutor to
the Crown Prince until 1850, when the lat-
ter matriculated at Bonn. In 1856 he suc-
ceeded Hermann as professor of classical
philology at Göttingen, but returned some
twelve years later to Berlin to occupy the
chair of classical archæology and to act as
director of the cabinet of antiquities in the Royal Museum
Curtius also much advanced the study of classical archæology as
presiding officer of the Archæological Society, as editor of the Archæ-
ological Journal, as perpetual secretary of the Royal Academy, and
as the founder of the German Archæological Institute at Athens. He
undertook a number of scientific missions in the service of the Prus-
sian government, and in 1874 concluded with the Greek government
a convention which secured to the German Empire for a term of
years the exclusive right to make excavations in the Greek kingdom.
The following year the first excavation was begun at Olympia in
Elis, the site of the ancient Olympic games, under the direction of
Curtius, who with others published the results in a voluminous and
most interesting report.
VII-266
ERNST CURTIUS
## p. 4242 (#620) ###########################################
4242
ERNST CURTIUS
Curtius's chief work is his 'History of Greece,' which appeared in
1867. It was originally published in three volumes as one of a series
of manuals for classical students issued by a Berlin house, and was
consequently intended for popular use; a circumstance that necessi-
tated the omission of the copious notes in which the text of a
German scientific work is commonly lost. It showed a remarkable
familiarity with the climate, resources, and physical characteristics of
Greece; and interpreted ancient life with much eloquence from the
classical literature and from the monuments of ancient art. But the
monarchical leaning of the author prevented him from entering fully
into and appreciating the public life of the democratic communities
which he described; and his enthusiastic temperament led him some-
times to exaggerate and to be too eager a partisan, to accept
unproven hypotheses too readily and press them too hard.
Besides his 'History of Greece,' Curtius's most notable works are
'Peloponnesos (1850-51), which describes in detail
ancient
remains on the Peloponnesus; 'Die Stadtgeschichte von Athen'
(Municipal History of Athens: 1891), and 'Sieben Karten zur Topo-
graphie von Athen nebst erläuterndem Text' (Seven Maps of Athens:
1886). His life was a busy and eminently distinguished one, as an
archæologist, historian, and instructor, and his death in the summer
of 1896 was generally lamented by his associates.
THE CAUSES OF DISLIKE TOWARD SOCRATES
From the History of Greece ›
HE Athenians disliked men who wished to be different from
Tevery one else; particularly when these eccentrics, instead
of quietly pursuing their own path and withdrawing from
the world like Timon, forced themselves among their neighbors
and assumed towards them the attitude of pedagogues, as Soc-
rates did. For what could be more annoying to an Athenian of
repute than to find himself, on his way to the council meeting or
the law court, unexpectedly involved in a conversation intended
to confuse him, to shake his comfortable self-assurance, and to
end by making him ridiculous? In any other city such conver-
sation would have been altogether hard to manage; but at
Athens the love of talk was so great that many allowed them-
selves to be caught, and that gradually the number became very
large of those who had been the victims of this inconvenient
questioner, and who carried about with them the remembrance
## p. 4243 (#621) ###########################################
ERNST CURTIUS
4243
of a humiliation inflicted on them by him. And most of all was
he hated by those who had allowed themselves to be touched
and moved to tears of a bitter recognition of their own selves
by his words, but who had afterwards sunk back into their
former ways and were now ashamed of their hours of weakness.
Thus Socrates had daily to experience that the testing of men
was the most ungrateful of tasks which could be pursued at
Athens; nor could he, without the sacred resolution of an abso-
lutely unselfish devotion to his mission, have without ceasing
obeyed the divine voice which every morning anew bade him go
forth among men.
But that there were also more general and deep-seated grounds
for the sense of annoyance manifested by the Attic public, is
most clearly proved by the attacks of the comic stage. "To me
too," it is said in a comedy by Eupolis, "this Socrates is offens-
ive: this beggarly talker, who has considered everything with
hair-splitting ingenuity; the only matter which he has left uncon-
sidered is the question how he will get a dinner to-day. " Far
more serious were the attacks of Aristophanes. His standpoint,
as well as that of Eupolis and Cratinus, was the ancient Attic
view of life: he regarded the teachers of philosophy, round whom
the young men gathered, as the ruin of the State; and although
he could not possibly mistake the difference between Socrates
and the Sophists,—although moreover he by no means belonged
to the personal enemies of Socrates, with whom he rather seems
to have enjoyed a certain degree of intimacy,- yet he thought it
both his right and his duty, as a poet and a patriot, to combat
in Socrates the Sophist, nay, the most dangerous of Sophists.
The Athenian of the old school hated these conversations extend-
ing through whole hours of the broad daylight, during which the
young men were kept away from the palæstræ; these painful
discussions of topics of morality and politics, as to which it
behooved every loyal citizen to have made up his mind once for
all. If everything was submitted to examination, everything was
also exposed to rejection; and what was to become of the city, if
only that was to be allowed as valid which found gracious ac-
ceptance at the hands of this or that professor of talk? If
everything had to be learnt, if everything was to be acquired by
reflection, then there was an end of true civic virtue, which
ought to be a thing inborn in a citizen and secured by his train-
ing as such. In these days all action and capability of action.
## p. 4244 (#622) ###########################################
ERNST CURTIUS
4244
was being dissolved into an idle knowledge; the one-sided culti-
vation of the intellect was loosening the sinews of men, and
making them indifferent to their country and religion. From
this standpoint the poet rejects all such culture of youth as is
founded upon the testing of the mind, and leading it to perfect
knowledge, and lauds those young Athenians who do not care
for wasting their time by sitting and talking with Socrates.
The priestly party, again, was adverse to Socrates, although
the highest authority in religious matters which existed in Hel-
las, and had at all events not been superseded by any other,
had declared in his favor,- at the suggestion of Chærephon,
who from his youth up was attached with devoted affection to
his teacher. His was an enthusiastic nature; and he desired
nothing so ardently as that the beneficent influence which he
had experienced in his own soul might be shared by the largest
possible number of his fellow-citizens. For this reason he was
anxious for an outward recognition of the merits of his so fre-
quently misjudged friend; and he is said to have brought home
from Delphi the oracle which declared Socrates to be the wisest
of all men. Now, although this oracle was incapable of giving
a loftier assurance of his mission to the philosopher himself,
although it could not even remove the antipathy of the public,
yet it might be expected that it would disarm the calumny rep-
resenting Socrates as a teacher of dangerous heresies; and in
this sense he could not but personally welcome the Delphic
declaration. For it must be remembered that he continued to
regard the oracle as the reverend centre of the nation, as the
symbol of a religious communion among the Hellenes; and in
disallowing all presumptuous meditation on the right way of
venerating the gods, he entirely followed the precedent of the
Delphic oracle, which was in the habit of settling questions of
this kind by the answer that it was according to the usage of
their fathers that men should venerate the gods. At Delphi,
on the other hand, there could be no question as to the import-
ance of one who was leading the revolted world back to rever-
ence for things holy, and who, while his contemporaries were
derisively despising the obsolete ways of the past, and running
after the ignes fatui of the wisdom of the day, held up be-
fore their eyes the primitive sayings of the temples; a serious
consideration of which he declared to be sufficient to reveal
the treasure of immortal truth contained in them. If it was
## p. 4245 (#623) ###########################################
ERNST CURTIUS
4245
confessedly impossible to put an end to the prevailing desire
for independent inquiry, then the priests could not but acknowl-
edge that this was the only way by which the old religion could.
be saved.
Even the recognition by Delphi, however, was unable to pro-
tect Socrates against the suspicion of heresy. The fanaticism of
the priestly party increased in inverse ratio to its prospects of
real success; it regarded any philosophical discussion of religious
truths as a desecration, and placed Socrates on the same level as
Diagoras. Finally, the democrats, who after the restoration of
the constitution were the ruling party, hated philosophy, because
out of its school had issued a large proportion of the oligarchs;
not only Critias and Theramenes, but also Pythodorus the archon
of the days of anarchy, Aristoteles one of the Four Hundred and
of the Thirty, Charmides, and others, were known as men of
philosophical culture. Philosophy and the tendency towards
political reaction accordingly seemed to be necessarily connected
with one another. In a word, Socrates found opposition every-
where: some deemed him too conservative and others too liberal;
he had against him both the Sophists and the enemies of the
Sophists, both rigid orthodoxy and infidelity, both the patriots of
the old school and the representatives of the renovated democ-
racy.
Notwithstanding all this hostile feeling, the personal security
of Socrates was not endangered, because he pursued his path as
a blameless man, and because it was a matter of conscience with
him to avoid every offense against the law. But after the res-
toration of the constitution a variety of circumstances continued
to imperil his position at Athens.
SOCRATES AS AN INFLUENCE AND AS A MAN
From the History of Greece ›
IF
WE Contemplate Socrates in his whole way of living and
being (and in truth no other personage of Greek antiquity is
so distinctly brought before our eyes), it seems to us in the
first place as if at Athens he were not in his natural place; so
foreign to Athens are his ways, and so dissociated from it is
his whole individuality. He cannot be fitted into any class of
## p. 4246 (#624) ###########################################
4246
ERNST CURTIUS
Athenian civil society, and is to be measured by no such stand-
ard as we apply to his fellow-citizens. He is one of the poorest
of all the Athenians, and yet he passes with a proud step
through the streets of the city and confronts the richest and
best born as their equal; his ungainly and neglected exterior
makes him an object of public derision, and yet he exercises an
unexampled influence upon high and low, upon learned and
unlearned alike. He is a master both of thought and of speech,
yet at the same time an opponent on principle of those who
were the instructors of the Athenians in both; he is a man of
free thought, who allows nothing to remain untested, and yet he
is more diligent in offering sacrifices than any of his neighbors,
he venerates the oracles, and reposes a simple faith in many
things which the age laughs at as nursery tales; he blames
without reticence the dominion of the multitude, and yet is an
adversary of oligarchs. Entirely his own master, he thinks dif-
ferently from all other Athenians; he goes his own path with-
out troubling himself about public opinion; and so long as he
remains in harmony with himself, no contradiction, no hostile
attack, no derision vexes his soul. Such a man as this seemed
in truth to have been transplanted into the midst of Athens as
it were from some other world.
And yet, unique in his kind as this Socrates was, we are
unable on closer examination to mistake him for aught but a
genuine Athenian. Such he was in his whole intellectual tend-
ency, in his love of talk and skill in talk,-growths impossible
in any but Athenian air,- in the delicate wit with which he con-
trived to combine the serious and the sportive, and in his
unflagging search after a deep connection between action and
knowledge. He was a genuine Athenian of the ancient stamp,
when with inflexible courage he stood forth as the champion of
the laws of the State against all arbitrary interference, and in
the field shrank from no danger or hardship. He knew and
loved the national poets; but above all it is in his indefatigable
impulse towards culture that we recognize the true son of his
native city. Herein lay a spiritual affinity between him and the
noblest among the Athenians, a Solon and a Pericles. Socrates,
like Solon, thought that no man is too old to learn; that to learn
and to know is not a schooling for life, but life itself, and that
which alone gives to life its value. To become by knowledge
better from day to day, and to make others better, appeared to
## p. 4247 (#625) ###########################################
ERNST CURTIUS
4247
both to be the real duty of man.
Both found the one true hap-
piness in the health of the soul, whose greatest unhappiness they
held to lie in wrong and ignorance.
Thus with all his originality Socrates most decidedly stood on
the basis of Attic culture; and if it is taken into consideration
that the most celebrated representatives of Sophistry and the
tendencies akin to it all came from abroad,-e. g. , Protagoras
from Abdera, Prodicus from Ceos, Diagoras from Melos,—it may
fairly be affirmed that as against these foreign teachers the best
principles of Attic wisdom found their representative in Socrates.
Far, however, from merely recurring to the ancient foundations.
of patriotic sentiment,-fallen into neglect to the great loss of the
State,― and from opposing himself on an inflexible defensive to
the movement of the age, he rather stood in the very midst of
it; and merely sought to lead it to other and higher ends.
What he desired was not a turning back, but a progress in
knowledge beyond that which the most sagacious teachers of
wisdom offered. For this reason he was able to unite in himself
elements which seemed to others irreconcilably contradictory;
and upon this conception was based what most distinguished him
above all his fellow countrymen, the lofty freedom and inde-
pendence of his mind. Thus, without becoming disloyal to his
home, he was able to rise above the restrictions of customary
ideas; which he most notably achieved by making himself per-
fectly independent of all external things, in the midst of a
people which worshiped the beauty of outward appearance, and
by attaching value exclusively to the possessions which are
within, and to moral life. For this reason too his personal ugli
ness the broad face with the snub nose, thick lips and promi-
nent eyes—was a characteristic feature of his individuality;
because it testified against the traditional assumption of a neces-
sary union between physical and intellectual excellence; because
it proved that even in a form like that of Silenus there might
dwell a spirit like that of Apollo, and thus conduced to a loftier
conception of the being of man.
