Copyright
1897,
by Moses Coit Tyler.
by Moses Coit Tyler.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v26 - Tur to Wat
I began
picking corn-flowers; but they kept melting away from between
my fingers, do what I would. And I couldn't make myself a
I
I
wreath. And meanwhile I heard some one coming up to me, so
close, and calling, Lusha! Lusha! ' 'Ah,' I thought, 'what a
pity I hadn't time! No matter, I put that moon on my head
instead of corn-flowers, I put it on like a tiara, and I was all
brightness directly; I made the whole field light around me.
And, behold! over the very top of the ears there came gliding
very quickly towards me, not Vassya, but Christ himself! And
how I knew it was Christ I can't say: they don't paint him
like that -- only it was he! No beard, tall, young, all in white,
only his belt was golden; and he held out his hand to me.
'Fear not,' said he, my bride adorned: follow me; you shall lead
the choral dance in the heavenly kingdom, and sing the songs
of Paradise. And how I clung to his hand ! My dog at once
followed at my heels, but then we began to float upwards! he
in front,- his wings spread wide over all the sky, long like a
sea-gull's - and I after him! And my dog had to stay behind.
Then only I understood that that dog was my illness, and that in
the heavenly kingdom there was no place for it. ”
Lukerya paused a minute.
"And I had another dream, too,” she began again; “but
maybe it was a vision. I really don't know. It seemed to me I
.
was lying in this very shanty; and my dead parents, father and
mother, come to me and bow low to me, but say nothing. And
I asked them, Why do you bow down to me, father and mother? '
Because,' they said, you suffer much in this world, so that you
have not only set free your own soul, but have taken a great
burden from off us too. And for us in the other world it is
much easier. You have made an end of your own sins; now you
are expiating our sins. ' And having said this, my parents bowed
down to me again, and I could not see them; there was nothing
but the walls to be seen. I was in great doubt afterwards what
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IVAN TURGENEFF
had happened to me. I even told the priest of it in confession.
Only he thinks it was not a vision, because visions come only to
the clerical gentry. ”
"And I'll tell you another dream,” Lukerya went on. « I
dreamt I was sitting on the high-road, under a willow; I had a
stick, had a wallet on my shoulders, and my head tied up in a
kerchief, just like a pilgrim woman! And I had to go some-
where, a long, long way off, on a pilgrimage. And pilgrims kept
coming past me: they came along slowly, all going one way;
their faces were weary, and all very much like one another. And
I dreamt that moving about among them was a woman, a head
taller than the rest, and wearing a peculiar dress, not like ours
not Russian. And her face too was peculiar,- a worn face
and severe.
And all the others moved away from her; but she
suddenly turns, and comes straight to me. She stood still, and
looked at me; and her eyes were yellow, large, and clear as a
falcon's. And I ask her, Who are you? ' And she says to me,
I'm your death. Instead of being frightened, it was quite the
other way: I was as pleased as could be; I crossed myself! And
the woman, my death, says to me: I'm sorry for you, Lukerya,
but I can't take you with me.
Farewell! Good God! how
sad I was then! Take me,' said I, 'good mother; take me, dar-
ling! ' And my death turned to me, and began speaking to me.
I knew that she was appointing me my hour, but indistinctly, in-
comprehensibly. After St. Peter's day,' said she. With that I
awoke. Yes, I have such wonderful dreams! »
Lukerya turned her eyes upwards, and sank into thought.
“Only the sad thing is, sometimes a whole week will go by
without my getting to sleep once. Last year a lady came to
see me, and she gave me a little bottle of medicine against sleep-
lessness; she told me to take ten drops at a time. It did me so
much good, and I used to sleep; only the bottle was all finished
long ago.
Do you know what medicine that was, and how to
a
get it? »
The lady had obviously given Lukerya opium. I promised to
get her another bottle like it, and could not refrain from again
wondering aloud at her patience.
"Ah, master! ” she answered, “why do you say so? What do
you mean by patience? There, Simeon Stylites now had patience
certainly, great patience; for thirty years he stood on a pillar:
And another saint had himself buried in the earth, right up to
## p. 15129 (#65) ###########################################
IVAN TURGENEFF
15129
(C
his breast, and the ants ate his face. And I'll tell you what I
was told by a good scholar: there was once a country, and the
Ishmaelites made war on it, and they tortured and killed all
the inhabitants; and do what they would, the people could not
get rid of them. And there appeared among these people a holy
virgin; she took a great sword, put on armor weighing eighty
pounds, went out against the Ishmaelites, and drove them all be-
yond the sea. Only when she had driven them out, she said to
them: Now burn me; for that was my vow, that I would die a
death by fire for my people. And the Ishmaelites took her and
burnt her, and the people have been free ever since then! That
was a noble deed, now! But what am I! »
I wondered to myself whence and in what shape the legend
of Joan of Arc had reached her; and after a brief silence, I asked
Lukerya how old she was.
“Twenty-eight - or nine. It won't be thirty. But why count
the years! I've something else to tell you — ”
Lukerya suddenly gave a sort of choked cough, and groaned.
"You are talking a great deal," I observed to her; it may
be bad for you. ”
"It's true,” she whispered, scarce audibly; "it's time to
end our talk; but what does it matter! Now, when you leave
me, I can be silent as long as I like. Anyway, I've opened my
heart. ”
I began bidding her good-by. I repeated my promise to send
her the medicine, and asked her once more to think well and tell
me if there wasn't anything she wanted.
“I want nothing: I am content with all, thank God! ” she
articulated with very great effort, but with emotion; "God give
good health to all! But there, master, you might speak a word
to your mamma: the peasants here are poor - if she could take
the least bit off their rent! They've not land enough, and no
advantages. They would pray to God for you. But I want
nothing. I'm quite contented with all. ”
I gave Lukerya my word that I would carry out her request,
and had already walked to the door. She called me back again.
“Do you remember, master,” she said, -and there was a
gleam of something wonderful in her eyes and on her lips,-
what hair I used to have ? Do you remember, right down to
my knees! It was long before I could make up my mind to it.
Such hair as it was! But how could it be kept combed ?
>>
a
In my
## p. 15130 (#66) ###########################################
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IVAN TURGENEFF
state! So I had it cut off. Yes. Well, good-by, master! I can't
I
talk any more. "
That day, before setting off to shoot, I had a conversation
with the village constable about Lukerya. I learnt from him
that in the village they called Lukerya the Living Relic”: that
she gave them no trouble, however; they never heard complaint
or repining from her. “She asks nothing, but on the contrary
she's grateful for everything; a gentle soul, one must say, if
any there be.
Stricken of God," so the constable concluded, for
her sins, one must suppose; but we do not go into that.
And as
for judging her, no- – no, we do not judge her. Let her be! »
>
A few weeks later I heard that Lukerya was dead. So her
death had come for her and “after St. Peter's day. ” They told
me that on the day of her death she kept hearing the sound of
bells, though it was reckoned over five miles from Aleksyevka to
the church, and it was a week-day. Lukerya, however, had said
that the sounds came not from the church, but from above!
Probably she did not dare to say — from heaven.
-
## p. 15131 (#67) ###########################################
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MOSES COIT TYLER
(1835-)
He literary historian who performs for his country a double
service to criticism and literature deserves its gratitude. Ad-
mirable criticism often lacks the literary touch and tone, -
yet these are especially welcome in the critic of literature. Professor
Moses Coit Tyler, in the thorough-going and attractive studies he has
for years been making of the American literary past, stands alone in
the dignified endeavor to cover the whole field with scholarly care,
and by the methods of broad comprehensive criticism. His task is
still incomplete; but he has published ex-
haustive and stimulating volumes upon the
literature of the Colonial and Revolutionary
periods, of such a quality as to declare him
master of the field. His treatment of ma-
terial that in some hands would inevitably
prove dull in the handling, has made the
tentative literary struggles and efforts warm
and full of illumination.
To this attractiveness may be added the
solider characteristics which go to make up
the critic truly called to his vocation: judg-
ment, the sense of proportion, an apprecia-
tion of what are the underlying principles Moses Coit TYLER
in the development of American life and
letters, and a sound moral insight. Professor Tyler is by birth and
training the right sort of man to give a critical survey of the earlier
American literature, which is in intent and result so predominantly
earnest and ethical.
Moses Coit Tyler is a New-Englander; born in Griswold, Connecti-
cut, on August 2d, 1835. He was graduated from Yale in 1857, and
studied theology there and afterwards at Andover Theological Semi-
nary, Andover, Massachusetts. From 1860 to 1862 he was pastor
of the First Congregational Church of Poughkeepsie, New York. In
1863 he went to England, and resided there four years. On his return
he was appointed to the English chair of the University of Michigan.
In 1881 he became Professor of History at Cornell, which position
he has since held. He was made a priest of the Protestant Episcopal
Church in 1883.
## p. 15132 (#68) ###########################################
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MOSES COIT TYLER
ure.
Professor Tyler's literary activity began with the publication of
the (Brawnville Papers) in 1869,- a series of essays on physical cult-
The initial part of his chief life work was put forth in 1878:
A History of American Literature During the Colonial Time,' in two
volumes. The preface announced the author's intention of making
successive studies, covering the growth of American letters up to the
present time. In 1897 (A Literary History of the American Revolu-
tion' appeared in pursuance of this scheme. Professor Tyler also pub-
lished in 1879, in conjunction with Professor Henry Morley, a Manual
of English Literature. He contributed to the American Statesmen'
Series the monograph on Patrick Henry (1887); and in 1894 appeared
(Three Men of Letters,' - appreciations of Bishop Berkeley, President
Dwight, and Joel Barlow. A volume entitled “Essays from the Nation'
is made up of contributions to that journal while the writer was in
England.
Professor Tyler's criticism of the American literary production is
based upon a recognition of its vital relation to history, to politics,
and society. He apprehends that the “penmen” have exerted an
influence upon the course of American affairs not second to the
statesmen and generals. This sense of the significant bearing of the
native literature upon native life gives his study a fresh, interesting
point of view. Hence it is a contribution to American history. When
he shall have completed his survey and included the literature of the
Republic up to the century-end, it will stand as the one authoritative
and complete word upon the subject. Professor Tyler's style is very
enjoyable for liveliness, color, and euphony. His writing has, dis-
tinctly, the artistic touch, and it is never dry, formal, or conventional
either in manner or thought. The selections appended sufficiently
illustrate this trait.
(
EARLY VERSE-WRITING IN NEW ENGLAND
From <A History of American Literature. ) Copyright 1878, by G. P.
Putnam's Sons
A.
HAPPY surprise awaits those who come to the study of the
early literature of New England with the expectation of
finding it altogether arid in sentiment, or void of the spirit
and aroma of poetry. The New Englander of the seventeenth
century was indeed a typical Puritan; and it will hardly be said
that any typical Puritan of that century was a poetical personage.
In proportion to his devotion to the ideas that won for him the
derisive honor of his name, was he at war with nearly every
form of the beautiful. He himself believed that there was an
## p. 15133 (#69) ###########################################
MOSES COIT TYLER
15133
»
inappeasable feud between religion and art; and hence the duty
of suppressing art was bound up in his soul with the master-
purpose of promoting religion. He cultivated the grim and the
ugly. He was afraid of the approaches of Satan through the
avenues of what is graceful and joyous. The principal business
of men and women in this world seemed to him to be not to
make it as delightful as possible, but to get through it as safely
as possible. By a whimsical and horrid freak of unconscious
Manichæism, he thought that whatever is good here is appropri-
ated to God, and whatever is pleasant, to the Devil. It is not
strange if he were inclined to measure the holiness of a man's
life by its disagreeableness. In the logic and fury of his tremen-
dous faith, he turned away utterly from music, from sculpture
and painting, from architecture, from the adornments of costume,
from the pleasures and embellishments of society,- because these
things seemed only the Devil's flippery and seduction to his
“ascetic soul, aglow with the gloomy or rapturous mysteries of
his theology. ” Hence, very naturally, he turned away likewise
from certain great and splendid types of literature, — from the
drama, from the playful and sensuous verse of Chaucer and his
innumerable sons, from the secular prose writings of his contem-
poraries, and from all forms of modern lyric verse except the
Calvinistic hymn.
Nevertheless the Puritan did not succeed in eradicating poetry
from his nature. Of course, poetry was planted there too deep
even for his theological grub-hooks to root it out. Though denied
expression in one way, the poetry that was in him forced itself
into utterance in another. If his theology drove poetry out of
many forms in which it had been used to reside, poetry itself
practiced a noble revenge by taking up its abode in his theology.
His supreme thought was given to theology; and there he nour-
ished his imagination with the mightiest and sublimest concep.
tions that a human being can entertain — conceptions of God and
man, of angels and devils, of Providence and duty and destiny,
of heaven, earth, hell. Though he stamped his foot in horror
and scorn upon many exquisite and delicious types of literary
art; stripped society of all its embellishments, life of all its amen-
ities, sacred architecture of all its grandeur, the public service
of divine worship of the hallowed pomp, the pathos and beauty,
of its most reverend and stately forms; though his prayers were
often a snuffle, his hymns a dolorous whine, his extemporized
## p. 15134 (#70) ###########################################
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MOSES COIT TYLER
liturgy a bleak ritual of ungainly postures and of harsh monoto-
nous howls: yet the idea that filled and thrilled his soul was one
in every way sublime, immense, imaginative, poetic,- the idea
of the awful omnipotent Jehovah, his inexorable justice, his holi-
ness, the inconceivable brightness of his majesty, the vastness of
his unchanging designs along the entire range of his relations
with the hierarchies of heaven, the principalities and powers of
the pit, and the elect and the reprobate of the sons of Adam.
How resplendent and superb was the poetry that lay at the heart
of Puritanism, was seen by the sightless eyes of John Milton,
whose great epic is indeed the epic of Puritanism.
Turning to Puritanism as it existed in New England, we may
perhaps imagine it as solemnly declining the visits of the Muses
of poetry, sending out to them the blunt but honest message —
"Otherwise engaged. ” Nothing could be further from the truth.
«
Of course, Thalia and Melpomene and Terpsichore could not
under any pretense have been admitted; but Polyhymnia — why
should not she have been allowed to come in ? especially if she
were willing to forsake her deplorable sisters, give up her pagan
habits, and submit to Christian baptism. Indeed, the Muse of
New England, whosoever that respectable damsel may have been,
was a Muse by no means exclusive: such as she was, she cor-
dially visited every one who would receive her — and every one
would receive her. It is an extraordinary fact about these grave
and substantial men of New England, especially during our earli-
est literary age, that they all had a lurking propensity to write
what they sincerely believed to be poetry, - and this, in most
cases, in unconscious defiance of the edicts of nature and of a
predetermining Providence. Lady Mary Montagu said that in
England, in her time, verse-making had become as common as
taking snuff. In New England, in the age before that, it had
become much more common than
than taking snuff - since there
were some who did not take snuff. It is impressive to note, as
we inspect our first period, that neither advanced age, nor high
office,' nor mental unfitness, nor previous condition of respecta-
bility, was sufficient to protect any one from the poetic vice.
We read of venerable men, like Peter Bulkley, continuing to
lapse into it when far beyond the great climacteric. Governor
Thomas Dudley was hardly a man to be suspected of such a
thing, yet even against him the evidence must be pronounced
conclusive: some verses in his own handwriting were found upon
-
-
## p. 15135 (#71) ###########################################
MOSES COIT TYLER
15135
his person after his death. Even the sage and serious governor
of Plymouth wrote ostensible poems. The renowned pulpit ora-
tor, John Cotton, did the same; although in some instances, he
prudently concealed the fact by inscribing his English verse in
Greek characters upon the blank leaves of his almanac. Here
and there, even a town clerk, placing on record the deeply pro-
saic proceedings of the selectmen, would adorn them in the
sacred costume of poetry. Perhaps, indeed, all this was their
solitary condescension to human frailty. The earthly element,
the passion, the carnal taint, the vanity, the weariness, or what-
ever else it be that in other men works itself off in a pleasure
journey, in a flirtation, in going to the play, or in a convivial
bout, did in these venerable men exhaust itself in the sly dissi-
pation of writing verses. Remembering their unfriendly attitude
toward art in general, this universal mania of theirs for some
forms of the poetic art — this unrestrained proclivity toward the
«lust of versification” – must seem to us an odd psychological
freak. Or shall we rather say that it was not a freak at all, but
a normal effort of nature, which, being unduly repressed in one
direction, is accustomed to burst over all barriers in another;
and that these grim and godly personages in the old times fell
into the intemperance of rhyming, just as in later days, excellent
ministers of the gospel and gray-haired deacons, recoiling from
the sin and scandal of a game at billiards, have been known to
manifest an inordinate joy in the orthodox frivolity of croquet ?
As respects the poetry which was perpetrated by our ancestors,
it must be mentioned that a benignant Providence has its own
methods of protecting the human family from intolerable misfor-
tune; and that the most of this poetry has perished. Enough,
however, has survived to furnish us with materials for everlast-
ing gratitude, by enabling us in a measure to realize the nature
and extent of the calamity which the Divine intervention has
spared us.
It will be natural for us to suppose that at any rate, poetry
in New England in the seventeenth century could not have been
a Gaya Sciencia, as poetry was called in Provence in the thir-
teenth century. Even this, however, is not quite correct; for no
inconsiderable part of early New England poetry has a positively
facetious intention, - that part, namely, which consists of elegies
and epitaphs. Our ancestors seem to have reserved their wit-
ticisms principally for tombstones and funerals. When a
died, his surviving friends were wont to conspire together to
man
## p. 15136 (#72) ###########################################
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MOSES COIT TYLER
-
write verses upon him,- and these verses often sparkled with
the most elaborate and painful jests. Thus in 1647, upon the
death of the renowned Thomas Hooker of Hartford, his colleague
in the pastorate, Samuel Stone, wrote to an eminent minister in
Massachusetts certain words of grave and cautious suggestion:
“ You may think whether it may not be comely for you and
myself and some other elders, to make a few verses for Mr.
Hooker, and transcribe them in the beginning of his book. I do
but propound it. ” The appeal was effectual: and when, a few
years later, it came Samuel Stone's turn to depart this life, those
who outlived him rendered to his memory a similar service; his
name furnishing an unusually pleasant opportunity for those
ingenuities of allusion, and those literary quirks and puns, that
were then thought to be among the graces of a threnody.
THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE
From "The Literary History of the American Revolution.
Copyright 1897,
by Moses Coit Tyler. Reprinted by permission of G. P. Putnam's Sons,
publishers.
I"
Tis proper for us to remember that what we call criticism is
not the only valid test of the genuineness and worth of any
piece of writing of great practical interest to mankind: there
is also the test of actual use and service in the world, in direct
contact with the common-sense and the moral sense of large
masses of men, under various conditions, and for a long period.
,
a
Probably no writing which is not essentially sound and true has
ever survived this test.
Neither from this test has the great Declaration any need to
shrink. Probably no public paper ever more perfectly satisfied
the immediate purposes for which it was set forth.
From one
end of the country to the other, and as fast as it could be spread
among the people, it was greeted in public and in private with
every demonstration of approval and delight. To a marvelous
degree it quickened the friends of the Revolution for their great
task. « This Declaration,” wrote one of its signers but a few
days after it had been proclaimed, has had a glorious effect, -
has made these colonies all alive. ” “With the Independency of
«
the American States,” said another political leader a few weeks
later, "a new era in politics has commenced. Every considera-
tion respecting the propriety or impropriety of a separation from
((
## p. 15137 (#73) ###########################################
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15137
»
»
Britain is now entirely out of the question.
Our future
happiness or misery, therefore, as a people, will depend entirely
upon ourselves. ” Six years afterward, in a review of the whole
struggle, a great American scholar expressed his sense of the
relation of this document to it, by saying that “into the monu-
mental act of Independence,” Jefferson had “poured the soul of
the continent. ”
Moreover, during the century and a quarter since the close of
the Revolution, the influence of this State paper on the political
character and the political conduct of the American people has
been great beyond all calculation. For example, after we had
achieved our own national deliverance, and had advanced into
that enormous and somewhat corrupting material prosperity which
followed the adoption of the Constitution, the development of the
cotton interest, and the expansion of the republic into a trans-
continental power, we fell, as is now most apparent, under an
appalling national temptation, — the temptation to forget, or to
repudiate, or to refuse to apply to the case of our human breth-
ren in bondage, the very principles which we ourselves had once
proclaimed as the basis of every rightful government, and as the
ultimate source of our own claim to an untrammeled national
life. The prodigious service rendered to us in this awful moral
emergency by the Declaration of Independence was, that its
public repetition at least once every year in the hearing of vast
throngs of the American people, in every portion of the republic,
kept constantly before our minds, in a form of almost religious
sanctity, those few great ideas as to the dignity of human nature,
and the sacredness of personality, and the indestructible rights of
man as mere man, with which we had so gloriously identified the
beginnings of our national existence, and upon which we had
proceeded to erect all our political institutions both for the nation
and for the States. It did, indeed, at last become very hard for
us to listen each year to the preamble of the Declaration of
Independence, and still to remain the owners and users and
catchers of slaves; still harder, to accept the doctrine that the
righteousness and prosperity of slavery was to be taken as the
dominant policy of the nation. The logic of Calhoun was
flawless as usual, when he concluded that the chief obstruction
in the way of his system was the preamble of the Declaration
of Independence. Had it not been for the inviolable sacredness
given by it to those sweeping aphorisms about the natural rights
XXVI-947
as
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MOSES COIT TYLER
of man, it may be doubted whether, under the vast practical
inducements involved, Calhoun might not have succeeded in win-
ning over an immense majority of the American people to the
support of his compact and plausible scheme for making slavery
the basis of the republic. It was the preamble of the Declara-
tion of Independence which elected Lincoln, which sent forth the
Emancipation Proclamation, which gave victory to Grant, which
ratified the Thirteenth Amendment.
Moreover, we cannot doubt that the permanent effects of the
great Declaration on the political and even the ethical ideals of
the American people are wider and deeper than can be measured
by our experience in grappling with any single political problem;
for they touch all the spiritual springs of American national
character, and they create, for us and for all human beings, a
new standard of political justice and a new principle in the
science of government.
“Much ridicule, a little of it not altogether undeserved,” says a
brilliant English scholar of our time, who is also nobly distinguished
in the sphere of English statesmanship, "has been thrown upon the
opening clause of the Declaration of Independence, which asserts
the inherent natural right of man to enjoy life and liberty, with the
means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtain-
ing happiness and safety. Yet there is an implied corollary in this,
which enjoins the highest morality that in our present state we are
able to think of as possible. If happiness is the right of our neigh-
bor, then not to hinder him but to help him in its pursuit must
plainly be our duty. If all men have a claim, then each man is
under an obligation. The corollary thus involved is the corner-stone
of morality. It was an act of good augury thus to inscribe happi-
ness, as entering at once into the right of all and into the duty of
all, in the very head and front of the new charter, as the base of a
national existence and the first principle of a national government.
The omen has not been falsified. The Americans have been true to
their first doctrine. They have never swerved aside to set up caste
and privilege, to lay down the doctrine that one man's happiness
ought to be an object of greater solicitude to society than any other
man's, or that one order should be encouraged to seek its prosperity
through the depression of any other order. Their example proved
infectious. The assertion in the New World that men have a right to
happiness, and an obligation to promote the happiness of one another,
struck a spark in the Old World. Political construction in America
immediately preceded the last violent stage of demolition in Europe. ”
## p. 15139 (#75) ###########################################
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>
c
»
We shall not here attempt to delineate the influence of this
State paper upon mankind in general. Of course the emergence
of the American Republic as an imposing world-power is a
phenomenon which has now for many years attracted the atten-
tion of the human race. Surely no slight effect must have re-
sulted from the fact that among all civilized peoples, the one
American document best known is the Declaration of Independ-
ence; and that thus the spectacle of so vast and beneficent a
political success has been everywhere associated with the assertion
of the natural rights of man.
« The doctrines it contained,” says
Buckle, “were not merely welcomed by a majority of the French
nation, but even the government itself was unable to withstand
the general feeling. ” "Its effect in hastening the approach of
the French Revolution
was indeed most remarkable. ”
Elsewhere also in many lands, among many peoples, it has been
appealed to again and again as an inspiration for political cour-
age, as a model for political conduct; and if, as the brilliant Eng-
lish historian just cited has affirmed that noble Declaration
ought to be hung up in the nursery of every king, and
blazoned on the porch of every royal palace,” it is because it
has become the classic statement of political truths which must
at last abolish kings altogether, or else teach them to identify
their existence with the dignity and happiness of human nature.
It would be unfitting, in a work like the present, to treat of
the Declaration of Independence without making more than an
incidental reference to its purely literary character.
Very likely most writings - even most writings of genuine
and high quality — have had the misfortune of being read too
little. There is, however, a misfortune - perhaps a greater mis-
fortune - which has overtaken some literary compositions, and
these not necessarily the noblest and the best: the misfortune of
being read too much. At any rate, the writer of a piece of
literature which has been neglected, need not be refused the con-
solation he may get from reflecting that he is at least not the
writer of a piece of literature which has become hackneyed. Just
this is the sort of calamity which seems to have befallen the
Declaration of Independence. Is it, indeed, possible for us Amer-
icans, near the close of the nineteenth century, to be entirely just
to the literary quality of this most monumental document - this
much belauded, much bespouted, much beflouted document ?
since in order to be so, we need to rid ourselves if we can of
the obstreperous memories of a lifetime of Independence Days,
-
## p. 15140 (#76) ###########################################
15140
MOSES COIT TYLER
and to unlink and disperse the associations which have somehow
confounded Jefferson's masterpiece with the rattle of firecrackers,
with the flash and the splutter of burning tar-barrels, and with
that unreserved, that gyratory and perspiratory eloquence, now
for more than a hundred years consecrated to the return of our
fateful Fourth of July.
Had the Declaration of Independence been what many a revo-
lutionary State paper is,- a clumsy, verbose, and vaporing pro-
duction, -- not even the robust literary taste and the all-forgiving
patriotism of the American people could have endured the weari-
ness, the nausea, of hearing its repetition in ten thousand differ-
ent places, at least once every year for so long a period. Nothing
which has not supreme literary merit has ever triumphantly
endured such an ordeal, or ever been subjected to it. No man
can adequately explain the persistent fascination which this State
paper has had, and which it still has, for the American peo-
ple, or its undiminished power over them, without taking into
account its extraordinary literary merits: its possession of the
witchery of true substance wedded to perfect form; its massive-
ness and incisiveness of thought; its art in the marshaling of the
topics with which it deals; its symmetry, its energy, the definite-
ness and limpidity of its statements; its exquisite diction,- at
once terse, musical, and electrical; and as an essential part of
this literary outfit, many of those spiritual notes which can
attract and enthrall our hearts,- veneration for God, veneration
for man, veneration for principle, respect for public opinion,
moral earnestness, moral courage, optimism, a stately and noble
pathos,- finally, self-sacrificing devotion to a cause so great as to
be herein identified with the happiness, not of one people only, or
of one race only, but of human nature itself.
Upon the whole, this is the most commanding and the most
pathetic utterance, in any age, in any language, of national
grievances and of national purposes; having a Demosthenic
momentum of thought, and a fervor of emotional appeal such as
Tyrtæus might have put into his war-songs. Indeed, the Decla-
ration of Independence is a kind of war-song: it is a stately and
a passionate chant of human freedom; it is a prose lyric of civil
and military heroism. We may be altogether sure that no gen-
uine development of literary taste among the American people in
any period of our future history can result in serious misfortune
to this particular specimen of American literature.
## p. 15140 (#77) ###########################################
C
@
3
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0. Graech
JOHN TYNDALL.
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1
!
1
1
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1
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15141
JOHN TYNDALL
(1820-1893)
OHN TYNDALL was one of the many Irishmen who have con-
tributed substantially to English thought. He was born at
Leighlin Bridge, near Carlow, Ireland, on August 21st, 1820.
His early education was got at home, and at the school in his native
town; his grounding in English and mathematics being especially
sound. In 1839 he became civil assistant to a division of the ord-
nance survey, and from 1844 to 1847 was a railway engineer at Man-
chester. He then became a teacher of physics at Queenwood College,
Hampshire; and in 1848, desirous of further scientific study and cult-
ure, he went to Germany and heard the Marburg lectures of Bunsen
and Knoblauch, working in the laboratory and making original inves-
tigations in magnetism. He secured his doctorate in 1857; and after
more study in Berlin returned to England, where the publication of
his scientific discoveries brought him a fellowship in the Royal Society.
In 1853 he was, on the proposal of Faraday, elected to the chair of
Natural Philosophy at the Royal Institution, with which he remained
connected for more than thirty years, becoming its superintendent in
1867 and not retiring until 1887.
Professor Tyndall's long career, from its inception as a teacher
and investigator, was one of fruitful discovery in the realm of physics
and of brilliant exposition of scientific tenets. He began as a young
man the study of radiant heat; and the problems of electricity, mag-
netism, and acoustics also engaged his attention, valuable books upon
these subjects resulting. Such volumes as 'Heat Considered as a Mode
of Motion (1863), 'On Radiation (1865), and Dust and Disease,' are
among the more familiar. The scientific phenomena of glaciers in-
terested him for many years, and from 1856 to his death he visited the
Alps every season,- the initial journey was in company with Huxley,
– and made studies, the deductions from which were embodied in a
series of books very enjoyable in point of literary value. Mountain-
(
eering in 1861' (1862), and 'Hours of Exercise in the Alps' (1871), are
typical of this class. The publications of Tyndall also include a large
number of more technical treatises, adding substantially to his repu-
tation as a physicist, and to the advancement of modern science in
the field of his election. In 1872 he made a successful lecture tour in
the United States; and devoted the proceeds to the establishment of
## p. 15142 (#82) ###########################################
15142
JOHN TYNDALL
-
scholarships for the benefit of students doing original research in
sciences. Degrees were conferred upon him by the universities of
Cambridge, Edinburgh, and Oxford, the latter in spite of a protest
that he taught materialism.
Tyndall was a man of marked force of character, unswerving in
his loyalty to truth as he saw it, and gifted in the synthetic present-
ation of principles with lucidity, vigor, and eloquence. His literary
quality is of the high order also to be found in the English Huxley
or the German Haeckel. His Belfast Address in 1874, as president
of the British Association, — which made a sensation as a bold, clear,
uncompromising statement of the position of the present-day scient-
ists,- is a masterly survey and summary of scientific progress, and
very noble in its spirit and expression. The fine closing portion is
one extract chosen to show Tyndall as a writer. A careful read-
ing of the whole address is sufficient to relieve the speaker from the
charge of being a materialist in any strict sense, for he distinctly
disclaims that creed; confessing the mystery of the source of all life
to be insoluble for the man of science, and giving full credit to
the intuitional and creative faculties as authoritative within their
province. The fairness of mind and breadth of vision, together with
the literary merit, displayed in this address, make it one of the most
remarkable deliverances upon science by a scholar of the time.
Professor Tyndall died at Haslemere, Surrey, England, on Decem-
ber 4th, 1893, from an overdose of chloral accidentally administered
by his wife.
THE MATTERHORN
From (Hours of Exercise in the Alps)
>
09
N THE Thursday evening a violent thunder-storm had burst
over Breuil, discharging new snow upon the heights, but
also clearing the oppressive air. Though the heavens
seemed clear in the early part of Friday, clouds showed a dis-
position to meet us from the south as we returned from the col.
I inquired of my companion whether, in the event of the day
being fine, he would be ready to start on Sunday. His answer
was a prompt negative. In Val Tournanche, he said, they always
"sanctified the Sunday. ” I mentioned Bennen, my pious Catholic
guide, whom I permitted and encouraged to attend his mass on
all possible occasions, but who nevertheless always yielded with-
out a murmur to the demands of the weather. The reasoning
had its effect. On Saturday Maquignaz saw his confessor, and
(
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JOHN TYNDALL
15143
arranged with him to have a mass at two A. M. on Sunday; after
which, unshaded by the sense of duties unperformed, he would
commence the ascent.
The claims of religion being thus met, the point of next
importance, that of money, was set at rest by my immediate ac-
ceptance of the tariff published by the Chanoine Carrel. The
problem being thus reduced to one of muscular physics, we
pondered the question of provisions, decided on a bill of fare, and
committed its execution to the industrious mistress of the hotel.
A fog, impenetrable to vision, had filled the whole of the Val
Tournanche on Saturday night, and the mountains were half
concealed and half revealed by this fog when we rose on Sun.
day morning. The east at sunrise was lowering, and the light
which streamed through the cloud orifices was drawn in omi.
nous red bars across the necks of the mountains. It was one of
those uncomfortable Laodicean days which engender indecision,
— threatening, but not sufficiently so to warrant postponement.
Two guides and two porters were considered necessary for the
first day's climb. A volunteer, moreover, attached himself to our
party, who carried a sheepskin as part of the furniture of the
cabin. To lighten their labor, the porters took a mule with them
as far as the quadruped could climb, and afterwards divided
the load among themselves. While they did so I observed the
weather. The sun had risen with considerable power, and had
broken the cloud-plane to pieces. The severed clouds gathered
into masses more or less spherical, and were rolled grandly over
the ridges into Switzerland. Save for a swathe of fog which
now and then wrapped its flanks, the Matterhorn itself remained
clear; and strong hopes were raised that the progress of the
weather was in the right direction.
We halted at the base of the Tête du Lion, a bold precipice
formed by the sudden cutting down of the ridge which flanks the
Val Tournanche to the right. From its base to the Matterhorn
stretches the Col du Lion; crossed for the first time in 1860, by
Mr. Hawkins, myself, and our two guides. We were now beside
a snow gully, which was cut by a deep furrow along its centre,
and otherwise scarred by the descent of stones. Here each man
arranged his bundle and himself, so as to cross the gully in the
minimum of time. The passage was safely made, a few flying
shingle only coming down upon us. But danger declared itself
where it was not expected. Joseph Maquignaz led the way up
## p. 15144 (#84) ###########################################
15144
JOHN TYNDALL
the rocks. I was next, Pierre Maquignaz next, and last of all
the porters.
Suddenly a yell issued from the leader: «Cachez-
vous ! » I crouched instinctively ágainst the rock, which formed
a by no means perfect shelter, when a bowlder buzzed past me
through the air, smote the rocks below me, and with a savage
hum flew down to the lower glacier. Thus warned, we swerved
to an arête; and when stones fell afterwards, they plunged to
the right or left of us.
In 1860 the great couloir which stretches from the Col du
Lion downwards was filled with a névé of deep snow. But the
atmospheric conditions which have caused the glaciers of Switz-
erland to shrink so remarkably during the last ten years have
swept away this névé. We had descended it in 1860 hip-deep in
snow, and I was now reminded of its steepness by the inclina-
tion of its bed. Maquignaz was incredulous when I pointed out
to him the line of descent to which we had been committed, in
order to avoid the falling stones of the Tête du Lion. Bennen's
warnings on the occasion were very emphatic, and I could under-
stand their wisdom now better than I did then.
When Mr. Hawkins and myself first tried the Matterhorn,
a temporary danger, sufficient to quell for a time the enthusi-
asm even of our lion-hearted guide, was added to the permanent
Fresh snow had fallen two days before; it had quite over-
sprinkled the Matterhorn, converting the brown of its crags into
an iron-gray; this snow had been melted and re-frozen, form-
ing upon the rocks an enameling of ice. Besides their physical
front, moreover, in 1860, the rocks presented a psychological
one, derived from the rumor of their savage inaccessibility. The
crags, the ice, and the character of the mountain, all conspired to
stir the feelings. Much of the wild mystery has now vanished;
.
especially at those points which in 1860 were places of virgin
difficulty, but down which ropes now hang to assist the climber.
The intrinsic grandeur of the Matterhorn, however, cannot be
effaced.
After some hours of steady climbing, we halted upon a plat-
form beside the tattered remnant of one of the tents employed by
me in 1862. Here we sunned ourselves for an hour. We subse-
quently worked upward, scaling the crags and rounding the bases
of those wild and wonderful rock-towers, into which the weather
of ages has hewn the southern ridge of the Matterhorn. The
work required knowledge, but with a fair amount of skill it is
ones.
## p. 15145 (#85) ###########################################
JOHN TYNDALL
15145
safe work. I can fancy nothing more fascinating to a man given
by nature and habit to such things than a climb alone among
these crags and precipices. He need not be theological; but if
complete, the grandeur of the place would certainly fill him with
religious awe.
Looked at from Breuil, the Matterhorn presents two summits:
the one, the summit proper, a square rock-tower in appearance;
the other, which is really the end of a sharp ridge abutting
against the rock-tower, an apparently conical peak. On this
peak Bennen and myself planted our flagstaff in 1862.
At some
distance below it the mountain is crossed by an almost horizon-
tal ledge, always loaded with snow, which from its resemblance
to a white necktie has been called the Cravate. On this ledge
a cabin was put together in 1867. It stands above the precipice
where I quitted my rope in 1862. Up this precipice, by the aid
of a thicker — I will not say a stronger — rope, we now scram-
bled; and following the exact route pursued by Bennen and
myself five years previously, we came to the end of the Cravate.
At some places the snow upon the ledge fell steeply from its
junction with the ciiff; deep step-cutting was also needed where
the substance had been melted and re-congealed. The passage,
however, was soon accomplished along the Cravate to the cabin,
which was almost filled with snow.
Our first need was water. We could of course always melt
the snow; but this would involve a wasteful expenditure of heat.
The cliff at the base of which the hut was built, overhung;
and from its edge the liquefied snow fell in showers beyond the
cabin. Four ice-axes were fixed on the ledge, and over them was
spread the residue of a second tent which I had left at Breuil
in 1862. The water falling upon the canvas flowed towards its
centre. Here an orifice was made, through which the liquid
descended into vessels placed to receive it. Some modification of
this plan might probably be employed with profit for the storing-
up of water for droughty years in England.
I lay for some hours in the warm sunshine, in presence of
the Italian mountains, watching the mutations of the air. But
when the sun sank, the air became chill, and we all retired to
the cabin. We had no fire, though warmth was much needed.
A lover of the mountains, and of his kind, had contributed an
India-rubber mattress; on which I lay down, a light blanket
being thrown over me, while the guides and porters were rolled
## p. 15146 (#86) ###########################################
15146
JOHN TYNDALL
up in sheepskins. The mattress was a poor defense against the
cold of the subjacent rock. I bore this for two hours, unwilling
to disturb the guides; but at length it became intolerable.
learning my condition, however, the good fellows were soon alert;
and folding a sheepskin around me, restored me gradually to a
pleasant temperature. I fell asleep, and found the guides prepar-
ing breakfast and the morning well advanced when I opened my
eyes.
It was past six o'clock when the two brothers and I quit-
ted the cabin. The porters deemed their work accomplished, but
they halted for a time to ascertain whether we were likely to
be driven back or to push forward. We skirted the Cravate, and
reached the bridge at its western extremity. This we ascended
along the old route of Bennen and myself to the conical peak
already referred to, which, as seen from Breuil, constitutes a kind
of second summit of the Matterhorn. From this point to the
base of the final precipice of the mountain stretches an arête,
terribly hacked by the weather, but on the whole horizontal.
When I first made the acquaintance of this savage ridge - called
by Italians the Spalla — it was almost clear of snow. It was now
loaded, the snow being beveled to an edge of exceeding sharp-
The slope to the left, falling towards Zmutt, was exceed-
ingly steep, while the precipices on the right were abysmal. No
other part of the Matterhorn do I remember with greater interest
than this. It was terrible, but its difficulties were fairly within
the grasp of human skill; and this association is more ennobling
than where the circumstances are such as to make you conscious
of your own helplessness. On one of the sharpest teeth of the
ridge Joseph Maquignaz halted, and turning to me with a smile,
remarked, “There is no room for giddiness here, sir. ” In fact,
such possibilities in such places must be altogether excluded from
the chapter of accidents of the climber.
It was at the end of this ridge, where it abuts against the last
precipice of the Matterhorn, that my second flagstaff was left in
1862. I think there must have been something in the light fall-
ing upon this precipice, that gave it an aspect of greater verti-
cality when I first saw it than it seemed to possess on the present
occasion. We had however been struggling for many hours pre-
viously, and may have been dazed by our exertion. I cannot
otherwise account for three of my party declining fatly to make
any attempt upon the precipice. It looks very bad, but no real
ness.
## p. 15147 (#87) ###########################################
JOHN TYNDALL
15147
climber with his strength unimpaired would pronounce it, without
trial, insuperable. Fears of this rock-wall, however, had been
excited long before we reached it. It was probably the addition
of the psychological element to the physical — the reluctance to
encounter new dangers on a mountain which had hitherto inspired
a superstitious fear -- that quelled further exertion.
Seven hundred feet, if the barometric measurement can be
trusted, of very difficult rock-work now lay above us. In 1862
this height had been underestimated by both Bennen and myself.
Of the 14,800 feet of the Matterhorn, we then thought we had
accomplished 14,600. If the barometer speaks truly, we had only
cleared 14,200.
Descending the end of the ridge, we crossed a narrow cleft
and grappled with the rocks at the other side of it. Our ascent
was oblique, bearing to the right. The obliquity at one place
fell to horizontality, and we had to work on the level round a
difficult protuberance of rock. We cleared the difficulty with-
out haste, and then rose straight against the precipice. Above
us a rope hung down the cliff, left there by Maquignaz on the
occasion of his first ascent. We reached the end of this rope,
and some time was lost by my guide in assuring himself that it
was not too much frayed by friction.
picking corn-flowers; but they kept melting away from between
my fingers, do what I would. And I couldn't make myself a
I
I
wreath. And meanwhile I heard some one coming up to me, so
close, and calling, Lusha! Lusha! ' 'Ah,' I thought, 'what a
pity I hadn't time! No matter, I put that moon on my head
instead of corn-flowers, I put it on like a tiara, and I was all
brightness directly; I made the whole field light around me.
And, behold! over the very top of the ears there came gliding
very quickly towards me, not Vassya, but Christ himself! And
how I knew it was Christ I can't say: they don't paint him
like that -- only it was he! No beard, tall, young, all in white,
only his belt was golden; and he held out his hand to me.
'Fear not,' said he, my bride adorned: follow me; you shall lead
the choral dance in the heavenly kingdom, and sing the songs
of Paradise. And how I clung to his hand ! My dog at once
followed at my heels, but then we began to float upwards! he
in front,- his wings spread wide over all the sky, long like a
sea-gull's - and I after him! And my dog had to stay behind.
Then only I understood that that dog was my illness, and that in
the heavenly kingdom there was no place for it. ”
Lukerya paused a minute.
"And I had another dream, too,” she began again; “but
maybe it was a vision. I really don't know. It seemed to me I
.
was lying in this very shanty; and my dead parents, father and
mother, come to me and bow low to me, but say nothing. And
I asked them, Why do you bow down to me, father and mother? '
Because,' they said, you suffer much in this world, so that you
have not only set free your own soul, but have taken a great
burden from off us too. And for us in the other world it is
much easier. You have made an end of your own sins; now you
are expiating our sins. ' And having said this, my parents bowed
down to me again, and I could not see them; there was nothing
but the walls to be seen. I was in great doubt afterwards what
## p. 15128 (#64) ###########################################
15128
IVAN TURGENEFF
had happened to me. I even told the priest of it in confession.
Only he thinks it was not a vision, because visions come only to
the clerical gentry. ”
"And I'll tell you another dream,” Lukerya went on. « I
dreamt I was sitting on the high-road, under a willow; I had a
stick, had a wallet on my shoulders, and my head tied up in a
kerchief, just like a pilgrim woman! And I had to go some-
where, a long, long way off, on a pilgrimage. And pilgrims kept
coming past me: they came along slowly, all going one way;
their faces were weary, and all very much like one another. And
I dreamt that moving about among them was a woman, a head
taller than the rest, and wearing a peculiar dress, not like ours
not Russian. And her face too was peculiar,- a worn face
and severe.
And all the others moved away from her; but she
suddenly turns, and comes straight to me. She stood still, and
looked at me; and her eyes were yellow, large, and clear as a
falcon's. And I ask her, Who are you? ' And she says to me,
I'm your death. Instead of being frightened, it was quite the
other way: I was as pleased as could be; I crossed myself! And
the woman, my death, says to me: I'm sorry for you, Lukerya,
but I can't take you with me.
Farewell! Good God! how
sad I was then! Take me,' said I, 'good mother; take me, dar-
ling! ' And my death turned to me, and began speaking to me.
I knew that she was appointing me my hour, but indistinctly, in-
comprehensibly. After St. Peter's day,' said she. With that I
awoke. Yes, I have such wonderful dreams! »
Lukerya turned her eyes upwards, and sank into thought.
“Only the sad thing is, sometimes a whole week will go by
without my getting to sleep once. Last year a lady came to
see me, and she gave me a little bottle of medicine against sleep-
lessness; she told me to take ten drops at a time. It did me so
much good, and I used to sleep; only the bottle was all finished
long ago.
Do you know what medicine that was, and how to
a
get it? »
The lady had obviously given Lukerya opium. I promised to
get her another bottle like it, and could not refrain from again
wondering aloud at her patience.
"Ah, master! ” she answered, “why do you say so? What do
you mean by patience? There, Simeon Stylites now had patience
certainly, great patience; for thirty years he stood on a pillar:
And another saint had himself buried in the earth, right up to
## p. 15129 (#65) ###########################################
IVAN TURGENEFF
15129
(C
his breast, and the ants ate his face. And I'll tell you what I
was told by a good scholar: there was once a country, and the
Ishmaelites made war on it, and they tortured and killed all
the inhabitants; and do what they would, the people could not
get rid of them. And there appeared among these people a holy
virgin; she took a great sword, put on armor weighing eighty
pounds, went out against the Ishmaelites, and drove them all be-
yond the sea. Only when she had driven them out, she said to
them: Now burn me; for that was my vow, that I would die a
death by fire for my people. And the Ishmaelites took her and
burnt her, and the people have been free ever since then! That
was a noble deed, now! But what am I! »
I wondered to myself whence and in what shape the legend
of Joan of Arc had reached her; and after a brief silence, I asked
Lukerya how old she was.
“Twenty-eight - or nine. It won't be thirty. But why count
the years! I've something else to tell you — ”
Lukerya suddenly gave a sort of choked cough, and groaned.
"You are talking a great deal," I observed to her; it may
be bad for you. ”
"It's true,” she whispered, scarce audibly; "it's time to
end our talk; but what does it matter! Now, when you leave
me, I can be silent as long as I like. Anyway, I've opened my
heart. ”
I began bidding her good-by. I repeated my promise to send
her the medicine, and asked her once more to think well and tell
me if there wasn't anything she wanted.
“I want nothing: I am content with all, thank God! ” she
articulated with very great effort, but with emotion; "God give
good health to all! But there, master, you might speak a word
to your mamma: the peasants here are poor - if she could take
the least bit off their rent! They've not land enough, and no
advantages. They would pray to God for you. But I want
nothing. I'm quite contented with all. ”
I gave Lukerya my word that I would carry out her request,
and had already walked to the door. She called me back again.
“Do you remember, master,” she said, -and there was a
gleam of something wonderful in her eyes and on her lips,-
what hair I used to have ? Do you remember, right down to
my knees! It was long before I could make up my mind to it.
Such hair as it was! But how could it be kept combed ?
>>
a
In my
## p. 15130 (#66) ###########################################
15130
IVAN TURGENEFF
state! So I had it cut off. Yes. Well, good-by, master! I can't
I
talk any more. "
That day, before setting off to shoot, I had a conversation
with the village constable about Lukerya. I learnt from him
that in the village they called Lukerya the Living Relic”: that
she gave them no trouble, however; they never heard complaint
or repining from her. “She asks nothing, but on the contrary
she's grateful for everything; a gentle soul, one must say, if
any there be.
Stricken of God," so the constable concluded, for
her sins, one must suppose; but we do not go into that.
And as
for judging her, no- – no, we do not judge her. Let her be! »
>
A few weeks later I heard that Lukerya was dead. So her
death had come for her and “after St. Peter's day. ” They told
me that on the day of her death she kept hearing the sound of
bells, though it was reckoned over five miles from Aleksyevka to
the church, and it was a week-day. Lukerya, however, had said
that the sounds came not from the church, but from above!
Probably she did not dare to say — from heaven.
-
## p. 15131 (#67) ###########################################
15131
MOSES COIT TYLER
(1835-)
He literary historian who performs for his country a double
service to criticism and literature deserves its gratitude. Ad-
mirable criticism often lacks the literary touch and tone, -
yet these are especially welcome in the critic of literature. Professor
Moses Coit Tyler, in the thorough-going and attractive studies he has
for years been making of the American literary past, stands alone in
the dignified endeavor to cover the whole field with scholarly care,
and by the methods of broad comprehensive criticism. His task is
still incomplete; but he has published ex-
haustive and stimulating volumes upon the
literature of the Colonial and Revolutionary
periods, of such a quality as to declare him
master of the field. His treatment of ma-
terial that in some hands would inevitably
prove dull in the handling, has made the
tentative literary struggles and efforts warm
and full of illumination.
To this attractiveness may be added the
solider characteristics which go to make up
the critic truly called to his vocation: judg-
ment, the sense of proportion, an apprecia-
tion of what are the underlying principles Moses Coit TYLER
in the development of American life and
letters, and a sound moral insight. Professor Tyler is by birth and
training the right sort of man to give a critical survey of the earlier
American literature, which is in intent and result so predominantly
earnest and ethical.
Moses Coit Tyler is a New-Englander; born in Griswold, Connecti-
cut, on August 2d, 1835. He was graduated from Yale in 1857, and
studied theology there and afterwards at Andover Theological Semi-
nary, Andover, Massachusetts. From 1860 to 1862 he was pastor
of the First Congregational Church of Poughkeepsie, New York. In
1863 he went to England, and resided there four years. On his return
he was appointed to the English chair of the University of Michigan.
In 1881 he became Professor of History at Cornell, which position
he has since held. He was made a priest of the Protestant Episcopal
Church in 1883.
## p. 15132 (#68) ###########################################
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MOSES COIT TYLER
ure.
Professor Tyler's literary activity began with the publication of
the (Brawnville Papers) in 1869,- a series of essays on physical cult-
The initial part of his chief life work was put forth in 1878:
A History of American Literature During the Colonial Time,' in two
volumes. The preface announced the author's intention of making
successive studies, covering the growth of American letters up to the
present time. In 1897 (A Literary History of the American Revolu-
tion' appeared in pursuance of this scheme. Professor Tyler also pub-
lished in 1879, in conjunction with Professor Henry Morley, a Manual
of English Literature. He contributed to the American Statesmen'
Series the monograph on Patrick Henry (1887); and in 1894 appeared
(Three Men of Letters,' - appreciations of Bishop Berkeley, President
Dwight, and Joel Barlow. A volume entitled “Essays from the Nation'
is made up of contributions to that journal while the writer was in
England.
Professor Tyler's criticism of the American literary production is
based upon a recognition of its vital relation to history, to politics,
and society. He apprehends that the “penmen” have exerted an
influence upon the course of American affairs not second to the
statesmen and generals. This sense of the significant bearing of the
native literature upon native life gives his study a fresh, interesting
point of view. Hence it is a contribution to American history. When
he shall have completed his survey and included the literature of the
Republic up to the century-end, it will stand as the one authoritative
and complete word upon the subject. Professor Tyler's style is very
enjoyable for liveliness, color, and euphony. His writing has, dis-
tinctly, the artistic touch, and it is never dry, formal, or conventional
either in manner or thought. The selections appended sufficiently
illustrate this trait.
(
EARLY VERSE-WRITING IN NEW ENGLAND
From <A History of American Literature. ) Copyright 1878, by G. P.
Putnam's Sons
A.
HAPPY surprise awaits those who come to the study of the
early literature of New England with the expectation of
finding it altogether arid in sentiment, or void of the spirit
and aroma of poetry. The New Englander of the seventeenth
century was indeed a typical Puritan; and it will hardly be said
that any typical Puritan of that century was a poetical personage.
In proportion to his devotion to the ideas that won for him the
derisive honor of his name, was he at war with nearly every
form of the beautiful. He himself believed that there was an
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»
inappeasable feud between religion and art; and hence the duty
of suppressing art was bound up in his soul with the master-
purpose of promoting religion. He cultivated the grim and the
ugly. He was afraid of the approaches of Satan through the
avenues of what is graceful and joyous. The principal business
of men and women in this world seemed to him to be not to
make it as delightful as possible, but to get through it as safely
as possible. By a whimsical and horrid freak of unconscious
Manichæism, he thought that whatever is good here is appropri-
ated to God, and whatever is pleasant, to the Devil. It is not
strange if he were inclined to measure the holiness of a man's
life by its disagreeableness. In the logic and fury of his tremen-
dous faith, he turned away utterly from music, from sculpture
and painting, from architecture, from the adornments of costume,
from the pleasures and embellishments of society,- because these
things seemed only the Devil's flippery and seduction to his
“ascetic soul, aglow with the gloomy or rapturous mysteries of
his theology. ” Hence, very naturally, he turned away likewise
from certain great and splendid types of literature, — from the
drama, from the playful and sensuous verse of Chaucer and his
innumerable sons, from the secular prose writings of his contem-
poraries, and from all forms of modern lyric verse except the
Calvinistic hymn.
Nevertheless the Puritan did not succeed in eradicating poetry
from his nature. Of course, poetry was planted there too deep
even for his theological grub-hooks to root it out. Though denied
expression in one way, the poetry that was in him forced itself
into utterance in another. If his theology drove poetry out of
many forms in which it had been used to reside, poetry itself
practiced a noble revenge by taking up its abode in his theology.
His supreme thought was given to theology; and there he nour-
ished his imagination with the mightiest and sublimest concep.
tions that a human being can entertain — conceptions of God and
man, of angels and devils, of Providence and duty and destiny,
of heaven, earth, hell. Though he stamped his foot in horror
and scorn upon many exquisite and delicious types of literary
art; stripped society of all its embellishments, life of all its amen-
ities, sacred architecture of all its grandeur, the public service
of divine worship of the hallowed pomp, the pathos and beauty,
of its most reverend and stately forms; though his prayers were
often a snuffle, his hymns a dolorous whine, his extemporized
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MOSES COIT TYLER
liturgy a bleak ritual of ungainly postures and of harsh monoto-
nous howls: yet the idea that filled and thrilled his soul was one
in every way sublime, immense, imaginative, poetic,- the idea
of the awful omnipotent Jehovah, his inexorable justice, his holi-
ness, the inconceivable brightness of his majesty, the vastness of
his unchanging designs along the entire range of his relations
with the hierarchies of heaven, the principalities and powers of
the pit, and the elect and the reprobate of the sons of Adam.
How resplendent and superb was the poetry that lay at the heart
of Puritanism, was seen by the sightless eyes of John Milton,
whose great epic is indeed the epic of Puritanism.
Turning to Puritanism as it existed in New England, we may
perhaps imagine it as solemnly declining the visits of the Muses
of poetry, sending out to them the blunt but honest message —
"Otherwise engaged. ” Nothing could be further from the truth.
«
Of course, Thalia and Melpomene and Terpsichore could not
under any pretense have been admitted; but Polyhymnia — why
should not she have been allowed to come in ? especially if she
were willing to forsake her deplorable sisters, give up her pagan
habits, and submit to Christian baptism. Indeed, the Muse of
New England, whosoever that respectable damsel may have been,
was a Muse by no means exclusive: such as she was, she cor-
dially visited every one who would receive her — and every one
would receive her. It is an extraordinary fact about these grave
and substantial men of New England, especially during our earli-
est literary age, that they all had a lurking propensity to write
what they sincerely believed to be poetry, - and this, in most
cases, in unconscious defiance of the edicts of nature and of a
predetermining Providence. Lady Mary Montagu said that in
England, in her time, verse-making had become as common as
taking snuff. In New England, in the age before that, it had
become much more common than
than taking snuff - since there
were some who did not take snuff. It is impressive to note, as
we inspect our first period, that neither advanced age, nor high
office,' nor mental unfitness, nor previous condition of respecta-
bility, was sufficient to protect any one from the poetic vice.
We read of venerable men, like Peter Bulkley, continuing to
lapse into it when far beyond the great climacteric. Governor
Thomas Dudley was hardly a man to be suspected of such a
thing, yet even against him the evidence must be pronounced
conclusive: some verses in his own handwriting were found upon
-
-
## p. 15135 (#71) ###########################################
MOSES COIT TYLER
15135
his person after his death. Even the sage and serious governor
of Plymouth wrote ostensible poems. The renowned pulpit ora-
tor, John Cotton, did the same; although in some instances, he
prudently concealed the fact by inscribing his English verse in
Greek characters upon the blank leaves of his almanac. Here
and there, even a town clerk, placing on record the deeply pro-
saic proceedings of the selectmen, would adorn them in the
sacred costume of poetry. Perhaps, indeed, all this was their
solitary condescension to human frailty. The earthly element,
the passion, the carnal taint, the vanity, the weariness, or what-
ever else it be that in other men works itself off in a pleasure
journey, in a flirtation, in going to the play, or in a convivial
bout, did in these venerable men exhaust itself in the sly dissi-
pation of writing verses. Remembering their unfriendly attitude
toward art in general, this universal mania of theirs for some
forms of the poetic art — this unrestrained proclivity toward the
«lust of versification” – must seem to us an odd psychological
freak. Or shall we rather say that it was not a freak at all, but
a normal effort of nature, which, being unduly repressed in one
direction, is accustomed to burst over all barriers in another;
and that these grim and godly personages in the old times fell
into the intemperance of rhyming, just as in later days, excellent
ministers of the gospel and gray-haired deacons, recoiling from
the sin and scandal of a game at billiards, have been known to
manifest an inordinate joy in the orthodox frivolity of croquet ?
As respects the poetry which was perpetrated by our ancestors,
it must be mentioned that a benignant Providence has its own
methods of protecting the human family from intolerable misfor-
tune; and that the most of this poetry has perished. Enough,
however, has survived to furnish us with materials for everlast-
ing gratitude, by enabling us in a measure to realize the nature
and extent of the calamity which the Divine intervention has
spared us.
It will be natural for us to suppose that at any rate, poetry
in New England in the seventeenth century could not have been
a Gaya Sciencia, as poetry was called in Provence in the thir-
teenth century. Even this, however, is not quite correct; for no
inconsiderable part of early New England poetry has a positively
facetious intention, - that part, namely, which consists of elegies
and epitaphs. Our ancestors seem to have reserved their wit-
ticisms principally for tombstones and funerals. When a
died, his surviving friends were wont to conspire together to
man
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MOSES COIT TYLER
-
write verses upon him,- and these verses often sparkled with
the most elaborate and painful jests. Thus in 1647, upon the
death of the renowned Thomas Hooker of Hartford, his colleague
in the pastorate, Samuel Stone, wrote to an eminent minister in
Massachusetts certain words of grave and cautious suggestion:
“ You may think whether it may not be comely for you and
myself and some other elders, to make a few verses for Mr.
Hooker, and transcribe them in the beginning of his book. I do
but propound it. ” The appeal was effectual: and when, a few
years later, it came Samuel Stone's turn to depart this life, those
who outlived him rendered to his memory a similar service; his
name furnishing an unusually pleasant opportunity for those
ingenuities of allusion, and those literary quirks and puns, that
were then thought to be among the graces of a threnody.
THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE
From "The Literary History of the American Revolution.
Copyright 1897,
by Moses Coit Tyler. Reprinted by permission of G. P. Putnam's Sons,
publishers.
I"
Tis proper for us to remember that what we call criticism is
not the only valid test of the genuineness and worth of any
piece of writing of great practical interest to mankind: there
is also the test of actual use and service in the world, in direct
contact with the common-sense and the moral sense of large
masses of men, under various conditions, and for a long period.
,
a
Probably no writing which is not essentially sound and true has
ever survived this test.
Neither from this test has the great Declaration any need to
shrink. Probably no public paper ever more perfectly satisfied
the immediate purposes for which it was set forth.
From one
end of the country to the other, and as fast as it could be spread
among the people, it was greeted in public and in private with
every demonstration of approval and delight. To a marvelous
degree it quickened the friends of the Revolution for their great
task. « This Declaration,” wrote one of its signers but a few
days after it had been proclaimed, has had a glorious effect, -
has made these colonies all alive. ” “With the Independency of
«
the American States,” said another political leader a few weeks
later, "a new era in politics has commenced. Every considera-
tion respecting the propriety or impropriety of a separation from
((
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»
»
Britain is now entirely out of the question.
Our future
happiness or misery, therefore, as a people, will depend entirely
upon ourselves. ” Six years afterward, in a review of the whole
struggle, a great American scholar expressed his sense of the
relation of this document to it, by saying that “into the monu-
mental act of Independence,” Jefferson had “poured the soul of
the continent. ”
Moreover, during the century and a quarter since the close of
the Revolution, the influence of this State paper on the political
character and the political conduct of the American people has
been great beyond all calculation. For example, after we had
achieved our own national deliverance, and had advanced into
that enormous and somewhat corrupting material prosperity which
followed the adoption of the Constitution, the development of the
cotton interest, and the expansion of the republic into a trans-
continental power, we fell, as is now most apparent, under an
appalling national temptation, — the temptation to forget, or to
repudiate, or to refuse to apply to the case of our human breth-
ren in bondage, the very principles which we ourselves had once
proclaimed as the basis of every rightful government, and as the
ultimate source of our own claim to an untrammeled national
life. The prodigious service rendered to us in this awful moral
emergency by the Declaration of Independence was, that its
public repetition at least once every year in the hearing of vast
throngs of the American people, in every portion of the republic,
kept constantly before our minds, in a form of almost religious
sanctity, those few great ideas as to the dignity of human nature,
and the sacredness of personality, and the indestructible rights of
man as mere man, with which we had so gloriously identified the
beginnings of our national existence, and upon which we had
proceeded to erect all our political institutions both for the nation
and for the States. It did, indeed, at last become very hard for
us to listen each year to the preamble of the Declaration of
Independence, and still to remain the owners and users and
catchers of slaves; still harder, to accept the doctrine that the
righteousness and prosperity of slavery was to be taken as the
dominant policy of the nation. The logic of Calhoun was
flawless as usual, when he concluded that the chief obstruction
in the way of his system was the preamble of the Declaration
of Independence. Had it not been for the inviolable sacredness
given by it to those sweeping aphorisms about the natural rights
XXVI-947
as
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MOSES COIT TYLER
of man, it may be doubted whether, under the vast practical
inducements involved, Calhoun might not have succeeded in win-
ning over an immense majority of the American people to the
support of his compact and plausible scheme for making slavery
the basis of the republic. It was the preamble of the Declara-
tion of Independence which elected Lincoln, which sent forth the
Emancipation Proclamation, which gave victory to Grant, which
ratified the Thirteenth Amendment.
Moreover, we cannot doubt that the permanent effects of the
great Declaration on the political and even the ethical ideals of
the American people are wider and deeper than can be measured
by our experience in grappling with any single political problem;
for they touch all the spiritual springs of American national
character, and they create, for us and for all human beings, a
new standard of political justice and a new principle in the
science of government.
“Much ridicule, a little of it not altogether undeserved,” says a
brilliant English scholar of our time, who is also nobly distinguished
in the sphere of English statesmanship, "has been thrown upon the
opening clause of the Declaration of Independence, which asserts
the inherent natural right of man to enjoy life and liberty, with the
means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtain-
ing happiness and safety. Yet there is an implied corollary in this,
which enjoins the highest morality that in our present state we are
able to think of as possible. If happiness is the right of our neigh-
bor, then not to hinder him but to help him in its pursuit must
plainly be our duty. If all men have a claim, then each man is
under an obligation. The corollary thus involved is the corner-stone
of morality. It was an act of good augury thus to inscribe happi-
ness, as entering at once into the right of all and into the duty of
all, in the very head and front of the new charter, as the base of a
national existence and the first principle of a national government.
The omen has not been falsified. The Americans have been true to
their first doctrine. They have never swerved aside to set up caste
and privilege, to lay down the doctrine that one man's happiness
ought to be an object of greater solicitude to society than any other
man's, or that one order should be encouraged to seek its prosperity
through the depression of any other order. Their example proved
infectious. The assertion in the New World that men have a right to
happiness, and an obligation to promote the happiness of one another,
struck a spark in the Old World. Political construction in America
immediately preceded the last violent stage of demolition in Europe. ”
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c
»
We shall not here attempt to delineate the influence of this
State paper upon mankind in general. Of course the emergence
of the American Republic as an imposing world-power is a
phenomenon which has now for many years attracted the atten-
tion of the human race. Surely no slight effect must have re-
sulted from the fact that among all civilized peoples, the one
American document best known is the Declaration of Independ-
ence; and that thus the spectacle of so vast and beneficent a
political success has been everywhere associated with the assertion
of the natural rights of man.
« The doctrines it contained,” says
Buckle, “were not merely welcomed by a majority of the French
nation, but even the government itself was unable to withstand
the general feeling. ” "Its effect in hastening the approach of
the French Revolution
was indeed most remarkable. ”
Elsewhere also in many lands, among many peoples, it has been
appealed to again and again as an inspiration for political cour-
age, as a model for political conduct; and if, as the brilliant Eng-
lish historian just cited has affirmed that noble Declaration
ought to be hung up in the nursery of every king, and
blazoned on the porch of every royal palace,” it is because it
has become the classic statement of political truths which must
at last abolish kings altogether, or else teach them to identify
their existence with the dignity and happiness of human nature.
It would be unfitting, in a work like the present, to treat of
the Declaration of Independence without making more than an
incidental reference to its purely literary character.
Very likely most writings - even most writings of genuine
and high quality — have had the misfortune of being read too
little. There is, however, a misfortune - perhaps a greater mis-
fortune - which has overtaken some literary compositions, and
these not necessarily the noblest and the best: the misfortune of
being read too much. At any rate, the writer of a piece of
literature which has been neglected, need not be refused the con-
solation he may get from reflecting that he is at least not the
writer of a piece of literature which has become hackneyed. Just
this is the sort of calamity which seems to have befallen the
Declaration of Independence. Is it, indeed, possible for us Amer-
icans, near the close of the nineteenth century, to be entirely just
to the literary quality of this most monumental document - this
much belauded, much bespouted, much beflouted document ?
since in order to be so, we need to rid ourselves if we can of
the obstreperous memories of a lifetime of Independence Days,
-
## p. 15140 (#76) ###########################################
15140
MOSES COIT TYLER
and to unlink and disperse the associations which have somehow
confounded Jefferson's masterpiece with the rattle of firecrackers,
with the flash and the splutter of burning tar-barrels, and with
that unreserved, that gyratory and perspiratory eloquence, now
for more than a hundred years consecrated to the return of our
fateful Fourth of July.
Had the Declaration of Independence been what many a revo-
lutionary State paper is,- a clumsy, verbose, and vaporing pro-
duction, -- not even the robust literary taste and the all-forgiving
patriotism of the American people could have endured the weari-
ness, the nausea, of hearing its repetition in ten thousand differ-
ent places, at least once every year for so long a period. Nothing
which has not supreme literary merit has ever triumphantly
endured such an ordeal, or ever been subjected to it. No man
can adequately explain the persistent fascination which this State
paper has had, and which it still has, for the American peo-
ple, or its undiminished power over them, without taking into
account its extraordinary literary merits: its possession of the
witchery of true substance wedded to perfect form; its massive-
ness and incisiveness of thought; its art in the marshaling of the
topics with which it deals; its symmetry, its energy, the definite-
ness and limpidity of its statements; its exquisite diction,- at
once terse, musical, and electrical; and as an essential part of
this literary outfit, many of those spiritual notes which can
attract and enthrall our hearts,- veneration for God, veneration
for man, veneration for principle, respect for public opinion,
moral earnestness, moral courage, optimism, a stately and noble
pathos,- finally, self-sacrificing devotion to a cause so great as to
be herein identified with the happiness, not of one people only, or
of one race only, but of human nature itself.
Upon the whole, this is the most commanding and the most
pathetic utterance, in any age, in any language, of national
grievances and of national purposes; having a Demosthenic
momentum of thought, and a fervor of emotional appeal such as
Tyrtæus might have put into his war-songs. Indeed, the Decla-
ration of Independence is a kind of war-song: it is a stately and
a passionate chant of human freedom; it is a prose lyric of civil
and military heroism. We may be altogether sure that no gen-
uine development of literary taste among the American people in
any period of our future history can result in serious misfortune
to this particular specimen of American literature.
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@
3
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0. Graech
JOHN TYNDALL.
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1
!
1
1
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1
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15141
JOHN TYNDALL
(1820-1893)
OHN TYNDALL was one of the many Irishmen who have con-
tributed substantially to English thought. He was born at
Leighlin Bridge, near Carlow, Ireland, on August 21st, 1820.
His early education was got at home, and at the school in his native
town; his grounding in English and mathematics being especially
sound. In 1839 he became civil assistant to a division of the ord-
nance survey, and from 1844 to 1847 was a railway engineer at Man-
chester. He then became a teacher of physics at Queenwood College,
Hampshire; and in 1848, desirous of further scientific study and cult-
ure, he went to Germany and heard the Marburg lectures of Bunsen
and Knoblauch, working in the laboratory and making original inves-
tigations in magnetism. He secured his doctorate in 1857; and after
more study in Berlin returned to England, where the publication of
his scientific discoveries brought him a fellowship in the Royal Society.
In 1853 he was, on the proposal of Faraday, elected to the chair of
Natural Philosophy at the Royal Institution, with which he remained
connected for more than thirty years, becoming its superintendent in
1867 and not retiring until 1887.
Professor Tyndall's long career, from its inception as a teacher
and investigator, was one of fruitful discovery in the realm of physics
and of brilliant exposition of scientific tenets. He began as a young
man the study of radiant heat; and the problems of electricity, mag-
netism, and acoustics also engaged his attention, valuable books upon
these subjects resulting. Such volumes as 'Heat Considered as a Mode
of Motion (1863), 'On Radiation (1865), and Dust and Disease,' are
among the more familiar. The scientific phenomena of glaciers in-
terested him for many years, and from 1856 to his death he visited the
Alps every season,- the initial journey was in company with Huxley,
– and made studies, the deductions from which were embodied in a
series of books very enjoyable in point of literary value. Mountain-
(
eering in 1861' (1862), and 'Hours of Exercise in the Alps' (1871), are
typical of this class. The publications of Tyndall also include a large
number of more technical treatises, adding substantially to his repu-
tation as a physicist, and to the advancement of modern science in
the field of his election. In 1872 he made a successful lecture tour in
the United States; and devoted the proceeds to the establishment of
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JOHN TYNDALL
-
scholarships for the benefit of students doing original research in
sciences. Degrees were conferred upon him by the universities of
Cambridge, Edinburgh, and Oxford, the latter in spite of a protest
that he taught materialism.
Tyndall was a man of marked force of character, unswerving in
his loyalty to truth as he saw it, and gifted in the synthetic present-
ation of principles with lucidity, vigor, and eloquence. His literary
quality is of the high order also to be found in the English Huxley
or the German Haeckel. His Belfast Address in 1874, as president
of the British Association, — which made a sensation as a bold, clear,
uncompromising statement of the position of the present-day scient-
ists,- is a masterly survey and summary of scientific progress, and
very noble in its spirit and expression. The fine closing portion is
one extract chosen to show Tyndall as a writer. A careful read-
ing of the whole address is sufficient to relieve the speaker from the
charge of being a materialist in any strict sense, for he distinctly
disclaims that creed; confessing the mystery of the source of all life
to be insoluble for the man of science, and giving full credit to
the intuitional and creative faculties as authoritative within their
province. The fairness of mind and breadth of vision, together with
the literary merit, displayed in this address, make it one of the most
remarkable deliverances upon science by a scholar of the time.
Professor Tyndall died at Haslemere, Surrey, England, on Decem-
ber 4th, 1893, from an overdose of chloral accidentally administered
by his wife.
THE MATTERHORN
From (Hours of Exercise in the Alps)
>
09
N THE Thursday evening a violent thunder-storm had burst
over Breuil, discharging new snow upon the heights, but
also clearing the oppressive air. Though the heavens
seemed clear in the early part of Friday, clouds showed a dis-
position to meet us from the south as we returned from the col.
I inquired of my companion whether, in the event of the day
being fine, he would be ready to start on Sunday. His answer
was a prompt negative. In Val Tournanche, he said, they always
"sanctified the Sunday. ” I mentioned Bennen, my pious Catholic
guide, whom I permitted and encouraged to attend his mass on
all possible occasions, but who nevertheless always yielded with-
out a murmur to the demands of the weather. The reasoning
had its effect. On Saturday Maquignaz saw his confessor, and
(
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JOHN TYNDALL
15143
arranged with him to have a mass at two A. M. on Sunday; after
which, unshaded by the sense of duties unperformed, he would
commence the ascent.
The claims of religion being thus met, the point of next
importance, that of money, was set at rest by my immediate ac-
ceptance of the tariff published by the Chanoine Carrel. The
problem being thus reduced to one of muscular physics, we
pondered the question of provisions, decided on a bill of fare, and
committed its execution to the industrious mistress of the hotel.
A fog, impenetrable to vision, had filled the whole of the Val
Tournanche on Saturday night, and the mountains were half
concealed and half revealed by this fog when we rose on Sun.
day morning. The east at sunrise was lowering, and the light
which streamed through the cloud orifices was drawn in omi.
nous red bars across the necks of the mountains. It was one of
those uncomfortable Laodicean days which engender indecision,
— threatening, but not sufficiently so to warrant postponement.
Two guides and two porters were considered necessary for the
first day's climb. A volunteer, moreover, attached himself to our
party, who carried a sheepskin as part of the furniture of the
cabin. To lighten their labor, the porters took a mule with them
as far as the quadruped could climb, and afterwards divided
the load among themselves. While they did so I observed the
weather. The sun had risen with considerable power, and had
broken the cloud-plane to pieces. The severed clouds gathered
into masses more or less spherical, and were rolled grandly over
the ridges into Switzerland. Save for a swathe of fog which
now and then wrapped its flanks, the Matterhorn itself remained
clear; and strong hopes were raised that the progress of the
weather was in the right direction.
We halted at the base of the Tête du Lion, a bold precipice
formed by the sudden cutting down of the ridge which flanks the
Val Tournanche to the right. From its base to the Matterhorn
stretches the Col du Lion; crossed for the first time in 1860, by
Mr. Hawkins, myself, and our two guides. We were now beside
a snow gully, which was cut by a deep furrow along its centre,
and otherwise scarred by the descent of stones. Here each man
arranged his bundle and himself, so as to cross the gully in the
minimum of time. The passage was safely made, a few flying
shingle only coming down upon us. But danger declared itself
where it was not expected. Joseph Maquignaz led the way up
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JOHN TYNDALL
the rocks. I was next, Pierre Maquignaz next, and last of all
the porters.
Suddenly a yell issued from the leader: «Cachez-
vous ! » I crouched instinctively ágainst the rock, which formed
a by no means perfect shelter, when a bowlder buzzed past me
through the air, smote the rocks below me, and with a savage
hum flew down to the lower glacier. Thus warned, we swerved
to an arête; and when stones fell afterwards, they plunged to
the right or left of us.
In 1860 the great couloir which stretches from the Col du
Lion downwards was filled with a névé of deep snow. But the
atmospheric conditions which have caused the glaciers of Switz-
erland to shrink so remarkably during the last ten years have
swept away this névé. We had descended it in 1860 hip-deep in
snow, and I was now reminded of its steepness by the inclina-
tion of its bed. Maquignaz was incredulous when I pointed out
to him the line of descent to which we had been committed, in
order to avoid the falling stones of the Tête du Lion. Bennen's
warnings on the occasion were very emphatic, and I could under-
stand their wisdom now better than I did then.
When Mr. Hawkins and myself first tried the Matterhorn,
a temporary danger, sufficient to quell for a time the enthusi-
asm even of our lion-hearted guide, was added to the permanent
Fresh snow had fallen two days before; it had quite over-
sprinkled the Matterhorn, converting the brown of its crags into
an iron-gray; this snow had been melted and re-frozen, form-
ing upon the rocks an enameling of ice. Besides their physical
front, moreover, in 1860, the rocks presented a psychological
one, derived from the rumor of their savage inaccessibility. The
crags, the ice, and the character of the mountain, all conspired to
stir the feelings. Much of the wild mystery has now vanished;
.
especially at those points which in 1860 were places of virgin
difficulty, but down which ropes now hang to assist the climber.
The intrinsic grandeur of the Matterhorn, however, cannot be
effaced.
After some hours of steady climbing, we halted upon a plat-
form beside the tattered remnant of one of the tents employed by
me in 1862. Here we sunned ourselves for an hour. We subse-
quently worked upward, scaling the crags and rounding the bases
of those wild and wonderful rock-towers, into which the weather
of ages has hewn the southern ridge of the Matterhorn. The
work required knowledge, but with a fair amount of skill it is
ones.
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JOHN TYNDALL
15145
safe work. I can fancy nothing more fascinating to a man given
by nature and habit to such things than a climb alone among
these crags and precipices. He need not be theological; but if
complete, the grandeur of the place would certainly fill him with
religious awe.
Looked at from Breuil, the Matterhorn presents two summits:
the one, the summit proper, a square rock-tower in appearance;
the other, which is really the end of a sharp ridge abutting
against the rock-tower, an apparently conical peak. On this
peak Bennen and myself planted our flagstaff in 1862.
At some
distance below it the mountain is crossed by an almost horizon-
tal ledge, always loaded with snow, which from its resemblance
to a white necktie has been called the Cravate. On this ledge
a cabin was put together in 1867. It stands above the precipice
where I quitted my rope in 1862. Up this precipice, by the aid
of a thicker — I will not say a stronger — rope, we now scram-
bled; and following the exact route pursued by Bennen and
myself five years previously, we came to the end of the Cravate.
At some places the snow upon the ledge fell steeply from its
junction with the ciiff; deep step-cutting was also needed where
the substance had been melted and re-congealed. The passage,
however, was soon accomplished along the Cravate to the cabin,
which was almost filled with snow.
Our first need was water. We could of course always melt
the snow; but this would involve a wasteful expenditure of heat.
The cliff at the base of which the hut was built, overhung;
and from its edge the liquefied snow fell in showers beyond the
cabin. Four ice-axes were fixed on the ledge, and over them was
spread the residue of a second tent which I had left at Breuil
in 1862. The water falling upon the canvas flowed towards its
centre. Here an orifice was made, through which the liquid
descended into vessels placed to receive it. Some modification of
this plan might probably be employed with profit for the storing-
up of water for droughty years in England.
I lay for some hours in the warm sunshine, in presence of
the Italian mountains, watching the mutations of the air. But
when the sun sank, the air became chill, and we all retired to
the cabin. We had no fire, though warmth was much needed.
A lover of the mountains, and of his kind, had contributed an
India-rubber mattress; on which I lay down, a light blanket
being thrown over me, while the guides and porters were rolled
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JOHN TYNDALL
up in sheepskins. The mattress was a poor defense against the
cold of the subjacent rock. I bore this for two hours, unwilling
to disturb the guides; but at length it became intolerable.
learning my condition, however, the good fellows were soon alert;
and folding a sheepskin around me, restored me gradually to a
pleasant temperature. I fell asleep, and found the guides prepar-
ing breakfast and the morning well advanced when I opened my
eyes.
It was past six o'clock when the two brothers and I quit-
ted the cabin. The porters deemed their work accomplished, but
they halted for a time to ascertain whether we were likely to
be driven back or to push forward. We skirted the Cravate, and
reached the bridge at its western extremity. This we ascended
along the old route of Bennen and myself to the conical peak
already referred to, which, as seen from Breuil, constitutes a kind
of second summit of the Matterhorn. From this point to the
base of the final precipice of the mountain stretches an arête,
terribly hacked by the weather, but on the whole horizontal.
When I first made the acquaintance of this savage ridge - called
by Italians the Spalla — it was almost clear of snow. It was now
loaded, the snow being beveled to an edge of exceeding sharp-
The slope to the left, falling towards Zmutt, was exceed-
ingly steep, while the precipices on the right were abysmal. No
other part of the Matterhorn do I remember with greater interest
than this. It was terrible, but its difficulties were fairly within
the grasp of human skill; and this association is more ennobling
than where the circumstances are such as to make you conscious
of your own helplessness. On one of the sharpest teeth of the
ridge Joseph Maquignaz halted, and turning to me with a smile,
remarked, “There is no room for giddiness here, sir. ” In fact,
such possibilities in such places must be altogether excluded from
the chapter of accidents of the climber.
It was at the end of this ridge, where it abuts against the last
precipice of the Matterhorn, that my second flagstaff was left in
1862. I think there must have been something in the light fall-
ing upon this precipice, that gave it an aspect of greater verti-
cality when I first saw it than it seemed to possess on the present
occasion. We had however been struggling for many hours pre-
viously, and may have been dazed by our exertion. I cannot
otherwise account for three of my party declining fatly to make
any attempt upon the precipice. It looks very bad, but no real
ness.
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JOHN TYNDALL
15147
climber with his strength unimpaired would pronounce it, without
trial, insuperable. Fears of this rock-wall, however, had been
excited long before we reached it. It was probably the addition
of the psychological element to the physical — the reluctance to
encounter new dangers on a mountain which had hitherto inspired
a superstitious fear -- that quelled further exertion.
Seven hundred feet, if the barometric measurement can be
trusted, of very difficult rock-work now lay above us. In 1862
this height had been underestimated by both Bennen and myself.
Of the 14,800 feet of the Matterhorn, we then thought we had
accomplished 14,600. If the barometer speaks truly, we had only
cleared 14,200.
Descending the end of the ridge, we crossed a narrow cleft
and grappled with the rocks at the other side of it. Our ascent
was oblique, bearing to the right. The obliquity at one place
fell to horizontality, and we had to work on the level round a
difficult protuberance of rock. We cleared the difficulty with-
out haste, and then rose straight against the precipice. Above
us a rope hung down the cliff, left there by Maquignaz on the
occasion of his first ascent. We reached the end of this rope,
and some time was lost by my guide in assuring himself that it
was not too much frayed by friction.
